South African soldiers are buried at the Delville Wood cemetery, the last resting place of those involved in an ‘epoch of terror and glory’.
On 11 November 1918 an armistice ended the fighting between the Allied and the Central Powers. Thirty-two states were to attend a conference in Paris at the beginning of 1919 to draft treaties that, it was hoped, would ensure peace and stability. In addition to the Union government’s official representatives at the Paris conference, two other groups of South Africans went to Europe in 1919 to voice their grievances and to express their views: an SANNC deputation headed by Sol Plaatje and an Afrikaner Nationalist delegation led by J.B.M. Hertzog.
There were members of the SANNC who believed that the outbreak of World War I had prevented the 1914 deputation from making a greater impression on the British government and public. They believed the time was ripe to press their demands, with both British Premier David Lloyd George and American President Woodrow Wilson having publicly emphasised the rights of small nations and the doctrine of self- determination.
In mid-December 1918 S.M. Makgatho, the president of the SANNC, summoned congress members to a special meeting in Johannesburg which was opened by the mayor of the city. It was agreed that a deputation should be sent to Britain and that a petition toKing George V should be drafted and presented to the governor-general. The petition cited numerous examples of African loyalty during the war and outlined the grievances of the black inhabitants of South Africa who, it was maintained, lived under a veiled form of slavery.
The petition asked the king to bring about a revision of the Union constitution to ensure the enfranchisement of blacks throughout South Africa. The congress stressed that not one of the protectorates should be transferred to the Union without the consent of the inhabitants of the territories. The petition further expressed the congress’s strong feelings that neither German South West Africa nor German East Africa should beceded to the Union of South Africa unless its constitution were altered to remove colour prejudice. The petition had, of course, no chance of changing the situation in the Union and was destined to never even reach the king. Its interest lies in reflecting the views of the SANNC.
In April 1919 R.V. Selope Thema and L.T. Mvabaza sailed from Cape Town to Britain to represent the SANNC. Thema had acted as national secretary-general of the congress during World War I and Mvabaza, who had been a member of the 1914 deputation to London, had been arrested in 1918 as one of the alleged instigators of the sanitary workers’ strike in Johannesburg. They were later joined in London by Sol Plaatje, the wellknown journalist and author, who had gone alone to Britain in 1914 to protest against the Natives Land Act, and J.T. Gumede from Natal, a founder member of the SANNC.
Thema and Mvabaza went to Paris, but their efforts to present their case to the peace conference were unsuccessful. They did, however, obtain a promise from Lloyd George that he would meet them on his return to London. Colonial Secretary Lord Milner responded to a memorandum detailing black grievances by reiterating that Britain could not interfere in the domestic affairs of a self-governing dominion. Plaatje, in particular, continued to publicise the grievances of his people and a number of members of the British Parliament spoke on the subject when the colonial office vote was discussed in the House of Commons in July 1919. The British government, however, stood by its doctrine of non-interference in South Africa’s affairs.
In November 1919 the SANNC delegation met Lloyd George. The black delegates particularly criticised the pass laws, which they described as similar to the laws in the slaveholding southern states of the United States, and the Natives Land Act, which they said reduced them to the position of wanderers in the country of their birth. They faced large and powerful forces determined to enforce the colour bar and prevent the educational and economic advancement of the black population. To their chagrin, Lloyd George replied that the matters they raised were not within the powers of the British government to resolve.
Impressed by the delegates, Lloyd George wrote to Smuts that the black delegates were ‘men possessed of very considerable oratorical gifts’. He urged him to meet them and satisfy their legitimate aspirations. He added a warning:
If they do suffer under disabilities and if they have no effective constitutional mode of expression, it is obvious that sooner or later serious results must ensue . . . The colour question is now a world question. It is impossible for it to be treated in watertight compartments. What South Africa does is of vital importance to the rest of us, just as what we do is going to be of vital importance to you.
This failed mission was the last serious attempt to obtain British intervention in South African affairs and it brought to a close the early period of black political activity. In the first flush of its formation and stimulated by the Land Act and the Native Administration Bill, the SANNC had become the widely accepted channel for black political protest. After this desperate gesture, the movement lost much of its coherence and initiative. Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, who represented the South African government at the
Paris peace conference that ended World War I, had attended a peace conference at Vereeniging seventeen years earlier as the representatives of a vanquished state. They may thus, in some respects, be said to have had sharper insights than other delegates into the implications of peace terms imposed by the victors after a war. They were also directly and deeply concerned about a specific territorial aspect of the settlement – the future control of German South West Africa. It was finally agreed that South West Africa would become a ‘C class’ mandate. It would be administered as an integral part of South Africa, as the mandatory state, subject to reports being submitted to the League of Nations. On 28 August 1919 Louis Botha died in Pretoria a month short of his 57th birthday. The 49-year-old Smuts became the second prime minister of the Union of South Africa.
