SPRINGBOK LEGION / TORCH COMMANDO

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Springbok Legion ~ Torch Commando ~ since 19xx

They fought for land and freedom,
And paid the price of war,
And framed a Constitution wise
To live for evermore.
On this foundation set in rock
– Secure, entrenched and fair –
We guard our fourfold Union
Enshrine our honour there.
The spirit robbed from pledges
We shall restore to each:
Protect the sacred freedom
Of worship, language, speech;
The purity of law preserve,
The rule of law provide,
And justice mete to friend and foe
In courts with access wide.
No rule totalitarian
Democracy shall know.
The fascist and the communist
Form, root and branch must go.
The white, the black, the coloured race
Rejected none shall be,
Who build with worth in harmony
Our Land's eternity.
To God we pledge our service true.
We take our Torch from him,
And light the path for government
Above corruption grim.
We see on high the master Torch!
God guide our feet and bless
Our aim, and give humility
.
And wisdom in success.

.

SPRINGBOK LEGION / TORCH COMMANDO

.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH : The Torch Commando

The Torch Commando was a South African organisation, born out of the work of the Springbok Legion, a South African organisation of World War II veterans. Is was founded in 1941 during the Second World War. The War Veterans Action Committee established with the involvement of Springbok Legionnaires to appeal to a broader base of ex-servicemen. It was underwritten by Harry OPPENHEIMER, through an opaque trust fund.

The Springbok Legion was initially formed by members of the 9th Recce Battalion of the South African Tank Corps, the Soldiers Interests Committee formed by members of the First South African Brigade in Addis Ababa, and the Union of Soldiers formed by the same brigade in Egypt.

The aims and objectives of the Springbok Legion were enunciated in its 'Soldiers Manifesto'; it was open to all service-men regardless of race or gender and was avowedly anti-fascist and anti-racist. Amongst its leading members were servicemen such as

• Joe SLOVO ‧ ‧
• Lionel BERNSTEIN ‧ ‧
• Wolfie KODESH ‧ ‧
• Jack HODGSON ‧ ‧

and

• Fred CARNESON ‧ ‧

who all later joined the ANC: African National Congress and its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe under the command of [ Nelson MANDELA] ‧ x ‧ .

Others such as

• Harry SCHWARZ ‧ x ‧ a later well-known anti-apartheid political leader, lawyer and ambassador to the United States during the government of national unity was one of the organisation's founders. Another member was
• General Kenneth van der SPUY ‧ x ‧ one of the founding members of the SAAF: South African Air Force who fought in both World War I and World War II and was captured and imprisoned in the Kremlin by the Russians after fighting alongside the White Russian forces against the communists and held until 1920.

The Torch Commando was founded in 1951 during the Coloured vote constitutional crisis, in protest against the South African government's plan to remove Coloureds from the voters roll in the Cape Province. At a time when the Springbok Legion's numbers were diminishing, the Torch Commando strategy gave a new lease of life to the aims and objectives of the Springbok Legion, perceived as being too left wing by some, and gave a home to whites in other liberal formations including liberals in the United Party, who identified with black grievances.

The wartime RAF fighter ace group captain Adolph 'Sailor' MALAN ‧ x ‧ became the president of the 'Torch Commando'. The commando's main activities were torchlight marches, from which they took their name. The largest march attracted 75,000 protesters.

The Torch Commando existed for more than five years, and at its height claimed to have had 250,000 members. The government was alarmed by the number of judges, public servants and military officers joining the organisation, and a new law was passed to ban anyone in public service or the military from joining.

Subsequently the National Party did everything to purge the memory of the Springbok Legion Torch Commando and men such as 'Sailor' MALAN, who had appeal with white Afrikaner youth.

______________________

Founded in 1951, the War Veterans' Torch Commando, or "the Torch", as it was usually called, was one of the largest protest organisations in South Africa's history. At its height it had 250 000 signed-up members, which was almost 10% of the white population. Tens of thousands of people attended its mass meetings in the cities, and sometimes more than 50 000. Smaller meetings were held in smaller towns all over the country, and often the venue was packed. Thousands participated in marches organised with military precision in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, and elsewhere.

