Mon 11 Aug: The Lovedale riots of 1946 have been much in my mind since last week, not that they happened nor their scale, but that they were responded to by the white powers that be at Lovedale in such individualistic and localised terms as ‘it was the sugar ration’ and ‘X and Y were ringleaders’, and by many parents and guardians in ‘we sent them for education not to get in trouble’ terms. It was the students, and the organisations that grew up around these events such as the Ciskei Parents Organisation and especially the Transkei Organised Bodies (letters signed by a certain G. Mbecki) that ‘got it’, that knew that politics and the drive for change were propelling events. They knew and recognised that all the many student riots occurring were linked and concerned with justice and respect. But the white bubble at Lovedale in 1946 seems hermetically sealed – the understanding which unfolds across many documents is to the effect of ingratitude, a few trouble-making ringleaders, sheep-like followers too intimidated to do otherwise. The world had changed, these young people had changed and intended that they would be treated differently, but the Lovedale and Shepherd bubble seemingly knew it not. The irony of the Nats election victory (1948) which in 1946 was yet still to come is strong because, although they knew it not either, the fate of white supremacy had been sealed, for that slow but immense surge of people which Olive Schreiner discusses in her letters and in Women and Labour as world movements for freedom was in process.

Last updated: 11 Aug 2014