authorities"
and stressed "the educational,
social, economic
and political elevation of the native people in South Africa."65
Down to 1939 and beyond, the ANC remained under the control of
lawyers, clergy, and journalists, who tried to elicit white support to redress
African grievances "by constitutional
means." Most of the time they ad-
hered scrupulously to those cautious methods and modest objectives, lob-
bying sympathetic white missionaries, journalists, and politicians and pro-
testing each installment
of discriminatory
legislation from the Natives
Land Act of 1913 through the Representation of Natives Act of 1936. In
1914, they sent a fruitless delegation to England; in 1919, they sent an-
other to Versailles to try to influence the peacemakers on their behalf.
The Coloured and Indian organizations were under similar middle-class
leadership and pursued corresponding
goals for their people. Abdullah
Abdurahman,
president of the APO from 1905 until his death in 1940, was
a doctor trained at Glasgow University; the leaders of the SAIC were such
men as P. R. Pather, an estate and financial agent, and Abdulla Ismail
Kajee, a businessman. The APO made some not very successful efforts to
cooperate with African leaders, but the SAIC concerned itself exclusively