The People’s Paper. Christopher Lowe

August 1930.

      149 SANNC, Memorial to King George V, 16 December 1918, Wits Historical Papers, Molema-Plaatje Papers Cc9: 8; and SANNC, Constitution (1919): 1, 13.

      150 W. G. Jordan, Black Newspapers and America’s War for Democracy, 1914–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001): 112–13.

      151 ‘I Jerusalem Itatiwe’, Abantu-Batho, 20 December 1917 on the Middle East; ‘General Notes’, Ilanga, 10 August 1917 notes Abantu-Batho’s report that survivors from the voyage of the Mendi had been rescued.

      152 ‘Hooray!’, Abantu-Batho, 17 February 1916.

      153 ‘Why No Arrests?’, Abantu-Batho, 18 July 1918.

      154 ‘The War News’, Abantu-Batho, 6 January 1916, trans., DNL 1329/14 D48, ‘Anglo German War: Native Newspapers: Abantu Batho’. Seme admitted authorship to the government.

      155 [B. Phooko], ‘Firm and Just: Or, Just and Firm’, International, 15 December 1916; this piece originated as an ‘Open Letter to the Hon. the Acting Director of Native Labour and Controller of Native Labour’.

      156 ‘The Labour Contingent’, Abantu-Batho, 18 April 1918, in A. Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: South African Blacks and the First World War (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987): 103, 113. Abantu-Batho reprinted a review (‘The Black Man’s Part in the War’, 13 June 1918) of Sir Harry Johnston’s book favourable to Africans’ role in the war.

      157 ‘Natives and the War’, Abantu-Batho, 14 February 1918, DNL 144/13 D205 (see Part II), also cited in Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: 110, who notes that their quiescence was predicated on a limited literacy and army discipline that meant, as reported by Abantu-Batho, ‘they couldn’t write otherwise’.

      158 ‘Notes and Comments’, Abantu-Batho, 25 April 1918, in Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: 133,

      159 ‘Our Position’, Abantu-Batho, 14 February 1918, in Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: 133.

      160 ‘The Future of the German Colonies’, Abantu-Batho, 7 February 1918 (also in Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: 133; Letanka responded (Grundlingh, p. 134) that ‘if this doctrine is not applicable to the native inhabitants of this country, then the case of the British Government falls to the ground’).

      161 D. Hafe, ‘British Expeditionary Force’, Ilanga, 26 October 1917.

      162 ‘South Africa: The Next World Imbroglio?’, Abantu-Batho, 14 August 1930; W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘Smuts’, The Crisis 37(2), February 1930: 63; W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘Patient Asses’, The Crisis 37(3), March 1930: 100.

      163 ‘A Meeting at Vrededorp’, Abantu-Batho, 11 July 1918. SANNC meetings also had a sergeant-at-arms.

      164 ‘Mendi Memorial Club’, Abantu-Batho, 9 December 1920.

      165 Rev. H. R. Ngcayiya, ‘Native Grievances’, Abantu-Batho, 16 December 1920; see Part II.

      166 Abantu-Batho, 1 October 1926, cited in B. Nasson, Springboks on the Somme: South Africa in the Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Penguin, 2007): 236.