Cape Town of the 1930s was a distinctive republic of ideas populated by groups and personalities who left a legacy that merits revisiting, writes Michael Weeder.
Cape Town of the 1930s was a distinctive republic of ideas populated by groups and personalities who, despite being not well-known today, left a legacy that merits revisiting.
As a teenager, Reg September was influenced by many of the bright stars of the day. One was Irishwoman Clare Goodlatte. Dubbed “the red nun”, she had left her Anglican religious order in Grahamstown to settle in Woodstock.
Over time she donned the ideological colours of the Trotskyite-aligned Workerist Party of South Africa.
This group, a breakaway from the Lenin Club, included dissenters who had either quit or been expelled from the Communist Party and reconstituted themselves as the Spartacist Club.
For some, strategic differences centred on a commitment to the struggle for the land of the rural poor or emphasis on the centrality of the urban working class - black and white - in the struggle for a new South Africa.
The African Peoples Organisation (APO) existed almost aloof from these emerging challenges to the status quo.
Since its inception in 1902 the APO, inspired by British Liberal principles, had walked a constitutional path measured by protests and delegations to London. It espoused the accommodationist philosophy of Booker T Washington: “If your head is in the jaws of a lion, then it is best to reach over and tap it on the shoulder.”
Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, a pragmatic, astute politician, stood at its helm.
A portion of Abdurahman’s closing remarks at the APO’s 1935 conference was directed at the young people of his immediate constituency, including his daughter, Cissie Gool. They were keen to take the fight from protest to challenge.
The ailing statesman asked the young Turks “to come along and help to solve one of the most difficult and perplexing problems that confront the world, namely, how to adjust ourselves to the changing world - how black and white can live together in peace and amity, each contributing his share to make this country truly great”.
This was the potent political elixir 15-year-old Reg September would imbibe when James la Guma, the controversial proponent of The Black Republic, invited him into the Hanover Building in Tennant Street.
Retired UWC vice-chancellor Brian O’Connell remembers how, returning from the Sunday mass at Holy Cross Catholic Church, he would hear the sound of classical music wafting from the La Guma house directly opposite his.
It was there the Fifteen Group, a close circle of comrades, established the National Liberation League of South Africa in December 1935.
This organisation located itself within the South African slave story, as was evident from its emblem of a slave who had broken free of his chains, holding a flaming torch aloft with the chains still manacled to his wrist. Reg joined the league in 1939, his matric year.
“The league was my first political home,” he noted, “committed, as it was 'to struggle for complete social, political and economic equality' for all South Africans. It appealed to me.”
But by 1940 the league was in trouble. “Goolam Gool pulled up beside me in his Terraplane car one Sunday morning on Second Avenue in Kenilworth. He shouted, Reggie, we have smashed the league.
“I wasn’t aware of the conflict in the leadership of the league between people of the Communist Party and the likes of Goolam Gool, one the leaders of the Trotskyites,” Reg recalled.
“At a later stage in my life I was to observe time and again how people fought shy of any sign of disagreement and division within a movement. Division within any movement causes untold disillusionment within the rank and file.
“With hindsight I should be grateful that I was able to sort out such basic issues at such a tender age.”
There was much to be done and many like Reg stepped forward, not counting the cost.
* The Very Rev Michael Weeder is the current Dean of St George's Cathedral.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Weekend Argus