Journalism history has drawn profitably on cultural and comparative studies of the media to highlight and weigh alternative readings of the press, whether as a reflection of or ‘constitutive medium’ of society.112 Journalists everywhere produce ‘news’ and engage with society and ideologies.113 In settler societies such as South Africa print journalism played a crucial role in creating real or imagined communities of readers and connecting them with one another across town and country, into a nation and to rulers,114 and more widely to engage imperial and other international or diaspora networks. The medium of print in settler societies with stunted indigenous bourgeoisies, such as South Africa, played a pivotal role in developing nationalisms and engaging the state.115
Abantu-Batho was a weapon that allowed engagement more on African terms and much more so than in deputations or the white press. A newspaper was impersonal, often anonymous via collective authorship,116 varied in views and able to use the ‘freedom of the press’ to push the envelope of criticism. Abantu-Batho used vernacular languages to change the linguistic terrain or discourse, although censors scrutinised its columns. If reaching a limited audience, it was important in instituting political engagements on better terms for Africans and helping make these encounters more flexible and potent. It ‘crossed the line’ between polite deputation and political resistance, usually seen as starting only from the late 1940s, and in this sense helped prepare the ground for popular resistance. It did this by broadening the terms of engagement to include solidarity with different classes, women, and other African peoples, and by reinserting into discourses African notions of politics (as around chiefs) and new hybrids of African and Western politics (such as Congress itself, a very African version of a parliament).
All this is not to say that other black newspapers did not also aim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’,117 or those parts of the population with whom they particularly identified. Imvo, Ilanga and Umteteli, for example, also sought such a mantle, and the latter two had close connections with some parts of the Congress movement. Umteteli (like its white mining backers and the white government) was strident in its rejection of Abantu-Batho’s claim to represent ‘the people’, as demonstrated in chapter 7 of this volume. The frequent reprinting of one another’s articles in the first years of Abantu-Batho points to a certain camaraderie among the black press. Moreover, some Congress provincial branches developed their own organs and, as Chris Lowe observes in his chapter, in its very early days Congress officials envisaged or recognised multiple organs; although the term, I suggest, might refer to credentialed papers accorded access to meetings rather than organisational organs.118 Nevertheless, Abantu-Batho claimed – and to some extent would succeed in building – a more intense national pitch. It cultivated a special, even intimate, relationship with Congress, from Seme’s initial dream of a united national voice to its 1919 confirmation of official organ status in the TNC constitution, to Gumede’s ‘nationalisation’ of the paper in the late 1920s.
Similarly, ‘the nation’ is also fraught with complexity and contestation, on which there is a vast literature that deconstructs the term and warns of the dangers of the abuse of nationalism. Suffice it to say that in this period of rising African nationalism Abantu-Batho played the central coordinating and consciousness-raising role, as discussed above. When I speak of ‘the People’s Paper’, then, I do so more to capture the meaning of ‘Abantu’ and ‘Batho’ (‘people’) to its editors, writers and audience, and not to suggest any kind of endorsement of nationalism as such. Even so, and as I and others argue elsewhere,119 national liberation was and is a key concept in South African politics.
The national dimension is more significant here than may meet the eye. Historians of the 1970s–80s searched for social histories in newspaper columns, moving on to the cultural sphere. The onset of digital newspaper archives now presents the tool, as John Nerone says, to begin ‘the reconstruction of the national conversation of previous ages’, aided by the distributed nature of the press via the recirculation of content through reprinting in other periodicals or by exchange, which may have been more useful in generating a national profile than subscribers.120 This is one way Abantu-Batho is now emerging from archival obscurity. Just as close monitoring by opponents gave it some credibility, the reprinting of content and its exchange to editors in other places, and the ability to search some of this content online has helped us recover more of this hidden archive.
THE POLITICAL CONTEXT
Abantu-Batho emerged at a time of intense black protest focused on the racist clauses of the Act of Union and the 1913 Natives’ Land Act. The black press united in its criticism of the exclusion of blacks from the franchise121 and such determined opposition would have imprinted itself on the minds of Abantu-Batho writers. Chapter 1 in this volume analyses in detail the political content and context of the paper, but it is useful here to sketch this.
The political tone was moderate-to-radical; ‘centre-left’ in today’s parlance. We cannot say that a systematic political doctrine was articulated; there was an eclectic philosophic mix, with editors appropriating ideas from Garvey, Mill, Marx and, in Grendon’s case, Swedenborg. In 1931 editors claimed a consistency in its philosophy over the years (see the Conclusion), and while we can see big differences between, say, the moderate or radical politics of Skota and Letanka, the common threads of African nationalism, Pan-Africanism and anti-racism did indeed bring some coherence.
The question of political affiliation/control is complex, and discussed in chapter 1. While there is nothing about a press organ in the 1919 SANNC constitution or its draft predecessor, and while in 1913 there was reference to six different ‘Newspaper Press Organs’ of the SANNC, Article 19 of the TNC constitution of 1919 specifies that ‘[t]he official organ of the Congress shall be the “ABANTU-BATHO”’.122 In the late 1920s J. T. Gumede declared it the ANC’s organ, but withdrew this naming from the masthead in 1930 when defeated by Seme who, now in control of Congress, had his own paper and ironically distanced himself from the one he had founded.
Did Abantu-Batho’s adoption as organ of the Transvaal Congress or ANC involve direct control or only mutual support? A company technically owned the paper and there are articles critical of the SANNC and, after Gumede’s 1930 fall from grace, of the ANC, so in this regard it was not entirely a party organ. Its columns were open to different writers. In its early years it boasted moderates Seme, Kunene and Saul Msane, while Skota, editor in the late 1920s, was also of this mould. Whether Congress supported the paper or whether its own fragility was a hindrance to long-term press survival is unclear, but it seems likely that the close association initially provided capital, subscribers and wider public interest, but ANC stagnation then brought reduced resources and, as seen in criticism in the poetry of Nontsizi,123 social distance or ostracism. The relationship with the Transvaal Congress was of a slightly different nature: with both being based in Johannesburg, this relationship was regular and intimate, and there all five languages of the paper were spoken.
I discern several distinct phases. From 1912 to 1917 Abantu-Batho was generally moderate. Yet already in 1916 signs of a growing radicalism were evident, as in the sharp editorialising of Grendon. The 1917 changes in SANNC leadership, with Makgatho defeating Dube and Seme retreating, saw Abantu-Batho back Makgatho, reprinting his 1918 SANNC address in full.124 On the split, Hughes points to the emergence (in the words of Thema) of ‘Msaneites and Dubeites’ as ‘the former used the pages of Abantu-Batho, and the latter Ilanga, to trade insults’.125
The period 1917–20