Book 5: People, Places and Apartheid - Chapter 3 - Politics and Consciousness in Cape Town Communities, 1980-1985 by Sean Field

From the book: Book 5: People, Places and Apartheid commissioned by The Department of Education

Anti-dangerous work. This organisation happened in the context of people living in their racial or cultural ghettos, with their own experiences, histories and issues to be confronted. This chapter describes some of the successes and difficulties faced by political activists working in the colouredcommunities of Cape Town. While many communities in the Western Cape were highly politicised during the 1980s, a central issue faced by activists was expressed as follows:

I think that has been a hell of a sore point in the coloured community, where people explain their lack of participation, or their apathy, by saying, ‘We don’t actually have a history of feeling confident that people stand together in the coloured areas’.

School children opposing the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, July 1976.© Mike Mzileni / BAHA

This chapter explores these issues through the words of United Democratic Front (UDF) activists. It describes the context of political struggles — beginning with the school boycotts of the early 1980s, consumer boycotts and stayaways which reached a climax in 1985. In addition, this chapter argues that it was inappropriate to label the political consciousness of coloured communities in the 1980s as “apathy” or “false consciousness”. The reasons for people’s conservatism or unresponsiveness to political campaigns were far more complex.

What contributed to the building of people’s organisations in Cape Town from 1980 to 1984?

The 1976 Soweto student uprising was a significant act of political defiance against the apartheid state. In the Western Cape, the Soweto uprising triggered student revolts in two Cape Town communities, Bonteheuwel and Langa. These student activists were mainly black consciousness (BC) in ideological orientation. The organisations they forged — such as the Black People’s Convention (BPC) — were short-lived and crushed by state repression by 1977. In contrast, the 1980 school boycotts in the Western Cape were a more important turning point in the building of sustainable antiapartheid organisations in schools and communities. They also marked the beginning of the re-emergence of organisations aligned with the African National Congress (ANC), also known as “the Charterist Movement”, inside South Africa.

Due to the 1980 school boycotts, the need to build not only student organisations in schools, but also community structures in order to politically mobilise people more broadly became evident to activists. In April 1980 the Cape Areas Housing Action Committee (CAHAC) was launched. This stimulated the growth of civic and residents’ organisations in coloured and African areas across the Western Cape.

It also spurred the development of youth structures outside of schools and universities. The Cape Youth Congress (CAYCO) was launched in July 1983. Together with the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), which organised in schools, CAYCO was possibly the most militant organisation in the region. Later, in 1985, these organisations were at the forefront of battles with the police and army.

The 1980-1984 period was an intense time for the recruitment, training and building of community organisations. It also triggered heated debates among the various political tendencies of the Western Cape. The New Unity Movement, the Western Cape Action League, black consciousness groups and the Charterist Movement debated questions such as who should be included in people’s organisations, the nature of working-class leadership and, most crucially, the strategy and tactics of political mobilisation.

By August 1983, with the national launch of the United Democratic Front in Mitchells Plein, the Charterist organisations were becoming stronger in terms of numbers and organisational capacity.

The UDF was a broad front of organisations that included youth, student, women’s, civics and other political organisations under its banner. Under the watchful eyes of the apartheid government, the UDF denied that it was a front for the ANC in exile. In reality, however, that is what it amounted to.

The UDF put forward a non-racial strategy of developing alliances across the partheid-defined communities of African, coloured, Asian and white people.

The first major campaign of the UDF was against the Tricameral Parliament elections of 1984. This was particularly significant in the Western Cape, given the number of potential coloured voters that resided in the region. On the whole, the boycott strategy of the UDF succeeded in ensuring that only small numbers of people actually voted.

It is probable that the vast majority of people classified coloured were opposed to the Tricameral Parliament, but did this necessarily mean that they supported the anti-apartheid liberation movement? Beneath the public rhetoric of leadership figures, on-the-ground activists debated and thought through these complex issues.