Retired judges and generals joined. Alan Paton, a Torch member who later became president of a new Liberal Party and who was already famous for his global best-selling novel about apartheid entitled Cry the Beloved Country, once said that the Torch was the only organisation the National Party (NP) ever feared.

So what exactly was this organisation which made headline news around the country for two years? It started with a small gathering on 21st April 1951 at the cenotaph near the Johannesburg City Hall commemorating soldiers who had died in the first and second world wars. The ex-servicemen present pledged themselves to defend the values for which their comrades had died.

Earlier in the year the NP government had announced that it would enact legislation to remove so-called "coloured" voters in the Cape Province from the common voters' roll and put them on a separate roll. Hence the name of the legislation in question – the Separate Representation of Voters Act. But there was a snag. Under the Constitution, legislation altering voting rights could be enacted only by two thirds of members of Parliament (MPs) at a joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament, comprising the National Assembly and the Senate. The NP had a simple majority, but not the required two thirds. It went ahead and passed the act anyway.

Coloured voters had been on the same voters roll as whites in the Cape since 1853. When the Cape, the Transvaal, Natal, and the Orange Free State (OFS) came together to form the Union of South Africa in 1910, the two-thirds procedure was introduced at the behest of Cape liberals to protect the coloured franchise. The unconstitutional manner in which coloured voters were now to be put on a separate roll outraged thousands of people. They suspected that the reason was to prevent coloured voters from tipping results against the NP in constituencies where they had the numbers to do so. There were six such marginal seats.

Torch supporters also regarded the Constitution as a "solemn compact" which was both legally and morally binding. They had spent years of their lives fighting dictators who paid no heed to constitutions. Many of their friends were among the 6 000 South Africans who had lost their lives in that fight. Moreover, they said, coloured people had made a significant contribution during the war, where they had fought in the Desert in North Africa and in Italy as volunteers. Now the NP, many of whose members had been opposed to the entry of South Africa into the war on the side of the British and some of whom had even been sympathetic to the German cause, was bent on violating the Constitution under which South Africa was governed.

After the gathering at the cenotaph, it was decided to hold bigger protests. These took place a fortnight later. The organisers were amazed at how many people turned up. In Port Elizabeth nearly 6 000 people did so. In Johannesburg more than 5 000 people, most of them ex-servicemen and women, coloured as well as white, marched from Noord Street near the main railway station to the city hall. Around 15 000 other people watched what one American writer described as "a spectacular torchlit procession". Although the Afrikaans press called the tin-can torches "blikfakkels", leading Torch members said that "to us they were torches of freedom".

The gathering outside the Johannesburg city hall decided to send resolutions of protest to the prime minister and leader of the NP, Dr DF Malan. They were to be conveyed to him in Parliament in Cape Town in a convoy of jeeps and other vehicles led by Commandant Dolf de la Rey, a veteran of the
The convoy was cheered as it passed through Bloemfontein and other towns along the way. More jeeps joined it. A crowd of 4 000 greeted it in Somerset West. When it arrived in Cape Town the grand parade in front of the city hall was packed with between 55 000 and 65 000 people. Among those who marched to the city hall were coloured veterans. Newspapers reported that they marched with the whites in displays of solidarity. Machine guns were placed on the roof of the Houses of Parliament, the government accusing the Torch of "planning a coup".

After the mass meeting on the grand parade, a smaller group, reported to be composed mainly of coloured people, surged up the road towards Parliament. Almost 160 people were injured in clashes with the police. Whereas some NP politicians had previously dismissed the Torch as a travelling circus, they now accused it of starting a riot. The minister of the interior, Dr Eben Dönges, said that the march in Cape Town had been orchestrated by communists. The national president of the Torch, AG ("Sailor") Malan, retorted that the NP were "scheming and plotting for a fascist republic posing as a bulwark against communism".

Although he had once been a sailor, Malan had joined the Royal Air Force and become famous as a Spitfire pilot and squadron leader for shooting down 32 German aircraft in the Battle of Britain in August and September 1940. When Malan was elected national president of the Torch, Louis Kane-Berman, who had fought at Alamein and in Italy, was elected national chairman. The patron-in-chief was NJ de Wet, a former chief justice and acting head of state in the closing years of the war. The national director was Ralph Parrott.

