In spite of severe reservations from members of the old guard, Xuma’s support helped to smooth the passage of a resolution at the conference allowing for the formation of the league. Lembede, Mda and Ngubane wrote up a draft manifesto, which was explicitly critical of the senior ANC: ‘[We] attribute the inability of Congress in the last twenty years to advance the national cause in a manner commensurate with the demands of the time, to weakness in the organisation and constitution; to its erratic policy of yielding to oppression, regarding itself as a body of gentlemen with clean hands and to failing to see the problems of the African through the proper perspective.’4Nevertheless, they took the draft to Xuma for approval in February 1944. Though worried by their criticism and even their tone of disrespect, he was prepared to give them his support.
A provisional constitution was drawn up and the league was launched at a meeting in the Bantu Men’s Social Centre in Johannesburg in April. At their first conference in September, Anton Lembede – whose professional qualifications, intellect and passion stood out – was elected first president and Mda his deputy. The manifesto and constitution called, in general terms, for African unity, ‘high ethical standards’ and a commitment to overcome racial domination. In effect, membership was exclusively African, although its constitution, in line with that of the ANC, also made provision for ‘young members of other sections of the community who live like and with Africans and whose general outlook on life is similar to that of Africans’.5Membership was open to those between 12 and 40; at the age of 18, recruits automatically became members of the ANC. The ANCYL, it was made clear, was never to set itself up in opposition to the mother body but rather to change it from within, to help the ANC to represent the African masses more effectively and more robustly.
Over the next few years the Youth League put pressure on the ANC – sometimes vocally, sometimes behind the scenes – to adopt more assertive African nationalist policies. As the Smuts government’s intransigence became clearer, and as the Youth League recruited more like-minded youth into the organisation, so their influence grew within the ANC. The leadership of the ANC, they argued, was reacting too slowly to rapidly unfolding events in the mid-1940s.
Even before the formalisation of the ANCYL, many in the ANC were stung by General Smuts’s offhand dismissal of an ANC charter, Africans’ Claims, issued in 1943. Modelled on, and inspired by, the Atlantic Charter, the document called for universal African rights in South Africa. It was an idealistic document that avoided any mention of specific political action. Yet Smuts made it clear that the Atlantic Charter was not applicable to Africans within South Africa. This was an early hint of the limits of Smuts’s reformism, and strengthened the young radicals’ view that cooperation with the state was futile. Nevertheless, the ANC soldiered on with its respectful delegations and participation in the NRC and Advisory Boards.
In August 1946 seventy thousand African miners across the Witwatersrand went on strike to demand better wages. The strike was brutally suppressed by management and government; dozens of miners were killed and injured, and many union leaders were prosecuted. The ANCYL issued several angry statements of solidarity with the mineworkers. The ANC tried to voice its protest through the vehicle of the NRC but was, once again, rebuffed by the Smuts administration. While the Youth Leaguers urged mass demonstrations and a total boycott of the NRC, the ANC leadership expressed its frustration by calling for an indefinite ‘adjournment’ of the NRC. But several senior ANC members nevertheless retained their membership of the Council until its dissolution under the Nationalists.
During the next month, September 1946, the radicalised Indian Congresses embarked on a passive resistance campaign in protest against new legislation that restricted Indian residential and commercial rights. While the Youth Leaguers mostly objected to the growing ANC cooperation with the Indian Congresses during the campaign, they were impressed by the Gandhian tactic of civil disobedience, which won the Congresses thousands of enthusiastic supporters.
Through the second half of the 1940s, the ANCYL criticised the senior body not only for its lacklustre recruitment, cautious tactics and participation in state structures, but also for its cooperation with non-Africans and communists. Mda’s and Lembede’s influence in this respect was significant. Key ANCYL leaders, at various meetings, attempted to change racially inclusive clauses in the ANC constitution, to bar individuals from simultaneously belonging to the ANC and Communist Party, and to prevent alliances with Indians, such as the Doctors’ Pact of 1947. The ANCYL even attacked the ANC’s leadership in May 1948 for co-sponsoring a People’s Assembly calling for universal franchise, because communists and the Indian Congresses had taken the initiative. Nelson Mandela, confident and fearless, was often used as the Youth League’s chief attack dog when it came to these controversial issues.
Although exclusive African nationalism was the dominant ideology in the ANCYL from 1944 until 1949, there were also significant left-leaning and non-racial factions within the movement. William Nkomo and David Bopape, for example, were known to be sympathetic to communists, and Dan Tloome, a young trade unionist who became increasingly active in the League, was himself a member of the Communist Party. By the end of the 1940s, many others, such as Oliver Tambo, were beginning to rethink their positions on non-African cooperation. What held the factions together was a belief in more militant, mass-based political action.
In July 1947, at the age of 33, Anton Lembede died suddenly. He had been the ANCYL’s most articulate spokesman, revered for his philosophical boldness and erudition. A grieving Mda, whom many regarded as the driving political force in the Youth League, took over the leadership. But by then he had taken up a teaching post in Roma, in Basutoland, and relied heavily on a working committee that he set up in Johannesburg, consisting of Sisulu, Tambo and Mandela. Though Mda’s ideas were very close to those of Lembede, he was, as I suggested earlier, a more pragmatic figure, and probably better able to hold the various factions of the ANCYL together. Though some have suggested in retrospect that Lembede, though admired, was a lone ‘extremist’, there is little doubt that he left a powerful imprint on ANCYL thinking.6
From its inception the ANCYL emphasised new recruitment. But it must be noted that most members did not really know how to appeal to uneducated workers and peasants. In terms of professional and academic qualification, they represented the elite of the ANC. As Bob Edgar observes, ‘Although inspired by mass action, the ANCYL was not an organisation of the masses.’7They recruited within their familiar networks: high schools, colleges, professional associations. Their recruitment was aimed more at strengthening the ANCYL’s voting power within the ANC than at developing a genuine mass base. That said, they did recruit energetically within their networks. Oliver Tambo, for example, before leaving teaching for law, set up a vibrant ANCYL branch at St Peter’s. Later ANC leaders such as Duma Nokwe, Joe Matthews and Andrew Mlangeni (not to mention Desmond Tutu) first cut their political teeth in this branch.8
Until 1948 the ANCYL had a presence only in the Transvaal, but in that year it made