The TwoMoralities-IVNon-racial African unity, based on humanism andthe new cultural amalgam, develops in. oppositionto tribalism and the Whites' morality of survival.

JORDAN K. NGUBANE

[In the three parts of this ·monograph already published,Mr. Ngubane has described the birth and developmentof the White man's desire for security and survival, andt'he African's yearning for fulfilment. The refusal of thefirst to be reconciled with the second is the obstacle inthe way of the Black-White unity that is needed ifevents are to be moved away from disaster in SouthAfrica.

The White lnan's morality of survival was formedduring the long period of his trek, a movement seekingfreedom for t'he group, the race or the class, and not forthe individual. Interacting with this have been theeffects of the "African Great Trek"-away from thetribe, in the bid to enable the individual to make betteruse of his life.

The final Part, containing the political conclusions,based on the author's argument, will appear in our nextissue-EDIToRS]

SOME SPOKESMEN OF APARTHEID .ascribe to Englishinfluences the African's bias in favour of fulfilment forthe individual. This argument falls down at twopoints. The tribe had evolved its own tradition ofhumanism when Jan van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape.It is true that it was cold and somewhat aloof, lackingthe warmth of its Christian successor. The Africantribe was not unique in this respect. Pagan Greece andRome had humanistic concepts with which the tribes­man's can be favourably compared.

Secondly, absolutism and humanism had beenpolaritics in Europe. The former had produced theInquisition. One reaction to this had been a determinedand sustained campaign to assert the rights of theindividual. Even without the British, the humanism ofthe tribe would in time have combined with the NewTestament's emphasis on the importance of the indivi­dual to create a significant reaction against Dutch­Huguenot absolutism.

The British came in on the African side, as hadbeen the case among the settlers, to accelerate a processwhich was already moving in a particular direction.Their emphasis on the rights of the individual, limitedas it was in the circumstances which prevailed in thenineteenth century, made them the natural allies ofthose in revolt against absolutism and its use of raceto preserve itself. The man in flight from the tyrannyof the tribe or the one rejected and despised by theChosen People had no alternative. He saw in theBritish a people he could regard in some ways askindred spirits.

THE NEW AFRI.CAN 4 MAY 1963

The Dutch-Huguenot Trek was at its height betweenthe years 1834 and 1838. That of the Africans reachedits highwater mark after the discovery of gold anddiamonds. The rapid industrialisation which followedattracted large numbers of Africans from both thetribal reserves and the mission stations. All roadsseemed to lead to the towns where amahumusha hadheld their own in the new environment for a long time.

The influx of the pagan and Christian newcomersinto the urban areas created complicated sociologicalproblems as much for amahumusha as for the muni­cipal authorities. The new arrivals did not know theways of the to\vnsman. Both of them despised him, fordifferent reasons. The Christians regarded him as avirtual renegade with practically no morals. The tribes­men viewed him with suspicion. He had become aBlack European. As was to be expected, the tribesmenhad no time for amakholwa as well. They wanted tolead their own life, segregated from those who hadgone over to the side of the White man. They wantednobody to intrude into their closed society.

How did a White m.unicipal authority have to provideaccommodation for people with such divergent outlooksand interest? If it made provision for the social dis­tinctions, an elite could emerge to spearhead the revoltagainst absolutism and White domination. It decidedto lump them together in the locations where compul­sory levelling broke down some of the barriers dividingthem. It would be easier to control their lives and theirmovements in conditions where a Black doctor ofphilosophy lived next-door to the grave-digger, inasimilar house with exactly the same dimensions andfacilities. The. Pass Laws and a vast army of policekept order in the locations.

The Christian missions sailed into this situation tomake things easier for the converts. They establishedschools into which they admitted children from allsorts of cultural backgrounds. In their churches theydrew no distinction between Zulu, Xhosa or Suto con­verts. Cultural homogeneity was emphasised and lingualdifferences played down. Zulus, Xhosas and Sutoattended the same church services. In time intermarriagecreated a new, non-lingual type of African.

