The 1957 baHurutshe revolt

In 1957 and 1958 a majority of the residents in Moiloa's Reserve, both men and women, mounted sustained resistance to the issuing of passes for women in the reserve. This has rightly been seen as a telling event in the history of the country's rural resistance to white rule, and one that has an iconic place in the grand narrative of the ANC's resistance history. The generally accepted view is that it was the attempt to force African women to carry passes that triggered the resistance, and the event is rightly a significant component of the history of women's resistance in South Africa – which would imply that the grievances experienced by the reserve's residents were relatively short term from the time the carrying of passes became compulsory in 1954. In this chapter, however, we argue that the trouble had been brewing for many years and the revolt can only be fully understood by examining developments in Moiloa's Reserve from several decades before the actual revolt broke out. The baHurutshe revolt was not primarily about pass resistance, but about retaining access to vital resources in the baHurutshe reserve. In this sense it bears a strong resemblance to the perhaps better known revolt in Sekhukhuneland which broke out shortly afterwards. Similarly, the full effect of this incident can only be comprehended by an analysis of the subsequent course of events over the ensuing decades.

The best account of the events that unfolded in Zeerust was recorded by the Reverend Charles Hooper, the Anglican priest in Zeerust. He personally intervened to assist the baHurutshe, for which he was finally deported from South Africa. Other commentators have examined specific aspects of the event, focusing for example on the role of the ANC, and the extent of political consciousness exhibited by the women in the reserve.

In March 1957, Abram Ramotshere Pogiso Moiloa, the ruling kgosi in Dinokana, was instructed by Carl Richter, the native commissioner in Zeerust, to tell the women of Dinokana to present themselves at the kgotla to collect their reference books. By this date, the issuing of passes had been strongly resisted by both urban and rural women throughout South Africa. In 1956 alone, ‘the year when “reference books” first began to be issued, some 50 000 women demonstrated against the pass laws on thirty-eight different occasions in thirty different places’.