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African Nationalism in South Africa: Origins and Problems*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Donovan Williams
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Extract

Many of the characteristic strains of African Nationalism in South Africa, as were manifest during its peak in the 1950s, may be traced back to the historical situation on the Eastern Frontier of the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the Port Elizabeth–East London–Alice triangle remained a highly significant area for nationalist ideas and action, and this derived from the effects on the Xhosa of the Black–White confrontation which began here 150 years earlier. In the early part of the nineteenth century the fundamental competition for land and cattle led to White military and missionary actions which, coupled with the preaching of Christianity, promoted attitudes among the Xhosa which may be seen in all subsequent African Nationalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , July 1970 , pp. 371 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

1 David, Kimble, A Political History of Ghana 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963), 24.Google Scholar

2 See Robert, I. Rotberg, quoted in McEwan, P. J. M., Twentieth Century Africa (London, 1968), 415.Google Scholar

3 Lord, Hailey, An African Survey (Oxford, rev. ed. 1957), 205.Google Scholar

4 Ibid. 252.

5 van Jaarsveld, Cf. A. F., Oud en Nuwe Weē in die Suid-Afrikaanse Geskiedskrywing (Pretoria, 1961)Google Scholar and The Afrikaner's Interpretation of South African History (Cape Town, 1964).Google Scholar

6 Omer-Cooper, Cf. J. D., Zulu Aftermath: The Nineteenth Century Revolution in Bantu Africa (London, 1966);Google ScholarBecker, P., Rule of Fear: The Life and Times of Dingane, King of the Zulu (London, 1964);Google ScholarBinns, C. T., The Last Zulu King: The Life and Death of Cetshwayo (London, 1963).Google Scholar

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8 I refer here especially to the work of Professor O. F. Raum, a former colleague at the University College of Fort Hare. For this paper he generously allowed me to read his unpublished articles on Xhosa personalities, written for the Dictionary of South African Biography, as well as ‘A topological analysis of Xhosa society’, an unpublished essay written for the Festschrzft für E. Dammann (Marburg). I am also indebted to him for his assistance in translating and discussing with me his published work, referred to below in footnotes 13 and 50. Since this article was written, the first volume of The Oxford History of South Africa, edited by Monica, Wilson and Leonard, Thompson, has been published (Oxford, 1969).Google Scholar It continues the correction of perspective. Chapter VI, by Monica Wilson, examines the missionary impact on the Xhosa, a subject of prime importance for my discussion which follows. Unfortunately her bibliography is inadequate and a key missionary figure, William Ritchie Thomson, seems to have been confused with the Rev.William, Thompson (p. 239).Google Scholar

9 E.g. the abandonment of the Orange River Sovereignty (1854), the annexation of the Diamond Fields (1871), and of the Transvaal (1877), the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), etc.

10 The title of Omer-Cooper's, J. D. book is suggestive: Zulu Aftermath: The Nineteenth Century Revolution in Bantu Africa.Google Scholar

11 The title of my book When Races Meet: The Life and Times of William Ritchie Thomson, 1796–1891 (Johannesburg, 1967) indicates that the frontier had two substantial sides to it.Google Scholar

12 I use the words ‘confrontation’, ‘Black’ and ‘White’ advisedly, in spite of the objections of some who, with some justification, contend that this is perhaps an oversimplification, since race and culture know no frontiers.

13 Pierre, L. van den Berghe, South Africa: A Study in Conflict (Wesleyan, 1965), 155 ff.,Google Scholar and Mary, Benson, The African Patriots: The Story of the African National Congress of South Africa (Faber, 1963), 168,Google Scholar and South Africa: The Struggle for a Birthright (Penguin, 1966), 134–5.Google Scholar both nibble at the idea. Raum, O.F. shows more insight in ‘Die moderne Fuhrungsgruppe bei den südafrikanischen Xhosa’, Sociologus, n.s. XVII, no. 2 (1967), 115–31.Google Scholar I have hinted at the idea in When Races Meet, 3, 214,Google Scholar and developed it further in ‘African Nationalism and Christianity’, New Nation, 02 1968, 17.Google Scholar The importance of the area in shaping African Nationalism is implied in Edward, Roux'sTime Longer than Rope, chaps. I-VIII (Madison, 1964) but never explicitly stated.Google Scholar

