If, in the 1920s, Natal ANC provincial structures suffered splits and had limited potential appeal to workers, then the same general observations apply to other provinces. However, this is only part of the complex regional history of the ANC's mosaic of branches. As in Natal, ANC branches in the Transvaal, Cape, and Orange Free State built on contacts with organised labour made in the previous decade and continued to catch the attention of some more politicised workers. Although the overall strength of these branches remained weak, when opportunities arose from a combination of political and socioeconomic causes, Congress branches were able to mount campaigns that mobilised Africans, including some workers.

With the Rand, Cape Town, and Port Elizabeth continuing to be major industrial centres these urban areas continued as the focus of such contacts. Declining real African wages, worsening working conditions and heightened legislative discrimination created a potentially favourable situation for political action. Housing was becoming particularly scarce for Africans in cities. That is not to say class differentiation did not occur. A 1920 church survey of Africans in the Ciskei indicated that clerks, interpreters, and some “skilled labourers” (artisans) were much more prosperous than unskilled urban or farm labourers, with teachers and lower-paid skilled workers forming an intermediary strata. Some farm labourers reported earning as little as £0.00 to £3.00 per annum. Similar figures emerged from another 1920 report, in Port Elizabeth, that recorded unskilled labourers receiving only three shillings and sixpence to four shillings a day, whilst African women factory workers earned as little as two shillings a day. In general, however, the margins of social difference were narrow: since the 1913 Natives’ Land Act, land was now much harder to obtain by Africans, whose occupational mobility was increasingly blocked.

Political factors would be the key to mobilising Africans around their grievances. There was substantial continuity in the leadership of provincial Congresses. Despite periodic declines in organisational activity, the popular perception of the ANC as a champion of black rights, earned by in its opposition to the 1913 Land Act and its vigorous 1919 protests against the pass laws, did not entirely disappear. However, an entirely new configuration of political actors emerged at this time.