These developments reinforced the solidarity of theChristians, gave increasingly definite direction to theirattitudes and confirmed them as the new leaders ofthe African community. The materialistic preferences ofamahumusha lost some of their drive. The tribesmendid not allow· themselves to be affected too deeply bythese changes. A few crossed the cultural line but themajority stuck to their ancient ways and customs. Weshall return to them shortly.

By not recognising the stratifications in the Africancommunity, industry and commerce~ t~e racial lawsand the location system helped greatly to break down

J 0 R D A N K. N G U BAN E , journalist, formereditor of the Ilanga laseNatal and Indian Opinion,vice-president of the Liberal Party of South Africa,attended the All African Peoples' Congress atAccra in 1958, and was chairman of the continua­-lion committee of the African Leaders Conferenceheld at Orlando in 1961. This article is Part IV ofa serially published monograph.

67.

the lingual and other barriers separating one groupfrom the others. They encouraged the merging of theurban and amakholwa patterns of culture into a newamalgam. The idealism and consistency to purpose ofthe converts combined with the realism and eclecticismof alnahumusha to produce an altogether new way oflife.

The tribesmen did not like the cultural fusion. Theystood aloof and continued to regard themselves as aseparate group. They called themselves abantu base­makhaya (the people who belong to where the homesare) to distinguish themselves from amakholwa andamahumusha. They lumped the last two together andreferred to them as abantu basesilungwini (the peoplewho belong to the White man's world).

Apart from language, colour and race oppression,the tribesnlen had little in common with abantu base­silungwini. They segregated themselves from them. Theyate, drank, dressed, thought and lived differently. Theirmanners and their marriage, birth and death ceremonies,together with their sexual habits, were -different. In con­temptuous moods they described the detribalisedAfricans as amakhafula, the africanised version ofkaffirs.

Even in their attitudes to the race question, they sawthe situation in a different light. The tribe had alwayshad the land ·and the numbers in its fight with theWhite man. It had opposed him as a racio-culturalentity. It nad seen him from the perspective of thegroup. It did not accept him as a permanent memberof the South African community. It did not feelindebted to him for much. It did not worship his God;did not speak his language and had no cultural linkswith him. As a result it preferred heroic solutions to therealistic· of abantu basesilungwini. It did not think interms of integration. It looked forward to the day whenthe White man would be pushed into the sea.

By th~ middle of the nineteenth century the Africancommunity had been divided into two distinct culturalgroups: the tribal and the non-tribal. They movedalong different routes to- different destinies. By the endof the century the majority had been pushed out of thetribal pattern to embrace the cultural amalgam.

The changes which had transformed the first Hotten­tot into a stranger among his people continued towreak havoc on the tribe. The stream of such desertersnever ceased to flow. In time the tribe decided to·haveits own schools. The process of change goes on to thisday. One result is that the· tribesmen· are now in theminority in the African community.

About one third of the Africans lead a non-tribalexistence in the urban areas. Another third is ·on Whitefarms. Only a third remains in the tribal areas orreserves. The latter are divided into two groups~the

tribal and the mission.The Boor Great Trek reached its moment of fulfil­

ment in 1910 when the Union of South Africa cameinto being. Then, the English and the Afrikaners agreedto come' together to present a White united frontagaints the African. The principle on which the Whitefront was established was· that the White man shouldb~ the master. This was the logical climax to which thetradition of absolution had moved events from the timewhen Jan van Riebeeck set his foot on·. South African

68

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50c each.

e Since four glamorous young women began work aswine stewardesses in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, hotelbusiness has more than doubled, with men drinkersvery much in the. majority. This is the first time inSouth African hotel history that stewardesses havetaken the traditional place of men or non-EuropeansSunday Express, Johannesburg.

e Testers, Receptionists, and Foremen are ·now some..thing of the past. The 1963 name for these personnelwill be "Service Supervisors". One Service Super­visor is in reality the Tester / Receptionist / Foreman-Atkinson's Moto.rs circular, Cape Town [C.C.]

