Days of Commitment Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #88)

period of considerable unrest aamongst the workers and a strike of fifty thousand miners on the Witswatersrand, large numbers of whom marched to Johannesburg from various centres, during which eleven miners were killed by the police, led to the adjournment of the Native Representative Council in protest and to a sedition trial involving members of the Centralcommittee of the CP. Africans, especially on the Reef, were defying the law and establishing a series of shanty towns and in 1946 violent clashes between Africans and the police took place. The indian people opened a second front and for two years campaigned against the Ghetto Law with a vigour that aroused administration from far and wide. Although Coloureds held no spectacular demonstrations during this period, Dr. E.T. Dietrich, president of the APO, declared that the Coloured people saw in the oppression of the African and Indian a likeness to their own oppression. He added that the Coloured man recognised that only by united movement of all the oppressed people fighting for the same aims could the tide of reaction and oppression be stemmed. It was against this background that in 1974 Drs. Xuma, Dadoo and Naicker thought another attempt at unity could be made. They met in Johannesburg and, guided by experience, avoided the over ambitious step of establishing a central political body to direct future struggles. Accordingly they agreed, as a start, that the ANC, MIC and TIC would co operate on matters of common interest, the only form of joint action likely to receive wide support. Later James Phillips signed the agreement on behalf of the APO. Whilst the agreement laid a firm foundation for the co operation of Africans, Indians and Coloureds, it respected the independence of the separate political organs party to it. It