AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Book chapter |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Managing black leadership: the Joint Councils, urban trading and political conflict in the Orange Free State, 1925-1942 |
| Author: | Rich, P. |
| Book title: | Holding their ground: class, locality and culture in 19th and 20th century South Africa |
| Year: | 1989 |
| Pages: | 177-200 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | elections 1937 politicians parliamentary representation |
| Abstract: | The Joint Council movement was an important dimension in interwar black politics in South Africa for it acted as one of the crucial links between local community organization and 'high' politics at the level of the State and government legislation. The Councils had been modelled on interracial bodies in the US and represented a 'modern' approach to the question of 'race relations'. In essence, however, they were instruments for the spread of a conservative liberal ideology that accommodated to the doctrine of racial segregationism. One neglected area in which the Joint Councils and liberal activists tried to involve themselves was the unpromising terrain of the Orange Free State (OFS). Here, a 'traditional' pattern of race relations stretching back to the Boer Republic before 1899 had become remodelled in the interests of a burgeoning white capitalist agriculture in the 20th century. This paper describes the context in which J.D. Reinhallt Jones, a white liberal and one of the founders of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), began to mobilize a section of 'moderate' African political opinion in the OFS behind the issue of urban trading licenses in order to strengthen the activities of the rural Joint Councils. This led to the establishment of political links which were to prove of considerable importance when he came to fight the election in 1937 as a 'native representative' for the Transvaal and OFS under the 1936 Representation of Natives Act. The Joint Council of Kroonstad, a town in the northern OFS, serves as example. Notes, ref. |
