Table Of ContentONE HUNDRED YEARS OF THE
DEBATING LIBERATION HISTORIES TODAY
On 8 January 2012 the African National Congress (ANC) of
South Africa, the oldest African nationalist organisation
on the continent, celebrated its one hundredth anniver-
sary. This historic event has generated significant public
debate within both the ANC and South African society
at large. There is no better time to critically reflect on
the ANC’s historical trajectory and struggle against
colonialism and apartheid than in its centennial year.
One Hundred Years of the ANC is a collection of new work
by renown South African and international scholars that
extends the historiography of the ANC, by tapping into
“marginal spaces in ANC history. The contributors reflect
on the relationship between Christianity and African
nationalism; political biography; language and the
politics of performance; the production of ideas; popular
movements; exile politics; and the transformation of the
ANC from liberation movement to state-governing party.
By moving away from the celebratory mode that has
characterised much of the contemporary discussions
on the centenary, the contributors suggest that the
relationship between the histories of earlier struggles
and the present needs to be rethought in more complex
terms. By opening up debate around controversial or
obscured aspects of the ANC’s century-long history,
One Hundred Years of the ANC not only challenges the
hegemonic narratives that have become an established
part of South Africa’s national discourse since 1994 but
_also sets out an agenda for future research.
The book is directed at both past and present activists
and local and international researchers of southern
African liberation politics. A wider readership with an
interest in understanding the historical roots of South
Africa's current politics will find this volume informative.
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ONE HUNDRED YEARS
OF THE ANC
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RICHMOND HILL
PUBLIC LIBRARY
Aug 20 20 |
|R ICHMOND GREEN|
ie 905-780-0711
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/onehundredyearsoO000Oliss
ONE HUNDRED YEARS
ie Wises rNI NKC
DEBATING LIBERATIONGHISSLOREBSeh@O DAY
EDP ED BY
ARIANNA LISSONI, JON SOSKE, NATASHA ERLANK,
NOOR NIEFTAGODIEN AND OMAR BADSHA
VY ©.
WITS UNIVERSITY PRESS ied
Published in 2012 in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
Post Office Wits, 2050, South Africa
www.witspress.co.za
and
South African History Online
266 Lower Main Road, Observatory, 7925, Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.sahistory.org.za/
Published Edition ©Wits University Press 2012
Compilation ©Edition Editors 2012
Chapters ©Individual Contributors 2012
Photographs © Individual Photographers 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher,
except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
ISBN: 978-1-86814-573-7 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-86814-600-0 (Digital)
Edited by: Pat Tucker
Design and Layout: Bernadette Ontong
Cover Design: Omar Badsha, Mads Norgaard, Deidre Mackenna, Bernadette Ontong and
Hothouse South Africa
Cover Art: Mads Norgaard
Printed and bound in South Africa by Creda Communications
RICHMOND HILL |
PUBLIC LIBRARY
AUG 2 0 2014
RICHMOND GREEN |
ANRC WON nr w4a4d
Contents
FIRST KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years
Philip Bonner
SECOND KEYNOTE ADDRESS
A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History 13
Joel Netshitenzhe
CHAPTER ONE
One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Struggle History After
Apartheid 29
Jon Soske, Arianna Lissoni and Natasha Erlank
CHAPTER TWO
Religion And Resistance In Natal, 1900-1910 55
Norman Etherington
CHAPTER THREE
Christianity and African Nationalism in South Africa
in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 77
Natasha Erlank
CHAPTER FOUR
Charlotte Maxeke: A Celebrated and Neglected Figure in History 97,
Thozama April
CHAPTER FIVE
Imagining the Patriotic Worker: The Idea of ‘Decent Work’ in the
ANC’s Political Discourse iil
Franco Barchiesi
CHAPTER SIX
Popular Movements, Contentious Spaces and the ANC,
1943-1956 135
Noor Nieftagodien
CHAPTER SEVEN
Unravelling the 1947 ‘Doctors’ Pact’: Race, Metonymy
and the Evasions of Nationalist History 163
Jon Soske
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Politics of Language and Chief Albert Luthuli’s funeral,
191
30 July 1967
Liz Gunner
CHAPTER NINE
Robben Island University Revisited 211
Crain Soudien
CHAPTER TEN
Shishita: A Crisis in the ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1980-811 233
Hugh Macmillan
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Comrade Mzwai 255
Vladimir Shubin
CHAPTER TWELVE
Revisiting Sekhukhuneland: Trajectories of Former UDF
Activists in Post-Apartheid South Africa 275
Ineke van Kessel
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Regeneration of ANC Political Power, from the 1994 Electoral
Victory to the 2012 Centenary 301
Susan Booysen
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The ANC: Party Vanguard of the Black Middle Class? 325
Roger Southall
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Globalisation, Recolonisation and the Paradox of Liberation
in Southern Africa
347
John S Saul
CONTRIBUTORS 367
INDEX
372
Acknowledgements
his book is based on a selection of papers presented at the One Hundred Years
of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories and Democracy Today Conference
held at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 20-23 September
2011. All the papers presented at the conference are available at:
http://www.sahistory.org.za/abstracts-and-papers-o
Many people have been involved in the production of this book. As editors, we
would particularly like to thank Arianna Lissoni for all the work that she has put
into the book and for co-ordinating all our efforts. We would also like to thank the
excellent staff at Wits Press for helping us to bring this book out in record time. A
note of thanks too, to the funders of the conference from which this book arose:
the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, South African History Online, the University of
Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Editorial Note
ne Hundred Years of the ANC begins with two keynote addresses delivered
‘OF the event which gave rise to this volume. Conferences often get lost in the
proceedings which succeed them, turning the instance of the creation of a debate
into a footnote. We did not want the profoundly important and framing issues
which both speakers raised to be eclipsed by this more academic interpolation
of the conference's content. Philip Bonner, one of South Africa’s most prominent
social historians, delivered a paper taking in his many years as an activist and
historian. His consideration of the factors which have held, and continue to hold,
the ANC together, and his focus on the history of fragments, helped to shape the
contributions present here. The address by Joel Netshitenzhe, a member of the
ANC National Executive Committee at the time of publication, and long-time ANC
strategist, casts the ANC’s success and continuing national importance in terms
of its ongoing search for identity and transformation. The chapters that follow are
chronologically ordered.
