Abantu-Batho expressed Pan-African solidarity with neighbouring countries. The case of Swaziland is discussed in chapters by Chris Lowe, Grant Christison and Sarah Mkhonza in this volume. For many years the Basutoland (now Lesotho) press and Abantu-Batho reported each other.129 In its first few years Abantu-Batho paid close attention to Swaziland, with reports often likening its predicament to that of Basutoland. In late 1912 the editor complained that ‘stationing five armies at the native borders’, including Basutoland, ‘shows some distrust of the loyalty’ of Africans.130 In 1914, commenting that a ‘Swazi Scare’ was ‘an ingeniously got-up canard’ for ‘military occupation of Swaziland’, he added, ‘[h]ad it not been for the presence of French Protestant Missionaries, even Basutoland would have long ago fallen a victim to this treacherous policy’.131 In 1916 the editor mused, ‘[c]ertain as the Night succeeds the Day, the Swazis, and with them the Basuto will under the Union fare worse than under their present Administrations’.132 In 1918 the loyalty of Basuto chiefs contrasted with the disloyalty of some white people.133
Like Abantu-Batho, the radical Basutoland commoner movement Lekhotla la Bafo called for Garvey’s release. Josiel Lefela, its leader, claimed in the 1920s that censorship denied him access to Naledi, Mochochonono and Abantu-Batho, obliging him to turn for support to the Communist Party’s South African Worker.134 However, Abantu-Batho did report on his policies in 1922.135 Swazi, Sotho and Tswana peoples were active on both sides of the border, and we need more research on these connections.
All this was not just regional solidarity and opposition to racial prejudice was not limited to cases of racism against Africans. In 1913 Abantu-Batho printed across two issues the speech of a leading Jewish socialist, Yeshaya Israelstam, to the second conference of the SANNC.136 A long article in 1923 expressed solidarity with Kenyans, not only deported African leader Harry Thuku, but also Indian Kenyans, seen as black Africans.137 Abantu-Batho had printed a piece from South African Outlook viewing Indian Kenyans in a derogatory way, which was seen by The International as revealing the ‘confusion brought into the “native mind” by bourgeois imperialist education’. The article ‘upheld the Kenya whites’ because ‘they would be BETRAYING THEIR TRUST to the natives if they acquiesced in the transfer of power to the Asiatic. … The African … despises the Indian for his spinelessness.’ Would not the Indian be justified in ‘returning the compliment to Abantu-Batho?’ The stinging attack perhaps influenced the later editorial.138 There were other reports on Kenya and East Africa, treating, among other things, the scramble for Africa and settler opposition to plans for legal equality in a British Labour government white paper.139
That Gandhi or his staff read Abantu-Batho is suggested by Indian Opinion reprinting a first-hand account of women’s anti-pass law protests as reported in Abantu-Batho.140 In 1918 an Abantu-Batho article linked Indian and African struggles.141 In 1919 Letanka, in his capacity as Abantu-Batho editor, rejected an invitation from the Transvaal Whites’ Protection League to an anti-Indian conference, declaring it not in African interests ‘to encourage, morally or otherwise, any movement based on colour lines’.142 Also printed was a TNC resolution against a trend among whites to ‘foment racial … prejudice’ around the ‘alleged Asiatic Menace’, a prejudice rooted in the fear of trading competition and an ‘exact analogy’ to the Land Act, which could be turned against Africans. It deplored ‘the movement against Indians’ and declared ‘any contemplated movement against them’ to be ‘unjust and inequitable’ and ‘based on colour prejudice’.143
Solidarity with India’s liberation movement increased. Gumede had met Nehru at an anti-imperialist conference in Brussels in 1927 and anti-imperialism was a growing tendency in the ANC and Communist Party of South Africa press, whose writers contributed articles to Abantu-Batho on India’s liberation struggles.144 The year 1930 marked a sharp upswing in the anti-colonial struggle in India, which Abantu-Batho quite extensively reported, including cloth and salt boycotts. Some coverage recalled the 1924 South African visit of Gandhi’s lieutenant, Sarojini Naidu, and the arrest of Manilal Gandhi. It also reprinted a May 1930 communiqué of solidarity with this struggle from the international Secretariat of the League against Imperialism in Berlin, with whom Gumede had become involved, that was critical of Gandhi’s non-violent tactics.145 Gumede probably penned a two-part anti-imperialist call to action aimed at Abantu-Batho readers that made a ‘united world-wide appeal … to the chiefs of Africa, the doomed and pitiable inhabitants of Africa’. Africans ‘could do it for ourselves’ but ‘[l]et us take our lesson from the Indians, Japanese and Chinese’.146
The modus vivendi between the state and South African Indian Congress, epitomised by its treasurer, I. B. Patel, garlanding Hertzog, was ‘hypocrisy on both sides’, for Indian South Africans could thank Hertzog only for their ‘present state of helotry’. Unless Hertzog stopped his derogatory ‘“coolie” talk’ and policies, his acceptance of ‘that sacred garland’ was an ‘impudent and ghoulish outrage on the sanctity of Indian traditions’. It was ‘stupid and wicked’ for the government to try to expel Indians after having brought them to the country. ‘We would humbly and reverently ask our Indian friends to pause and meditate before they make light of their honoured and time-worn customs.’ The Abantu-Batho editor concluded with an appeal for unity against ‘all anti-black laws’, mixed with a warning to Indian and Coloured South Africans that going it alone ‘would never bring them any closer to success’.147 Another factor may have been Indian capital. Seme’s original African Trading Company had become by 1922 the African and Indian Trading Association Ltd, with K. V. Patel and D. M. Nursoo on the board, although Indian advertisements are not very prominent. The company secretary, Skota, also the Abantu-Batho editor, called a shareholders’ meeting in July 1930 to reduce the allotment of shares to enable the Association legally to recommence business.148
That Abantu-Batho may have drawn on Indian capital in its last few years makes it tempting to account for a growing anti-imperialist solidarity in its pages, yet it had deep roots. In 1918 a special SANNC conference of chiefs sent a memorial to the British king saying emphatically that the Union of South Africa and Belgium should keep their hands off South West Africa, and East Africa and the Congo, respectively, until the wishes of the Africans were met. The ANC’s 1919 constitution refers to ‘one Pan-African Association’, including territories and protectorates, with membership open to ‘all men belonging to the aboriginal races of Africa’; it was ‘a big National Organisation whose scope and activities will cover a great portion of the African Continent’.149
WAR
Congress was not alone in adopting a moderate policy during World War I. The black press in the United States similarly faced dilemmas of either continuing protests or aiming at reforms incumbent on their loyalty.150 Abantu-Batho, given meagre resources and state policy, could not have reporters at the front, but commented on war issues in general and as they affected Africans.151 It provided a forum for critics of war policy and returned soldiers to expose their exploitation by white officers. In 1916 editor Grendon hoped that Botha would allow black South Africans to be active participants in the war,152 but this did not eventuate. Abantu-Batho questioned why General Hertzog could publish seditious statements in the dailies: ‘in no other part of the brutish Empire would politicians be allowed to carry on such a propaganda.’153 In contrast, when Seme in January 1916 had published a sharp commentary on war events (see Part II), he was dragged before government officials and threatened, his chief crime being perhaps his sarcasm in reporting that the British had ‘had enough’ of war and that their government was ‘in a state of chaos’. To add insult to official injury, he intimated that