Two English-speaking South Africans and two Afrikaners at the head of the Torch testified to its appeal right across the white population. Kane-Berman reminded audiences that almost 60% of the 334 000 South Africans who joined up for the war against Hitler were Afrikaans speaking. "They are rallying to us almost to a man," he said. When meetings were broken up, he said that hooliganism was only to be expected from our opponents. However, "all it does is to send up our recruiting figures by leaps and bounds".

People flocked in everywhere: 400 packed the town hall in Pinetown to launch a branch there; 1 500 railway workers joined in Durban; 400 people joined up in Paarl, and 400 in Umtata. There were soon branches in Amanzimtoti, Eshowe, Dundee, Colenso, Eliot, Strand, Fish Hoek, and Ficksburg. Within two days of its launch, the branch in the Sundays River Valley had 500 members; there was standing room only in the Bedford town hall when a branch was launched there. By the end of September there was a branch in every Reef town and on most of the mines. Torch emblems appeared on mine headgear in the OFS. Conservative white mining unions complained that the Torch was recruiting some of their members.

When the Torch came to recruit in Witbank, the mayor hosted a lunch and said, "We have heard of your wonderful movement. We have heard of the clamour for membership. We believe the object of the Torch Commando is to foster a spirit among the people where all will receive a square deal in which everyone's rights will be safeguarded." A newspaper in Kimberley, the Diamond Fields Advertiser, reported that recruitment on the platteland was "running like a veld fire".

Within three months of the launch of the Torch, it had almost 100 000 members enrolled in 206 branches. By the end of January the following year (1952) there were 120 000 members in 350 branches. By the middle of the year the Torch had 250 000 members, about a quarter of them ex-servicemen. They paid half a crown in membership fees, which was about half the price of a good cinema seat. The government prohibited serving members of the Permanent Force from joining, but this could not stop members of the Active Citizen Force from doing so.

Torch members soon included five former judges, and ten generals. One of the former judges, FAW Lucas, said it was unusual for judges to take political action, but the situation in South Africa was so serious as a result of the actions of the government that it was natural that anyone with the interests of the country at heart should take what steps they could to put matters right. One of the retired army officers who joined, Lieutenant-General George Brink, said race relations had deteriorated and that South Africa had become an unhappy country. "Let us join hands to advance the cause of South Africa, and to do this we must throw out the government."

Torches and bonfires lit up the sky when the Torch organised a series of meetings across the country in October 1951 on the ninth anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein.

Ten days before the Alamein commemoration in South Africa, Sailor Malan lit a flaming torch outside the Langham Hotel in Johannesburg. It was to be conveyed in a truck ahead of a convoy that would journey 4 000 miles across the country. Newspapers reported the convoy's progress as it progressed from one town to the next with headlines such as "Torch truck in city today!" A huge crowd cheered the truck when it arrived back in Johannesburg in time for the Alamein commemoration.

An article in the magazine Outspan takes up the story of how Torch members gathered in the square between the city hall and the Rissik Street post office opposite. Towards the square from four separate mustering points elsewhere in the city

"came marching several thousands of South African ex-servicemen and women, twelve abreast, singing the stirring songs they remembered from the years of the Second World War, at their head hundreds of roughly-made oil torches flashing orange light which set in sharp relief the faces of the thousands of people who lined the pavements. At every street intersection, from the city's historic Union Grounds to the city hall, traffic piled up as the procession rolled past. Flags fluttered from the skyscraper blocks of flats and offices as they marched – infantrymen, sailors, flyers and engineers, clerks, paymasters, colonels, and men who had spent the greater part of the war staring in futility at the barriers of barbed wire and the lofty machine-gun nests that held them in their prison camps in the bitter cold of Poland or in some sweaty, fever-ridden, Far Eastern jungle. They had marched before, these war veterans, but never together with the services they represent so intermingled, shoulder to shoulder. At the city hall the ranks split and the marchers, joined by thousands of spectators, flooded the brightly lit square."