e A Katangese African trooper was ordered to take amachine-gun which was threatening their position.He made -several attempts but each time he pulledback. Finally an officer said: "What's the matterwith you? Why don't you take that machine-gun?"Said the trooper: "I can't, sah. Not right now­there's a White gentleman using it."-"Stoep Talk",The Sta.r, Johannes~urg.

e Tanganyika Vice-President Rashidi Kawawa re·­turned to Cairo today after spending a day inhospital. He was nearly suffocated when air-condi­tioning in his closed limousine ceased to functionon Wednesday-Daily Nation, Nairobi [R.F.]

e 'Hunger leads to delinquency'PLEA TO REINTRODUCE SCHOOL FEEDING

-Cape Argus headlining [R.G.]e Luck-luck is not something absolute, it can be

influenced. Buy PERSIL, and you get not only thebest washing powder of all, but a chance to win aRefrigerator or tickets of the National Lottery!­The Ethiopian Herald.

e Hard-working, honest houseboy wanted. Must beEuropean-recommended. Ring 27381. ext. 14, morn­ings-East African Standard.

e The provision of facilities to meet the needs ofColoureds in the intensive farming areas of part ofthe Cape Province was recently announced by theMinister of Coloured Affairs, and of CommunityDevelopment and Housing, Mr. P. W. Botha ...Villages would be established at suitable places . . .Labourers on adjacent farms would be housed there... The statement said that the arrangement wouldcounteract migration to the cities and ensure a per­manent and efficient labour force ... The scheme'sadvantages, among others, were that farmers onsmall farms would not have to use valuable landfor housing their labourers-South African Digest.

THE NEW AFRICAN 4 MAY 1963

soil; the inescapable result of thinking in terms o~ thegroup and not the individual.

Two years later, the African Great Trek took itsclimatic turn. The leaders of the cultural amalgam werealarmed by the fusion on the \tVhite side. Union meanta major triumph for Afrikaner diplomacy; for absolu­tism, group consciousness and that mind which judgedmen in terms of race. In an environment where thesewere the dominant influences the area of freedom forthe Africa ~ould be narrowed. The humanism fromwhich the cultural amalgam had derived its inspirationwould be endangered. In the end the amalgam hadderived its inspiration would be endangered. In the endthe amalgam would be destroyed.' Tribalism wouldrear its head and the ideal of rebirth into a new destinywould pass on to history.

Union meant, also, that the intellectual and economicresources of the English would be harnessed with thevigour and numbers of the Afrikaner to'create a formi­dable barrier to the new African's march to fulfilment.

THIS WAS THE MOST serious threat abantu basesilung­wini had faced, apart from annihilation by the tribe.They were not armed. They did not have many friendson t1}e White side. They turned inwardly and soughtwithin their bosom the indestructible power with v/hichto meet the 'new threat. They found it in the ideal ofrebirth; in the values of the ·cultural amalgam and inthe way of life they had evolved for themselves some­where between the tribe and the White man.

To meet the new danger, two conditions had to besatisfied. The ideal of rebirth had· to be given a mean­ing which transcended race. Secondly, a type of leader­ship had to be given by abantu basesilungwini whichcould move Black and White toward agreement onultimate objectives and in that way fill the vacuumcreated by the Dutch-Huguenot settle/rs' rejection ofhumanistic tradition. Only with this agreement couldabantu basesilungwini survive as a cultural group andpreserve their way of life and achievements. Belongingas they did to t\VO cultural worlds, they believed thatthis circumstance equipped them best for providingthe leadership whi~h would bridge the gulf betweenBlack and White by widening the areas of commoninterest. Its starting-point would be the consolidationof African unity, for purposes of bargaining with theWhites.

In 1911, Dr. Seme called for a conference of Africanleaders to consider the threat inherent in the creationof the Union of South Africa, with its emphasis onrace as the yardstick by which to fix the position of theindividual in the life of the nation. The leaders metin Bloemfontein the following year. The three mostimportant things they agreed on were: African unity,non-racial equality and the diplomatic isolation of theWhite supremacists.

