The ANC has always been an elitist movement

It was very interesting to read an article a few years back in the Daily Dispatch, ANC’S Origins ‘at Bumbane’, 15 August 2011 page 4,DD. Nkosi Mandla Mandela states that the organisation was the brainchild of abaThembu monarch Dalindyebo I and celebrated author Rev Walter. M. Rubusana in 1906. He further states that the abaThembu monarch had always envisioned a formation of an organised movement that represented the people. Rubusana was universally recognized as one of the leading black politicians in South Africa. In this capacity he led the black delegation to London in June of 1909. There are two interesting things to point out in the light of this revelation by Nkosi Mandela. Firstly, at the turn of the 20th century colonial Britain passed the South African act of 1909 following the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer war. This act granted South Africa independence from Britain, maintaining Caucasian political domination through a discretionary electoral system that denied the majority of the people in the land to voter, the African. In 1906, when Dalindyebo and Rubusana and other abaThembu leaders supposedly met, they were aware of the threat of being marginalised by the British and Dutch settler community. It subsequently happened in 1910 when the Union of South Africa was formed. It must be pointed out that there was a legitimate need to organise Africans at this time. The question is who was to do this and how. African leaders and intellectuals including Rubusana were not truly convinced that forums like the All African Convention (AAC) would serve as an organisation that stood for absolute African rights as it was also divided into racial and tribal factions who cultivated elitism. Also, it had in its ranks modern educated men who were not in touch with the people on the ground due to the dehumanising nature of British colonialism. Secondly, then urgency of the African to mobilise against the advent neo-colonial tendencies at the turn of the century had momentum through organisations like the AAC and by 1906 the South African Native Congress (SANC) which had African intellectuals academics, religious leaders and most notably traditional leaders (or their envoys) in their ranks. It was felt that through the SANC, true Africanist stance against the Union of South Africa would be guarded. It must be noted again that the people who had the privilege of being in the leadership roles of the SANC were notably men who were above the ordinary status of the early 20th century African. The men Nkosi Mandla Mandela mentions in the gathering of 1906 were no different. Dalindyebo himself was a king of a Nation, Rubusana a religious leader-academic and author who had been trained and educated by missionaries, Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Mandela was a high ranking traditional leader in the abaThembu nation. When the earlier mentioned events of 1909 and 1910 unfolded in Britain and South Africa respectively, the anticipation by Rubusana and Dalindyebo (and others ) of its consequences by gathering in 1906 led to the subsequent formation of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) in 1912. Between 1906 and 1912, others had joined its ranks. The Sol Plaaitjies, John Langalibalele Dubes, the Sogas, Jabavaus, Pixley ka Semes and Jolobes were all in one way or another men with elevated social status in those times whether it was academic, religious or traditional/political. Several other young African leaders who had recently returned from university studies in England, Richard Msimang, George Montsioa and Alfred Mangena, and with established leaders of the South African Native Congress engaged to promote the formation of a national organization that would unify various African groups from the former separate colonies, now provinces. This would be the establishment of an elitist organization that would stand as a vanguard of African concerns and views against the formation of the Union of South Africa. This elitist nature of the organization still remains today as some leaders of the organization are biological offspring or a third generation of past leaders of the ANC. The ANC has always been an elitist movement.