This is a book about the ANC in its early days, about how its politics related (or at times did not relate) to ordinary South African working peoples. It also has lessons for today's struggles, as seen in the recent leadership tussles within the ANC in which issues of class and alliance have been prominent. I paint this complex story onto a nationwide canvas but also bring to life the active agents of this history at regional and local levels. It is a story that needs to be told, because many parts of it, especially at the local level, remain hidden or largely forgotten, and because the theme has continuing significance in South Africa.

Between 1912, when the ANC formed, and the 1950s when it launched widespread defiance campaigns that greatly increased its mass support, both its membership and the number of black workers in South Africa underwent enormous growth. Writers often have chosen to emphasise the differences between these seemingly disparate political and economic spheres, but many ANC members had strong sympathies for the rights of black workers, with whom they shared common national oppression. Those more politicised workers aware of Congress viewed the ANC in different ways. Some viewed it as an important presence on the political scene; many who rose to leadership in unions and civic bodies maintained close working relations, becoming active in provincial and national ANC structures. The respective organisations at times formed temporary tactical alliances. The intensity of these interactions fluctuated greatly, from place to place, and over time.

Commentators tend to see a watershed in ANC history in the late 1940s to early 1950s, when the ANC led location discontent among township dwellers and workers into large-scale boycotts and became a mass organisation and— supposedly for the first time—forged ties with workers. But whilst ANC history and labour history have, separately, been treated extensively in South African historiography, their relationship before 1940 rarely has been subjected to detailed analysis. Generally, and sometimes with good reason, historians refer to this early period of ANC history as a time of moderation. ANC contacts with workers often seem a mere curiosity or temporary aberration.