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4 The Hegemony of Race Coloured Identity within the Radical Movement during the Mid-twentieth Century This chapter uses two case studies to explore the ways in which the rise of the radical movement in Coloured politics influenced the expression of Coloured identity up until the early 1960s, when it was crushed by state repression. The first case study examines the Torch newspaper that appeared between 1946 and 1963. As the mouthpiece of the Non-European Unity Movement the Torch fell squarely within the Trotskyist tradition of the South African Left.1 The second case study, drawn from the rival Communist Party faction, focuses on Alex La Guma’s novella A Walk in the Night, written in the early 1960s.2 Both case studies will demonstrate that analysts have exaggerated the impact of left-wing ideology and politics in the promotion of nonracism before the 1960s. It will also be argued that they have underplayed the extent to which conventional perceptions and attitudes toward Coloured identity held sway among radicals. Discourses of Race and Identity in the Torch Newspaper The idea of uniting black people within a single organization, not merely seeking cooperation between racially distinct bodies, was introduced into Coloured protest politics by the National Liberation League, the first radical political organization to gain significant support within the Coloured community after its founding in 1935. This development represented a significant advance in nonracial thinking, even if it was mainly confined to radical activists and intellectuals. 98 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. After its incubation in the NLL, which was defunct by 1940, the idea of black political unity as a precondition for the overthrow of white rule became the cornerstone of the Non-European Unity Movement , a number of whose leaders had cut their political teeth in the NLL.3 The NEUM was set up as a federal body at its founding conference in Bloemfontein in December 1943 as part of a deliberate strategy to accommodate organizations and individuals from all sectors of society and to allow coordination of their activities without requiring that they surrender their separate identities. Besides building a united black political front, a core objective of the NEUM was to implement a policy of noncollaboration with white authorities, using the tactic of boycotting all racist institutions. The leadership positioned the NEUM as an organization for national liberation, with a set of minimum demands for full democratic rights outlined in the Ten Point Programme adopted at its inaugural conference. These transitional demands, it was theorized, would win the NEUM mass support within the black peasantry, urban proletariat, and petite bourgeoisie . Members of the white working class were not expected to play a progressive role in the early stages of the struggle, but it was believed they would, in time, realize that their fundamental interests lay with the rest of the working class as the movement grew in power and crises in the capitalist economy eroded their privileged status. When the struggle for national liberation had progressed to an appropriate stage, the radical demands of the working class would be asserted and provide the impetus for social revolution in South Africa.4 The NEUM’s main affiliates, in turn, consisted of two federal bodies . The Anti-CAD was almost entirely Coloured and based in the western Cape, whereas the All African Convention (AAC) was almost wholly African and drew support mainly from the eastern Cape. These two wings had an overlapping leadership, most notably in the persons of Goolam Gool, his sister, Jane, and her husband, Isaac Tabata. Despite concerted effort, the NEUM failed to draw in either the African National Congress or the South African Indian Congress (SAIC). In 1948, however, it managed to attract a breakaway faction from the Natal Indian Congress, the Anti-segregation Council, into the federation .5 These factions coexisted with varying degrees of unease within the federal structure of the Non-European Unity Movement for fifteen years until simmering tensions over differences in doctrine and strategy led to a split, largely along racial and regional lines, in 1958, each faction subsequently claiming to represent the NEUM. The AAC faction went on in 1961 to form a revolutionary wing, the African Coloured Identity within the Radical Movement / 99 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized...

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