This notion of limiting the influence of school folk was, in a nutshell, everything that educated Africans, and those committed to making common cause with them, dreaded reading from a head of state in South Africa’s Union. Such sentiments, while hardly unfamiliar to Yergan as an American of African descent and a missionary, still struck him as immoderate. Soon after learning the contents of these addresses, Yergan fired off this enraged reaction to WSCF official Henri-Louis Henriod in Geneva:
I must also write you and some of the British Student Movement people what I feel about the Rhodes lecture which General Smuts has just given at Oxford. Frankly, I am very much disturbed for his address is of the type which carries so much truth in it that people may not detect the serious fallacies in it and the very dangerous policy which it advocates. Moreover his address is given at the time when it may have the most harmful effect upon the decisions which the British Government may make in regard to the Hilton Young Report. I have observed what seem to be most favourable press reports in England. I am anxious to know what the German and French press have to say about it. In South Africa the most liberal papers like the Cape Times, and I am told, even the Johannesburg Star have given him most favourable reports, all of which distresses me. It is a strange fact that just now I must turn to the most reactionary Dutch papers like Ons Vaderland for a criticism of what they term his shrewd imperialism. Of course it is clear that this stems from their jealousy of and bitterness toward General Smuts.39
These Smuts Oxford addresses happened to coincide with the Hilton Young Report referred to in Yergan’s letter. Hilton Young had been charged with determining how administration would proceed in East Africa, where competing land claims fed friction between European settlers and African indigenes, in an era during which Britain had resolved that it would protect what it termed the “paramountcy of native interests.” Attempts by Smuts to show South Africa’s governmental segregation as progressive thus had a dual purpose: first, to project himself as a global statesman; second, to buttress his shattered position at home, resulting from his postelectoral defeat, as he began laying the groundwork for future domestic legislation. Good public relations were thus essential to a wider comeback plan.
Also toward the end of 1929, Yergan met another interesting individual, a student leader at Fort Hare named Donald M’Timkulu.40 When they met, M’Timkulu led Fort Hare’s Student Council and was responsible for helping to stimulate campus interest in and handle arrangements for the major Bantu-European Student Conference that Yergan was then in the process of organizing for the college for the following academic year. Every single detail had to be carefully attended to because its inter-racial atmosphere was not to be restricted to the conference and workshop areas but extended into previously private and strictly separated spaces—dining areas and dormitories. Participants, White and Black, were to be housed in the same living quarters at a 98 percent Nonwhite institution. While some efforts had been made to introduce Whites and Blacks to common learning and conferring situations, these had still respected the conventional context of social segregation. Yergan’s idea was new.
M’Timkulu found Yergan “very acceptable to us black students,” recalling how the African-American’s “addresses constantly played on the tune of harmony.”41 M’Timkulu also recalled that Yergan was touted as a symbol, an example to be emulated, by Professor D. D. T. Jabavu, as well as others in his social circle, like future Fort Hare faculty force, Z. K. Matthews; all of these Fort Hare African community members saw Yergan as theirs. Of the pioneer African Fort Hare professor, M’Timkulu said, “Jabavu was very jocular. Now and again in remarks to groups of students, he would point to Max Yergan as the kind of hero figure that we should emulate.” Matthews, for M’Timkulu “a dominant student figure” at Fort Hare, also “was a great admirer of Yergan.”
At around the same time as he began to take note of Yergan, M’Timkulu also became aware of the active administrative assistant handling Yergan’s affairs, friendly Frieda Neugebauer. So approachable and down-to-earth was she, in fact, M’Timkulu recollected, that at first “I didn’t realize she was a South African.” Only later did he alter that idea. M’Timkulu long thought that Neugebauer hailed from the United States. M’Timkulu added, “Yergan travelled a great deal at various African schools.” By 1930 “Student Christian Movement [administrative] work in general… was mainly done by Frieda Neugebauer.” Of her clear uniqueness, M’Timkulu added,
My impression was simply that she was so easy to get along with. We had only a few—two—white lecturers—women—at Fort Hare, and they were sort of standoffish, but she was not. With her it was easy to establish fairly friendly personal contact. She came to Fort Hare with Max Yergan.42
So, between 1929 and 1930, a new helper became prominent in Max’s professional and personal life.
Self-Determination: Linking the Two Great “Negro Questions”
The racial and ethnic segmentation of the South African social formation imparted a peculiar character to workers’ movements that arose within that milieu. Left-wing radicalism consequently grew at different rates among different sectors of the population and came to assume ethnic and regional overtones. Socialist agitation informed by the Marxian tradition tended to appear overwhelmingly “European” in the period preceding World War One and bore a filial relationship to radicalism in Britain. Inroads were made into African ghettoes or “locations” in the years after 1919, quite phenomenal efforts being made between 1926 and 1929, a period of unprecedented growth. This expansion of socialist sentiment was presaged by the relationship that tied the International Socialist League (ISL) under David Ivon Jones to the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union from 1919 onward. After 1921, a South African Communist Party (CPSA) entered the picture. Communist ideology was often transmitted in study circles and night schools.
