In South Africa, “nation” and “nationality” have been elastic concepts whose boundaries have expanded or contracted at various points in history according to the relative power or powerlessness of those defining them. A case in point is Lembede, whose starting point for his vision of African nationalism was his recognition of a fundamental political reality: that as long as Africans did not transcend their ethnic divisions, they would remain minor political actors. Unless the continent’s millions of inhabitants agreed to work cooperatively, Africans could not hope to take advantage of global power shifts and compete with established powers such as the United States, Japan, Germany, Russia, England and France and newly emerging ones such as China and India. Moreover, in South Africa, where white domination was perpetuated by dividing the black majority, black unity – based on a shared oppression – was a precondition for challenging the status quo.
Because Lembede’s brand of nationalism was aimed at forging a pan-ethnic identity, he discounted the usual building blocks of nationalism. What bound the peoples of Africa together and made them unique was not language, colour, geographical location or national origin, but a spiritual force he called “Africanism”. This concept first appeared in his writings in 1944, and was based not only on the fact that Africans shared the same continent but that they had adapted to Africa’s climate and environment. “The African natives,” he contended, “then live and move and have their being in the spirit of Africa, in short, they are one with Africa.”41
Borrowing liberally from Darwin’s law of variation in nature, Lembede maintained that because nations differed in the same way as flowers, animals, plants and humans, they had special qualities and defining characteristics. Accordingly, Africa had to “realise its own potentialities, develop its own talents and retain its own peculiar character.”42
This deterministic line of reasoning had a kinship with neo-Fichtean ideas then being advanced by some Afrikaner nationalists. Lembede was certainly familiar with their writings through the Afrikaans press and his MA research. In his thesis, he quoted from a booklet on communism by Nicolaas Diederichs, a professor of Political Philosophy at the University of the Orange Free State and a Broederbond leader.43 Lembede’s ideas mirrored aspects of Diederichs’s philosophy of nationalism, presented in his Nasionalisme as Lewensbeskouing en sy verhouding tot Internasionalisme (1935). For instance, the unifying characteristics of Diederichs’s nationalism was not “a common fatherland, common racial descent, or common political convictions”, but a divinely ordained “common culture”.
Just as He ruled that no deadly uniformity should prevail in nature, but that it should demonstrate a richness and variety of plants and animals, sound and colours, forms and figures, so in the human sphere as well He ruled that there should exist a multiplicity and diversity of nations, languages and cultures.44
No doubt Lembede appropriated some of the ideas of Afrikaner nationalists for his version of African nationalism. While Afrikaner nationalists distorted evolutionary theory to justify white domination, Lembede probably took special delight in recasting the same ideas to promote African equality with Europeans. Moreover, this concept of African nationalism was fundamentally opposed to Afrikaner nationalism. This is illustrated by a story Jordan Ngubane related to Mary Benson, about Lembede having a meeting with a leader of the Ossewa Brandwag (OB), an ultra-nationalist Afrikaner movement. The OB leader told Lembede that “we Afrikaner nationalists realise that no nationalist is an enemy of another nationalist. We have much that is common, land, you are exploited by Jews, English and Indians just as we are by Jews and English, we know that you are suffering and in final record [the] only real friend of a nationalist is another nationalist. We want to make a gesture of friendship.” The OB leader then allegedly handed Lembede a £500 check to be used as Lembede saw fit as a gesture of “goodwill towards African nationalists”. Lembede expressed his appreciation but pointed out that the “goals of Afrikaner and African nationalism [are] irreconcilable therefore [it is] unfair to you and me if I accepted help from your side.” Lembede then walked away.45
Because Lembede did not accept that ideas and innovations were bound by culture, he saw no inconsistency in taking ideas from non-Africans to construct an Africa-centred philosophy. Thus his writings drew on an eclectic range of sources: nineteenth century European romantic nationalists, Greek and Roman philosophers and leaders of Indian, Egyptian and other anti-colonial struggles. He valued the contributions of Western and Eastern civilizations and he argued that Africa was ideally placed to absorb the best from both. However, he warned against uncritically borrowing ideas that had no application on the African continent.46
Lembede’s ideas clearly were Pan African in scope, but it is striking that at no point in his writings did he refer to the Pan African Congress or any of the leading lights of Pan Africanism. Lembede’s ideas, for instance, echo those of Edward Wilmot Blyden, the West Indian/Liberian educator and philosopher who wrote on the creative and distinctive genius of the “Negro” race and the necessity for Africans to express racial pride and forge a unified nationality. Also curiously absent from Lembede’s writings is any mention of Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican-born black nationalist. Garvey’s ideas had not only caught hold in the United States after the First World War, but had also attracted a fervent following in South Africa. There is ample oral evidence that Lembede was familiar with Garvey and he frequently peppered his speeches with quotations from The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, so why not cite Garvey in his writings? It remains a mystery.47
Lembede is most commonly associated with the framing of a philosophy of African nationalism, but one cannot separate his ideas from the political ends they served. One objective was to create an ideological arsenal for African nationalists in the ANC to combat their principal political rivals, who had staked out clearly-defined doctrines and policies. For instance, the Communist Party of South Africa was rooted in Marxist dogma and regularly issued policy statements. The Non-European Unity Movement, which had an influential Trotskyite wing, had its Ten-Point Programme (a central plank of which was the boycott of government-created institutions), ratified in December 1943. And the African Democratic Party, touting a multiracial membership, had adopted its manifesto in September 1943, advocating change through peaceful negotiation and opposing militant protest. African nationalists were at a disadvantage in proselytising their cause unless they translated their emotions, aspirations and convictions into a logical and coherent set of doctrines independent of European ideologies. In the battle of the “isms”, the Youth League could put forward “Africanism” as an alternative.
In order for Africans to combat white domination, Lembede maintained they had to overcome phychological disabilities. The system of segregation had erected tangible political and economic barriers that were easily targeted, but white domination also had a corrosive impact on the self-image of Africans, and this was more difficult to cope with. This negative self-image was manifested in Africans’ “loss of self-confidence, inferiority complex, a feeling of frustration, the worship and idolisation of whiteness, foreign leaders and ideologies.”48 According to Lembede,
. . . the African people have been told time and again that they are babies, that they are an inferior race, that they cannot achieve anything worthwhile by themselves or without a white man as their “trustee” or “leader”. This insidious suggestion has poisoned their minds and has resulted in a pathological state of mind. Consequently the African has lost or is losing the sterling qualities of self-respect, self-confidence and self-reliance. Even in the political world, it is being suggested that Africans cannot organise themselves or make any progress without white “leaders”.
Now I stand for the revolt against this psychological enslavement of my people. I strive for the eradication of this “Ja-Baas” mentality, which for centuries has been systematically and subtly implanted into the minds of the Africans.49
Lembede’s ultimate cure for these ills was political freedom, but he prescribed several intermediate steps which Africans could take to reassert an independent identity. One was reversing the distorted image of their own past. This meant constructing a history that accentuated the positive achievements of African civilizations, praising the heroic efforts of African leaders who resisted European expansion and resurrecting the glories of the African past. Influenced by Seme, Lembede’s historical