LITMIR.BIZ

      Dazzling Contender

      1957–1959

      WHILE THE TREASON TRIAL droned on, Mandela was caught up in the biggest political crisis in the forty-five years of the ANC’s existence. It was ultimately to split the organisation apart, and to threaten Mandela’s own position even more seriously than he realised at the time. Ever since the Congress of the People the ANC had been under attack from the exclusive African nationalists, or ‘Africanists’, who opposed the Freedom Charter, with its assumption that the land belonged to everyone, and who called for Africans to take militant action and to stop cooperating with communists or other races. The Treason Trial had given lustre and nationwide recognition to the ANC leaders, but it had also focused attention on their collaboration with Indians and whites, which further antagonised the Africanists.

      Mandela was well-placed to understand the impatience and resentments of the Africanists, for they had something in common with his Youth Leaguers a decade earlier, and included some of his old allies. In different circumstances he could have been their leader, but now that he was committed to a broader multi-racial nationalism in alliance with the communists he regarded the rebels as a clear threat to the ANC’s unity, which he saw as crucial to the struggle. He was the more exasperated because they were taking advantage of the Treason Trial to gain support from the grassroots. The two sides were depicted in straightforward ideological colours: nationalists versus communists, exclusive versus inclusive. There were in fact many overlaps and blurs, but behind the confrontation lay long-standing personal resentments and cross-currents which became clearer in retrospect, and which eventually made reconciliation impossible.

      The Treason Trial continued to embroil Mandela and his fellow-accused in endless legal argument. Although the government showed no signs of giving up its case, in December 1957, after almost a year of preliminary hearings, the prosecutor dropped the charges against sixty-one of the accused – including, surprisingly, Luthuli and Tambo. Mandela, with his record of militant speeches, was among the remaining ninety-five. The defence applied for the whole case to be discharged, but instead a new prosecutor was appointed: the former Minister of Justice Oswald Pirow, a militant anti-communist who had been an avowed Nazi supporter during the war, and who now claimed that new evidence had emerged of a dangerous conspiracy which meant that the country was living on the edge of a volcano.

      When the magistrate, Mr Wessel, concluded that there was enough evidence of treason for the case to go to the Transvaal Supreme Court in Pretoria, Mandela realised that he had become too confident that the whole trial would collapse, and that he and his fellow-defendants might yet be sent to jail.¹ Behind all the absurdities of the trial – the long-winded prosecutor, the incompetent detectives and the ridiculous definitions of communism – there still lay the government’s original purpose: to put the accused out of action, and to convict them through existing legislation.

      The ANC leaders’ preoccupation with the day-to-day proceedings in the courtroom played havoc with their organisation, giving more opportunities to their opponents, who were not on trial. The leaders tried to rally supporters with a ‘We Stand by our Leaders’ campaign, but they had no opportunity for speech-making or canvassing. The Africanists, who were closer to the ground, accused the leaders of being high-handed and undemocratic, treating the membership like ‘voting cattle’.²

      The Africanists’ strongest base was in Mandela’s home territory of Soweto, where they were led by an impetuous populist, Potlako Kitchener Leballo. Mandela, who was his attorney, thought of Leballo as a wild-card, undeniably brave, but immature, like many of his followers.³ He had worked for the United States Information Service office in Johannesburg under the American David Dubois, where he was allowed to duplicate his leaflets.⁴ Joe Slovo claimed that the Pan Africanist Congress, which emerged in 1959 as the party of the Africanists, was founded at a meeting in the USIS offices.⁵ Leballo’s American links encouraged allegations that the CIA was backing the Africanists, which were never substantiated.

      From Leballo’s house in Soweto came the journal the Africanist, burning with diatribes and vituperation against the ANC’s leftist leadership. The Africanists, like nationalists everywhere, had more scope for emotive language than the multi-racialists; their invective against ‘aliens’, ‘Eastern functionaries’ and ‘vendors of the foreign method’ was much livelier than the clichés of anti-colonialism and Marxism which Mandela and his colleagues favoured, and made better copy for the white journalists who did much to publicise them. And their spokesmen were also more colourful and picturesque. Josias Madzunya, the Africanist ANC Chairman in Alexandra, was a former peddler who wore a long overcoat in the hottest weather and who could be relied on for firebrand speeches. Peter Raboroko, their spokesman on education, was a brilliant talker who became a witty polemical journalist. Zeph Mothopeng, a dedicated teacher before he was fired for opposing Bantu Education, was an intellectual who at first sounded aridly theoretical, but who proved to be a fearless campaigner and was to be imprisoned on Robben Island.

      The Africanists, including some of the old Youth Leaguers, attacked Mandela and his allies for becoming closer to the whites and the communists, and away from their own people. And Mandela was certainly now moving in different circles. ‘He was not shy to admit that he had shifted ground,’ said his law clerk Godfrey Pitje. ‘“Look, chaps, you can’t blame me for this,” Mandela would

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