Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa

by Leslie Anne Hadfield

Overview

Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa is an account of the community development programs of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa. It covers the emergence of the movement’s ideas and practices in the context of the late 1960s and early 1970s, then analyzes how activists refined their practices, mobilized resources, and influenced people through their work. The book examines this history primarily through the Black Community Programs organization and its three major projects: the yearbook Black Review, the Zanempilo Community Health Center, and the Njwaxa leatherwork factory. As opposed to better-known studies of antipolitical, macroeconomic initiatives, this book shows that people from the so-called global South led development in innovative ways that promised to increase social and political participation. It particularly explores the power that youth, women, and churches had in leading change in a hostile political environment. With this new perspective on a major liberation movement, Hadfield not only causes us to rethink aspects of African history but also offers lessons from the past for African societies still dealing with developmental challenges similar to those faced during apartheid.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611861921
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2016
Series:	African History and Culture
Edition description:	1
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Leslie Anne Hadfield is an assistant professor of African history at Brigham Young University. She has published articles in various African history journals.

Read an Excerpt

Liberation and Development

Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa

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By Leslie Anne Hadfield

Michigan State University Press

Copyright © 2016 Leslie Anne Hadfield
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61186-192-1

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CHAPTER 1

Liberating Concepts

Malusi Mpumlwana remembered one of the significant moments in his own "conscientization" as when University of Fort Hare students such as Barney Pityana and Lindelwe Mabandla came to Mthatha after being expelled for participating in a student strike in 1968. Malusi Mpumlwana was a high school student at St. John's College at the time. He recalled that Pityana, Mabandla, and others went around, "almost like evangelists," asking people in the streets, "Have you ever stopped to consider how much you owe to your people — how you owe your language, your [socialization], everything you have and you are — and what that means for your responsibility to society?" These questions particularly struck Malusi Mpumlwana, whose family background in the Ethiopian movement of the Anglican Church had primed him for involvement in black-led community outreach. He later played an in important role in both SASO and BCP projects. His memory represents how integral community action was in Black Consciousness in the minds of SASO's early leaders.

SASO students and BCP employees formulated their ideas about development in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when people across the African continent believed African political independence and economic development went hand-in-hand. Political circumstances in South Africa were different, however. Oppression grew worse, even as the South African state engaged in economic development. While community work began as a way to address the poverty so many of their people experienced under apartheid, SASO leaders and later the BCP also came to see "community action and development" as "inherently liberating concepts." Facing an oppressive state, community action was a way to develop people in preparation for a future political liberation. For Black Consciousness activists, liberation meant reaching one's full potential, and development meant obtaining the tools and capacity to do so. They believed that, if geared toward helping "the humblest of black people" cultivate human dignity and self-reliance, health, education, and public works projects would help them reach their goal of totally transforming individuals and society. Tying their concepts of liberation and development together in this way pushed against the fear and paternalistic practices in South Africa at that time.

DEVELOPMENT AND LIBERATION IN AFRICA IN THE MID-1960S AND EARLY 1970S

Kwame Nkrumah's adage "seek ye first the political kingdom" (and all things will follow) reflected the high hopes of the 1960s that African countries that had just gained independence could now enjoy real economic prosperity and growth. Many African leaders like Nkrumah saw political independence as the gateway to entering the world economy in a competitive position. They eagerly planned to mobilize local resources for the benefit of their own people rather than colonial powers. National strategies formulated in top-tier government offices promised to redirect economic and agricultural activities and organize communities to reach a higher level of development — a higher level of production, consumer power, and basic services. This included increased industrial manufacturing, major infrastructure projects, expansions in education and health care services, and even state-supported cooperative movements. It also included mobilizing peasant agricultural production for national and international markets.

One of the boldest experiments in charting a new course for independent African development was Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere's ujamaa (or "familyhood"). In a postcolonial Cold War context, Nyerere touted ujamaa as a unique socialism that drew upon deep roots of African communalism. Taking a leading nonaligned position, Tanzania also planned to function independent of foreign capital or monetary aid tied to global rivalries. This kind of fettered financial support could compromise Tanzanian independence. In 1967, the Tanzanian African National Union (TANU) adopted the Arusha Declaration, which outlined the principles of ujamaa. Echoing Nyerere's writings and speeches, it focused on self-help and agriculture. TANU leaders acknowledged that Tanzania had made mistakes in the past in thinking that industrialization and money (in the form of foreign aid or capital) would bring about development. In the first few years of their independence, they had learned that instead of money, "the development of a country is brought about by people." Once the people were self-reliant and assured of their human dignity, they would bring about economic development rooted in their own society. The declaration made it clear that TANU leaders recognized they could not go entirely alone without money; but it established that their focus should be on developing the self-reliance of people in order to maintain their independence. It emphasized the importance of intelligent hard work and local agricultural resources in developing that self-reliance.

