(NASA), Pretoria, DNL, Government Native Labour Bureau (GNLB), vol. 90, 144/13 D205 (hereafter only the DNL reference is given), asking clerks in his office to read Abantu-Batho regularly for the benefit of the chief censor.
7 Banning was more pronounced in India: Lord Curzon stated the Indian press had shown ‘a most exemplary and gratifying loyalty’ in the South African War, but ‘now and then one detects a note of veiled irony’ (letter 28 December 1902, in Private Correspondence India, Curzon to Hamilton, vol. X, India Office, British Library, D510/3; M. Israel, Communications and Power: Propaganda and the Press in the Indian Nationalist Struggle, 1920–47 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); C. Paul, Reporting the Raj: The British Press and India, c.1880–1922 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003): 23.
8 South Africa, Report of the South African Native Affairs Commission 1903–1905 (London: HMSO, 1905): 65.
9 Again the Indian comparison is apposite; see C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 2.
10 A. Odendaal, Vukani Bantu! Black Protest Politics in South Africa to 1912 (Cape Town: David Philip, 1984): 260.
11 J. Starfield, ‘Dr S. Modiri Molema (1891–1965): The Making of an Historian’, PhD, University of the Witwatersrand, 2007: 240 n. 69.
12 A point made by A. Davidson, I. Filatova, V. Gorodnov and S. Johns (eds), South Africa and the Communist International: A Documentary History, vol. 2 (London: Cass, 2003): 4 n. 3.
13 R. Whitaker, ‘History, Myth and Social Function in Southern African Nguni Praise Poetry’, in D. Konstan and K. Raaflaub (eds), Epic and History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010): 381.
14 I owe the latter comment to Chris Lowe’s ever-sharp insight.
15 Lack of data renders its history subject to possibilities, on which see G. Hawthorn, Plausible Worlds: Possibility and Understanding in History and the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
16 The reference to Allan Kirkland Soga seems wrong, as there is no evidence of his involvement, although he was active in the first years of the SANNC and involved in the contemporary short-lived Native Advocate.
17 S. M. Molema, The Bantu Past and Present: An Ethnographical and Historical Study of the Native Races of South Africa (Edinburgh: Green, 1920): 306, 304.
18 C. Dawbarn, My South African Year (London: Mills & Boon, 1921): 108. This is a quote from ‘Parting of the Ways: Part II’, Abantu-Batho, February–March 1920; see Part II of this volume.
19 E. W. Smith, ‘Some Periodical Literature Concerning Africa’, International Review of Missions 15, 1926: 605–6.
20 E. Roux and W. Roux, Rebel Pity: The Life of Eddie Roux (London: Penguin, 1972): 35.
21 E. Roux, ‘The Bantu Press’, Trek, 24 August 1945: 12. Here he also gives ‘about 1935’ for its demise, an erroneous date reproduced by later writers.
22 E. Roux, Time Longer than Rope: A History of the Black Man’s Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (London: Gollancz, 1948): 119–20, 358. For one such intervention, see S. H. Malunga, ‘Abantsundu base Africa Bati, Mayibuye i Africa’, Abantu-Batho, 2 December 1920.
23 In this book (p. 125) he cites an Abantu-Batho article on women’s anti-pass law struggles; see Part II.
24 E. Rosenthal, Bantu Journalism in South Africa (Johannesburg: Society of Friends of Africa, 1949): 13–14.
25 P. la Hausse de Lalouvière, ‘The War of the Books: Petros Lamula and the Cultural History of African Nationalism in 20th-century Natal’, in D. Peterson and G. Macola (eds), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2009): 52.
26 See Part II. We have not had the good fortune to chance upon a cache of lost issues as did David Ambrose, Naledi ea Lesotho (Roma: House 9 Publications, 2007). This independent paper, founded in 1904, reported the ANC founding and carried a 1915 article from Abantu-Batho, with Simon Phamotse a link, but after 1921, when it published pro-Garvey pieces, it faced censure and became increasingly moderate.
27 See M. Work (ed.), Negro Year Book 1916–7 (Tuskegee: Negro Year Book Company, 1917).
28 F. Wilson and D. Perrot (eds), Outlook on a Century: South Africa 1870–1970 (Lovedale: Lovedale Press, 1972); R. A. Hill (ed.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, vols. 9 and 10 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 and 2006); T. Karis and G. M. Carter (eds), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1964, vol. 1 (Stanford: Hoover University Press, 1972). A facsimile of the 19 October 1927 issue appears in A. Davidson, IUzhnaia Afrika: Stanovlenie sil protesta 1870–1924 (Moscow: Nauka, 1972).
29 Roux, Time Longer than Rope: 358.
30 L. Switzer and D. Switzer, The Black Press in South Africa and Lesotho: A Descriptive Bibliographic Guide to African, Coloured and Indian Newspapers, Newsletters and Magazines 1836–1976 (Boston: Hall, 1979): 24–26; L. Switzer, ‘Moderation and Militancy in African Nationalist Newspapers during the 1920s’, in K. Tomaselli and P. E. Louw (eds), The Alternative Press in South Africa (Bellville: Anthropos, 1991): 41.
31 T. Couzens, ‘Robert Grendon: Irish Traders, Cricket Scores and Paul Kruger’s Dreams’, English in Africa 15(2), 1988: 78. He is incorrect to state it was founded in 1913 (T. Couzens, The New African: A Study of the Life and Work of H. I. E. Dhlomo (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985): xv; A. Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-war Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004): 1.
32 D. Coplan, In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) and B. Peterson, Monarchs, Missionaries, and African Intellectuals (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2000): 16–17 appreciate the shaping of black ‘thinking and cultural practices’ by liberals, but do not use Abantu-Batho and miss the beating heart at the core of Johannesburg associations.
33 L. Switzer (ed.), South Africa’s Alternative Press: Voices of Protest and Resistance, 1880s–1960s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); L. Switzer and M. Adhikari (eds), South Africa’s Resistance Press: Alternative Voices in the Last Generation under Apartheid (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000); I. Ukpanah, The Long Road to Freedom: Inkundla ya Bantu (Bantu Forum) and the African Nationalist Movement in South Africa, 1938–1951 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2005).
34 Switzer and Switzer, The Black Press: 25.
35 Ibid.
36 C. Lowe, ‘Swaziland’s Colonial Politics: The Decline of Progressivist South African Nationalism and the Emergence of Swazi Political Traditionalism, 1910–1939’, PhD, Yale University, 1998. Like Lowe, Switzer (‘Moderation and Militancy’: 41) argues that ‘African nationalists never had a truly national newspaper’.
37 ‘Abantu-Batho became the official organ of [ANC] .... This gave the new organ a fillip that sent it soaring all over South Africa’ (T. D. M. Skota, The African Who’s Who: An Illustrated Classified Register and National Biographical Dictionary of the Africans in the Transvaal (Johannesburg: CNA, 1966): 80.
38 African World (Cape Town) 1(5), 27 June 1925, cover.
39 Government Printer to SNA, 30 April 1920, DNL 144/13 D205.
40 A. J. Friedgut, ‘The Non-European Press’, in E. Hellman (ed.), Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1949): 491.
41 G. Carter, The Politics of Inequality: South Africa since 1948 (New York: Praeger, 1959):43.
42 M. Benson, The African Patriots: The Story of the African National Congress of South Africa (London: Faber & Faber, 1963): 31; cf. Skota interview notes, Benson Papers, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, Mss. 348942/1.
43 A. Odendaal,