“Understandably, South African historiography has long been far more concerned with how and why cities were divided along lines of ethnicity and race rather than with intermingling across such divides,” said Vivian Bickford-Smith, of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. “In contrast, this project is about such intermingling of people – and thus cultures and ideas – in South African cities when apartheid built on already extensive segregation to make such mingling all but impossible beyond the (racially ordered) workplace. The intention has been to investigate who (and what) was involved, why, how and with what significant historical consequences.”
“I’m looking at the who, what, where and why of how individuals of varied political persuasions met across apartheid’s barriers and sought to undermine them.”
Bickford-Smith’s book project will comprise three parts marked by specific periods: the 1940s to 1960s when the possibility of open networks across racial boundaries was still relatively favourable, and the cultural, social and political initiatives they produced help generate an internal and nascent international anti-apartheid movement; the 1960s to 1976 in which the zenith of legislated racial separation together with more ruthless government suppression of opponents made such networks much harder, affecting the political practicality – and philosophy towards – overt co-operation; and, the late 1970s (post the Soweto uprising) to the 1980s when opportunities for 1950s style ‘united front’ co-operations opened up again, and the anti-apartheid movement had become globally very powerful.
For his seminar presentation Bickford-Smith focused on “describing and explaining those interracial social networks − consisting largely of educated urban elites – generated in the 1940s, perhaps most dramatically in Johannesburg, that multiplied in tandem with the coming of apartheid, both within and between South Africa’s major cities. These networks were also over time, and especially from the 1960s, extended to cities favoured by erstwhile members now in exile. This was because government repression made racially intermingled networks of this open and efficacious kind significantly harder to build and maintain – with important political organisational and ideological consequences (social history is essential in understanding political ideas ‘whose time has come’) − before they multiplied again as apartheid barriers weakened in the 1980s.”
An alternate vision
Bickford-Smith explained two diametrically opposed visions that dominated this period. One was that of apartheid – or cradle-to-grave racial separate development – as devised by the National Party. Apartheid’s ideological justification was that individuals within each of several identifiable ‘nations’ or ‘races’ (the terms were used interchangeably) could only achieve self-fulfilment within their own separate nation/race, as Nico Diederichs, who subsequently became the third State President of South Africa, explained to the South African parliament in 1948.
Vision two was one of what Diederich’s called ‘liberalism’, which prioritised individual rights ahead of national ones, and inevitably led to the breaking down of racial boundaries and to racial intermingling.
“To instil apartheid the government had to be able to allocate and register identities by race which meant being able to define people racially – no easy task as there is no scientific basis for race,” explained Bickford-Smith.
But a slew of well-known and increasingly harsh legislation including the Population, Group Areas, and Separate Amenities Acts aided in this categorisation process and in legislating separateness or apartheid with increasingly harsh penalties for contravention, including giving the government the right to declare a state of emergency and detain people without trial. “This led to court challenges and Gandhi-type civil disobedience and protest between 1952 and 1960 by the African National Congress,” said Bickford-Smith.
Legislation also encompassed state censorship of ideas with images, films and books banned. “The film Black Beauty was temporarily banned, the film of the musical South Pacific had scenes cut, and even the BBC News was removed,” said Bickford-Smith.
“Despite this, the musical King Kong was staged in the Wits Great Hall in 1959” he continued, “starring Miriam Makeba and Nthan Mdlele”. “It showed the opposite of anything that could be described as ‘culturally pure’ comprising music styles ranging from jazz to Broadway melodies to kwela, different languages and an interracial creative team (including such legendary names as Hugh Masekela). The show endured for a long run all over the country and was seen by about 120 000 people 60% of whom were ‘white’. The professional cast and crew undermined stereotypes of detribalised Africa having no culture and demonstrated the richness of the urban creole culture.”
“It was a rapturous reception for an idea whose time had come,” he added, “the idea that racial intermingling would not lead to inevitable conflict but could produce creative co-operation worthy of celebration, including the creolised cultural entertainment on display in Kong Kong. To those who attended, this even was one of emotional affectiveness – with music loosening race-bound identities and undoing reservations about then potential benefits of communication and co-operation across racial barriers.”
Bickford-Smith also pointed to the workshopping of early Fugard plays like No-good Friday and Blood Knot performed with Zakes Mokae as having similar impact.
Making and unmaking of place
But such networking also occurred beyond theatres, and Bickford-Smith pointed to crucial places and spaces including the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand, the iconic leftist Vanguard Bookshop and the offices of the Rand Daily Mail and Drum magazine.
“Although the Wits campus was socially segregated, many subsequent political leaders went there including Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo,” he explained. “Ismael Meer and Ruth First founded the Federation of Progressive Students in 1943 to fight the SRC elections and aid in transformation. While places off campus included Meer’s flat at Kholvad House, to which many prominent people including Mandela had a key, as well as Vanguard Bookshop run by Fanny Klenerman which became a discussion place for black and white intellectuals.”
He described Johannesburg during the Second World War as a place of political ferment where even an organisation like the Friends of the Soviet Union operated with government acquiescence, given the USSR was a wartime ally, and many – including a critical number of highly educated − across a variety of political persuasions in the city wanted a more equal, one nation, South Africa in which the colour bar would be lifted; while the Re-United National Party of D.F. Malan had proposed participation in the war, and the paramilitary Ossewabrandwag actively sought to undermine the war effort, in favour of racial hierarchy and separation. These were “two distinctly opposing visions”; but those who wanted racial barriers removed, believed that the tide of history was flowing in their favour and their vision was destined to win in the end, especially after the allies had won the war, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and the growing Civil Rights Movement in the USA.”
“Interracial networks produced per se defiance of apartheid, as well as plentifully wide-ranging and forceful denunciations of its destructive human consequences. Yet between them those involved utilised all the multi-media urban possibilities available in offering a positive alternative vision of a South African future to that provided by apartheid,” said Bickford-Smith. “Projecting this vision included promoting cultural creolisation – in the likes of emotionally affecting musical fusions or workshopped interracial theatre – intended to be celebrated as being inclusively South African. In the process, the existence of these networks and what they produced generated and leant some persuasive material substance to the core global anti-apartheid ideal: that the end of legalised racial separation and coming of democracy would not mean Armageddon. Instead, that these events would successfully reduce racism and help promote a common South African identity, one that already had creolised cultural underpinnings.”
Bickford-Smith noted that these relationships were, of course, not all smooth sailing and often had many underlying tensions. “However, I’m arguing that people co-operated by a range of activities including being on political platforms together but also via parades, theatre and film, and other initiatives. By showing that a particular skin colour doesn’t equal a particular culture, they projected an alternate vision to that supplied by apartheid ideology and practise.”
“Convivialty is about what people work out between themselves,” he added. “When friendships are made despite material and ideological restrictions this loosens a sense of ‘us against those who don’t think like us’ divisions.”
He ended his presentation with an extract from the 1959 film Come Back, Africa another multi-racial collaboration (including Lewis Nkosi and William ‘Bloke’ Modisane), depicting life in a South Africa township. This has been credited with having a profound impact on African cinema and regarded as important in documenting African township life and culture in this period.
Michelle Galloway: Part-time media officer at STIAS
Photograph: SCPS Photography