Tanzania inspired many who looked to Nyerere and TANU's socialism as holding to African independence. Gilbert Rist argued that Nyerere also changed international development discourse by bringing the concept of self-reliance into its vocabulary in a concrete way. The irony was that while Tanzania made a unique contribution to development with its focus on self-reliance, once it came to implementing the Arusha Declaration in the 1970s, the country also followed the continental trend of state-led development that often turned autocratic. Ujamaa most notably found its practical application in the grouping of people into cooperative villages with communal farming. State-enforced relocation to these villages inspired resentment rather than increased communal production. Along with the failure of business initiatives and global and environmental factors, ujamaa's agricultural failures led Tanzania to depend heavily upon international aid in subsequent decades.

In the mid-to-late 1960s, the South African state acted much like newly independent African developmentalist states that designed, implemented, and controlled national development initiatives. Yet the apartheid government carried out its development programs for rather different purposes. In other words, South Africa was "an African country with specific differences." Whereas African governments looked to secure black African national independence, the white minority government in South Africa worked to restructure society to support Afrikaner economic, social, and political interests. The Afrikaner-led National Party had been in power since 1948, when it began implementing policies that intensified racial segregation. Historians have revealed how the apartheid state evolved over the years, influenced by various racial and religious ideologies, economic dynamics, and political groups. The state grew and morphed as it extended its reach into the daily life of black South Africans, classifying and segregating races, further restricting black movement, and seeking to control black labor and urbanization.

A boom in economic growth, increased white support, and silenced black opposition allowed for greater implementation of large-scale restructuring in the mid-to-late 1960s. One of the main programs was that of grand apartheid — separation of the races on a large scale, even as separate nations that administered their own governments and basic services. The apartheid state targeted ten so-called homelands to become independent countries for specific ethnic groups. Africans who belonged to these groups would no longer be citizens of South Africa (helping the government quell black opposition) but could still work in South African industries. The apartheid state used development discourse to gain support for this policy. Hendrik Verwoerd, the Afrikaner-led National Party politician considered to be the father of apartheid, used the term "separate development" to describe grand apartheid, explaining it as "the growth of something for oneself and one's nation, due to one's own endeavors." This echoed the sentiments of new African nations of the time. Yet in reality, separate development meant that white South Africans could develop South Africa for themselves and relegate Africans to small, rural backwaters. More honestly, Verwoerd explained to other government leaders, "This was the only way of buying the white man his freedom and the right to retain domination in what is his country."

As it began to implement grand apartheid, the government had to make adjustments. For example, it had to balance economic interests with its desire to curb black urban migration. The country experienced rapid economic growth in the 1960s, spurred on by strong international investment. At the same time that it tightened pass laws to restrict movement to the urban areas, the government recognized that many black communities were entrenched in those areas and that industry and business needed educated black workers. The state thus encouraged manufacturing near rural homelands (and later within homelands) to make it easier for black workers to live in the regions and still work for South African industries. The state also adopted top-down agricultural policies in order to accommodate increasing concentrations of people in the homelands. In urban areas, the state created new black urban city councils, which were elected but were linked to apartheid homelands and expected to carry out apartheid policies. The government also continued to implement what became known as Bantu Education. Starting in the 1950s, the government took over most mission schools and controlled school curriculum, orienting it toward putting black students into semiskilled jobs that could support white economic interests. In the 1960s, the government focused on implementing Bantu Education to bolster grand apartheid (to educate black people to provide segregated services, particularly in the rural homelands) and increased higher education segregation. As discussed below, this both served apartheid and worked against it, extending education to more youth who often became politicized through their schooling experiences.

While many black people benefited from South Africa's economic boom and increase in school enrollments, black South Africans in general remained economically disadvantaged in the 1960s, affected by a history of exploitation, continued discriminatory policies, and a lack of political participation. Moreover, for black South Africans, the "political kingdom" moved farther and farther away. The decade opened with the Sharpeville Massacre in which nearly seventy people were killed by police. The apartheid government subsequently banned major black and radical political organizations, and the famous Rivonia trial of 1964 sent much of the ANC leadership to Robben Island to serve life sentences. State security forces gained more legal powers to take action against opposition and systematically used extralegal means to put down resistance, even torturing detainees to death. In addition to the new urban councils and homeland governments, the state also co-opted black leaders by creating representative councils for Coloured and Indian people. This gave people a sense of political participation but was not based on real democracy.