In established working-class areas, people were very aware of the problems they faced, especially socio-economic problems — wages, working conditions, employment, housing, electricity, water, the condition of streets and much more. Finding ways of drawing links in people’s minds between their socio-economic problems and the broader political context was not only a source of debate in community organisations, but also for the emerging anti-apartheid or independent trade union movement.

From 1979 black African workers could again legally organise themselves into trade unions, but these worker rights were still severely limited under apartheid labour laws. For example, it was very difficult to have a legal strike and it was illegal to engage in stayaways. With the success of the November 1984 stayaways in the Transvaal, worker stayaways became a common strategy to challenge both the apartheid state and private companies, by building alliances between trade union and community organisations across the country. However, this strategy was less successful in the Western Cape, for reasons that will be discussed later.

In the 1979-1984 period, several consumer boycotts were organised to help striking workers. This community strategy helped to support trade unions and simultaneously put pressure on specific private companies. For example, there was the Fattis and Monis boycott organised by the Food and Canning Workers Union (FCWU), the Rowntree boycott organised by the South African Allied Workers Union (SAAWU), the red meat boycott organised by the General Workers Union (GWU) and the Grand Bazaars boycottorganised by the Retail and Allied Workers Union (RAWU).

By late 1984 community organisations, especially those under the banner of the UDF, were challenging the apartheid state through various campaigns, widespread publicity and effective mobilisation. But this was all a build-up to the intensive clashes of the following year.

How was the apartheid state made ungovernable in 1985?

1985 was an important year in the political history of South Africa. Across the country anti-apartheid organisations confronted the police, army and government officials. It was the year that people’s organisations deliberately aimed to make the apartheid state ungovernable. Protest marches, boycotts, stayaways and strikes disrupted state structures in thousands of communities and schools. For weeks, or even months in some communities, the state was no longer in control of local governance.

However, by the end of the year the apartheid state had begun to regain control through detentions, beatings, shootings, assassinations and the implementation of unlimited powers granted to the state under repeated States of Emergency.

Cape Town was one of the many cities which witnessed on-going clashes, especially street battles between students and youth on the one hand and the police and army on the other. While the police and army used Casspirs, tear gas and guns filled with buckshot, birdshot, rubber bullets or live ammunition, protesters used stones and in some cases home-made
petrol bombs.

Four of the most persistent flashpoints in Cape Town were Athlone in the vicinity of Belgravia and Thornton Roads, Bonteheuwel in the Vanguard Drive area, Guguletu in the vicinity of NY1, and Mitchells Plein in the Spine Road area. The University of the Western Cape (UWC) was the most militant site of university struggles. Many student-police clashes took place on the campus and on Modderdam Road. There were also many other sites of struggle.

People of all ages and across the cultural spectrum participated in these struggles. However, students and youth from the coloured and African areas of Cape Town constituted the vast majority. These “young lions and lionesses” (as they were described at the time) took the biggest risks and often suffered the worst consequences. Images and stories of these handto- hand street battles were communicated through the global mass media.

This directly stimulated the emergence of a disinvestmentand sanctionscampaign in various countries. The countrywide State of Emergency resulted in the systematic detention or banning of the student, youth and community leadership. By 1986 anti-apartheid organisations were on the defensive. In the period 1987-1989, as organisations found ways to regroup, discussions were taking place about the nature of organisation in this repressive period.

The relationship between the militant young activists who emerged out of the 1980 school boycotts and the older generation was a significant dynamic. This dynamicdirectly influenced the difficulties of conscientising, organising and mobilising people for the anti-apartheid cause in the coloured communities of Cape Town.

What was the nature of political consciousness in the coloured communities of the Western Cape?

People protesting against apartheid beach segregation laws are driven off the whites-only Strand beach by a South African Police helicopter.© Louise Gubb / Trace Images

Colonial, pre-apartheid and apartheid governments lumped a wide range of cultural groups under the broad label, coloured. This historical reality had direct consequences for anti-apartheid political organisation in the areas defined as “coloured” under the Group Areas Act of 1950. The years of life under apartheid had their consequences — many people felt they were inferior.

