The All Africa Convention emerged on 16 December 1935 in response to proposed legislation restricting African voting rights in the Cape Province. Under D. D. T. Jabavu and A. B. Xuma, it united a broad coalition of African organisations and political tendencies against the Native Bills. Its subsequent collapse in the early 1940s contributed to the formation or consolidation of rival political movements, including the Non-European Unity Movement.
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The Story
The All Africa Convention emerged on 16 December 1935 amid a constitutional crisis. The white government proposed preventing Africans who might otherwise qualify from becoming ordinary voters in the Cape Province, where approximately 11,000 Africans were already on the common roll. The Convention brought together organisations opposed to the Native Bills and transformed resistance to the proposed legislation into a national political coalition.
Professor D. D. T. Jabavu chaired the Convention, while Dr A. B. Xuma served as secretary. Its coalition was unusually broad, extending from elderly conservative rural African chiefs to young Coloured Trotskyists from the western Cape. This breadth gave the Convention considerable representative force, but it also contained competing ideas about whether Africans should use institutions created by discriminatory legislation or reject them entirely.
After the Native Bills became law, the Convention struggled to define a new strategy. Debates over participation in bodies such as the Natives’ Representative Council sharpened divisions, particularly through the influence of I. B. Tabata and other advocates of non-collaboration. As the Convention collapsed in the early 1940s, the African National Congress regained strength, while the Non-European Unity Movement was formed in 1943 from delegates associated with the Convention and the National Anti-CAD.
The All Africa Convention emerged on 16 December 1935 in response to proposed legislation restricting African voting rights in the Cape Province. Under D. D. T. Jabavu and A. B. Xuma, it united a broad coalition of African organisations and political tendencies against the Native Bills. Its subsequent collapse in the early 1940s contributed to the formation or consolidation of rival political movements, including the Non-European Unity Movement.
Continue exploring
The Story
The All Africa Convention emerged on 16 December 1935 amid a constitutional crisis. The white government proposed preventing Africans who might otherwise qualify from becoming ordinary voters in the Cape Province, where approximately 11,000 Africans were already on the common roll. The Convention brought together organisations opposed to the Native Bills and transformed resistance to the proposed legislation into a national political coalition.
Professor D. D. T. Jabavu chaired the Convention, while Dr A. B. Xuma served as secretary. Its coalition was unusually broad, extending from elderly conservative rural African chiefs to young Coloured Trotskyists from the western Cape. This breadth gave the Convention considerable representative force, but it also contained competing ideas about whether Africans should use institutions created by discriminatory legislation or reject them entirely.
After the Native Bills became law, the Convention struggled to define a new strategy. Debates over participation in bodies such as the Natives’ Representative Council sharpened divisions, particularly through the influence of I. B. Tabata and other advocates of non-collaboration. As the Convention collapsed in the early 1940s, the African National Congress regained strength, while the Non-European Unity Movement was formed in 1943 from delegates associated with the Convention and the National Anti-CAD.