African Perspectives of King Dingane kaSenzangakhona by Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu

Author:Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

On 16 December 1930, a large contingent of policemen barred the way to the city centre and when demonstrators bore down on them, the police attacked them with clubs and assegais. The results were calamitous—Nkosi and three other Africans were stabbed to death and horribly mutilated by the police. Various reports of this incident appeared in the major newspapers including the Durban-based Natal Mercury. 58

The newspaper report highlighted the fact that ‘about 70 European constables and 50 Native constables, armed with pick handles and kierries rushed in among the Natives. The yelling rose to tumult, and for some time there was resistance to the police attempts to clear the Flats’. After the confrontation with unarmed African workers, ‘then began the general flight … Johannes Nkosi was found unconscious. He had been a prominent speaker throughout the day, and had received the passes which were burnt’. To underline the oppressive nature of white-ruled South Africa, the Natal Mercury, as apologists of police brutality, reduced the killing of Nkosi to an act of writing a pamphlet and also claimed he was guilty of being a member of the CPSA. Readers were informed that ‘it is understood that he [Nkosi] was the author of a pamphlet predicting “Hell on Dingaan’s Day”’, and had been called before the chief magistrate, a Mr Maynard Page. He was described as an organiser of the ‘Durban Branch of the Communist Party of South Africa ’. 59

Other angles and biases emerge from another report in the Natal Mercury which used the language of security police and Pirow, the Minister of Justice, by referring to the African workers as ‘agitators’. The article reported that by ‘8.30am there was a crowd of about 160 listening to two agitators, who exhorted them to burn their passes, as a “Christmas box” to the Government’. To compound matters further for the white journalist who covered the pass-burning campaign, African workers displayed a communist flag—surely not a crime—inscribed with the words: ‘Down with Pirow’s slave laws. Away with the passes on Dingaan’s Day. Shisani ama passi (Burn your passes)’. 60

The racist white journalists who recorded the event were not concerned about the brutal behaviour of the police and the killing of Nkosi and the two workers. To show their opposition to the counter-commemoration of 16 December, they described the African workers in animalistic terms, as dogs (of the ‘bobtail order’). One such report read: ‘…from that time onwards a steady stream of Natives came to the meeting and they were immediately button-holed by a bearded Native, wearing a fez and a flowing red robe, who endeavoured to get their passes from them … the Natives present were mostly of the rag and bobtail order… extremist agitators’. 61

The report continued ‘…there were very few kitchen boys and town workers present. It appeared that the ICU order to its members to boycott the pass burning was respected’. But to his chagrin, the racist journalist who was an ‘expert’ in identifying African ‘kitchen boys’ and ‘town workers’,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.