Document 40 - Anti-CAD, Why You Should Not Vote [1958]

From: South Africa's Radical Tradition, a documentary history, Volume Two 1943 - 1964, by Allison Drew

Document 40 - Anti-CAD, Why You Should Not Vote [1958]

The Anti-C.A.D. Movement was formed in 1943 to fight the Coloured Advisory Council and the beginnings of a Coloured Affairs Department. The Anti-C.A.D. gnashed the C.A.C. by using the boycott weapon: no organisations of the people went near to it; the people would have nothing to do with the C.A.C.-men or Quislings. For 15 years the Government has not been able to set up a Coloured Affairs Department to act as policeman over the Coloured people in the same way as the Native Affairs Department controls the African people.

The Anti-C.A.D Movement is calling upon all Coloured voters NOT to vote in this dummy election. Here are some of the reasons why you should BOYCOTT this fraud of apartheid and to help in your own political enslavement.

YOU SHOULD BOYCOTT: -

I.BECAUSE to vote on an aparte voters' roll for White "Coloured Repre­sentatives" means to accept political inferiority, to work a political fraud, and to give up your right to a franchise, that is, the right of anyone of any colour or sex or religion to sit in parliament and provincial council as well as to vote for anyone of any colour or sex or religion.

II.BECAUSE voting in this dummy election means taking yourself and the WHOLE of the Coloured people, men and women, a step backward, AWAY from full franchise and citizenship rights.

III. BECAUSE the Coloured people in meetings not only in the Cape Province, but also in the O.F.S., Transvaal and Natal have called upon you not to betray them by voting. There are about 1 1/2 million Coloured people: there are only about 29 000 Coloured voters. The voters must not put the Herrenvolk in a position to say that they, the voters, accepted political apartheid and therefore every form of apartheid on behalf of the whole 1 1/2 million Coloured people.

IV.BECAUSE a vote for any candidate - U.P., Nat., Independent or Treason trialist -means a vote for Herrenvolkism, for apartheid, for segregation. Every candidate BY THE ACT of trying to get into parliament through this aparte voting fraud ACCEPTS apartheid for the Coloured people - although he rejects it for himself.

The A.N.C. resolution for the boycotting of these institutions also made provision for the establishment of the Council of Action, whose function was to decide upon the institution to be boycotted. It was realised that it was not sufficient to say that we boycott these institutions, when people may not be ready for it. There are people even within the A.N.C. who do not realise that boycott is a tactic and only one of the methods to be used for the struggle for national independence and against white domination and discriminatory laws. The fact, some of them argued at the Queenstown National Conference in 1953 that they regarded the decision to boycott not just as a tactic.

They were wrong, and Congress should rediscuss the whole matter now with a view to reviewing the unclear and unsatisfactory 1949 resolution, which no longer reflects a greatly changed situation.