South African Indian Congress

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The South African Indian Congress ( SAIC ) was from 1924 to the end of apartheid , the most politically active and oppositional representation of the ethnic Indian population in South Africa . The SAIC used Mahatma Gandhi's methods of nonviolent resistance and allied itself permanently with the African National Congress (ANC), which represented a large part of the black majority, against the apartheid government.

history

Prehistory and beginnings

From 1860, many Indians came to South Africa to work on the sugar cane plantations in Natal . From the 1880s, Indians came to South Africa to work as merchants. In 1891 they were expelled from the Orange Free State . Under the later Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mahatma Gandhi, they formed the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in Natal in 1894 in order to better represent the interests of the Indian population vis-à-vis the dominant “whites”. 1903 in Transvaal , the Transvaal British Indian Association (TBIA; later Transvaal Indian Congress, TIC), in 1917 in the Cape Colony of the Cape British Indian Congress (later CBIC, Cape Indian Congress, CIC) was founded. Under Gandhi there were several actions of nonviolent resistance according to his Satyagraha policy. However, after Gandhi's return to India , more moderate individuals took the lead. On January 26, 1919, a congress of the three organizations was opened in Cape Town , which was supposed to ensure the representation of the Indians in the South African Union founded in 1910 . At that time, however, there was no joint organization. It was not until 1924 that the SAIC was founded at another meeting in Durban . The first president was Umar Hajee Ahmed Jhaveri . The leadership of the SAIC remained moderate despite discriminatory laws such as the Class Areas Bill passed in 1924 . She tried to make her voice heard through petitions and appeals.

Radicalization

In the 1930s and 1940s, the SAIC became more radical. Actions of non-violent resistance against the increasing disadvantage of people of Indian origin compared to whites became more frequent again. For the first time the people of Indian origin allied themselves with the black South Africans. In 1945 Gagathura Mohambry "Monty" Naicker took over the management of the NIC, in 1946 Yusuf Dadoo took over the management of the TIC. From 1946 to 1948, the SAIC carried out nonviolent actions against the discriminatory Trading and Occupation Land Bill, or Pegging Act, and the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act (known as the Ghetto Act ). Around 2000 people were arrested. The newly elected Indian government then broke off trade relations with South Africa.

On March 9, 1947, the closed -doctoral Naicker, Dadoo and the chairman of the ANC, Alfred Bitini Xuma , the so-called Three Doctors' Pact, which provided for a far-reaching cooperation between ANC and SAIC. In September Naicker became President of the SAIC, Dadoo also became part of the leadership. In 1952, at a meeting in Bloemfontein, the ANC and SAIC agreed to carry out the Defiance Campaign . Around 8,500 people were arrested during this non-violent resistance campaign, including Naicker, Dadoo and Fatima Meer . Deputy Head of Campaign Nelson Mandela was Ismael Cachalia, of Indian descent. From 1953 the SAIC was part of the Congress Alliance , which passed the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Johannesburg in 1955, along with the ANC, the South African Colored People's Organization (SACPO) and the South African Congress of Democrats (COD) , with equal rights for all South Africans.

The South African government did not respond to the demands. In the subsequent Treason Trial , a criminal trial that lasted from 1956 to 1961, 21 of the 156 accused were SAIC members or people of Indian origin, such as Dadoo and Ahmed Kathrada . Also some of them belonged to the armed arm of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe , founded in 1961 . The SAIC and its sub-organizations had not been banned by the authorities , but their work was so prevented that it broke up. Ahmed Kathrada was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia trial alongside defendants such as Mandela and Walter Sisulu , which he served until 1989. In 1968, the apartheid government founded the South African Indian Council, which was rejected by the SAIC and the majority of people of Indian descent and which achieved only six percent turnout in the election of the three-chamber system of representatives of Indian descent. In the 1980s some actions by the sub-organizations took place. The TIC was involved in the formation of the United Democratic Front , which was founded in 1983 as a broad opposition alliance against the apartheid government.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b History of the Indians in South Africa 1860–1970 (English), accessed on March 11, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b c Portrait of the TIC at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on March 12, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c d Information at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on March 12, 2012.
  4. ^ SACP website , accessed on March 9, 2012.
  5. ↑ Cachalia at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on March 12, 2012.
  6. ↑ Detailed information on the Treason Trail  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English, PDF file), accessed on March 11, 2012.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.hsrcpress.ac.za  
  7. ^ Report at nelsonmandela.org (English), accessed on March 11, 2012.