Dr Abdullah Ab durah man, who led the coloured African Political (later People’s) Organisation for 35 years, was one of the most important leaders in South Africa at the time. Elected to the Cape Provincial Council, he was a key fi gure in talks between leaders of the various racial groups from the mid- 1920s to mid-1930s. As a member of the Wilcocks Commission that investigated the living conditions of the coloured population, he closely questioned a young professor, Hendrik Verwoerd, who was giving evidence to the commission on his ideas for a solution to the racial problem. These ideas later became known as ‘apartheid’.
Even before the first meeting of the National Convention, black South African political leaders organised a conference to discuss their attitude towards the white thrust for unification. After the war there was considerable disillusionment among black people in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony about the terms of the Vereeniging peace agreement and their subsequent treatment by Milner’s regime.
As historian André Odendaal has shown, a number of black political organisations emerged. The Transvaal Vigilance Association and a branch of the Cape-based South African Native Congress (which had been founded by Walter Rubusana and A.K. Soga) were established in 1903. In the following year the Transvaal Basotho Committee was started. The Bloemfontein Vigilance Committee was formed in 1903 and a larger organisation, the Orange River Colony Native Vigilance Association, came into being in 1904.
In the Cape the African Political (later People’s) Organisation (APO) was founded in 1902 under the leadership of W. Collins and J.W. Tobin to further the interests of coloured people. In 1905 Dr Abdullah Abdurahman was elected president of the APO and its influence spread beyond the borders of the Cape Colony. Abdurahman announced in 1905 that the chief aims of the APO were to improve coloured education and to agitate for franchise rights for coloureds in the new British colonies in the north when they received responsible government.
At Queenstown in November 1907, 80 delegates from different parts of the Cape Colony, including members of the coloured organisation APO, resolved that federation was preferable to unification and that the Cape franchise should be the basis of the federal franchise. The Queenstown conference brought black and coloured leaders together and created greater cohesion between black newspapers although John Tengo Jabavu and his newspaper Imvo Zabantsundu continued to follow their own line (See John Tengo Jabavu’s Dissenting voice).
Politically aware blacks knew that the formation of a united South Africa would have momentous consequences for them. When the deliberations of the National Convention started, blacks and white sympathisers as well as the APO sent petitions and messages to the Convention pleading that the rights of black and coloured inhabitants should be respected. When the draft Act was made public in February 1909 black newspapers were vehement in their rejection of the colour bar provisions and warned of ‘a future filled with bitter hatred and even violence’.
Black delegates from all four colonies and representatives of the APO attended a South African Native Convention in Waaihoek location, Bloemfontein. In March 1909 they passed resolutions objecting to the colour bar clauses of the draft Act and decided to send a delegation to London if the National Convention did not heed their pleas. The Convention decided to continue to meet, and it may be considered to be the forerunner of the South African Native National Congress (formally established in January 1912), which later became the African National Congress. The APO conference in Cape Town in April 1909 condemned the colour bar clauses and forwarded its views to the final Bloemfontein session of the Convention. The National Convention ignored all representations from black and coloured sources, as they had also earlier ignored petitions urging votes for women.
A nine-man delegation led by W.P. Schreiner, which included Rubusana, Jabavu and Abdurahman, went to London to try to persuade the British government not to accept the form of Union drawn up by the National Convention. Gandhi and other Indians also went to the British capital to present the case of their people in South Africa. The colour bar aspects of the Act were criticised in the British press and also in Parliament, but no changes were mooted. A schedule to the Act laying down conditions on the colour bar for the possible future incorporation of Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland into the Union – which has been interpreted as a lever on white South African opinion – was the furthest the British government was prepared to go.
