The first few years of the New Era Fellowship (NEF) were selfconsciously experimental in their form and substance. Phumi Giyose, a New Unity Movement (NUM) theoretician, describes it, in relation to the role of Ben Kies, as ‘an experimental period from 1935 onwards when the upcoming leadership of the Non-European Unity Movement [NEUM] was looking in a rich mine field of political experiences for a theory and organisation praxis’. M M Herries has described it as a ‘sorting-house’. This experimentation and ‘sorting out’ took all of its stimulus from the particular character of the conjuncture – the onset of the Second World War, and the intentions of the South African government to take the franchise away from people classified as ‘coloured’. The conjuncture precipitated an intense crisis of social analysis – how to hold together what was going on internationally with what was happening in South Africa. The thesis of the ‘Black Republic’ was, by itself, inadequate, but it was not immediately apparent what to put in its place. The ground first needed to be cleared. Giyose says that ‘maximum programmes from Europe were tried out and got rejected in favour of a minimum programme of democratic demands. Vanguard party formations offered their candidature. These were put aside in favour of a broad national front. Liberalism, Gandhism, nationalism – all these put themselves on offer. They were pushed aside.’

One sees in this experimentation the NEF giving its attention to a wide range of issues in the beginning. The organisation arose in response to the need for clearing the ground with respect to the immediate issues of the socialist struggle and the tactics and strategies of the South African revolution. At that time, as Sarah Mokone explains: