The fire next time? Part 4, Lovedale riots 1920, 1946 & others

The fire next time? Part 4, Lovedale riots 1920, 1946 & others

Preface

This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog concerned with the crisis in South African universities in 2015 and 2016, with comparisons drawn between these student protests and those of earlier years and particularly 1920 and 1946. Part 1 takes off from a discussion of recent books with very different viewpoints on the recent events. It also provides background information about South Africa’s schools and colleges. Part 2 is concerned with the private troubles/public issues aspect and discusses both macro and micro matters of relevance. Part 3 draws on the ideas of Norbert Elias in reaching an interpretation of the hows and whys of the protests. Part 4 (this blog) turns attention to the student protests of 1920 and 1946, using those occurring at Lovedale as a case study. Part 5, to be published as next week’s blog, makes some comparisons between the earlier protests and those of 2015 and 2016. For non-South Africans, it should be noted that the discussions in Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5 will not make full sense without also reading the contextual information in Part 1.

Please note that the discussion of the 1920 and 1946 riots here is truncated and the full version will appear complete with quotations and archive references when the whole set of blogs on crisis in the universities appears on the WWW website in full. This will be announced in a future Lives & Letters mailing and also a future weekly blog.

The background

There have been many strikes, riots, marches and other protests by South African school, college and university students over the years, Some are now known world-wide, while the majority are largely forgotten. However, the riots in 1920 and 1946 at the prestigious Lovedale Institution in the Eastern Cape remain a topic of note, in part because Lovedale was seen as a flagship for black education and so events there caught both the public eye and that of officialdom, in part because protests occurred in other institutions too and were a harbinger of later change. It is also in part because various records of these events have survived in the Cory Library’s Lovedale collections, enabling some detailed investigation.

Missionary-funded Lovedale was not alone in experiencing disturbances on these occasions, and the collections contain numerous references to protests occurring elsewhere. However, because the boundaries of Lovedale were both clear and also permeated by outside happenings and there is a considerable amount of documentation about the events that took place, it provides a useful case study. Tracing these events and how the various participants and onlookers responded to them in the Lovedale case also throws interesting light on the crisis in the universities concerning the protests of 2015 and 2016.

Lovedale of the day was a very large teaching institution with different kinds of schools under an umbrella centre – technical, biblical, teacher training, general education including at a high school level, plus a hospital. At the time of the 1920 riots, its Principal was James Henderson, whose family letters are part of WWW research; at the time of the 1946 events, the Principal was RHW Shepherd, whose family letters will later become part of WWW research. For many years, Lovedale was seen as the outstanding establishment for black education in South Africa, drawing its students from many parts of Southern Africa and including people of a range of ages and different ethnic backgrounds. It had white students as well as black and girls as well as boys, and its student complement included many from the black elite. In 1906, it was decided that a new Inter-State College, later a university, should be founded at Fort Hare rather than Lovedale. Fort Hare opened its doors as a degree-giving body in 1916 with Alexander Kerr its Principal. In many respects sister educational establishments, many students moved from Lovedale to Fort Hare. Both institutions (which still exist, in different forms) are located near Alice, in the Eastern Cape.

South African student ‘troubles’ in the form of protests and related activities in schools and colleges seem to have started in 1919/1920. They are usually associated with the rise of large-scale black/African militant labour and political activity, although there are other associated factors as well and these are considered later. As well as Lovedale, protests and other troubles occurred at some other education establishments catering for the black elite, including the Wilberforce Institution in Johannesburg, St Matthews in Keiskammhoek near King William’s Town, the Healdtown Institute in Healdtown, Blythwood near Butterworth, St John’s in Umtata, and a number of LMS schools. Most were mission-founded establishments, the Wilberforce Institution was an American-founded African Methodist episcopal college, while the most significant of the LMS troubles occurred at its mission-school at Inyati in 1932, amounting to what was referred to as an insurrection.

Protests involving students in these elite black schools and colleges were focused in a number of years. Those discussed or mentioned in the archived Lovedale documentation are:

1919/20: The backcloth involved wartime changes and then major strikes across South Africa, particularly in the area of Johannesburg. Protests in educational settings involved over twenty institutions, with letters on file from a number of the Principals concerned, including Henderson as the head of Lovedale, as well as other documentation.

1929: The backcloth was provided by a National Party election victory and segregationist policies. A significant number of protests occurred, with Henderson mentioning that the Heads Association should pool information and responses to them – ‘steps must be taken to render a repetition of such incidents… [have] serious consequences for those taking part in them so they will, after perhaps more than one trial of strength, come to an end’.

1944-5: The backcloth involved wartime privations and industrial militancy. A number of protests occurred sporadically across many schools and colleges, including Lovedale, Blythwood, Healdtown and others.

April 1946: A number of boycotts and other troubles at Lovedale, discussed below.

August 1946: The backcloth was provided by wartime changes and sporadic unrest of different kinds. Then a major mine strike in the Rand mines started in August, with smaller strikes and protests over many months in the build-up to this. Also in August, there were widespread students protests, including the riot that led to the closure of Lovedale, discussed below.

1955-6: The backcloth was political change and the extensive arrests of ‘trouble-makers’ and the start of the Rivonia trials. Widespread protests, including a riot that led to the closure of Fort Hare, discussed later.

These student protests occurred, then, in the context of wider boycotts, strikes and other protest activity, with the student unrest contiguous with and to a large (but not total) extent part of these issues and movements for change. Some more detail on the political circumstances is as follows.

In 1919/1920, following the end of World War I, there were significant strikes of railway, mine, dock and other workers, many but not all centred on the Johannesburg area. These were major industrial and political events and led to significant changes in the organisation and extensions of the control of the national state. In 1929, following the earlier growth of the Afrikaner nationalist movement in South Africa, there was a National Party election victory and under Hertzog as Prime Minister many segregationist policies were introduced. In 1944-6, there was considerable political ferment world-wide, while in South Africa radical political movements representing black people were on the increase, there was significant industrial action in the form of a major mining strike, and a prolonged drought led to food shortages. In 1955-6, apartheid policies were being greatly extended under the control of the reconfiguring national state, and there was a crackdown on political activism including mass arrests followed by the infamous Treason Trials.

The riots of 1920 and 1946 are both documented in the Lovedale collections, especially those of 1946. Detailed archival referencing for the different points made in the discussion following are provided in the full version to be published later. In what follows, an outline is given of events on both occasions. The middle sections – which provide an Elias-grounded analysis of the combination of structural and local factors involved using detailed archival materials – are omitted; these will be provided when the full version of this discussion is published. The analysis is focused on 1946 because of the extensiveness of the documentation, with briefer mentions of 1920 and 1956 when there are helpful comparisons to be made. The final section of what appears here is a summary discussion of some conclusions. In next week’s blog, some comparisons are made with the protests of 2015 and 2016.

Summary events of 1920

During World War I, the student population of Lovedale grew, there was some privation concerning food, as there was more generally in South Africa, and various staff members were absent, involved in wartime work. The ratio of staff to students was as a result decreased.

In 1919, there were strikes among different groups of workers in Johannesburg and its environs. The Lovedale riots of 1920 started on Sunday 25 April, with a riot in accommodation and other buildings, apparently over food and changes in the flour used to make bread. There were mass meetings of students following the first troubles and then another mass meeting which decided that there would be a strike the next day. But then immediately technical workshops and dormitories and other buildings were smashed up, the grain store set on fire and the electricity powerhouse damaged. Staff houses and also some staff were pelted with stones. A large number of the students then removed themselves to the nearby Black Hill, where a further meeting was held and people stayed all night.

After the arrival of police, 198 rioters were taken before a magistrate’s court and most were found guilt. Lennox was the Acting Principal at the time, while Henderson was away on furlough, but on his return and following communication with Principals from similar institutions he instituted penalties for the rioters and a large number of expulsions.

Summary events of 1946

Towards the end of World War II, there were around 1200 people sleeping at Lovedale each night, including staff, borders, hospital patients, farm and other workers. Between 1944 and 1945 there were more than twenty protest outbreaks in mainly Bantu Education Department institutions, including smashing and burning property, refusing to attend classes and showing ‘disobedience’ to authority.

At the end of the war there were food shortages because of a severe drought. In the period before the riot occurred, there were sporadic outbreaks of insubordination toward staff, and also related events which a student described to one of the Council members, Senator Welsh, as a ‘reign of terror’ among the students themselves. On 7 August 1946, and apparently because of the sugar ration, around 200 male students rioted, broke panes of glass and damaged other Lovedale buildings including dwelling-houses and dormitories and the library. Attempts to set fire to various buildings were also made. Police from Alice were called and many students were arrested. After a trial, 152 students were found guilty of public violence and given various punishments including the then fairly typical strokes with a cane for some, and a fine or imprisonment with hard labour for a number. A notable feature commented on by the magistrate was that no one said anything about why they rioted; some of those questioned in the witness box said they were either forced or frightened by the mob, but with no names and no detail given.

The next day around 75 students marched into Alice where their fellows were held, to show solidarity. A day later the remaining 185 men and 275 women students became involved by being ‘insubordinate’, jeering, catcalling, not turning up for formal events including classes, with some stone-throwing. ‘The students’ also issued notice of a strike unless certain conditions were met. It was then decided to close the institution, which was done for nine weeks.

When Lovedale reopened, some 80 students were barred, reduced by Shepherd from a larger number because the Governing Council disagreed on how to handle those convicted. The Council also set up an internal but independent commission of inquiry, which met over a period of some days, took witness statements, considered written documentation, interviewed members of staff, reviewed verbatim reports of the trial and considered other related evidence. Much of the material now archived derives from this source, although there are many letters and other documents in addition.

Independently, the government’s Department of Native Affairs instituted its own inquiry into the more than 20 riots that occurred in 1944-6 in educational institutions. Most of these were in government-controlled institutions. Nonetheless, the inquiry led to the end of a mission-governing independent Lovedale, with its absorption into oversight and control by the Department of Bantu Education.

1946 Triggering factors

Omitted section using archival materials.

1946 Local circumstances

Omitted section using archival materials.

1946 Wider context

Omitted section using archival materials.

 

Some Eliasian discussion points

In trying to work out what happened and why regarding the riot in 1946, staff and others at Lovedale focused almost entirely on the immediate aspects, and also the apportioning of culpability and blame as part of how they should deal with the aftermath of the events. This is why a number of ‘narrative of events’ kinds of documents can be found in the records, with the different events and the order in which these occurred were detailed as part of making sense of what seems for many of the staff including Shepherd to have been almost unthinkable. The effect is to see the narrative of occurrences in the institution as itself providing both a causal pattern, and because of this a sufficient explanation.

It is difficult to assess now how important the specific triggers that appear in the documentation actually were, although they were mentioned as a legitimating rationale for the outbreak of the riots by some students and this was picked up and repeated in the various investigations and statements. There is more sense that the complaints mentioned in 1920, actually were a factor, for the different aspects (bread, change of staff, new disciplinary regime) are spelled out in detail and seem to have coalesced into a sense of grievance having arisen in the period immediately before. Those in 1946 are stated in a more perfunctory way, and anyway the protests followed some months of increasingly serious troubles, both as expressed towards staff, and those that remained largely within the student body until the riot broke out and which seem to have involved sufficient force or its threat to have been described as ‘terror’.

In some contrast, the internal committee of inquiry appointed by Lovedale’s Governing Council seemed much more aware of events and changes in the wider world, and its report focused particularly on the long-term structural aspects. And while the committee worked through all the immediate matters raised, by and large its members did not see these as having a causal role. They did however identify an ‘intermediate’ issue concerning the ratio of staff to students as having played apart. The ratio had decreased because of wartime increases in student numbers and decreases in the number of staff available, and it was the post-war reverberations of this that they focused on. That is, the returning staff regulated student behaviour more, but in a context in which there were still too few staff to keep tight disciplinary control outside of classrooms. Insofar as a triggering event is identified in the report, it is this.

Here, all three of the levels of events (triggers, local, contextual) used to structure the analysis of the archival data seem important, to different degrees. ‘Big events’ happen in small ways in local places involving specific people and particular incidents, and it is a combination of the latter things which provide the trigger in particular localities. The particular ‘big events’ of the student protests of 1920, 1946 and 1956 occurred in each case as a series of local events with local triggers, but which shared some particular aspects, not least because these unfolded in a domino-effect way and with channels of communication existing between the different institutions.

It seems clear that it was the existence of widespread changes in thinking and of self- and group-identity, along with political protests and related activity arising from events taking place outside of the educational context, which provided the stimulus for the within-education protest. Overall, the events of the 1946 protest, and also those of 1920 and 1956, seem ‘tip of an iceberg’ in character and closely associated with and arising from wider troubles and political protests. These student protests do not appear to have been initiators in their own right but as responsive in character.

In addition, ‘triggers’ do not have inevitable effects, nor do changes in the zeitgeist necessarily result in grounded radical action, and it requires the existence of suitable contexts in which all of the factors involved come together and coalesce. Obviously, there were many such contexts in 1920, 1946 and 1956 or the protests would not have been as widespread as they were. Equally obviously, mines, docks, railways and their workers are very different from the largely mission-founded elite educational institutions in which the student protests occurred in 1920, 1946 and 1956. Regarding Lovedale and its companion institutions, the school or college was a ‘place out of place’, one where there was unusual mixing of different kinds, cross-ethnic, to an extent cross-gender, also white-black, as well as pupil-teacher, with a range of established and outsider formations around these.

The particular ‘place out of place’ of Lovedale was a largely boarding establishment with an artificial mix of people of different ethnicities, skin colours, ages, and positions in different power-structures. It was also characterised by the absence of the ordinary constraints of a family, community and ethnic kind, and imposition of a formalised, rather authoritarian if also well-meaning, white-provided one. This increased the influence and importance of the within-group hierarchies that existed among the students in the institution. These divisions created tensions and could in themselves cause troubles, and they could also become magnified in out of the ordinary circumstances. The differences were volatile in character because deriving from a set of cleavages of different established and outsider group kinds and these sometimes overlaid each other and were sometimes separate, depending on circumstances. A result was that a wide range of events or issues might propel the differences into more open conflict, again of variable kinds.

At Lovedale both in 1920 and in 1946, there were small caucuses involved in spearheading the different protest activities. The 1946 caucus of ‘the Board’ in Form V seems to have been home-grown and composed by a small number of very politicised long-term students at Lovedale, who operated in a self-consciously literary as well as political way. The 1946 caucus was different in character and how it operated, which was very much in the immediacy of the moment and also largely behind the scenes with other students foregrounding the different activities. It seems to have been composed largely from the 1946 intake and with a preponderance of Johannesburgers. This was conjecture and supposition from the evidence collected at the time by Shepherd and others. However, it was confirmed in a later interview statement by the young man identified as the key organiser and ringleader. At the time he called himself Kitchener Leballo, and later was the well-known Potlako K Leballo. Leballo had a long, complicated career as a political activist and was General Secretary of the PAC for many years.

A similar kind of caucus was also identified as existing at Fort Hare when a riot occurred there in 1956. Its Acting-Principal HR Burrows reported to its Senate that a group known as ‘the caucus’ was responsible for intimidating many students and propelling the riot that occurred at the start of May, with earlier frequent boycotts, including acts of violence and also of ‘insubordination’. The riot eventually led to closure of the institution. The ‘narrative’ written on these matters by Shepherd comments in passing that some of the more violent activity such as stone-throwing had also been directed at visiting African preachers and lecturers as well as white. Authority may well have been seen as white, but the idea of ‘quislings’ was mentioned by some.

Immediately before the riot itself occurred, the Student Representative Council resigned because unable to do its work, due to the ‘unmistakable evidence of the existence within the student body of the College of a secret authority, sometimes referred to as the caucus, whose instructions are obeyed by students, often through fear of physical violence and other forms of intimidation’. Immediately following its resignation, the ‘riot proper’ broke out. As a result, on 4 May the students were informed the College was closing and special trains had been arranged to take them away that day.

It is worth adding that of course radicalism and protest were and are by no means confined to students. In December 1956, Shepherd wrote to a Council member, James Dougall, that Fort Hare had become involved in the mass arrests leading to the Treason Trials because it is Professor ZK Matthews had been arrested and a fund had been started to support his defence. He goes on to write, “In a publication called World Dominion he is quoted as saying ‘what we Africans are aiming for is the creation of a purely African State, that is, the re-orientation of South Africa towards an African character, Africanization of this country, as a prelude to its inclusion in a United States of Africa”… this is typical of the statements he has been making in recent years”.

A brief coda on whiteness. The many events involved in the protests referred to in this discussion concerned the growing political consciousness of the majority population and rapidly growing feelings about equality and justice, although at local levels they took many forms and a wide range of motivations and political activities were involved. To a large extent the targets were authority figures of all kinds, embodied in the staff and their associates and disciplinary measures of all kinds, with the institution seen as part of a state apparatus, and the state apparatus seen as representing white interests and premised on discrimination, segregation and the enforcement of unjust inequalities. Whiteness had nothing to do with it and whiteness had everything to do with it.

A final comment

Part 5 will conclude this discussion of universities in crisis by offering some comparisons between the events and circumstances of 1920, 1946 and 1956 with those of 2015 and 2016.

 

Last updated: 29 September 2017


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