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SUMMARY:Adding Red to the Black Atlantic: the Industrial Workers of Africa
 's and International Socialist League's black revolutionary syndicalists a
 nd the South Africa Native National Congress's 1917-1920 radicalisation - 
 Prof Lucien van der Walt\, University of the Witwatersrand\, Johannesburg 
 South Africa
DTSTART:20120306T174500Z
DTEND:20120306T191500Z
UID:TALK34782@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Isabel DiVanna
DESCRIPTION:The late 1910s saw colonial and proletarian revolt sweep the g
 lobe\, while in South Africa\, union membership increased fourteen-fold an
 d strikes exploded. The first African and Indian unions emerged\, based on
  revolutionary syndicalism\, which is a variant of anarchism: the Industri
 al Workers of Africa (IWA) and the Indian Workers Industrial Union in 1917
 \, and a 1920 "One Big Union" congress saw the IWA and others merge into t
 he Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) on a militant platform. 
 A section of the generally moderate\, elitist South African Native Nationa
 l Congress (SANNC) was radicalised\, too\, throwing itself into strikes an
 d protests\; these radicals were often also members of the revolutionary s
 yndicalist bodies\, the IWA and the International Socialist League (ISL). 
 Structural factors\, such as  postwar inflation\, and the larger climate o
 f turbulence and instability\, doubtless played a role in this radicalisat
 ion. However\, the content and contours of this early SANNC radicalisation
  can only be understood by examining the activities of the revolutionary s
 yndicalists\, notably Fred Cetiwe\, Andrew Dunbar\, Hamilton Kraai and T.W
 . Thibedi\, in influencing the editors of Abantu-Batho\, in Cape and Trans
 vaal SANNC structures\, in the 1918 Witwatersrand IWA-SANNC-ISL strike mov
 ement (and trial)\, in the 1919 ICU-IWA Cape Town dockers' strike\, in the
  1919 Witwatersrand anti-pass campaign\, in the 1918 and 1920 SANNC congre
 sses\, and in the 1920 merger of the IWA\, ICU and others. I suggest that 
 Benedict Anderson's observation that the era was shaped by the "immense gr
 avitational pull" of anarchism and syndicalism\, long the "dominant elemen
 t in the self-consciously internationalist radical Left\," "the main vehic
 le of global opposition to industrial capitalism\, autocracy\, latifundism
 \, and imperialism\," also applies to South Africa. The long-ignored role 
 of anarchism and syndicalism needs to be reconsidered in local historiogra
 phy\, while the history of the SANNC needs to be delinked from simplistic 
 nationalist narratives.
LOCATION:Gatsby Room\, Wolfson College
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