There was a dais among the palm trees and the singing and chanting died away to a whisper when Sailor Malan made his first big public appearance. Kane-Berman told this vast gathering that the flaming torches were symbolic of the searchlights used at Alamein to guide troops to their objectives and remove the possibility of any man being lost. "These are the lights of democracy – let them be a source of comfort to the people of this country whatever their language, race, or colour. They convey a message to the people of South Africa in the name of those who fought and lived and in the name of those who fought and died."

Johannesburg was not the only site of a mass meeting. Dedication services drew altogether 150 000 people across the country and in South West Africa (now Namibia, which was then still under South African control). Bonfires were lit across the country, some of them on the mountains above Barberton, six in Pretoria, and one at a peak high in the Drakensberg. People gathered also in Benoni, Krugersdorp, Vereeniging, Cape Town, Port Shepstone, Empangeni, and elsewhere.

Often the ceremonies included the procedure used in many countries around the world to commemorate those who died in the world wars: the sounding of the Last Post by a bugler, followed by a two-minute silence, after which the bugler would sound Reveille (the army early-morning wake-up call). The Diamond Fields Advertiser reported that hundreds of bonfires lit up the sky around Kimberley and in a fire chain from the Kalahari to the Cape as "men dedicated themselves to work for the fruits of the victory that had been won in the desert against Rommel." The SABC, however, failed to broadcast a single detail about all these Alamein commemorations.

When the Torch wanted to repeat the ceremonies at the Union Buildings the following year, the minister of public works, Ben Schoeman, refused permission. Guy Brathwaite, a prominent Pretoria Torchman, said that if the minister and his colleagues had fought side-by-side with other South Africans during the war, they would better appreciate the reason why the Torch wanted to commemorate Alamein again.

People from around the country were inspired to write poems about the Torch and send them to the newspapers. For example, at the time of the Alamein commemorations Vera Coster from Port Alfred had the following published:

"They fought for land and freedom,
And paid the price of war,
And framed a Constitution wise
To live for evermore.
On this foundation set in rock
– Secure, entrenched and fair –
We guard our fourfold Union
Enshrine our honour there.
The spirit robbed from pledges
We shall restore to each:
Protect the sacred freedom
Of worship, language, speech;
The purity of law preserve,
The rule of law provide,
And justice mete to friend and foe
In courts with access wide.
No rule totalitarian
Democracy shall know.
The fascist and the communist
Form, root and branch must go.
The white, the black, the coloured race
Rejected none shall be,
Who build with worth in harmony
Our Land's eternity.
To God we pledge our service true.
We take our Torch from him,
And light the path for government
Above corruption grim.
We see on high the master Torch!
God guide our feet and bless
Our aim, and give humility

    And wisdom in success."

This amateur poet captured in verse the five guiding principles of the Torch:

SOURCE :

The rise and fall of the Torch Commando
John Kane-Berman | 30 July 2018
John Kane-Berman writes on the great, but now forgotten, movement that rose to challenge the NP govt
The Torch Commando

John Kane-Berman writes of the meteoric rise and fall of the Torch Commando in the early 1950s. Formed by World War II veterans to defend the Constitution and the voting rights of the coloured minority, the Torch at its height had a quarter of a million members. Part of the battle to defend coloured voting rights was fought through the courts, whose opposition to the violation of the Constitution was in the end defeated only by political manoeuvring. This article draws on local and foreign press reports, but also on hitherto unpublished documents that John Kane-Berman inherited from his father, Louis Kane-Berman, who was the national chairman of the Torch, while "Sailor" Malan was its president. Among other things, the article discusses some of the disputes over strategy within the Torch and between that organisation and others.

Also of extreme interest was co-leader of the Torch Commando rally in Cape Town – Kmdt. Dolf de la Rey – he famously captured Winston Churchill during the Boer War fighting for the Boers and became a Torch Commando activist, another one of the rich tapestry of Afrikaner war heroes in conflict with National Party politics and philosophy.
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References source

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torch_Commando
2. https://samilhistory.com/2017/07/30/the-torch-commando-led-south-af...
3. https://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torch_Commando

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