South African Choral Music (Amakwaya): Song, Contest and the ...

4.1 The African Yearly Register: A Directory ofBlack Middle Class Identity 101
Their motives, however, as I shall argue, are more complex, and point towards the process of
negotiation and a turning away from simple imitation of European values. There is clear evidence in
African society of a rising consciousness of ethnic identity, starting in the late nineteenth century
and gaining importance in the first quarter of the twentieth century.40 In September 1932, S. B.
Ngcobo published an article taking a critical stand on assimilation, adaptation and imitation: "It is
our belief that the progress of a people must start from the elements of their own 'kultur"'.41 He
concludes by stating: 'We Natives are now beginning to be self-confident as a race; we would like to
have a voice - in administration of our affairs even to a small extent". This development was part
of the emergence of an African national culture, which I will discuss in detail later in this chapter.
The core concept here was to establish a way of negotiation between tradition and progress. The
inclusion of traditional communities was a central part of this concept, as A. W Dhlamini, President
of the Natal Bantu Teachers' Union, argued in the 1930s: 'We look forward to the time when
greater understanding and friendship will obtain amongst all races - the Abantu, Europeans, and
Asiatics - who have to work together for the South Africa of the future".42 The leaders of the black
elite who called for reconciliation and the integration of old customs were well aware that 'progress'
and 'modernisation' could be achieved only by including traditional communities in the process. By
the twentieth century, more mission-school educated Africans believed that a satisfactory self-image
could not be built entirely on adopted European models. Thus the black middle class began to
promote co-operation with and integration into traditional African communities. The following
comment by Benediction Mngome Zulu, an Adams College student in the early 1940s, is representative
of the growing criticism that eventually led to the demand within the black middle class for a
less exclusive approach:
There is no doubt at all that economically speaking the prosperity of this country industrially and commercially
lies in the education and civilisation of the Bantu proletariat... Unless we realise that we, especially
our leaders and the so-called educated section of our people, bear a serious responsibility to the
race as a whole, the clamoring for education, political and economical rights will continue to be a talk full
of sound and fury which signify nothing. It is the educated African who has failed dismally to be a light
to his people. Indeed, the educated African has proved himself to be the worst enemy of his own race.43
A similar position was held by Albert Luthuli, eventually leader of the African National Congress
CANC). He was convinced that in order to "build a progressive, united African nation... rural
folk and city people had to co-operate; and the highly educated and the most backward had to be
brothers".44 The idea was to break down the barriers among various black ethnic groups. From early
in the twentieth century leading figures in the African community strove to eliminate ethnic discrimination
in order to work towards a national black African solidarity. This is expressed, for instance,
in one of the songs, titled 'Wonk' Um'nt' Onsundu" (The Whole Brown Community), that
Dube in 1911 published in his Zulu Songbook, Amagama Abantu:
40 S. B. Ngcobo, "The Development of the Native Reserves" in Iso Lomuzi, September 1932, Vol. 2: 26-27; 31.
41 Ngcobo's use of the Afrikaans word "kultur" in an English sentence may be a reminder that the 1930s, when he
wrote this, was a period when Afrikaners were taking great interest in their own "kultur".
42 A. W Dhlamini, President of the Natal Bantu Teachers' Union, in his Presidential address during the twentieth annual
conference at Ladysmith (Native Teachers Journal, July 1938: 34).
43 Iso Lomuzi (May 1943: 14).
44 "Busy Bee", IIanga, June 30, 1951. Quoted in T. Couzens 1985: 352.