the government, through the Native Affairs Department, recommended the creation of advisory boards instituted through the Urban Areas Act of 1923 to encourage harmonious cooperation between urban Africans and local officials. However, the boards had no real power. Nieftagodien contends: ‘... they were explicitly denied any real power and their overall functions were limited to an advisory capacity and local authorities were neither obliged to consult the advisory boards nor to take into account any recommendations by them’.46
More worrying was the fact that the boards ‘tended to be drawn from the members of the petty-bourgeoisie, the teachers and semi-literate’. Board members had to be upstanding members of the community, ‘free of rental arrears’ – in short, exemplary people in the community who ‘did not agitate for radical change’.47 In Kroonstad, for example, the board was composed essentially of teachers – which is hardly surprising, because from the late 1920s Kroonstad had become one of the important centres of black education in the country. Some of the members of the Native Advisory Board in Kroonstad were Manes, Pitso, Makhetha, Damane, Dingalo, Molete, Modise, Tladi (the complainant against ’Mote, above) and Lekhetha, but despite their educational background and standing in the community they not only failed to influence the town council but also condoned some of its unpopular decisions, thus further denting the board’s credibility in the eyes of black residents.
Although teachers were not prohibited from becoming members of political organisations or participating in the activities of organisations associated with opposition politics, the government took exception to their political involvement. Participation in opposition politics could lead to outright dismissal. Elias Maliza, for instance, was dismissed because of his active membership in the ICU.48 But it was the case of Abiel Thabo Seele that probably caused teachers in the OFS, especially Kroonstad, to be particularly cautious. Seele, a teacher at Heilbron United Native School, was humiliated by the Department of Native Education, which demanded he write a letter giving reasons why the department should not dismiss him after he addressed a meeting of the ICU on 1 November 1936. In his reply, Seele, who was not a member of the ICU, wrote, in part:
In the first place may I sincerely apologise for having participated at all – this error was done in ignorance. To relate ... circumstances attending this participation may I mention that on this day while proceeding from church I was requested by the officials of the said movement to assist them in interpretation – to this request I readily acceded because there be no one efficient for the purpose. At the end of the meeting I was asked to say a few words ... I had not the least desire or motive of creating a spirit of ill-feeling and hostility between white and black, nor did I harbour any malicious intention of publicly criticising government administration.49
Seele’s dismissal was finally shelved after Reverend C Jummen intervened on his behalf, stating that Seele had learned his lesson and pleading with the department to forgive him.50 Such intimidation and threats probably explain why teachers in Kroonstad (which is about eighty kilometres from Heilbron) felt more comfortable working within ‘moderate’ bodies such as the Native Advisory Board.
The Native Advisory Board’s credibility was ‘damaged by the role of the white chairman, which often precluded the possibility of direct criticism of the local authority’ ... [B]oard members were encouraged to use their “good office” in such matters as resolving domestic disputes, discouraging illegal brewing and sale of liquor, informing the authorities of necessary repairs and improvement of services and, in general preserving “peace and good order”.’51 In some places, such as Cradock in the Eastern Cape, location advisory board members ‘resolved small disputes, studied pauperism, launched ward clean-up contests and asked the town council to maintain the location’s cemetery’,52 and in Alexandra township, it was stated that the Native Advisory Board ‘... would not only assist the police in carrying out the law, but it would also make representation on any other matter affecting the welfare of the township’.53 Finally, board members were made to believe that they were superior to the rest of the community and that it was their duty to lead by example. This message was stressed to delegates attending the Location Advisory Boards Congress in 1935 by JR Brent, Kroonstad’s superintendent:
You leaders must never lose sight of the fact that you are at least a century or two ahead of the Bantu masses you lead. You are educated men. You understand and have absorbed the modern civilised outlook. Never fall into the error of imagining that any appreciable number of your followers have the same outlook. Labour patiently to teach and to leaven them so that one day they will be able truly to enjoy the benefits of modern civilisation. Don’t always aim at popularity or political advantage, but stem their rush towards the precipice, when the necessity arises, and head them gently in the right direction.54
During this period, when the Native Advisory Board was in existence in Kroonstad’s black locations, besides the economic hardships the majority of the residents had to endure, conditions in the locations were appalling. Roads were untarred, dusty, replete with potholes, and littered with ash, empty tins and discarded pieces of paper. There was no sewerage system – an outmoded bucket system was in use. ‘Equally outmoded was the water-supply system. The residents used communal taps placed strategically at corners of the locations’ streets and venue. Besides having to queue for the water on a daily basis, at times these taps ran dry. As a result women and young girls were forced to walk long distances to other taps in the locations to get water.’55
The first signal of the ineffectiveness of the Native Advisory Board became visible in 1932 when the white authorities divided the Kroonstad riverbanks into two separate areas for ‘Europeans’ and ‘Natives’ (those considered coloured were allowed access to the European section). This shocked Africans, who saw no difference between themselves and coloureds. The board demanded that the riverbank regulation should also apply to coloured persons but this was refused by the local secretary of native affairs. During this period the Kroonstad Town Council, under the tenure of Mayor FA van Reensen, stepped up the police raids for home-brewed beer, even on Sundays. The Kroonstad Native Advisory Board made an attempt to dissuade the Kroonstad Town Council but failed, and its relationship with the residents of the locations deteriorated.
These incidents, and the inability of the board to influence the town council to develop the locations, caused the residents to be disillusioned with it. Some public bodies in the locations bypassed the board and negotiated directly with the town council. The Registered and Ratepayers Association, under the leadership of Mr Mothibedi, opposed the decision by the board, which complained bitterly and requested the council to ensure that all public bodies in the locations approach the council through it. The residents’ intolerance of the Kroonstad Native Advisory Board had reached boiling point. More than 500 people assembled in the location for a meeting and, after a vigorous speech by ’Mote, unanimously asked the Native Advisory Board to resign en bloc.
In its final attempts to demonstrate its concern for the residents, the board requested the council to stop the night raids during the months of December and January. The request was turned down. Again, in 1945, the council rejected the board’s request to have the names of wives removed from lodgers’ permits and for the lodger’s fee to be reduced from three pennies to two. In the same year the board was reprimanded for misleadingly informing the council that the number of taxis in the location had decreased. Finally, in 1946 the board’s request that the location’s inhabitants be allowed to slaughter cattle for marriage feasts was turned down. To the residents of the locations these were clear signs that the board was failing to advance their best interests.
After 1944 some native advisory boards were radicalised, possibly as a result of the formation of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), which introduced radical ideas into black politics. It was at this stage that politicians, including members of the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa, became members of the advisory boards. The people of Kroonstad’s black locations were, however, neither mobilised nor organised for some time. Concurrent with the functioning of the Native Advisory Board in the town, the Kroonstad Joint Council of Europeans
