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| Xolela Mangcu |
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Populism has been a controversial term in South African public discourse in recent years precisely because it has been used as a tool in the lexical armoury of the combatants in the battle for the leadership of the ruling African National Congress. In order to understand why populism has been denigrated to great effect by the political, economic and social elite one has to have some idea of the historical resistance to popular democracy by African elites going back to the nineteenth century.
The
anti-populist streak has its antecedents in the social division that
emerged among African people following their encounter with European
modernity in the nineteenth century. At the end of the anti-colonial
wars that lasted almost a hundred years between the end of the
18 th century and the end of the nineteenth
century, Africans found themselves divided between two groups: those
who subscribed to the new religious and educational systems brought
into the country by the European missionaries and those who rejected
European 'civilization' as a bastardization of African culture. And
because religion and education came to stand for what Ntongela
Masilela calls the "facilitators of the entry into European
modernity," leadership became the preserve of what Du Bois
called the "talented tenth."
To be sure,
the social division started among Xhosa chiefs Ngqika (1778-1829) and
Ndlambe (died 1828) who stood for submission to and rebellion against
European colonialism, respectively. Aligned to both chiefs were the
prophet-intellectuals Ntsikana and Nxele. Ntsikana became possibly
the single most influential individual in converting the Xhosa to
Christianity. Nxele led 20,000 m en to a war against the British in
the small town of Grahamstown. Thousands were killed and Nxele was
incarcerated on Robben Island, where he died. Peires argues that,
their differences notwithstanding, their attraction to their
respective followers lay in their power to reinterpret a world which
had suddenly become incomprehensible. "They are giants because
they transcend the specifics to symbolize the opposite poles of Xhosa
response to Christianity and the West: Nxele representing struggle,
Ntsikana submission."
These two
individuals lay the contours of a continuing conflict between what
can be described as 'conservative' and 'radical' modernizers.
Conservative modernizers accepted European modernity as a Godbestowed
blessing on the 'heathen' Africans. They denounced African cultural
traditions and even in their politics were careful not to disturb the
apple-cart of European civilization. One of the most influential and
yet controversial of these conservative modernizers was John Tengo
Jabavu (1859-1921), a teacher and a preacher who later became a
community leader. He established the influential newspaper Imvo
Zabantsundu and was one of the movers behind the establishment
of the University of Fort Hare as the first university for black
students. Jabavu was controversial not only for his dependence and
appeasement of his white financiers but also for his support for the
notorious Land Act of 1913, which dispossessed black people of their
lands. The Act apportioned only 13 percent of the land to black
people and allocated the remaining 87 percent to whites.
Despite
opposition from radical modernizers such as WB Rubusana, Sol Plaatje,
SEK Mqhayi, who jointly established their own rival newspaper, Izwi
Labantu, the conservative modernizers became more influential in
shaping the course of oppositional politics in South Africa. Having
studied under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute, they came
back to establish the South African National Native Congress, later
renamed the African National Congress in 1923. One of the more
radical modernizers, WB Rubusana, was at the founding of the ANC,
with W.E.B Du Bois at the Pan African Congress in London in 1911, and
also the first €”- and the last - €”African to run for parliament
in the then Cape parliament, which at the time allowed for African
representation under a qualified franchise. The franchise was later
abolished and blacks were removed from the voters' roll in 1936.