But African communities also endured years of indoctrination under apartheid, so what was different for the coloured communities in Cape Town? Several activists referred to the benefits that the coloured community received from the apartheid system. This included the Coloured Labour Preference Policy, which began in 1955 and certainly helped many coloured families to achieve a greater sense of economic security.

More alienating, though, was the way that the apartheid state saw coloured communities as cultural “leftovers” — the people who did not fit into “real” ethnic or racial classifications. This often carried the sense that people classified coloured had neither an identity nor a history. These are apartheid myths that have no basis in historical fact. However, they are myths that people believed and that negatively shaped how they perceived themselves as individuals and as a community.

The cultural diversity of people classified as coloured by the apartheid state needs to be more deeply understood. It did have a bearing on the levels of anti-apartheid militancy in parts of those communities. Activists repeatedly referred to a “culture of individualism” as an obstacle to building collective organisations. However, this does not explain why coloured youth showed considerable common purpose, to stand together and work together with youth from the African townships. law of the land, the yardstick by which all other laws are judged.

Let us then rather turn our attention to the older generations within the coloured community. Many of them saw that there were problems in their communities and facing their children, but they were very reluctant to talk about these problems in political
forums.

While it was evident that the political and socioeconomic aspects of the apartheid system were having harsh consequences in people’s lives, especially in working-class areas, why were these issues not perceived as being political?

Most working class people were understandably caught-up in day-today economic struggles, which activists at the time described as “bread and butter issues”. Viewed from within this context, explicitly political issues such as releasing political prisoners and detention without trial seemed less important than the pressing concerns of their everyday lives. It is also important to acknowledge the mixture of fear, uncertainty and even racism that shaped political consciousness in coloured communities.

Given these concerns that activists were already identifying in the mid to late 1980s, it is not surprising that the majority of coloured communities in Cape Town, especially in working-class areas, voted for the National Party in the first democratic elections in 1994. By the late 1980s many activists realised that “apathy” was not the best way to describe a complex generational situation. The youth in most coloured communities had been politicised by the events of 1980-1985. However, their parents and grandparents had generally been uninvolved in those events; they tended to remember the pre-apartheid and apartheid experiences of their formative years.

Equally, given that some sections of the coloured community did not conform to the theories espoused by the liberation movements, does not mean that the community was “the problem”. Some activists felt that the problem was with themselves. One of the principles of Charterist approaches to political organisation is to always start organisational work “at where your community is at” and not where you would like people to go or be. The activist quoted in the box is implying that all too often activists in coloured areas forgot this basic principle.

By the late 1980s anti-apartheid organisations across the country were either in retreat or gradually rebuilding after the heavy repression of the repeated States of Emergency from 1985 to 1989. While a sense of pessimism dominated then, the re-emergence of the UDF in the guise of the Mass Democratic Movement gave new hope that the internal liberation movement could regroup. As February 1990 approached, the general expectation was that the liberation movements still had a long struggle ahead. There were many reasons for F.W. de Klerk’s watershed speech on 2 February 1990, but one factor must be acknowledged — the battles fought during the 1980s by thousands of South Africans had inflicted more harm on the apartheid state than was fully realised at the time.

Conclusion

The oral history quotations of political activists that I have selected and interpreted suggest that the vast majority of people in urban communities in Cape Town were not apathetic. Many, especially the youth, were very politicised and believed in different strands of Marxist theory. However, the politics of many other people, especially the older generation, were more cautious and conservative. This does not mean that they had no political ideology. On the contrary, they did have political views, usually anti-apartheid views, but these views often did not match the approaches taken by liberation organisations. It must also be remembered that the 1980s allowed very little space to debate these issues openly. In post-1994 South Africa we have the democratic freedom to do this, but we must engage in these debates in a non-judgmental way. As both the 1994 and 1999 general elections indicate, a similar diversity of political opinions still exists within coloured communities. Many activists and writers, including myself, do not agree with the conservative ideologies some people believe, but it is a reality we must continue to analyse with empathyand locate within the specific historical context of Cape Town.