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‘SEA KAFFIRS’: ‘AMERICAN NEGROES’ AND THE GOSPEL OF GARVEYISM IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY CAPE TOWN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2006

ROBERT TRENT VINSON
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis

Abstract

This article demonstrates that black British West Indians and black South Africans in post-First World War Cape Town viewed ‘American Negroes’ as divinely ordained liberators from South African white supremacy. These South-African based Garveyites articulated a prophetic Garveyist Christianity that provided common ideological ground for Africans and diasporic blacks through leading black South African organizations like the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA), the African National Congress (ANC) and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU). This study utilizes a ‘homeland and diaspora’ model that simultaneously offers an expansive framework for African history, redresses the relative neglect of Africa and Africans in African diaspora studies and demonstrates the impact of Garveyism on the country's interwar black freedom struggle.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I wish to thank Peter Alegi, Edda Fields-Black, Leslie Brown, Benedict Carton, Robert Edgar, Rebecca Ginsburg, Jerome Handler, Linda Heywood, Joseph E. Harris, John Lonsdale, Tim Parsons, Marcus Rediker, Lester Spence, Emory Tolbert and the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of African History for comments on earlier versions of this article.