CONGRESS POLITICS AND OTHER POLITICAL MOVEMENTS
That ANC politics were prominent in Abantu-Batho flowed naturally, given that the movement’s founder, Seme, backed by the SANNC executive, had also founded the paper. The 1919 constitution of the Transvaal Native Congress (from the 1920s Transvaal African Congress, or TAC) recorded Abantu-Batho as its organ and in the late 1920s it became the organ of the national ANC. Based in Johannesburg, editors tended to have overlapping membership of both. Congress office bearers and politicised correspondents made good use of the paper’s pages to announce and report on meetings and to air differences with government and among themselves. It remains unclear how Abantu-Batho structures related to ANC structures: whether any directives flowed from Congress bodies to editors, or whether they all felt obliged to explicitly canvass support for Congress or follow its policies in editorials. Seme, Msane, and Selope Thema, and later Mweli Skota and Gumede, were leading Congress office holders during their time as editors, although others, such as Kunene and Grendon, were less prominent. Seme’s overall role is unclear: he began as managing editor and at the start may have been involved in setting overall editorial policy, although this influence faded by the end of World War I and the paper’s increasingly radical tone would have been anathema to him.
There is nothing about a press organ in the 1919 SANNC constitution or its draft predecessors, although recording secretary duties included being ‘newsagent of the congress’, reporting to the executive all press comments affecting or concerning Congress and ‘generally report[ing] to the press the proceedings of the Congress’.8 In April 1913 there was reference to six ‘Newspaper Press Organs’ of the SANNC: Abantu-Batho, Umlomo wa Bantu, Ilanga lase Natal, Naledi ea Lesotho, Tsala ea Batho and APO.9 On the other hand, Article 19 of the 1919 TNC constitution specifies that ‘[t]he official organ of the Congress shall be the “ABANTU-BATHO”’. Here, organisational ties were close: Sesotho editor Letanka was TNC vice-president and journalist Selope Thema general secretary.10 Over the years the paper carried many editorials favourable to the national and provincial Congress (if at times critical of the former), and thus is identified with them.
Being a Congress organ or mouthpiece, Abantu-Batho recorded much detail of its doings, including constitutional amendments. A fragment from a February 1926 issue carried changes to sections 104–5 and 106–7 of chapter VII of the ANC constitution on forwarding monies and debts, as mandated at a special conference of January that also amended sections 83–87, 90–91 and 98 of chapter VI so that ‘each and every member’ in ‘all Provinces shall pay a membership fee of 2s. 6d. and a monthly levy of 1s’; any territory, province or branch defying this would ‘forfeit its right as a branch’.11
That Abantu-Batho gave ample and sympathetic coverage to Congress affairs makes it a seminal source for ANC history. Matters of organisation and ideology feature. ‘What is wanted is organisation’, it reported in 1917 in light of problems such as members having to pay their own expenses to conferences invariably held in Bloemfontein, which was fast becoming a ‘dumping ground’ for meetings.12 Reports on Congress are often effusive, as on the ninth meeting of the TNC in April 1919 marked by an attendance that was ‘very large indeed’. Yet they also reveal problems in organising in rural areas such as Lydenberg and Barberton, where organisers ‘have actually miles and miles under difficult climatic conditions, yet zealously preach their mission to their own compatriots’. White farmers could be ‘very antagonistic’, yet organisers ‘press on preaching the gospel of unity and wakefulness’.13 In these varied reports, a nascent African nationalism was ever present. In 1924 the American magazine Living Age, after citing rumblings of resistance in Kenya, detected the ‘same spirit of protest’ in a recent Abantu-Batho editorial that stated:
Rome, mistress of the world, ruled supreme … and erected …. ‘The Temple of Eternal Peace’. Nineteen hundred years have passed, and that temple is now buried among the ruins of ancient Rome, and other temples have been erected for the purpose of preaching peace …. Yet there is no peace … the nations of the world are only taking a breathing space before they once more come to grips in a deadlier and more destructive war. With such a conception of peace, the strong and rich oppressing the weak and the poor, with the canker of racial prejudice eating at its very vitals, how can the white man expect peace …? Who can think that he can come to my house, put me out, take all I possess, and then talk to me about peace and justice, and … a League of Nations for peace?14
Internal debates were aired. Randfontein branch chair S. B. Macheng replied to TAC general secretary Moses Mphahlele’s proposed election of provincial presidents, agreeing that they should appoint their own officials, but adding that, having ‘elected a Moses to lead the Africans to the land of promise’, they now needed an Aaron to follow his commands. He proposed S. P. Matseke, who served under Gumede and Seme, for unity.15
Editors used their prerogative to intercede on matters of principle. In 1916 they printed a letter to Saul Msane requesting repayment of a loan of £27 8s extended by the London Missionary Society and Aborigines Protection Society to the SANNC delegation to England. The editor (probably Grendon) appended a caustic cautionary note:
The Congress at Kroonstad, we were told, undertook in August last to pay the sums demanded as above. The above letter shows that Congress has not yet discharged the obligation undertaken on behalf of its delegates. Note, O Bantu, the tardiness of your stewards in this matter. Where are your Treasurers? Call them to their duty without delay, ere the patience of your benefactors across the pond become taxed beyond the mark.16
If some debate surfaced, there was also as in most political papers a degree of intolerance. ANC president Makgatho, in a letter to Umteteli in March 1921, accused Abantu-Batho editors of being a clique that hurled insults at political opponents:
It seems that any person regardless of his/her level of education, if one does not go along or work together with the ‘Bantu-Batho’ clique, is deemed to be uneducated/ poorly educated; and does not have the ability to lead the nation! … We watch with trepidation as canons and pistols are being shot at the late son of Msane. … It is from this same clique that we heard loud noises of grievances against Reverend Dube. … Now today we see the clique publishing further insults in its newspaper suggesting that the President of the S.A.N.N.C and the President of the Transvaal Native Congress [Makgatho] is just poorly educated, someone who should be thrown out of office! … We cannot talk and now our members are scared of our organization, of Congress because of this Jeppe bush clique. Many rumours are circulating within the community that the President of the Congress is being pulled by the nose by the Jeppe bush clique. Let me inform the community that no, the President of the Congress has his own independent and complete mind. … Now is electioneering time, so stop insults, ‘Bantu-Batho’.17
This tags a dogmatic streak in some editors or their factions. Yet Makgatho had earlier used the paper for such ends to snipe at Dube (as had Msane) and continued to publish there, suggesting a need to maintain broad factional support or editorial changes pursuant to his criticism. More ironically, Umteteli concurred with Abantu-Batho’s New Year message: ‘[L]et our leaders and people exercise a spirit of toleration to one another’.18
Questions of tolerance and inner-party democracy are worth pursuing. If the editors’ ‘poison pen’ touched a nerve and revealed an unfortunate tendency to intolerance, they also staked out a distinct style based on a claim to national representativeness and ‘direct-action’ journalism. Adopting an apolitical, pro-Chamber of Mines ‘line’ pursued by Umteteli (whose editorials could be just as vituperative) was hardly an option. Editors simultaneously sought opportunities to soften and moderate comments, as in the above-mentioned paeans to esteemed white officials mentioned below or olive branches extended to Jabavu and Dube, and gave generous space to a wide range of political and religious bodies. After all, operating on a far-from-level playing field, they needed allies. What is harder to determine, given the leading role played in Transvaal ANC politics by Mvabaza, Mabaso and Letanka, is whether the paper or the party wagged the editorial tail.
There are many cases where Abantu-Batho declared in favour of the democratic interests of ‘the