Abstract
The Natal Indian Congress (NIC) was revived in 1971 in the context of
what has become known as the ‘Durban moment’. This period also witnessed the
emergence of the Black Consciousness Movement and an independent trade union
movement inspired by the 1973 Durban strikes. Despite a government crackdown
and opposition from anti-apartheid groups that asserted that ethnic identities
were a relic of the past, the NIC attracted younger activists through the 1970s
and by the early 1980s, had survived the banning and detention of its
leadership to become involved in civic struggles over housing and education,
and in mobilizing against government-created political structures. It also
played a pivotal role in the United Democratic Front formed in 1983. This did
not mean that the NIC was monolithic. The 1980s spawned vibrant and often
vicious debates within the NIC over participation in government-created
structures, allegations of cabals and, as democracy dawned, differing opinions
of the future of an organization that first came into being in the last decade of
the nineteenth century. In critically interrogating this crucial period between
1980 and 1994, when mass-based struggle was renewed, two states of
emergency were imposed and apartheid eventually ended, this article adds to
the growing historiography of the anti-apartheid struggle by focusing on an
important but neglected aspect of that story. It focuses on the internal workings
of the NIC and the relationship between the NIC, the emergent Mass
Democratic Movement and the African National Congress (ANC) in the context
of broader political and economic changes