Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman

"Abdurahman, who was born in Wellington on 12 December 1872 and graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Glasgow in 1893, entered public life in 1904 when he became the first black person to be elected to the Cape Town City Council. Abdurahman retained a seat on the council until his death in 1940. It was, as president of the APO that Abdurahman made his most important political contribution. 

The APO, the first substantive coloured political organisation, was founded in Cape Town in 1902 as segregation intensified at the turn of the century and forced coloured people to mobilise politically. Abdurahman joined the APO in 1903 and was persuaded by general secretary Matt Fredericks to be elected president in 1905 to prevent the fledgling organisation from being torn asunder by feuding political factions. Not only did Abdurahman unite the APO but he completely dominated the organisation for the thirty five years of his presidency. Under his leadership the APO grew into a body of several thousand members with a national network of over a hundred branches by 1910, making it the country’s largest black political organisation of the day. For the next three decades the APO remained by far the most important coloured communal organisation, dominating coloured protest politics and co-ordinating wide-ranging efforts for the socio-economic upliftment of the coloured community. Organisations such as the South African Coloured Union formed in 1913, the United Afrikaner League founded in 1919 and the African National Bond established in 1925, all created with the express intention of challenging Abdurahman’s influence with the coloured electorate, were ephemeral and drew little support. 

In 1914 Abdurahman became the first coloured person to be elected to the Cape Provincial Council, another seat he retained for the duration of his life. On the provincial council he sought in particular to influence policy on issues of health and education. Although an articulate advocate of coloured interests, Abdurahman’s nfluence on this council was muted because coloured people formed a relatively small part of the electorate. It was only in the late 1930s with the emergence of a radical political movement in the shape of the National Liberation League that this dominance was challenged and it was only after Abdurahman’s death that the APO was finally eclipsed. The basic principles of his political philosophy were that all citizens be equal in the eyes of the law, that the franchise be colour-blind and that the state ensure equal enjoyment of civil liberties. Abdurahman’s credo is summed up in the oft-repeated sentiment that ‘it is not race or colour but civilisation which is the test of man’s capacity for political rights.’ A great deal of Abdurahman’s effort was expended on a futile struggle to stem the erosion of coloured civil rights. In 1906 and 1910 he played leading roles in delegations that unsuccessfully petitioned the British government to veto the denial of coloured franchise rights. In the 1920s and 1930s he led a rearguard action against state initiatives that undermined the economic and political status of coloured people, most notoriously the Pact Government’s Civilised Labour Policy. While he had little success in arresting the tide of segregation, Abdurahman did bequeath an enduring legacy in the field of education. In 1913 he initiated the establishment of the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA), the first coloured teachers’ association, which still exists today. The TLSA played a key role in mobilising the coloured teaching profession behind the drive to reform coloured education.

Abdurahman also took the lead in establishing the Trafalgar High School in 1911, the first institution in the country to offer secondary education to coloured students. He was also behind the founding in 1934 of the Livingstone High School, only the second such school in Cape Town. Abdurahman, in addition, spear-headed the movement to set up primary schools to provide secular education for Muslim children. The Rahmaniyeh Institute, founded in 1913, as the first of fifteen such schools established by the mid-1940s. Given the ineluctable racial divisions of South African society, Abdurahman’s main efforts were of necessity directed at the advancement of the coloured community. As early as 1907 he recognized the need for black unity in the fight against white supremacy. He thus supported all attempts at inter-ethnic cooperation often against the wishes of supporters. Abdurahman’s thinking was well ahead of its time in this respect. It is thus not surprising that between 1927 and 1934 he convened a series of four Non-European Conferences of black political organisations jointly with D. D. T. Jabavu to formulate a co-ordinated black response to segregation. Although he was unable to turn this loose coalition into a permanent body because of organisational rivalries and personal jealousies, it is nevertheless significant as the first initiative at forming a united black political front. 

In the latter half of the 1920s Abdurahman also became involved in the politics of the South African Indian community. Though not an Indian himself, such was his reputation that in 1925 he was asked by the South African Indian Congress (SAIC) to lead a delegation to request that the Indian government intervene in the anti-Asiatic legislation about to be tabled by the Union government. This move was partly responsible for a series of round-table conferences between the two governments over the next two years and also the position of Indians in South Africa improving until the 1930s. As the struggle against white supremacism within the coloured community intensified from the late 1930s onwards and as the centre of gravity of extra-parliamentary opposition shifted to the left, Abdullah Abdurahman and other moderate political leaders suffered increasing criticism for their adherence to liberal values and the ineffectiveness of their methods in the face of an intransigent ruling minority. Whatever their shortcomings, it needs to be recognized that people such as Dr. Abdurahman were pioneers in the fight against racial oppression and that their struggle was in many senses a necessary antecedent to later, more effective forms of resistance. In the four decades before his death on 20 February 1940, Abdurahman was far and away the most influential and popular political leader within the coloured community." (SAHistory, 2019).