Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, by William M. Gumede

Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, by William M. Gumede.

Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, by William M. Gumede.

William M. Gumede offers the reader what is arguably the most well-informed and critical political biography of both Mbeki and the African National Congress (ANC) by someone outside of Mbeki’s or the ANC’s inner sanctum. From his book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, this is an extract from the chapter Freedom’s Long Walk.

William M. Gumede  

Chiefs of royal blood and gentlemen of our race ... We have discovered that in the land of their birth, Africans are treated as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The white people of this country have formed what is known as the Union of South Africa - a union in which we have no voice in the making of the laws and no part in their administration. We have called you, therefore, to this conference, so that we can together devise ways and means of forming our national union for the purpose of creating national unity and defending our rights and privileges. Pixley ka Isaka Seme, 1912

For it is not true that the work of man is finished. That man has nothing more to do in the world. But be a parasite in the world. That all we now need is to keep in step with the world. But the work of man is only just beginning. And it remains to man to conquer all the violence embedded in the recesses of his passion. And no race possesses the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of freedom. There is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory. Aime Cesaire, ‘Return to my Native Land’

Yesterday is a foreign country; tomorrow belongs to us. Thabo Mbeki

SLEEPY BLOEMFONTEIN WOKE TO AN UNFAMILIAR BUZZ. FROM THE FARTHEST corners of South Africa they came, by train, on foot and horseback, to this windswept city in the middle of the veld, deep in the rugged interior. For one day, the natives were baas in this consummate Afrikaner capital of an erstwhile Boer republic, the Orange Free State. It was 8 January 1912, a date that would be etched in the memory of all South Africa as the founding day of the African National Congress, known at the time as the South African Native National Congress. The historic conference opened with a moving prayer, a call to the Almighty to bring sanity to a land where one’s skin colour at birth determined where you would go to school (if at all), how much education you could get, whom you could sleep with, where you worked (if it all), how high you could rise in society, how much you would be paid, where you would live, whether or not you could be treated for illness, and where you would be buried.

That morning, with tears in their eyes and in full voice, they sang that stirring hymn, ‘Lizalise Dinga Dingalako Tixo We Nyaniso’ (Fulfil Thy Promise, God of Truth) by the seminal African composer, Tiyo Soga. The melody drifted out of the sandstone hall, past startled white passers-by, across the rolling prairie stretching towards the deep-blue African skies, before disappearing over the nearby flat-topped koppies. Another, more popular hymn, Enoch Sontonga’s ‘Nkosi Sikelel’iAfrika’ (God Bless Africa), would also be rendered during the conference, with equal gusto and deep emotion. In due course, the ANC would adopt this as its official anthem, and more than half a century later, many newly free African countries would proclaim ‘Nkosi Sikelel’iAfrika’ the national song of their fledgling nations. But it would be almost eight decades before the same hymn became the national anthem of a free, democratic, non-racial South Africa, and on that January morning, such a prospect lay deeply buried beneath an uncertain future.

It was a young African lawyer, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, who would bravely point expectation towards that future. The year before, at a special meeting of the South African Native Convention’s executive committee, Seme had issued a clarion call for all the diverse opposition groups in South Africa to unite under a single banner in order to more effectively fight the growing disenfranchisement of blacks. Formal black political organisations included the Natal Indian Congress (formed by Mohandas Gandhi in 1894) and the African Political Organisation, set up in 1902. In former colonies that had become provinces there were the Natal Native Congress, organised in 1900 by Josiah T Gumede, Martin Luthuli and Saul Msane, among others; and the Orange River Colony Native Congress and the South African Native Congress in the Western Cape.

In 1910, Boer and Briton had buried the hatchet after the bitter Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 to form the Union of South Africa, in which blacks were regarded as second-class citizens. The cruel Natives Land Act of 1913 would reduce the entire black population to squatters, forcefully wresting control of the land on which they had homes, earned a living and hoped to be buried. The groundwork for the historic launch of the ANC had been laid a number of years before, but assumed a new dimension when Seme, recently returned from studying at Columbia University and Jesus College, Oxford, joined forces with three more young black lawyers, Alfred Mangena, George D Montsioa and RW Msimang, and called for a conference to ‘unite all the various African tribes in South Arica’.

Seme was a political novice, equipped with the training and prestige of an attorney, and a strong sense of mission to bring about political unity among the African people. Seme, journalist Sol T Plaatje and others involved in the tricky negotiations in the second half of 1911 had in mind a movement that would not only unite politically active Africans and their separate organisations in different parts of the country, but also achieve a social unity of the chiefs, as representatives of traditional forms of authority and influence; of the new generations of mission-educated Africans who were now ready to assume the leadership in political affairs of their people; and the masses who needed to be led.

Only with such an organisation could Africans overcome the political disabilities confirmed by the 1910 Act of Union, and would they be able to make ‘their grievances known and considered’ by both ‘the government and the people of South Africa at large’. Late that Monday afternoon, when Seme’s motion proposing the establishment of the Congress was passed unanimously, few were in doubt that they had taken a vital step in the history of their people. Many saw the formation of the Congress as equal in significance to the achievement of the whites-only Act of Union, which brought the former Boer republics and British colonies together under a single flag.

The Reverend John Dube, an educationist and editor of Ilanga lase Natal, was elected president general. Seme became treasurer, and Plaatje, a self-educated newspaper editor and novelist, became secretary general. Thomas Mapikela, president of the Free State Native Congress, would act as speaker, and George Montsioa would be the recording secretary. The Reverend EJ Mqoboli of the Wesleyan Church filled the post of chaplain-in-chief, and the vice-presidents were Walter Rubusana, of the Cape Native Congress, Meshach Pelem, of the Bantu Union in the Eastern Cape, Sefako Makgatho, president of the Transvaal Native Congress, and Alfred Mangena, South Africa’s first African barrister.

Eight chiefs were elected honorary presidents. Dube, to his own surprise, was elected in absentia - he had injured himself in a bad fall from a horse and was represented by his brother, Charles. Ahead of the conference it was widely expected that the Reverend Walter Rubusana from East London, translator of the Bible and the first and only African candidate elected to the Cape Provincial Council, would be the founding president.“ John Dube was an impressive figure. He was seen as the right man to achieve the vital tribal unity the Congress hoped to achieve. […]

Contents of Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, by William M. Gumede

Preface
Abbreviations
1. Freedom’s Long Walk
2. Mbeki’s Path to Power
3. Escaping Mandela’s Shadow
4. Was the ANC Trumped on the Economy?
5. Economics for the Poor
6. The CEO
7. Mbeki’s AIDS Denial – Grace or Folly?
8. Comrade Bob
9. NEPAD and the ‘Big Men’
10. What’s Wrong With Being Filthy Rich?
11. Remaking South Africa’s Politics
12. Modernising the Alliance
13. The Poor Bite Back: The ‘New’ Struggle
14. ‘We Are All Yes-Men and Women Now’
15. The Battle for Succession
Notes
List of Interviews
Index

This is an extract from the book: Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, by William M. Gumede.

Book title: Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC
Author: William Mervin Gumede
Publisher: Zebra Press
Cape Town, South Africa 2005
ISBN 1770070923
Paperback, 15x23 cm, 384 pages

Gumede, William M. im Namibiana-Buchangebot

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