14 Williams, , New Nation, 02 1968, 17.Google Scholar

15 The Cape Nguni of the South Eastern Bantu comprise the amaXhosa, abaThembhu and amaPondo. These are the ‘Kaffirs’, the correct term in its historical context of which Tiyo Soga himself (see below, p. 380) was so proud (John, Chalmers, Tiyo Soga: A Page of South African Mission Work (London, 1878), chap. XXI and especially pp. 430–1, 435). The Xhosa mainly inhabited the Kaffirland side of the Eastern Frontier, and still predominate today in the Eastern Cape and the Ciskei.Google Scholar

16 The year 1819 saw the attack on Grahamstown by the Xhosa, spurred on by Makanna, the first of the great nineteenth-century prophets in Kaifraria. In that year, too, the Xhosa lost the Ceded (‘Neutral’) Territory. In 1820 the first permanent mission station was established at Chumie in Kaffirland. All three events are highly significant for subsequent developments. Also, by this time there was little elbow room left on the frontier.

17 New Nation, 02 1968, 17.Google Scholar

18 The most cogent evidence of this was witnessed by me when travelling from Alice to Grahamstown. I observed ‘redblanket Kaflirs’ giving the clenched fist and thumbs-up sign of the African National Congress to passing European motorists. Carl, G. Rosberg and John, Nottingham, in The Myth of ‘Mau Mau’: Nationalism in Kenya (New York, 1966),Google Scholar hold that African Nationalism in Kenya had a ‘unique rural-urban political blend’ (p. XVIII). I would disagree with this claim to exclusiveness. The situation in the Eastern Cape was similar. Cf., Raum in Sociologus, 121.Google Scholar

19 Already in 1850 the Frontier War was called ‘The War of the Races’. African nationalists call the Frontier Wars the ‘Wars of Resistance’.

20 The clenched fist and thumbs-up sign of the African National Congress was the brainchild of the Young Africa League at the University College of Fort Hare. Nkosi' Sikelel'i-Afrika (God Bless Africa), the African national anthem in southern Africa, was composed by Enoch Sontonga, a Xhosa who was a missionary, for the African Congress at Lovedale in 1921.

21 Williams, , New Nation, 02 1968, 17;Google ScholarRaum, , Sociologus, 128.Google Scholar

22 Rosberg, and Nottingham, , 7–8. But they adduce no evidence in support of this important observation.Google Scholar

23 Wilson, M., Keiskamahoek Rural Survey, vol. III, Social Structure (Pietermaritzburg, 1952), 158.Google Scholar See also Mgotsi, N. and Nkele, N., ‘A Separatist Church: Ibandla lika-Kresta,’ African Studies, xv, no. 2, 112.Google Scholar

24 In the years 1819, 1834, 1846, 1850, apart from vigorous commando activity which sometimes amounted to undeclaed war, as in the case of the 1825 Somerset commando.

25 Williams, , When Races Meé, chaps. 2, 4.Google Scholar

26 Xhosa society was prepared to come to terms with some of the features of the new culture which obtruded itself into Kaflirland. Makanna resorted to violence oniy after had been rebuffed by the Whites (see Raum, ‘A topological analysis of Xhosa society’). throwing the role of the prophet-type leader into sharp relief, Raum disposes of certain conventional ideas about Xhosa society, including C. K. Popper's assertion that Xhosa society was taboo-ridden and xenophobic.

27 Raum, , ‘A topological analysis of Xhos soxiety’.Google Scholar

28 Ibid.

29 Williams, , When Races Meet, 84 ff.Google Scholar

30 A comparison between the 1850 Frontier War and the 1950s brings to light fascinating analogies which cannot now be discussed.

31 Minutes of the Presbytery of Caifraria, vol. I, I April 1835 (Cory Library, Rhodes University), quoted in Williams, , When Races Meet, 61.Google Scholar

32 Professor O. F. Raum in a letter to the author, 24 April 1968.

33 Afrikaner and African Nationalism (Oxford, 1967).Google Scholar

34 The authorship of the pamphlet is irrelevant. The Young Africa League would not have distributed literature which was not germane to its cause.