Marxist study circles figured prominently through the 1920s but had a particularly profound effect after 1926, receiving a setback in 1928 when the CPSA—following the separatist precedent set by its American counterpart, which had adopted a policy of “self-determination” in a “Black Republic” based in the “Black belt” in the southern states—itself called for a “Native Republic” of workers and peasants. It was in this period that unique emphasis was placed upon cultivating African cadres who might then function as working-class leaders.43 Beginning with the inauguration of a Ferreirastown experiment in 1926, Communist Party night schools played a major role in aiding African workers to attain some level of fluency in English while also acquainting them with a socialist tradition.44 Among Whites, while a small number were English speakers, the vast majority were Jews who had recently emigrated from Eastern and Central Europe, a trend that had been occurring throughout the decade and would continue thereafter.
Some of the early formulations that took shape in these schools were, for linguistic reasons, frequently extremely awkward, and look theoretically rudimentary for their naïvely crude reductionism. The Ferreirastown school founder, Edward Roux, a White dedicated to stimulating the growth of African cadres, provided an example. In 1926, T. W. Thibedi wrote an article in his native Sesotho in the South African Worker. Its English translation included this description of class struggle:
There are only two groups of people on the earth and they are as follows:—
1. The group of the capitalists who stand only to govern the workers and make laws by which they succeed in robbing the workers of the product of their labour power.
2. The second group is that of the workers which is the one that makes everything necessary for life.
These two groups do not agree, but face each other like a cat and a rat.… Now it is the duty of all workers of all countries to unite and fight against the capitalists and their laws and against the robbery that is made by the rich. If you workers wish to live in nice houses and get all the necessities of life, you must overthrow the capitalist government and start a government where capitalism and poverty shall not be known, as
they have done in Russia.45
In the vernacular this was very effective. No doubt many working-class Africans received not only invaluable instruction in English in these schools but also exposure to the theories of class struggle, of capitalist exploitation, and of the relationship between class divisions and racist oppression. Recalling his experience in one such school, Moses Kotane, a participant who later rose to become a Communist Party general secretary, shared the following vivid remembrance:
One thing struck me very deeply and that was the Native study class. Here the real wage slaves are being enlightened in the direction of literacy. Here in the slum area, in a “hall” fitted with benches and so-called tables, gather big, hefty pupils to listen to, swallow and digest the words of their teachers. In the vague and gloomy light of a few lamps and candles there sit those dark masses before whom one day the great capitalists will tremble and beg for mercy. With backs bent, intent on study, with a craving and desire for knowledge not equalled among whites, they are gaining the knowledge which is power and which will one day help them to accomplish the social revolution in conjunction with their white fellow-workers.46
Unlike the older African National Congress and the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union, whose prominence and mass appeal were based upon attempts to overcome the intra-ethnic contradictions of a brutally divisive, race-conscious social formation, the South African Communist Party, fueled by the “Native Republic thesis,” embraced, in theory and aspiration, racial integration, even though introducing new African cadres into its ranks had almost destroyed it during the late twenties. Despite tokenism in many instances, it was clear that among the most visible party militants stood men and women of African origin, especially by the decade’s end. Openly defying law, custom, and prior party practice, these recruits were now political comrades and, at least nominally, potential social equals. While theoretically problematic, the policy did spur Black recruitment.
Coming fresh from a meanly segregated North America during the 1920s, Yergan would have found this unprecedented interest in attracting members to the CPSA striking. In addition, Yergan’s work in the interracial Joint Council Movement eschewed the ethnic nationalism of most “race” men and women of the period in favor of work within ostensibly interracial (although certainly not integrated) settings. There was thus a degree of continuity between Joint Council participation and association with Communist members professing nonracialism. But Yergan had to have been impressed by the differences between the Whites he encountered in the moderate but apolitical Joint Councils and the more openly combative, fearless, outspoken, and uncompromising White Communists engaged in trying to fight racialism in ways that even liberals considered irresponsible.
However, the racial dimension of the matter should not obscure the fact that the “Negro” and “Native” questions emerged as subsets of the broader national and colonial question. While Black membership was first considered in 1920, not until the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1924 were Comintern members from colonial territories able to influence the direction of debates on this key issue. By 1927, a full-fledged League against Imperialism appeared. Among its representatives were two South African militants, African National Congress (ANC) leader Josiah T. Gumede and “Coloured” Communist Jimmy La Guma. Prior to this Congress, colonial delegates, mostly Nonwhite, swallowed their national and racial pride as their situations and struggles were trivialized by specialists who often treated them in a patronizing, high-handed, and arrogant manner. With forbearance, tact, and a quiet determination not unlike that required of Yergan in South Africa, such colonial cadres as India’s M. N. Roy, Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, Sen Katayama of Japan, and Semaun of Java eventually made their presence felt. The racial side of the South African national question delayed African participation in its solution until the middle and late 1920s. While Yergan’s awareness of the debate is not known, he knew some of its principals.47
The Comintern’s line change, which tied struggles of Black South Africans to those of African-Americans in the South, is thus of great interest. This could be both convenient and challenging for someone in a position like Yergan’s. Although South Africa differed from the United States, racism, the color bar, and a parallel segregation system made it more familiar terrain for a Black American than many non-Africans wished to acknowledge. This was certainly a factor in the attempt to block Yergan and other Negro missionaries from entering the country. By the 1930s, using the messianic tradition of activist, liberatory interpretation of biblical texts, Black South Africans and Black Americans sought, on several occasions, to achieve convergence. In responding to a revitalized Communist Party actively courting darker constituencies in both countries, Yergan heeded yet another call—a mission he seemed uniquely qualified to fulfill—rooted in the ecumenical social gospel.