The delegates agreed to abandon the loyalties of thepast and to emerge as a new people in history movingtoward the ideal of an egalitarian society. They wereno longer to be narrowly Zulu or Xhosa or Suto. Theywere going to be Africans. In time the new communityadopted Nkosi Sikelela I Afrika (Lord, Succour ThouAfrica) as their national anthem. The song was anational prayer for the preservation of the values of thecultural amalgam.

THE NEW AFRICAN 4 MAY 1963

The unity agreed upon was not going to be usedto push the Europeans and the Asians into the sea.It wa~ designed to widen the area of equality. For thecultural amalgam to survive, the Whites had to belongpermanently to South Africa. They could remain hereonly in conditions where they were as free as theAfrican to make the best possible use of their lives.There was always the clearly expressed conviction onthe part of amakholwa in particular that the culturalamalgam was the product of contact b·etween Blackand White; that by its blending of traditions from thecultures of our various peoples it was, in fact, the onlytruly South African culture.

Aban.tu basesilunf?wini had abandoned the exclusive­ness of the tribe in order to identify themselves withprogressive humanity on the other side of the colourline. They expected that in time, the European and theAsian would do as they had done in Bloemfontein. Theywould accept the ideal of rebirth into a larg~r destiny,reject group exclusiveness, embrace the values of thecultural amalgam and march arm in arm with theracial majority to create a $ociety in which no humanbeing would ever again be punished for belonging to aparticular race.

As the tribe lost its power to influence events, thecultural amalgam would be affected more deeply andwould be enriched more fully by those of its roots whichwere in the culture and technology of the White man.In other words, the Bloemfontein conference committeditself to the ideal of creating a basically Christian civi­lisation suited to African conditions within which theindividual could make the best use of his life regardlessof race, colour or seX4

If one takes into account the circumstances whichbrought amahumusha and amakholwa into being, theBloemfontein conference's rejection of racialism and itsrespect for the rights of the individual were the logicaloutcome of an historical process which made the twodecisions major conditions of survival for abantubasesilungwini.

The conference rejected White South Africa's conten­tion that the colour problem was a domestic matterfor the new Union. They argued that the denial ofhuman rights on grounds of race was something whichconcerned humanity vitally. With this in mind, ·theysent a delegation to Britain in 1913 to warn against thedangers of segregation and another to Versailles in1919 to awaken the nations to the threat to peace thatis inherent in race discrimination.

After the conference the diplomacy of abantu base­silungwini aimed at isolating the White supremacistsfrom the rest of civilised mankind wherever this couldbe done. World interest in South Africa's race problemto-day is thus not a fortuitous development of recentorigin. It is the direct result of systematic planning overthe last fifty years and the intelligent exertion ofpersuasive pressures \vherever these could produce thedesired results. If White South Africa did not realisethat all this was going on, it must blame its Press.

The delegates were as particular about their methodsas they had been about their goals. They committedthemselves to the use of constitutional and non-violenttechniques in the mistaken belief that a racial front

(Continued on page 74)

·69

(Continued fron1 page 69)

based on the morality of survival would yield to peace­ful or moral pressures. At the same time they neededpeace and stability to consolidate their unity and buildup their people's power reserves.

Internally, their diplomacy had always beeninfluenced also by their position of weakness betweenthe armed White community on the one side and the.numerically powerful tribe on the other. This balanceof power threatened to keep the non-tribal communitypermane.ntly in the position of a third force and inthat way to incapacitate it for moving events decisivelytoward its own goals.

In the days when the tribe fought the White man, ithad been hailed as an heroic champion of freedom.When the majority of the African people rejected itsnarrow loyalties, in favour of the humanism of ama­humusha and amakholwa, it could no longer claimto be the sole champion of the Black man's cause. Thetribe now had a rival in the African united front createdby the Bloemfontein conference.

A BRIEF RECAPITULATION of the historical developmentswhich led to this situation might shed more light onthe divisions in the African community. The destructionof African states by the White man left the Black com­munity divided into two groups: the tribal and thenon-tribal. The imposition of White rule meant thatboth became involved in the struggle against raceoppression ~ghting from two different perspectives, to­ward two dIfferent goals.