35 Another such publication was Three Hundred Years by ‘Mnguni’ (Cape Town, 1952).Google Scholar

36 Kimble, , Political History of Ghana, 159 ff.Google Scholar

37 James, S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (California, 1958), 105 ff.Google Scholar

38 Cf., Roland Oliver, How Christian is Africa? (London, 1956), 23–4:Google Scholar ‘it was probably as dangerous to be a Kikuyu Christian between 1952 and 1955 as to be a Christian during any of the great persecutions of the later Roman Empire’. Also Vincent, Harlow, Chilver, E. M. and Alison, Smith, History of East Africa, II (Oxford, 1965), 362 ff.Google Scholar

39 Cf., Coleman, Nigeria: Background, 347.Google Scholar

40 Jabavu, D. D. T., ‘Christianity and the Bantu’ in Stauffer, M. (ed.), Thinking with Africa: Chapters by a Group of Nationals Interpreting the Christian Movement (London, 1928), 120–1.Google Scholar

41 ‘Problems of the African Church’ in Stauifer, (ed.) Thinking with Africa, 124.Google Scholar

42 Bennie MSS (University College of Fort Hare) quoted in Williams, , When Races Meet, 60.Google Scholar

43 See above, p. 377.

44 Williams, , When Races Meet, 61–2.Google Scholar

45 Mahabane, in Stauffer, (ed.), Thinking with Africa, 136.Google Scholar

46 Raum, , Sociologus, 125;Google ScholarTrapido, S., ‘African divisional politics in the Cape Colony, 1884 to 1910’, J. Afr. Hist. IX, no. I (1968), 81.Google Scholar

47 Glasgow Missionary Society, Quarterly Papers, no. 3, p. 13,Google Scholar quoted in Williams, , When Races Meet, 98.Google Scholar

48 Chalmers, , 430.Google Scholar

49 Journal of the Rev. Tiyo, Soga, quoted in New Nation, 02 1968, 17. Soga lists a number of different tribes from all parts of South Africa. I understand that the Journal has disappeared from the Library of the University College of Fort Hare where I consulted it during the mid-1950s. I hope to devote an article to the significance of Tiyo Soga for African Nationalism in South Africa.Google Scholar

50 Cf., O. F. Raum, ‘Von Stammespropheten zu Sektenführern’, in Benz, E. (ed.), Messianische Kirchen, Sekten und Bewegungen im heutigen Afrika (Leiden, 1965), 47–70.Google Scholar Some historians distinguish between ‘separatist’ and ‘independent’ African church movements (cf., Edgar H. Brookes in the Preface to Bengt, E. M. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London, 1961), 3–4).Google Scholar Others do not (e.g. Barrett, D. B., ‘Church growth and independency as organic phenomena: an analysis of two hundred African tribes’,Google Scholar in Baëta, C. E. (ed.), Christianity in Tropical Africa, 267–88).Google Scholar I prefer ‘separatist’, an adjective used by those who were involved with the movement in the Eastern Cape towards the end of the nineteenth century. In passing it may be noted that Barrett's remarks about the relationship of independency (separatism) to tribalism are of some significance for this article (ibid. 282–4).

51 Quoted in New Nation, 02 1968, 17.Google Scholar See also Mzimba, L. N., ‘The African Church’ in Dexter Taylor, J. (ed.), Christianity and the Natives of South Africa: A Year Book of South African Missions (Lovedale, n.d.), 89.Google Scholar

52 Mzimba, in Dexter, Taylor (ed.), 91.Google Scholar

53 Stauffer, (ed.), 539.Google Scholar

54 Mzimba, in Dexter, Taylor, 91.Google Scholar

55 Govan, Mbeke, South Africa: The Peasants' Revolt (Penguin, 1964), 12.Google Scholar That the fostering of African nationalism might result in violence was apparently not considered contrary to Christian ethics and is evidence of the divided mind of African ministers. Cf., Leo Kuper, An African Bourgeoisie: Race, Class and Politics in South Africa (London, 1965), 216, ‘African clergymen are encased in ambivalence…’.Google Scholar

56 Raum, in Benz, (ed.), 47–70. The three sects define the triangle of resistance: Mgijima's Israelites have their main centre in Queenstown, but originally at Ntabalanga, Kamastone Location, Whittlesea (Buihoek); Bhengu's church is in East London; and Limba's church in Port Elizabeth.Google Scholar

57 This point is poignantly made by Dr D. D. T. Jabavu writing in 1934: ‘If there is anything the indigenous African prizes, it is the possession of a settled home on land near the bones of his ancestors…’, ‘Bantu Grievances’ in Schapera, I. (ed.), Western Civilization and the Natives of South Africa: Studies in Culture Contact (London, 1934), 287.Google Scholar

58 Gray, Cf. R., ‘Problems of historical perspective: the planting of Christianity in Africa in the nineteenth century’, in Baëta, C. G. (ed), Christianity in Tropical Africa (Oxford, 1968), 27.Google Scholar

59 E.g. research, past and present, for certain D.Phil. degrees directed by Dr A. F. Madden, of Nuffield College, Oxford.

60 Baëta, (ed), Christianity in Tropical Africa, 24.Google Scholar