council’s position was that it would make a definitive decision only after the sitting of the Native Trading Rights Inquiry on 5 September 1932. By January 1933 the government had still not made a decision about native trading rights, as was evident from a letter addressed to JD Rheinallt-Jones, one of the founders of the joint council system, by BW Shepherd from Lovedale in the Cape, asking about the outcome of the inquiry. The government does not seem to have been convinced by the Kroonstad Joint Council of Europeans and Natives’ representations on the subject, and as a result the town council refused to grant trading rights to blacks, who continued to trade illegally. A number were arrested and fined, providing funds for the council’s native revenue account. In June 1931, for example, seventeen-year-old John Moseka was arrested in ‘B’ Location and charged with hawking and peddling unlawfully. He was found guilty and fined £5 or one month’s hard labour. In the same year, Sam Kaulane, a ‘native sergeant’ in the South African Police, testified in court that he had arrested a man trading illegally in the location. He told the court:
On the 20 June 1931 I found accused in ‘D’ Location, in Kroonstad, pushing a handcart, shouting ‘goods for sale’. I saw him stop in front of hut No. 193 and selling some two packets of mealie meal, which he took from his cart. Accused had no licence of any kind.24
The failure by the Joint Council of Europeans and Natives to represent adequately the black people’s interests in trading rights (and the unabating arrest of black traders in Kroonstad) caused Father Martin Knight of the St Francis Priory and a member of the Joint Council of Europeans and Natives to address a letter to Mr Saffery, the secretary of the council, in March 1935. It lamented that the council’s inquiry into Free State trading rights ‘met here when it was too late’ and he recommended that in future the council should establish central committees in each area to deal with matters of local rather than national importance.25
Not all black traders were unfortunate. Some managed to engage in business without detection by the police. Lydia Malehlohonolo Mphosi is one of them. She was born in 1918 at Heuningspruit, a farming area in the Kroonstad district, and came to Kroonstad in 1942. She did not attend school, but instead conducted a vegetable business. Mokete Pherudi, in Who’s Who in Maokeng, points out: ‘At the time, no family in Maokeng slept without food because Mrs Mphosi was not only selling cheap but was also providing credit for weekend and month-end collection.’
The refusal to grant blacks trading rights continued until after the Second World War. In 1947–48 ‘the [Native Affairs] Committee in Kroonstad recommended that Abel Mathike, Sam Kuolane [possibly Kaulane], David Chakane, Nicodemus Ntanga and Gilbert Mayeza [possibly Mateza] be permitted to trade as butchers in the location ...’26
Simon Mateza, who was born in Marabastad in 1931, remembers that his father, Gilbert Mateza, opened his vegetable business during this period. ‘I went up to Standard 5. Thereafter, I went to help my father because as he was working, he also used to own a shop. We had some donkeys and a cart, which we used to collect some vegetables from the market, and sold them around the location.’ With the relaxation of the trading laws, Mateza senior went on to establish his first formal business. But trading was still heavily restricted.
... it used to be difficult during those times for a black person to start a business. We used to have something that resembled a shop at our house. So, the law was that we were only allowed to open very early in the morning before people went to work, so that they could buy some sugar and some coffee. After that you had to close for the rest of the day and only open at five when people returned from work.
Simon Mateza continued trading after his father died (in 1951).
But during that time I already had an idea [about running a business]. I later opened something like a barbershop, where I was cutting people’s hair. I ran that shop even though I was not making enough money ... I did some piece jobs, and also transported people around the location. I did that until I had a car of my own. I would transport them to the farms. I went to rent a shop in Marabastad. We started by selling food in the bar, me and my partner by the name of Mkhoane. When Mkhoane and I separated, I decided to open my own [business] in Phomolong, where I was renting a place. In 1963 I found my own stand and built a shop, which I named Langa Cash Store. That was my breakthrough. Business was doing well. Shops like Pick n Pay and Shoprite were not there yet. Shops which were there used to close at five in the afternoon. And in town no shops operated on weekends and during holidays, as well. That was a good chance for us to sell and make good money.
Women who were not employed, like Moses Masizane’s grandmother, the owner of ‘Khambule’s Place’, survived by selling home-made beer. ‘Beer brewing was a pervasive feature of location life ... women monopolised the brewing of beer and it was often their major source of income.’27 Most black women who settled in the urban areas in the 1930s survived through the brewing trade although the white authorities deemed it illegal. To curb it, the government, through the Native (Urban Areas) Act No. 13 of 1928, prohibited the supply or delivery of any liquor to Africans28 and ruled that Africans seeking to purchase liquor should do so from beer halls created by the municipalities. As the Witwatersrand municipalities had done, the white authorities in Kroonstad also enforced a total ban on the purchase and consumption of liquor by its African population. The police constantly raided householders suspected of trading in home-brewed beer, and the women brewing and selling it devised measures to avoid police raids. Historians Bonner and Nieftagodien note that some used ‘watchmen’ (usually their children), who stood on corners to spot the police. ‘When the police came by on their bicycles, the watchmen would signal by saying, “It is red” or by walking away quickly from their spots.’29 Others hid their stock so that the police could not find it, while some bribed the police by allowing them to drink beer without paying.
In a miscalculated move to resolve the illegal trading of home-brewed beer, in 1935 the Kroonstad Native Advisory Board passed a resolution that licensed ‘kaffir’ beer should be placed under municipal control. The resolution prompted agitation in the locations. Keable ’Mote, a leading figure in the ICU in the town, demanded the resignation of the board, which had been set up in the 1920s ‘to serve as [a mechanism] of liaison between location residents and the authorities’.30 The women continued to trade, and the police increased their raids.
In spite of all the hardships that the residents of Kroonstad’s black locations had to endure, they refrained from protesting, except on a few occasions.
Black political formations and protests
In 1912 the SANNC was formed in Bloemfontein to unite, mobilise and represent African interests following the passing of the 1910 whites-only South Africa Act of Union, which withheld the franchise from all Africans outside the Cape. Three years later, its branch in Kroonstad hosted the organisation’s fourth meeting.31 The SANNC branch in Kroonstad was neither militant nor radical, but Kroonstad offered a convenient meeting place, midway between Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Natal and the Cape on the main line.32
The docility of the SANNC’s Kroonstad branch is unsurprising. During the initial stages of its existence, the SANNC’s national leadership was also restrained in its approach. It hoped that by pleading and petitioning the British Crown, the latter would intervene on behalf of the African people in South Africa. ‘African leaders,’ Lodge writes, ‘were keen to demonstrate their loyalty for the duration of the First World War.’33 On the other hand, the SANNC leadership’s preoccupation with the Land Act of 1913 shifted its focus on directing and shaping agitation at the local level. In Kroonstad, one of the leading figures in the SANNC, Reverend Pitso, was an energetic member of the committee, headed by RW Msimang, which was tasked with ratifying the constitution of the SANNC.34 The reason for the inactivity of the SANNC’s branch in Kroonstad is its failure to become involved in the day-to-day hardships experienced by the residents of the locations – but other branches of the SANNC in the OFS did not operate with the same restraint. In 1920, in
