‘Benighted in the Bright Noon-Day Sun’: ‘Bantu Loyalty’ and Its Discontents, 1919–1939

Through the lens of the royal visits of the Prince of Wales in 1925 and a series of royal events in the 1930s, this chapter explores the changing manifestations of black loyalism at pivotal moments in a period of profound transformations for the empire, monarchy, and subcontinent following the First World War. The Prince of Wales’ 1925 visit took place in the radical 1920s when the loyalist idiom was subjected to its most strenuous testing and challenges from more confrontational forms of nationalism, millennial prophetic movements, Garveyist ‘Back-to-Africa’ protest, peasant, and worker militancy—all of which were met by ruthless state repression. Although Africans (and Indians) participated in huge numbers in the royal tour events, ignoring the calls to boycott, the aloofness and restraint with which the Swazi king Sobhhuza greeted the Prince, the wholesale manipulation of the Zululand indaba by a disaffected Solomon ka Dinuzulu to assert his primacy, and barbed addresses of loyalty reveal both the conditional and contested character of black loyalism in this period. By contrast, when the Prince’s younger brother, Prince George embarked on his royal visit, the radical moment had passed, and loyalism and moderation were the dominant notes in most black political cultures. The early 1930s, with the Silver Jubilee of King George V, followed shortly by the accession of two Kings (Edward Vlll and George Vl) and the abdication of one—Edward Vlll, moreover, saw more intensive ideological investment by the authorities in promoting the British crown as a focus of loyalty and symbol of stability, while a lèse majesté case against prominent communists for criticising the monarch undoubtedly discouraged open expressions of anti-monarchism. The events of Prince George’s 1934 visit, like the King’s Silver Jubilee celebrations in the following year, demonstrated that even in the regions such as Durban, host to the most intensive politicisation at the end of the 1920s, radical republicanism now carried little appeal. There, and elsewhere, the crown was contrasted favourably as a more enlightened source of authority than the segregationist Southern African governments; African monarchy could be deployed as powerful symbols in the struggles for land, freedom, and justice, and in turn, imbue the imperial monarchy with validity and credibility.