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

12 The Mrican Native Choir (1892) and Early Manifestations ofBlack Middle Class Identity
public concerts at South Shields, expresses the choir's intention "to interest the public in the
internal, material and social progress of South Africa and the Native Population" (see Figure 1.8).
Statements like this must be considered from two different perspectives. To begin with, we have
to remember Charlotte Manye's interview in London in which she commented on her experiences
of English and South African life:
[L]et us be in Africa even as we are in England. Here we are treated as men and women. Yonder we are
but as cattle. But in Africa, as in England, we are human. Can you not make your people at the Cape as
kind and just as your people here?
Her report reveals the discrepancy in the political and social views that developed between England
and its colony, South Africa, in the course of the nineteenth century. The choristers obviously
perceived the English as distinctly different from South Africans. Whereas in England they were
apparently regarded "as men and women", back home they were treated "but as cattle". Manye's
statement might be a somewhat oversimplified analysis of the situation but touches on the tensions
that were apparent between the British government and the Colonial rulers. Indeed, the colonists
often deviated from metropolitan ideas when it came to the question: ''What shall we do with the
Natives?,,40 Whereas politics in England tended to be based on class rather than on ethnic grounds,
the settlers drew a distinct line between themselves and the black 'other'.
As the next chapter will show in more detail, white settlers and traders, who feared competition
and marginalisation if equal rights were granted to the black population, frustrated any attempt to
move in this liberal direction. Their major concern was to find ways of taking advantage of Africans
as a cheap labour force. Missionary enterprises were welcome only in so far as they worked
side by side with economic and political forces, "to eat away the tissues which held together the cells
of family, clan, and triballife".41 This was seen as necessary in order to secure the supply of labour.
Educative measures were to be limited to the purpose of preparing the African with skills needed
for the place assigned to him within the colonial society. We will see later how the colonial government
used the missionary enterprise for their own purposes. Tensions intensified towards the end
of the nineteenth century, owing to the emergence of a black elite, educated by the missionaries,
which could not be absorbed into the pool of black labour desired by the colonial powers. The
fundraising drive for a technical schools, which was the second motivation for the tour of the African
Native Choir, touched on this issue. The Choir argued that training and schooling were essential
for the black population not least because "the result of such training would be that the white people
would have servants who would do their work more intelligently, more cleanly, and with more
economy than is at present done".42 Whether this was an intelligent move on the side of the choir
management to enlist high government patronage and receive extensive support during their trip is
not entirely clear.
In any case, issues like these were part of the complex web of paternalistic attitudes and imperialistic
and capitalistic ideologies that determined the relations between Britain and the colonies. It is
not remarkable that on either side one might find openly anti-missionary and anti-liberal factions,
which points to the ambiguity that lay at the heart of the late-Victorian imperial enterprise. The
organisers of the African Native Choir were well aware of differences between their own aspirations
and their white audiences' understanding of them. Thus they made these differences an issue
when they attempted to arouse in "the civilised nations of the world a more direct interest, if possible,
in South African affairs and to help to solve the great problem: 'What shall we do with the
40 The Christian Express (May 1, 1891).
41 M. Perham, The Colonial Reckoning (London: Collins, 1961): 37.
42 The Christian Express (May 1, 1891).