If the tribe became dominant in the African com­munity, abantu basesilungwini feared that attitudes onboth sides of the colour line might be cast in per­manently racial moulds. Two, nationalisms would arisewhich would remain irreconcilable because of the racialfactor. The cultural amalgam would then be reducedto an impotent third force between the racial giants.This could endanger it and threaten the survival ofabantu basesilungwini.

The first condition of security, next to unity, becamethe destruction of the tribe as a factor of politicalsignificance. Once the racial factor was weakened on theAfrican side the cultural amalgam and its values wouldensure that the alternative to White racialism was raceintegration. and not Black racialism. The peoples ofSouth AfrIca would then be divided into two greatcamps: the racialists and the non-racialists. Abantubasesilungwini would predominate on the non-racialside. .~h7 moti,:es behind all this can be stated simply.

PolICIes whIch stressed group consciousness couldthreaten the newly-established unity. Emphasis had tobe on those things which people had in 'common,whether they were Black or White. Where this was thecase, the White oppressor would not find it easy torevive Zuluism or Sutoism and in that way wreck thecultural amalgam. Secondly, an unarmed people nursinga growing unity amidst unparalleled odds could lookfor allies only among those sections of the human racewhich upheld similar values of life. These were basedlargely on the humanism which had brought abantubasesilungwini into beiRg. •

(To be concluded)

74

COMMENTSelf-Sabotage inSouth Afr~ca

'''IS IT A GOVERNMENT by 'mad babies'?" queried WaIter'Crondike, relinquishing all attempts to be objective ashe and the viewers of Britain saw photographs takenminutes after the Sharpeville massacre.

The South African government has good grounds forits angry protests in Britain and New York on the show­ing of this documentary. The film is damning. It sweepsaside any lingering doubts that "apartheid isn't whollybad".

The commentary was not completely objective, but itwas factual. What better introduction could one havethan a view of the Kruger National Park, followed by aview of a location, and the explanation that "there arespecial reserves for the animals and there are alsospecial reserves for the blacks?"

We were spared a list of what the white man hasdone for the black man: indirectly paid for by his,exploited labour. But we ·were not misled by that omis­sion. For it was not the evil days of death in Sharpe­ville and Langa, nor the courageous words of PatrickDuncan and Chief Lutuli, that made this film such anoutstanding indictment of apartheid; it was the wordsof the Nationalist Party Ministers themselves, as in allseriousness they explained their viewpoint and rationa­lised their actions with the perverted logic of madmen.

Dr. du Plessis, with the racial fanaticism of de'Gobineau, maintained that, "Peop~e have different ways,of life, different definitions of happiness, different hopesand fears. Apartheid is not only sound policy, but ethi­cal and just." Certain moments approached comedy.Mr. Vorster defined a pass endearingly as "a neat andhandy book"· in which the African can keep the manydocuments he is otherwise "prone to lose". He soundedlike a social anthropologist who has discovered a new'racial trait' of the Bantu. Mr. Vorster-or should wecall him Father Vorster-then enlightened the commen­tator on the corporal punishment which 17,000 menreceive each year. "I was caned by my father, weren'tyou caned by yours?" he asked softly. Paul Sauer gave;a ne·w interpretation of democracy . . . "yes, it is acomplete democracy, in so far as those people who havea vote, exercise it."

Opponents of apa!theid had their say. Chief Lutuli,Patrlck Duncan, OIIver Tambo, Helen Joseph, Arch­bishop de Blank. Their words carried conviction butlacked impact. There is nothing quite so impressive asthe verbal suicide of the Nationalists. Perhaps this wasanother manifestation of what Relen Suzman ascribedto them in the film: "their peculiar form of deathwish." •

A review, by a South African living in London, ofthe film Sabotage in South Africa, made by the C.B.S.and presented on television in the United States,Britain and other European countries during Marchand April.

THE NEW AFRICAN 4 MAY 1963