Protest and Accommodation: Ambiguities in the Racial Politics of the APO, 1909-1923 |
Protest and Accommodation: Ambiguities in the Racial Politics of the APO, 1909-1923
Kronos: Journal of Cape History
Number 20 (November 1993)
pages 92-106
Mohamed Adhikari, Associate Professor of Historical Studies
University of Cape Town
Historical writing on the coloured community of South Africa has tended to accept coloured identity as given and to portray it as a fixed entity. The failure to take cognizance of the fluidity of coloured self-definition and the ambiguities inherent to the process has resulted in South African historiography presenting an over-simplified image of the phenomenon. The problem stems partly from an almost exclusive focus on coloured protest politics which has had the effect of exaggerating the resistance of coloureds to white racism and the advance of segregationism. Furthermore, little consideration has been given to the nature of coloured identity or to the manner in which it shaped political consciousness within the coloured community. This is particularly true of analyses of the period following the inauguration of the Union of South Africa in 1910, a time when the legitimacy of coloured identity was not in any way questioned within the coloured community and when coloured protest politics was dominated by one body, the African Political Organization (APO).
These inadequacies are clearly evident in recent academic writing on coloured history. Richard van der Ross, in his account of the history of coloured political organization, for example, appears oblivious of the need to investigate these issues despite previously having written a polemical book on coloured racial identity. Gavin Lewis view that coloured identity is a ‘white imposed categorization’ is a simplistic formulation which ignores a wide range of evidence to the contrary. Ian Goldin’s book, written from a neo-Marxist perspective, at one point acknowledges the complexity of coloured identity but then proceeds to treat it as little more than a ploy the white supremacist state used to divide and rule the black population.
By exploring how ambiguities and contradictions within coloured identity helped shape the political consciousness of coloureds this article seeks to draw attention to complexities of their political experience hitherto neglected by historians. It thereby also hopes to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of a crucial period in the political history of the coloured community. Special emphasis is placed on the ways in which the marginality and the intermediate status of this social group resulted in ambivalences in their political outlook. The APO, the first newspaper to be directed specifically at a coloured readership, is an ideal vehicle for such an enquiry. As the mouthpiece of an organization at the very heart of coloured communal life at a time when the direct testimony of coloured people in the historical record is scarce, the APO provides unique insights into the social identity and political attitudes within the coloured community…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Kronos, Kronos: Journal of Cape History, Mohamed Adhikari, South Africa