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  • The Founders: The origins of the ANC and the struggle for democracy in South Africa by Andre Odendaal
  • Melissa Armstrong
The Founders: The origins of the ANC and the struggle for democracy in South Africa By Andre Odendaal. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013.

The Founders argues that the character and form of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), established in 1912, was fortified and refined by more than fifty years of African participation in constitutional politics and protest. The notion that the ANC had deep intellectual roots is not likely to be new to scholars of South Africa, however the detailed cataloguing of the lives, writings, and ideas of groups and individuals make Odendaal’s work an important contribution. The author makes extensive use of both English and Xhosa newspapers printed prior to 1912. With meticulous precision and detail, he uses these sources to trace the political ideas and debates considered by Western-educated African men.

Odendaal recognizes and articulates the subtle changes and divisions that occur within the political resistance formed by mission-educated Africans between 1860 and 1912. In order to emphasize these changes, The Founders is divided into four roughly chronological sections. In the first section, the author highlights the beginnings of organized African constitutional debate and political resistance between 1860 and the late 1880s. The rise of African constitutional challenge to the colonial regime started in the Eastern Cape and was linked to the early establishment of missionary schools in the region as well as the military devastation suffered by the Xhosa and the Zulu in 1856–57 and 1878 respectively. Africans educated by missionary institutions—like Tiyo Soga—voiced their political views conservatively, optimistic that processes of education and assimilation would bring equal rights to Black and White men in South Africa. However, Western-educated Africans were not made the legal equals of their White counterparts and by the late 1870s and early 1880s, African intellectuals grew more radical in their political approach.

The main body of the work examines the process by which African political resistance moved from the confines of the Eastern Cape to grow into a nationally unified movement that represented African rights and freedoms. The author highlights two historical developments that initially enabled African constitutional politics to gain a wider regional base. First, the discovery of diamonds and gold in the South African interior and the subsequent colonial desire to control African labor created new spaces in which resistance could form. Second, the rise of the religious separatist movement, Ethiopianism, became an outlet for nascent political expression; while not a lasting movement, the separatist church used Christian values to challenge colonial power and oppression. At the turn of the century, with budding political dissention growing in the South African interior, the South African war and its aftermath became crucial to the growth of unified African political expression. Most politically involved African men sided with the British war effort, believing the British to be the champions of equal rights for Africans. However, after the British victory in 1902, the political cause for equality and African rights was not extended in the former Boer Republics. The disenchantment with the British corresponded to the growth in political organizations that aimed at encouraging African awareness and action in securing equal rights. Editors of African newspapers in the first decade of the twentieth century were quick to provide political commentary on the implications of a South African federation. Furthermore, South African political organizations debated how best to respond to the growing Boer-Briton colonial alliance forming against African political interests. When the Union in 1910 provided neither direct political representation for Africans nor any hope for Black assimilation, the educated elite that had been driving African constitutional politics for the past fifty years were able to finally bridge regional boundaries, coordinate with traditional chiefs, and mobilize a united African front. In 1912, African representatives from across South Africa met and together formed the South African National Congress.

Odendaal’s research on the political precursors to the ANC has benefited from thirty-five years of consideration. As stated in his introduction, The Founders is a compilation of Odendaal’s master’s thesis “The...

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