The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

that during the 1950s, a period seen in many nationalist accounts as a heroic age of unity
and consistency, the new nationalist movement contained several tensions:
between ethno‐nationalists and social radicals, between
both these on the one hand and the older generation of
liberal civil rights campaigners on the other, and finally,
between the movementʹs working‐class base and its largely
petty bourgeois leadership. 97
In addition, Lodge examined the history of formal political organisations as well as that
of “more inchoate resistance groups”. In order to understand “the variations and
inconsistencies in black responses to political repression and social injustice”, Lodge’s
study tried to concentrate on the “details” of local situations without “losing sight of the
overall picture”. 98
While some of Lodge’s arguments were refined in later social histories of resistance, 99
his 1983 book was the foremost study that had transcended conventional political
history and narrations of narrow institutional politics. Alongside Lodge’s work, a range
of other studies, either based on, or influenced by biographical research, also
significantly challenged the main contours of institutional histories of the rise of
nationalism in South Africa for their failure to take account of the evolution of class
differentiation amongst Africans. Whereas the forays of Sapire and Delius into
biographical research sought to highlight the political activity and consciousness of local
activists as vehicles for studying local variations in political cultures and styles of
protest, the biographical research of Shula Marks, Brian Willan and Paul la Hausse
attempted to draw attention to the fractured nature of the African middle class and the
contradictions of nationalism.
97 Tom Lodge, Black Politics, p viii. The examination of these tensions and contradictions formed the
bulk of Lodge’s book (Chapters 2‐9).
98 Tom Lodge, Black Politics, p ix.
99 For example, Peter Delius’ research on Sekhukhuneland cited above presented the argument that, in
some parts, the Communist Party, particularly in its local expressions, may have been more significant
than the Youth League in the radicalisation of the ANC during the 1940s. Colin Bundy’s unpublished
biographical work on Govan Mbeki suggested that a generational radicalism began occurring in the
1930s, and not the 1940s, thus challenging Lodge’s periodisation of resistance ‘phases’. See Colin
Bundy, ‘Schooled for Life? The Early Years and Education of Govan Mbeki’, Paper presented at the
Africa Seminar, University of Cape Town, 30 March 1994.
146