Lembede’s friend and partner was Peter Mda, better known as A.P. While Lembede tended to imprecision and was inclined to be verbose, Mda was controlled and exact. Lembede could be vague and mystical; Mda was specific and scientific. Mda’s practicality was a perfect foil for Lembede’s idealism.
Other young men were thinking along the same lines and we would all meet to discuss these ideas. In addition to Lembede and Mda, these men included Walter Sisulu; Oliver Tambo; Dr. Lionel Majombozi; Victor Mbobo, my former teacher at Healdtown; William Nkomo, a medical student who was a member of the CP; Jordan Ngubane, a journalist from Natal who worked for Inkundla as well as the Bantu World, the largest-selling African newspaper; David Bopape, secretary of the ANC in the Transvaal and member of the Communist Party; and many others. Many felt, perhaps unfairly, that the ANC as a whole had become the preserve of a tired, unmilitant, privileged African elite more concerned with protecting their own rights than those of the masses. The general consensus was that some action must be taken, and Dr. Majombozi proposed forming a Youth League as a way of lighting a fire under the leadership of the ANC.
In 1943, a delegation including Lembede, Mda, Sisulu, Tambo, Nkomo, and myself went to see Dr. Xuma, who was head of the ANC, at his rather grand house in Sophiatown. Dr. Xuma had a surgery at his home in addition to a small farm. Dr. Xuma had performed a great service to the ANC. He had roused it from its slumbering state under Dr. ka Seme, when the organization had shrunk in size and importance. When he assumed the presidency, the ANC had seventeen shillings and sixpence in its treasury, and he had boosted the amount to four thousand pounds. He was admired by traditional leaders, had relationships with cabinet ministers, and exuded a sense of security and confidence. But he also carried himself with an air of superciliousness that did not befit the leader of a mass organization. As devoted as he was to the ANC, his medical practice took precedence. Xuma presided over the era of delegations, deputations, letters, and telegrams. Everything was done in the English manner, the idea being that despite our disagreements we were all gentlemen. He enjoyed the relationships he had formed with the white establishment and did not want to jeopardize them with political action.
At our meeting, we told him that we intended to organize a Youth League and a campaign of action designed to mobilize mass support. We had brought a copy of the draft constitution and manifesto with us. We told Dr. Xuma that the ANC was in danger of becoming marginalized unless it stirred itself and took up new methods. Dr. Xuma felt threatened by our delegation and strongly objected to a Youth League constitution. He thought the league should be a more loosely organized group and act mainly as a recruiting committee for the ANC. In a paternalistic way, Dr. Xuma went on to tell us that Africans as a group were too unorganized and undisciplined to participate in a mass campaign and that such a campaign would be rash and dangerous.
Shortly after the meeting with Dr. Xuma, a provisional committee of the Youth League was formed, under the leadership of William Nkomo. The members of the committee journeyed to the ANC annual conference in Bloemfontein in December of 1943, where they proposed the formation of a Youth League to help recruit new members to the organization. The proposal was accepted.
The actual formation of the Youth League took place on Easter Sunday, 1944, at the Bantu Men’s Social Center on Eloff Street. There were about one hundred men there, some coming from as far away as Pretoria. It was a select group, an elite group, a great number of us being Fort Hare graduates; we were far from a mass movement. Lembede gave a lecture on the history of nations, a tour of the horizon from ancient Greece to medieval Europe to the age of colonization. He emphasized the historical achievements of Africa and Africans, and noted how foolish it was for whites to see themselves as a chosen people and an intrinsically superior race.
Jordan Ngubane, A. P. Mda, and William Nkomo all spoke, and emphasized the emerging spirit of African nationalism. Lembede was elected the president, Oliver Tambo, the secretary, and Walter Sisulu became the treasurer. A. P. Mda, Jordan Ngubane, Lionel Majombozi, Congress Mbata, David Bopape, and I were elected to the executive committee. We were later joined by such prominent young men as Godfrey Pitje, a student (later teacher then lawyer); Arthur Letele, Wilson Conco, Diliza Mji, and Nthato Motlana, all medical doctors; Dan Tloome, a trade unionist; and Joe Matthews, Duma Nokwe, and Robert Sobukwe, all students. Branches were soon established in all the provinces.
The basic policy of the league did not differ from the ANC’s first constitution in 1912. But we were reaffirming and underscoring those original concerns, many of which had gone by the wayside. African nationalism was our battle cry, and our creed was the creation of one nation out of many tribes, the overthrow of white supremacy, and the establishment of a truly democratic form of government. Our manifesto stated: “We believe that the national liberation of Africans will be achieved by Africans themselves. . . . The Congress Youth League must be the brains-trust and power-station of the spirit of African nationalism.”
The manifesto utterly rejected the notion of trusteeship, the idea that the white government somehow had African interests at heart. We cited the crippling, anti-African legislation of the past forty years, beginning with the 1913 Land Act, which ultimately deprived blacks of 87 percent of the territory in the land of their birth; the Urban Areas Act of 1923, which created teeming African slums, politely called “native locations,” in order to supply cheap labor to white industry; the Color Bar Act of 1926, which banned Africans from practicing skilled trades; the Native Administration Act of 1927, which made the British Crown, rather than the paramount chiefs, the supreme chief over all African areas; and finally, in 1936, the Representation of Natives Act, which removed Africans from the Common Voters’ Roll in the Cape, thereby shattering any illusion that whites would allow Africans to have control over their own destiny.
We were extremely wary of communism. The document stated, “We may borrow . . . from foreign ideologies, but we reject the wholesale importation of foreign ideologies into Africa.” This was an implicit rebuke to the Communist Party, which Lembede and many others, including myself, considered a “foreign” ideology unsuited to the African situation. Lembede felt that the Communist Party was dominated by whites, which undermined African self-confidence and initiative.
A number of committees were formed that day, but the primary purpose of the Youth League was to give direction to the ANC in its quest for political freedom. Although I agreed with this, I was nervous about joining the league and still had doubts about the extent of my political commitment. I was then working full-time and studying part-time, and had little time outside of those two activities. I also possessed a certain insecurity, feeling politically backward compared to Walter, Lembede, and Mda. They were men who knew their minds, and I was, as yet, unformed. I still lacked confidence as a speaker, and was intimidated by the eloquence of so many of those in the league.
Lembede’s Africanism was not universally supported because his ideas were characterized by a racial exclusivity that disturbed some of the other Youth Leaguers. Some of the Youth Leaguers felt that a nationalism that would include sympathetic whites was a more desirable course. Others, including myself, countered that if blacks were offered a multiracial form of struggle, they would remain enamored of white culture and prey to a continuing sense of inferiority. At the time, I was firmly opposed to allowing Communists or whites to join the league.