Days of Commitment Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #89)

was a shrewd move and during the past twenty nine years inter racial untiy was grown and organs of collective action, co ordinating the activities of the different groups have emerged. The roots of the alliance between the ANC, SAIC, CPC, the white SACOD, the non racial SACPU and the joint campaigns waged from 1950 onwards are to be found in the Xuma Dadoo Naicker Pact. In the light of the conditions in which one worked at the time no other form of unity could have succeeded. Each national group faced problems peculiar to itself, which did not affect the other groups and which could best be taken up by the political organisation of the group affected. The Pass system, for example, encroaches upon one of the most cherished rights of democratic government and, as the principle means of persecuting Africans, it is deeply resented by them and some of the most powerful African campaigns have centered around this question. But the pass does not affect the other groups at all, or at least not in the form in which it affects Africans, and they do not regard it as the number one enemy. Similarly hardly any issue has agitated the Indian people more than the Ghetto Law, the principle of which has now been embodied in the Group Areas Act. Short of violence, Indinas have resisted these two laws by all means at their disposal and the latter is still the main object of attack. But the same law has not hit Africans as hard as Indians and, apart from expressing admiration and solidarity, African response to a campaign based solely on this law would at present probably not be as solid and substained as that of the Indians.