In the face of this new threat, the Africans proved slow to unite. In December 1948 the ANC held a joint meeting with its rival body the All-African Convention, which was dominated by Trotskyists, including Mandela’s opponent Isaac Tabata. Dr Xuma called for blacks to ‘speak with one voice’. J.B. Marks warned that ‘the people are being crushed while we complacently quibble about technical difficulties’. Peter Mda insisted that the basis of unity must be African nationalism. But Tabata called for unity among all non-Europeans on the basis of total non-collaboration, which ANC delegates could not accept.51 The meeting was inconclusive, and the arguments continued at another assembly four months later.
The need for unity emerged much more sharply with riots in Durban in January 1949, when enraged Zulus set on Indians and the police and military intervened, leaving 142 dead. Mandela heard from his Indian friends that whites had encouraged the riots by transporting Zulus to the scene.52 The bloodshed, Mandela thought, put the ‘Doctors’ Pact’ to the test, and he was impressed to see Dr Naicker playing a critical role in quickly restoring peace and promoting goodwill. ‘The year 1949,’ he wrote thirty years later, ‘was an unforgettable experience for those who have given their lives to the promotion of inter-racial harmony.’53 Dr Xuma blamed the riots on the government’s divisive policies, and warned against ‘the law of the jungle’. The black fury spread to the Johannesburg area, where some Indian and African leaders hoped the Congresses would jointly appeal for calm. Ahmed Kathrada went with a journalist, Henry Nxumalo, to Mandela’s house in Orlando to try to persuade him to support a joint statement, but Mandela, still wary of the ANC being influenced by Indians, insisted that the ANC should act on its own.54
By mid-1949 Dr Malan’s government was preparing to enforce apartheid with drastic laws: each person would be classified by race; the races would live in separate parts of the cities; and mixed marriages would be forbidden. The firebrands of the Youth League, including Mandela, felt challenged to respond. Their President Peter Mda advocated a ‘Programme of Action’ based on organising mass protests against the government. The Youth League was gaining more support in the ANC as a whole, and was losing patience with Xuma’s caution. In November 1949, a few weeks before the ANC’s annual conference, Mda went with Sisulu, Mandela and Tambo to see Xuma in Sophiatown. They argued that the ANC must adopt mass action and passive resistance like Gandhi’s in India, or the Indians’ in South Africa three years before. Xuma retorted that it was too early, that action would only provoke the government to crush the ANC. The Youth Leaguers warned him that if he did not support them they would vote against his presidency at the conference. Xuma replied angrily that they were young and arrogant, and showed them the door.55
Looking round for an alternative President, they first asked Professor Matthews, who thought they were naïve and immature, with their emotive rhetoric, and turned them down.56 Then they made a rash choice, turning to Dr James Moroka, a dignified and relatively wealthy African doctor who had inherited a small estate in the Orange Free State, where a century before his great-grandfather Chief Moroka had welcomed the Afrikaner Voortrekkers – who then betrayed him. Moroka, a courteous gentleman, had, like Dr Xuma, many white friends and patients. He had been courageous in opposing the ‘Hertzog Bills’ in 1936, but he had since been attracted by the Trotskyists, and had become President of the ANC’s rival the All-African Convention. Now, surprisingly, he told the Youth Leaguers that he supported their radical Programme of Action, and agreed to stand against Xuma even though he was not even a member of the ANC – which he kept calling the ‘African National Council’.57
The ANC Youth League opened its own conference on 15 December 1949, just before the main ANC conference at Bloemfontein, with a humble prayer:
Thou, Heavenly Father, art continuing to lift us up from the sinks of impurity and cesspools of ignorance. Thou art removing the veil of darkness from this race of the so-called ‘Dark Africa’.58
The inner group of Youth Leaguers – headed by Mda, Sisulu, Mandela and Tambo – clearly emerged at the conference as ‘the kingmakers’, though Mandela could not attend. They had some differences: Mda remained a firm African nationalist, with Mandela closest to him. Sisulu was much more open to other racial groups, while Tambo remained diplomatic.59 But they all demanded mass action.
The main ANC conference was eclipsed in the South African press by a much more melodramatic event: the opening by Prime Minister Malan of the vast Voortrekker Monument outside Pretoria, commemorating the sufferings of the Great Trek, before a crowd of 100,000 Afrikaners. ‘The hour has come,’ said Malan. ‘A sunbeam from the heavens is striking down on the sarcophagus.’
Dr Xuma did his best to challenge this ceremony, with a speech in the market square of the Bloemfontein township in which he warned prophetically that the Voortrekker Monument would remind future generations of the racial strife between Europeans and Africans. The white press took little notice.
In his presidential address to the ANC conference Xuma tried to rally support, and emphasised that Africans were united against apartheid.60 But he firmly rejected the Youth League’s policy of boycotting apartheid institutions. His speech received meagre applause, and Diliza Mji, an outspoken young medical student in the Youth League, then moved a vote of non-confidence. ‘A shock-wave went through the hall,’ as Mji described it. ‘Never in the history of the ANC had the President been criticised.’61 The kingmakers then turned to Moroka, who had already pledged his support, and the conference elected him as President. Xuma remained on the executive until he resigned on 13 March 1950, complaining that the Youth League had betrayed him. But Sisulu, Mandela and Tambo wrote a forceful rebuttal in the Bantu World: ‘We are as a nation entitled at any time to call upon any one of us to lead the struggle.’62
The ANC also elected a much more radical National Executive, including the Youth Leaguers Peter Mda, Oliver Tambo and Godfrey Pitje, the young activist from Fort Hare. Mandela himself was co-opted onto the National Executive two months later, to fill the place left by Xuma. More importantly, the Congress chose a new Secretary-General. The veteran clergyman James Calata stood down, finding the Programme of Action too radical, and in his place Walter Sisulu was elected by one vote.63 Sisulu was the right man at the right time. Unlike Moroka, he was totally dedicated to the ANC and its new policy. As he recalled: ‘Once they had decided to elect me my approach was: “I have nothing to live for except politics. So I cannot draw up a programme of action which I am not able to follow myself.” That required me to be confident of the future, otherwise I would weaken somewhere. That confidence kept me in.’
Mandela had a narrower view than Sisulu. ‘When I became Secretary-General my duty was to unite people,’ Sisulu said later, ‘whereas Nelson and Mda were still thinking in terms of projecting the Youth League.’64