The Social Gospel Trend within the Ecumenical Movement
Max Yergan was not the only ideologue in his theological cohort who was moved to think differently by the events of the Depression era. Mention has already been made of John Mott’s internationalism, along with Ned Carter’s leading role in the Pacific Relations Institute. George Haynes, founder of the Urban League and race relations head for the Federal Council of Churches, did racial adjustment advocacy. Yergan was in close touch with all of these men, in addition to others of a more philanthropic bent whose support for the YMCA was great. If not radicals, they were at least tolerant of radicalism.
Among the three, Haynes’s relationship with Yergan was unique. Haynes, like Yergan, was at heart a social gospeler; moreover, by academic training and overall reputation, he was securely tied to the foundation nexus, trading on postwar links to the Russell Sage Fund. As a logical outgrowth of his respect for Yergan’s achievements as a conciliator and his interest in the race relations field, Haynes was drawn to South Africa. He attended a conference planning meeting organized by Yergan with ten White clerics in Cape Town in May 1930. Haynes asked, “What would be the attitude of the churches to the projection of work among the colored and the Bantu population of the City?”
Quick to respond was Congregationalist cleric Ferguson, who said that as a body “the churches had a genuine interest in the welfare and development of the colored people and would welcome any work that would help them.” When one minister queried the reason behind Haynes’s question, he stated that “the Y is an arm of the church, [that] its fundamental policy is to place the controlling voting power of the organization in the hands of those who are active members of churches; [and] that the experience of the Y in other lands indicated that the progress of the work hinged on the cooperation of the churches.” Haynes’s retort prompted the question whether the YMCA “had a plan and a program which it proposed to bring into the area.” Haynes turned a challenge into an opportunity, relating that each territory’s plan is “worked out by those in the country, [and] that the criteria by which our survey is to judge the work begun among Natives by Yergan are drawn from… the ideals, purposes, policies… which have been undertaken, the result achieved and the conditions and needs which confronted the movement in S.A.” Referring to the Y recruitment effort, Haynes concluded that “the churches would rally to such an effort.”48
A sobering note was sounded as “old Meiring” of the Dutch Reformed Church ventured a warning, his fellow Afrikaner constituents in mind.
He said he would offer me one caution. In traveling through the country and speaking, especially to people of Dutch extraction, but also to others, bear in mind that there are those who have the liberal point of view but there are many others and what I may say may make the task of the progressives hard or easier.49
Haynes’s response was very like what might have issued from Yergan:
I assured him that my main work is observation and inquiry; that speaking was only to be done where it could not wisely be omitted; that I should then speak only of what I knew about in America; [and] that I would be cautious even in that.50
Though Yergan was credited as having cohosted the interview, he carefully played his familiar behind-the-scenes role, presumably to guarantee the White religious leaders maximum exposure to yet another American Negro dedicated to cooperative racial adjustment. He delicately allowed them to draw their own conclusions regarding Haynes’s fitness to conduct his investigation of African Y work. This statement facilitated a seamless, genial closure to their talk, as the collective emphasized this point within the context of a hearty endorsement by participating Cape churches. A spirit of “observation and inquiry” led Haynes through his address to and record of Fort Hare’s June interracial meeting.51
Bantu-European Student Christian Conference, June 1930
The universally acknowledged zenith of Max Yergan’s career as a YMCA secretary was reached in the unprecedented interracial SCA gathering he organized at Fort Hare, June 27–July 3, 1930: the Bantu-European Student Christian Association Conference. The meeting was noteworthy as a rare opportunity for Whites and Blacks to interact on a nonracial level. Such a conclave would have been a major event anywhere in the world at that time—including the segregated United States—but that it occurred in South Africa was astounding. The participants who assembled constituted a veritable who’s who of South African liberalism, but also included racial moderates from outside the country as well.
On Friday, June 27, Max Yergan dedicated the new structure in remarks carried by the press.
This is the building for the Christian Union, which has crystallised in brick and stone the dreams of our students for several years. This building is to serve a threefold purpose. It is to provide a common centre for the Bantu students of the Union, to furnish a community centre for this area and to offer training for those students who come to Fort Hare for preparation as leaders in YMCA work and in social service among the Bantu people in the urban and rural areas of the Union.52
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