1912–1920s: (Class and Tribe — The South African Native National Congress Founded 1912, Becoming the ANC in 1923, Massive Anti-Pass-Law Demonstrations in 191…

1912–1920s: (Class and Tribe — The South African Native National Congress Founded 1912, Becoming the ANC in 1923, Massive Anti-Pass-Law Demonstrations in 1919, 40,000 Mineworkers Striking in 1920, the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union Founded 1919 with 100,000 Members by the Mid-1920s, and the Emergence of Organized Political Protest in the Industrial Economy): Economic change brought new patterns of resistance, most dramatically in South Africa, where the need to control labor and contain Africans in reserves had given rise to the oppressive pass system. Some of the earliest organized protest outside Islamic North Africa appeared in the years immediately before and after the First World War. In 1912, the South African Native National Congress was founded by members of a political elite, becoming the African National Congress in 1923 — its broader appeal was limited at this stage, but the organization laid foundations for wider political action, notably through cooperation with Indian and Coloured groups. Already there were other manifestations of popular protest: in 1919, massive anti-pass-law demonstrations indicated the possibilities for mass participation in political action, and the following year some forty thousand mineworkers went on strike. This industrial muscle facilitated the foundation of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union in 1919, an organization boasting one hundred thousand members by the mid-1920s. Structural problems and internal rifts brought about the Union’s collapse by decade’s end, but it had demonstrated the potential for mass action and suggested the existence of a growing worker consciousness — a consciousness forged not in the seminar rooms of European political theory but in the brutal crucible of the compound and the mine shaft.