Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Repression, Revelation and Resurrection: The Revival of the NIC
- 2 Black Consciousness and the Challenge to the ‘I’ in the NIC
- 3 Between Principle and Pragmatism: Debates over the SAIC, 1971−1978
- 4 Changing Geographies and New Terrains of Struggle
- 5 Class(rooms) of Dissent: Education Boycotts and Democratic Trade Unions, 1976−1985
- 6 Lenin and the Duma Come to Durban: Reigniting the Participation Debate
- 7 The Anti-SAIC Campaign of 1981: Prefigurative Politics?
- 8 Botha’s 1984 and the Rise of the UDF
- 9 Letters from Near and Afar: The Consulate Six
- 10 Inanda, Inkatha and Insurrection: 1985
- 11 Building Up Steam: Operation Vula and Local Networks
- 12 Between Fact and Factions: The 1987 Conference
- 13 ‘Caught With Our Pants Down’: The NIC and the Crumbling of Apartheid 1988−1990
- 14 Snapping the Strings of the UDF
- 15 Digging Their Own Grave: Debating the Future of the NIC
- 16 The Ballot Box, 1994: A Punch in the Gut?
- 17 Between Rajbansi’s ‘Ethnic Guitar’ and the String of the ANC Party List
- Conclusion: A Spoke in the Wheel
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Repression, Revelation and Resurrection: The Revival of the NIC
- 2 Black Consciousness and the Challenge to the ‘I’ in the NIC
- 3 Between Principle and Pragmatism: Debates over the SAIC, 1971−1978
- 4 Changing Geographies and New Terrains of Struggle
- 5 Class(rooms) of Dissent: Education Boycotts and Democratic Trade Unions, 1976−1985
- 6 Lenin and the Duma Come to Durban: Reigniting the Participation Debate
- 7 The Anti-SAIC Campaign of 1981: Prefigurative Politics?
- 8 Botha’s 1984 and the Rise of the UDF
- 9 Letters from Near and Afar: The Consulate Six
- 10 Inanda, Inkatha and Insurrection: 1985
- 11 Building Up Steam: Operation Vula and Local Networks
- 12 Between Fact and Factions: The 1987 Conference
- 13 ‘Caught With Our Pants Down’: The NIC and the Crumbling of Apartheid 1988−1990
- 14 Snapping the Strings of the UDF
- 15 Digging Their Own Grave: Debating the Future of the NIC
- 16 The Ballot Box, 1994: A Punch in the Gut?
- 17 Between Rajbansi’s ‘Ethnic Guitar’ and the String of the ANC Party List
- Conclusion: A Spoke in the Wheel
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The pre-eminent political organisation among Indians in South Africa through the first half of the 20th century was the Natal Indian Congress (NIC), founded by Mohandas K. Gandhi in 1894. In the 1940s a battle for the soul of the NIC was fought between groups dubbed ‘moderates’ and ‘ radicals’. The latter group, under the leadership of Dr Monty Naicker, emerged victorious, with Dr Kesaveloo Goonam, a fellow student of Naicker's at Edinburgh University in the 1930s, becoming vice-president of the NIC, the first woman to hold this position. The NIC entered into an alliance with the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1950s. It was a dramatic move for the NIC, which, for the first half of the twentieth century, had shied away from alliances with Africans. In a series of momentous pioneering moves, the NIC joined with the ANC in the 1952 Defiance Campaign, and rallied behind the Freedom Charter adopted in 1955 at the Congress of the People in Kliptown. Through these actions, NIC leaders were pronouncing that the freedom of Indians was inextricably tied to the liberation of the African majority.
From 1960 the state went on the offensive, banning the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Although the NIC had not been declared illegal in this period, it had through the weight of ‘bannings, detentions and imprisonment … virtually folded up’, according to one of its executive members, Thumba Pillay.
Dr Goonam related an incident that vividly illustrates the weakness of the NIC at the time. Emerging from the home of a patient, she encountered a man sitting under a tree:
He called me and asked: ‘You coming from Congress Ma?’ I said: ‘Yes.’ Then he fiddled with the turban he was wearing and took out a note from his pocket. It stated: ‘You Venkatsamy, are notified by the City Council to leave your plot number so and so …’ When I finished reading, he said, ‘Ma, I’ve been living in this place for the last fifty years. Where do I go now? I got a smallholding here where I grow … household vegetables … Can't Congress do something?’ I said I would speak to Congress but I knew nothing could be done.
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- Colour, Class and CommunityThe Natal Indian Congress, 1971-1994, pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2021