The speech by Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi at the launch of a book about the late Chief Albert Luthuli on the 27th November (see here) revived so many memories of my youth that I feel I should share them with people interested in the history of the ANC.
Prince Buthelezi tells us something about his uncle, Prince Mshiyeni ka Dinizulu and about meetings held at the prince's residence, KwaSokesimbone. Well by a strange turn of fate I was also at that residence one day in 1939. It happened like this: My late father who had fought against the British in the Second Anglo-Boer War, and who had never been in a High School, much less a university, had an illegal medical practice on our little farm near the Nqutu Zulu Reserve.
When the police at Nondweni started to take an interest he wanted to give the thing up, but his Zulu patients advised him to visit the Regent of the Zulu Nation, prince Mshiyeni, and to ask that very important man for his assistance. An appointment was made for him to see the prince and on the appointed day I, then 11 years old, accompanied him to the chief's residence.
When we arrived there my father was ushered into the presence of the chief, who listened to his problem and ordered his secretary to type a letter to the Magistrate at Vryheid in which he told that gentleman that my father was a friend of the Zulu nation and should be assisted.
While my father was in the chief's presence I was made to wait outside in the car. A Zulu boy, about my own age, brought me a glass containing a cold drink. (Perhaps this was Mangosuthu !). The letter signed by the prince, when presented to the Magistrate, induced that official to issue my father upon payment of five shillings, with a licence to sell patent and Dutch medicines, which effectively legalised his practice !
Prince Buthelezi tells us about Mr. A.W.G. Champion, the man who was president of the ANC in Natal until 1951. I never met him, but I knew all about him. When I was transferred to the Special Branch in Durban in January 1952 the first thing I learnt was that complete "history reports" on all "agitators" were an absolute necessity. These reports required the full names of the agitators.
Mr. Champion's names, if my memory does not fail me, were Arthur William Grace Champion. Despite his English names he was of pure African descent. It was claimed that he spoilt his daughter by giving her a sports car.
Prince Buthelezi tells us that Chief Luthuli's full names were Albert Mvumbi Luthuli. That left out the name John. I knew him as Albert John Luthuli. He also refers to Massabalala Yengwa, This man's full name was Massabalala Bonny Yengwa. He and I frequently spoke about our problems studying through UNISA. I gave mine up and only resumed them twenty years later, while he, I think, went on to get his degree. Another man he mentions is P.H.Simelane. This was Pitness Humphry Simelane. He does get dr. Conco's names right, Wilson Zamindlela Conco.
I remember when I first heard dr. Conco making a speech at the Bantu Social Centre I was told by Paul Zulu, my colleague, that Conco's father was Harry Conco. Well I knew all about Harry Conco. He owned the bus service between Umzinto and Ixopo and I frequently saw his buses in Highflats when I was stationed there in 1947. I know I told Paul it was terribly unfair that I had to start working as a labourer on the Railways after matric, whereas this rich man's son was able to go to university to obtain a medical degree.
Some other names that crop up in Prince Buthelezi's speech also ring bells. Rowley (Israel) Arenstein was the Communist Party's most active lawyer. His wife, Jacqueline, very petite and pretty, was also a communist, as were their neighbours, Errol and Dorothy Shanly. G.R. Naidoo, the journalist whom he mentions, once made a fool of me in an article in either Drum or some other magazine.
What had happened was that the PAC, sometime after their formation, tried to test the water in Durban. Their local leader, Abednego Ngcobo, a former policeman, hired the Bantu Social Centre in Beatrice Street for a mass meeting and all the organization's big guns came down from Johannesburg to address it. I was in the hall fairly early, the only white person there. To Ngcobo's distress only the first five rows in the hall were filled.
Rumours began to circulate that the ANC were massing at the corner of Grey and Beatrice Streets. The proceedings had hardly started when we heard people singing outside the hall and suddenly a huge army of ANC members marched into the hall, singing and waving placards. They filled the hall and shouted down the speakers. Ngcobo came to me and pleaded that I should help. He said I was a detective and I couldn't just sit there and watch these people taking over the meeting.
After all, the PAC had paid for the hall. Like a fool I thought I'd help him and climbed on to the platform, only to be met by deafening shouts and jeers and advice like "Swanepoel get the hell off that platform".
Realising that I was making a fool of myself I sneaked back to my chair while the meeting ended in chaos. G.R.Naidoo's story about the incident included a bad picture of me on the platform saying: "Did you guys gotta licence?"
Prince Buthelezi told his audience that he visited Chief Luthuli at his home in Groutville. He claims that they went outside to speak, because the chief believed that his house was bugged. We did bug places in Natal in those days, including the hall in Lakhani Chambers which Buthelezi also visited, but we never bugged Chief Luthuli's house. I visited that house on two occasions when nation-wide searches of agitators' houses and offices were decided upon at Head Office.
Chief Luthuli was an absolute gentleman. His activities as president of the ANC were of such a nature that detectives like my colleagues and I, who came from what in today's terms would be called racist homes, became outspokenly in favour of some of his policies. On a number of occasions I asked him what his policy would be if he were to become prime minister. His answer was that his economic policies would more or less mirror those of the Labour Party in Britain.
He scoffed at my suggestion that communists were using his party. People like M.P.Naicker who ran the NIC office and others like Dawood Ahmed Seedat who manned the Communist Party's newspaper office in Durban did not pose a threat to his organization, he said. "Why get rid of your best organizers?" he asked.
On the question of violence as a political tool he was always outspokenly clear. He did not believe in it and would never advocate it. This did not mean that his verbal attacks on the government were any the less powerful. He hated discrimination on grounds of race, colour or creed.
Chief Luthuli never even hinted at anything like Black Economic Empowerment or Demographic Representivity. In fact, in his autobiography, Let my People Go, he stated very clearly that if the ANC were to come to power, race would not be a factor: "For us, we do not desire to dominate, but to share as between brethren, basing our hierarchy on ability, not colour. That is our offer".
And of course it was that offer which the white electorate took up when they voted in favour of change and it was that offer, I believe, which eventually made it possible for the ANC to take over the government peacefully.
There was one part of Chief Luthuli's politics which I found difficult to understand - his absolute refusal to consider the possibility of any kind of homeland for white people. When the suggestion was made to him that four fifths of the country be allocated to Africans and one fifth to whites he refused it out of hand, for the simple reason that it would be apartheid.
His heirs similarly display an absolute fear of white people being in charge of any meaningful part of the country. For that reason they changed the boundaries of all municipalities. Although the DA cannot be called a "white" party by any stretch of imagination, the ANC will change the boundaries of the Western Cape in time to come in order to reclaim power there.
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