When whites in South Africa joined forces in 19l0 to form the Union of South Africa, the ideals of black political unity began emerging in the minds of the black leadership of the time. They were faced with the political unity amongst the country's whites and saw the need to establish a counter-balancing black unity of purpose. The Colonial conquest of South Africa had interrupted the process by which large scale black Kingdoms had begun evolving.  At the time when whites were penetrating the country's hinterland to set up the Boer Republics there was in existence a very large Zulu Kingdom, a Sotho Kingdom, a Swazi Kingdom and a very well formed large-scale Tswana society. These Kingdoms had emerged as more powerful chiefdoms subjugating weaker neighbours and incorporating them into an ever-expanding political empire. This process of amalgamation and empire building would have continued had whites not intervened and there would have been a continuation of an already clearly defined political process of State formation without white interference.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the Kingdoms of Swaziland, KwaZulu and Lesotho had already come to the realisation that continued warfare between them was destructive.   King Moshoeshoe I had sent peace emissaries to King Mpande, and King Sobhuza I did likewise. There was common recognition that the growth of Kingdoms by the process of conquest could not be continued indefinitely and that there was a need for clearly defined foreign relations between the then established Kingdoms.

Black leadership in the country, after the Act of Union, accepted the need for black political unity both because of the newly formed unity between whites and because the cause of black unity had already emerged as an ideal amongst indigenous peoples. The country's black leaders at the time of the Act of Union had discarded warfare as a prime mechanism of political expansion or as a mechanism best designed to maintain territorial political integrity.

The Bambatha Rebellion of 1906 must be seen as the last attempt by black South Africa to throw off the yoke of oppression through revolutionary violence. They had to face the reality of the white presence in the country and they had to face the reality of the fact that this white presence had destroyed the boundaries of existing black Kingdoms. They recognised that these boundaries would never be re-established and they recognised the fact that a new multi-racial South Africa had come into existence. They recognised that blacks had either to drive the white man into the sea and reclaim the country as their own, or they had to be participants in the new reality and accept the fact that the country was destined to be a multi-racial state.

It is a tribute to the statesmanship of these early leaders that they clearly elected to begin campaigning for the inclusion of blacks in the newly born Union of South Africa. The Act of Union made black South Africans citizens of this new Union but denied them fundamental social, political and economic rights. As black leaders turned to grasp at new realities and to evolve tactics and strategies aimed at gaining full acceptance of blacks as citizens of the country, a new political tradition was born.

Colonial settlers and Boers advanced into the country's hinterland by conquest and established their Colonial and Boer rule by force. Black South Africa first experienced white administration through the barrel of the gun. White Colonists and Boers moved ever further afield to establish white control and regarded blacks as savages, incapable of assimilating civilised and Christian values. Both Boer and British Colonists regarded it as their duty to impose Western standards and norms on black populations and if black populations resisted this kind of self-advancement, they should be subjugated and taught the lessons of civilisation by force. Early whites regarded the indigenous African population of the country as biblical drawers of water and hewers of wood, and approached their task of subjugating them with mistaken Christian zeal.

During the nineteenth century the scramble for Africa was taking place. Black South Africans not only experienced subjugation by force of arms themselves but they were also witness to whites waging wars against each other. They saw the Portuguese, settled in what was then Lourenco Marques and Delagoa Bay, vying with the British who occupied Port Natal. They saw the Boers vying with the British in the Cape Colony and Natal, and they saw Boer vying with Boer in conflicts between the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Diplomacy of the gun dominated.

Blacks faced the ruthlessly advancing white interests bare-handed and were repeatedly confronted with the military superiority of whites on horseback using, what were then, modern arms. In every corner of South Africa there are histories of valiant attempts by unarmed blacks attempting to fend off highly mobile and superiorly armed white British battalions and Boer commandos. Blacks resisted white forces at the cost of terrible loss of life, property and territory. This made deep impressions on the black mind and when military conquest later led to social, economic and political subjugation, blacks experienced a second dimension of oppression.

They experienced oppression as blacks and became ever-increasingly aware of the common bond of blackness which this experience imposed on them. They experienced oppression as black individuals but they also experienced oppression as black communities and as black Kingdoms.

Whatever whites did, however they did it, however they rationalised what they were doing and whatever morality was claimed in the doing of it, blacks only experienced conquest and subjugation. As the black saying goes "Whites even used missionaries to conquer us.  Missionaries taught us to pray with our eyes closed so that while we prayed, our land could be stolen." The British liberal traditions in the Cape Colony and Christian liberalism in minority white groups were viewed with grave scepticism by blacks. For them it did not matter whether the white finger which pulled the trigger belonged to a Christian liberalist or an angry racist white. The effect was the same. Blacks saw white British Governors and Boer Presidents pursuing different policies and rationalising their behaviour in different ways, but for them conquest remained conquest.