the SANNC branch discussed the Land Act, passes for women, education, hostels for domestic workers and the state’s replacement of black rail workers and interpreters by ‘poor whites’. Because of this the support for this branch grew.36 But the SANNC branch in Kroonstad, taking its cue from the national leadership’s modus operandi¸ failed to mobilise the black residents to resist the removals from their initial settlement in town and by 1920 this branch had ceased to function. Various attempts were made to revive it, but without success. For example, in 1936 Simon Ndlovu, Keable ’Mote and Sol Ngaonabase were reported to be attempting to revive the ANC in Kroonstad,37 and again in 1938 the president-general of the ANC, the Reverend ZR Mahabane, pressurised ’Mote, ‘who was now provincial secretary of the All African Convention (AAC) in the OFS, to establish the branch of the ANC in Kroonstad’.38 Perhaps the promulgation of the Riotous Assemblies (Amendment) Act in 1930 (following acts of radicalism and protests spearheaded by African women in the 1920s) contributed to the failure to revive the ANC in Kroonstad.
The inertia of the Kroonstad branch can also be attributed to the internal problems which had besieged the ANC in the 1920s, ranging from some members’ heightened disillusionment with the politics of diplomatic persuasion and the changing of leadership from the militant Josiah Gumede to the ageing Pixley ka Isaka Seme in 1930, and to the not-so-radical Reverend Mahabane. In Kroonstad, the ANC’s politics were to remain moribund until the mid-1950s, when the Women’s League revived them. It was against this background that the ICU briefly filled the political vacuum left by the ANC.
The ICU and radical protests in Kroonstad
The ICU initially organised workers, particularly farm workers, fighting on their behalf for better wages and working conditions, but gradually shifted its activities towards politics and became ‘a workers’ organisation but function[ing] as a mass-based political party because its charismatic leaders voiced a broad range of popular grievances’.39 In a country where blacks were treated unjustly because of the government’s segregation laws, it was inevitable that ‘the pronouncement and actions of the ICU and its leaders took on an increasingly political colour’.40
Available evidence suggests that there were few ICU branches in the OFS towns (particularly in the northern OFS) which could match the ICU branch in Kroonstad. Besides taking up labour issues (such as when Joe Kokozela, the principal at Bantu United School, together with William Ballinger, met with the district union farmers and recommended that a farm worker should be afforded ‘three pounds a month, a house, and good food for a male adult with a small family, with five pounds if there were more than two children’),41 the ICU branch in Kroonstad also involved itself in the affairs of the locations. In 1928 the mayor of Kroonstad accused the ICU of being instrumental in advising stand-holders not to pay their taxes (rent charges).
The Afrikaans media and some of the members of the Native Advisory Board in Kroonstad blamed Keable ’Mote, the secretary of the ICU in the OFS, as the prime instigator. The Northern Times, a local newspaper, reported that in 1927 ’Mote and his supporters (presumably within the ICU) discredited the Native Advisory Board and encouraged the residents to refuse to pay tax and rent to the council – which responded by threatening to evict residents in arrears. This raised the ire of the residents. In her seminal work on the ICU, Helen Bradford argues that in fact it was not ’Mote who incited the rent boycott but the ICU Women’s Section, which was defending its members’ middle-class status: ‘[T]he Kroonstad ICU Women’s Section leaders were distinguished from those forced into the labour-market by possession of a house, and hence ability to draw rent from lodgers.’42
It has been noted above that from the 1920s a significant number of black people were moving to Kroonstad in search of employment and somewhere to stay. The new arrivals included a sizeable number of women. In 1923 General Jan Smuts’s government – despite resistance by some municipalities in the OFS – passed the Natives Urban Areas Act which stopped black women from carrying passes and effectively removed all restrictions on women entering urban areas. However, the 1930s was not a good time to enter the urban areas, especially Kroonstad, as the NP government which came to power in 1929 did everything possible to provide job opportunities for ‘poor whites’ at the expense of blacks. Because of this, and the already limited job opportunities in Kroonstad, black workers found themselves either out of work or forced to settle for meagre pay and it was impossible for tenants to pay their accommodation fee regularly. Others, particularly those who were forced out of work to be replaced by poor whites, probably could not even pay their rent. This affected the stand-owners’ livelihoods. When the town council hiked rent charges, the women, some of whom depended solely on the tenants’ rental (and sometimes on the sale of home-brewed beer), rallied and refused to pay, and by the time ’Mote was arrested for supporting the boycott, the residents owed the council £4 000. This protest prompted the town council to begin to take note of the ICU’s presence in the area.
In 1928, serious tensions had developed between the ICU founder, Nyasaland-born Clements Kadalie, and ’Mote. There is no available evidence to explain the exact reason for this tension, but it is possible that after his trip overseas Kadalie, as the leader of the union, felt that ’Mote was becoming too radical. Kadalie favoured a moderate approach.43 This was evident when, during the ICU’s fight against the Kroonstad Town Council for threatening to evict the rent defaulters, Kadalie (and other local leading figures in the ICU) failed to come to ’Mote’s defence,44 instead distancing himself and the national council of the ICU from ’Mote and insisting that he was away in Europe at the time and therefore could not be associated with ’Mote’s actions. Kadalie’s changed position had a great deal to do with his fear of being deported to Nyasaland.
When ’Mote advocated the replacement of the Native Advisory Board with a new association, after concluding that the body was not advancing the residents’ interests, his proposal was hotly challenged. In a letter to the Kroonstad Times, MM Tladi, a schoolteacher at Bantu United, accused ’Mote of deception. He argued that ’Mote had informed the newspaper that an association was to be formed which would get rid of the Native Advisory Board, and said he had interviewed the teachers and ministers of the church whom ’Mote claimed to have mobilised and who said they knew nothing about the imminent association. In addition, Tladi accused ’Mote of being deceptive because he had encouraged the residents to continue with the protest and promised he would settle the deficit owed to the council. He concluded his letter by asking ’Mote: ‘Where is the £4 000 promised to wipe out the deficit?’ The story did not end there. Soon rumours that ’Mote was embezzling ICU funds began making the rounds. To contain him, in 1928 the union decided to transfer him to the Transvaal. In response, ’Mote threatened to secede from the ICU. But after negotiations he reconsidered. He later hit back by associating himself and the ICU in the OFS with the campaign organised by the Communist Party of South Africa to burn passes on Dingaan’s Day, 16 December 1929.
Kadalie, who by then had made a deal with the government that he would not be deported, openly opposed the campaign. This put the final nail in the coffin of the relationship between the ICU and its OFS branch. By this point there were serious tensions and differences within the ICU’s national leadership. In April 1931, ’Mote convened a conference in Kroonstad of ICU branches in the OFS and the Western Transvaal. At the meeting fifty-seven delegates formed the Federated Free State ICU of Africa and elected Selby Msimang president and ’Mote secretary. However, this new organisation was stillborn, and in 1934 the ICU branch in Kroonstad ceased to function on the farms and in the location which had once led Kadalie to boast that ‘the ICU have never failed in Kroonstad’.45
The conflicts within and finally the demise of the ICU in Kroonstad not only paved the way for native advisory boards (and other moderate bodies) to function without any hindrance, but also arrested vibrant political engagement in the locations for the next two decades.
‘Moderate’ bodies in Kroonstad
In response to the growing schism between urban blacks
