The Ambiguities of Protest in South Africa

The 1920s were a time of ferment in South Africa, and the African nationalist press played an important role in communicating the issues and events of this decade to their audiences. The images of reality projected by these newspapers and magazines were necessarily contradictory, but they differed substantially from those projected by the established white press a crucial distinction, since African experiences were rarely represented in these publications. The African nationalist press represented the African petty bourgeoisie in South Africa, but as a number of scholars have noted, class boundaries in African society were neither rigid nor clearly defined. The petty bourgeoisie was fragmenting downward at an accelerated pace after Union in 1910, and alliances were frequent between class fractions that might otherwise have been differentially placed in the social relations of capitalist production.1 As discrimination and oppression at all levels intensified, more and more Africans in occupational categories that were on the fringes of the lower middle class descended into the ranks of the proletariat. Salaried white-collar workers fared little better: wage scales were so low that the more educated had little opportunity to emulate the lifestyles of their white counterparts. Hence it is not surprising that especially in periods of hegemonic crisis alienated fractions of the African petty bourgeoisie would find common cause with unorganized industrial workers and peasants in openly defying the status quo. Such a crisis occurred in the years immediately following World War I. Soaring food prices, low wages, and job discrimination temporarily galvanized African workers, especially on the Witwatersrand, where a wave of wildcat strikes and boycotts appeared to threaten civil order. Nationalists within the South African Native National Congress (renamed the African National Congress in 1923) were divided over the most appropriate response to take towards industrial strife, and mobilizing workers briefly radicalized African politics in the Transvaal. In the countryside, fluctuating grain prices, prolonged drought, and plant and animal diseases posed an immediate threat to food and

Political science · Politics · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · History · Law · South African History and Culture

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