With the general silencing of black resistance in the 1960s, aboveground anti-apartheid activity on a national level continued with liberal, multiracial groups that carried out economic and social development activities. Engaging in less political activities deterred state repression. But these organizations also sought to affect politics by exposing the negative social and material impact of apartheid. Christian resistance to apartheid particularly gained momentum during this time. A larger Christian movement to focus more on the poor and oppressed was spreading worldwide. South American Catholic priests and theologians led in defining a new evangelism of building communities and promoting social justice, adopted by the Vatican II council, held between 1962 and 1965. South African clergy and theology students engaged with liberation theology coming out of Latin America and Black Theology in the United States, both of which emphasized social justice. They also responded to events within South Africa. The Cottesloe Consultation, held by the World Council of Churches after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, declared that South African society did not conform to Christian teachings on the equality and liberation of humanity. Beyers Naudé, an Afrikaner cleric, emerged from the Consultation as a radical voice. He broke with the mainstream Dutch Reformed Church and launched Pro Veritate, a journal that served as a forum for exposing the negative aspects of apartheid. In 1963, he helped form the multiracial ecumenical Christian Institute, which sought to unite all progressive Christians.

As the decade progressed, other ecumenical groups took a stronger stand against apartheid. In 1968, the South African Council of Churches published "A Message to the People of South Africa," which strongly rejected apartheid as against the gospel of Christ. The message called on Christians "to work for the expression of God's reconciliation here and now." In 1969, the South African Council of Churches and the Christian Institute joined together to follow this admonition. They started by launching a study project designed to expose apartheid's evils through social science research. They named this initiative "Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society," or Spro-cas. Despite the focus on Christianity in its title, the study was comprised of six commissions: Economics, Social, Legal, Politics, Church, and Education. Over 100 people took part in Spro-cas's research and reports. Participants included church leaders such as Catholic archbishop Denis Hurley and liberal or radical university professors such as political scientist Richard Turner, economist Francis Wilson, and sociologists Lawrie Schlemmer and Frederick van Zyl Slabbert.

In publishing reports and conducting social science research, Spro-cas resembled the work of the long-running South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). The SAIRR was a typical multiracial liberal nongovernmental organization (NGO) that aimed to "[further] inter-racial peace, harmony, and cooperation" by "[promoting] contact, discussion, and understanding." Its membership was open to people of all races and various political leanings, though white people generally occupied leadership positions. The primary way it sought to achieve racial harmony was to investigate the state of race relations in the country — or "[seek] the facts, and [make] them known." To do so, the SAIRR produced its annual Race Relations Survey (or A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa). Starting in 1946, it reported on South African political, legal, social, and economic developments of the previous year. The institute also held various seminars, lectures, and workshops.

Spro-cas and the SAIRR's reports provided academic evidence for what was obvious to many: apartheid bred stark inequality. While churches and ecumenical organizations provided important space for anti-apartheid activity, in the early 1970s some people began to push the organizations to take more action. At the end of 1970 and the beginning of 1971, there was a stronger call for Spro-cas and churches to act on their pronouncements. In a letter written in November 1970, Archbishop Hurley stressed the importance of making the Spro-cas 1 findings significant beyond a group of academics. The problem was not a "lack for academic material on apartheid," he wrote. Instead, he was "convinced that the most important thing to do now is to plan on how the conclusions of the reports are to be communicated to non-academic people," and taken seriously enough "for an on-going program of action to develop." Spro-cas director Peter Randall then moved to establish the second phase of the project, called the "Special Project on Christian Action in Society," or Spro-cas 2. It was under this second project that the BCP was initially established, directed by Bennie Khoapa, a Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) social worker trained at the Jan Hofmeyer School of Social Work and friend of Black Consciousness activists.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Liberation and Development by Leslie Anne Hadfield. Copyright © 2016 Leslie Anne Hadfield. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Note on Terminology xi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Liberating Concepts 19

Chapter 2 Creative Interactions 39

Chapter 3 Black Review 63

Chapter 4 The Zanempilo Community Health Center 91

Chapter 5 The Njwaxa Leather Home Industry 123

Conclusion 153

Notes 167

Bibliography 229

Index 251

Editorial Reviews

The book demolishes the pervasive belief that African women and men were inferior to other racial groups in South Africa.”
—Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, honorary professor, University of South Africa, and executive director, South African Democracy Education Trust

From the Publisher