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South Africa 1960 – 1994
Troy Neale
Eagle Vale High School
2. National resistance to apartheid
By the end of the 1960s the oppression of non-white South Africans by their white masters made South Africa an anomaly in the modern world. South Africa opposed the ‘winds of change’1 in Africa and around the world with a determination to maintain white supremacy. Only the continual struggle of the anti-apartheid parties, chiefly the ANC, could unite black Africans and gain international support to bring down the apartheid regime.
a) The nature, growth and early impact of the African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) was created in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) but did not represent the majority of black Africans in their earliest period of protest.2 The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) during the early 1940s and 1950s organised most resistance to apartheid and was lead mostly by white communists. The banning of the Communist Party in 1952 made organising protests exceptionally difficult and risky. In 1944 the ANC changed its approach to mass protest by the creation of the ANC Youth League. 3
Members of the ANC Youth League, including Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, demanded a much more militant programme of action. Their aim was to have mass protest, boycotts of white services and passive resistance against apartheid laws such as the Pass Laws. This new form of mass protest was known as the Programme of Action. The Programme of Action was adopted by the ANC in 1949 becoming its united strategy against the apartheid regime.4 During the 1950s there were a number of non-violent protests especially by Indians, Coloureds and white women. The official name was the Defiance Campaign (1952). The aim was to deliberately but politely break apartheid laws such as curfews and Pass Laws. This campaign was not effective in the face of harsh government oppression. The police simply responded with extreme violence and many thousands of peaceful protestors were jailed or fined heavily. Finally the ANC was forced to call off the Defiance Campaign5.
After the Defiance Campaign failed, a number of groups in the struggle against apartheid joined and formed the Congress Alliance. This Alliance consisted of the ANC, South African Council of Trade Unions, the South African Indians Congress and the Coloured Peoples Association. In 1955 Members of the Congress Alliance travelled the country collecting the demands of all ordinary Africans for a ‘just and free society’6. These demands were compiled in the Freedom Charter.
The overarching goal of the Freedom Charter was stated in its opening clause ‘we the people shall govern’ 7
In 1959 a splinter group within the ANC, led by Robert Sobukwe, broke away from the ANC and formed a new organisation called the Pan Africanists Congress (PAC). The PAC drew much of its support from areas such a SOWETO and other black areas around Cape Town, notably Langa where the ANC was not influential8. The PAC argued that it differed radically in its conception of the struggle against apartheid. The PAC believed they were repressed as Africans. The ANC policy was non-racial democracy freedom for all races in South Africa and the PAC was pro-African and, some have argued, anti-white. The PAC therefore was mostly opposed to the Congress Alliance, which also included the white-based Congress of Democrats. Robert Sobuwke argued that the ANC was heavily influenced by the Communist Party and must therefore favour a class-based concept of the struggle against apartheid .On the other hand the PAC claimed to stand solely for the liberation of an oppressed Africa and its repressed people.
The PAC held the view that blacks alone should be responsible for policy matters, without white interference9. The PAC formed an underground military unit called Poqo (Purge), similar to the MK in the ANC. Poqo was the first black political organisation in South Africa which openly accepted the taking of human life as part of its strategy and historians have argued that it was far more militant than the ANC10. As a new anti-apartheid front, the PAC would face a baptism of blood during a protest over Pass Laws at Sharpeville in 1960.
Questions to consider:
- Describe the growth of the African National Congress (ANC) up to 1960.
- Explain why some members left the ANC and formed the PAC.
- What were fundamental differences between the tactics of the ANC and the PAC?
b) Sharpeville massacre 1960
On March 21 1960, the PAC organised a protest against the Pass Laws. The campaign involved marching large numbers of protestors to the Police station where they would burn their passes in protest. Over five thousand protestors converged on the tiny police station armed at most with stones. The police inside opened fire and killed sixty-nine protestors (of the sixty-nine, eight women and ten children were shot in the back while running away), the police also wounded another one hundred and eighty11. At the same time in the Langa Township near Cape Town, the PAC was also demonstrating and some twenty thousand protestors gathered, the protestors were baton-charged and ordered to leave. They threw stones and the police opened fired, killing two and wounding forty-nine protestors.12
Significance of Sharpeville
The consequences of the shootings at both Sharpeville and Langa were immediate:
- South Africa received international condemnation and calls for apartheid to end
- Trouble erupted in Cape Town when Phillip Kgosana, the local PAC leader led 30,000 protestors to the House of Parliament in Cape Town to protest police violence. The police did not have the numbers to hold back the protestors and a compromise was reached where pass laws were suspended. The following day however, Kgosana was arrested and the suspension order lifted.13
- The vulnerability of white South Africa and the seething undercurrent of Black unrest were made very clear to the South African government and the world.
- Both the ANC and PAC were banned, and immediately went under ground and some members went into exile.
- Both MK and Poqo changed direction from non-violent protest to direct military action against the apartheid regime from Sharpeville onwards.
- PAC president Robert Sobukwe and other leaders were arrested.
- Mandela and Oliver Tambo of the ANC fled overseas.
Questions to consider:
- What were the immediate effects of the Sharpeville massacre?
- Explain the significance of this massacre in the fight against apartheid.
c) The role of Mandela’s leadership of the ANC
After Sharpeville the ANC was banned by the government but it continued its activities underground. Nelson Mandela pushed the ANC and its military unit MK towards the direction of sabotage. MKs sabotage attacks in 1961 were against power stations and other strategic government buildings and symbols of apartheid, such as the Bantu Affairs Office. The banning of the ANC left it no option but to pursue a policy of violence14. It was obvious to Mandela and many others in the ANC executive that decades of non violent resistance had only lead to harsher repression by the white government15. The objective of sabotage was to harm the white economy, and bring national and international attention to the ANC cause.
After the banning of the ANC, Mandela and the MK successfully operated underground for almost two years. In this time Mandela moved covertly across South Africa and trained in Ethiopia with other MK members as a guerrilla fighter. Mandela also made his way to Britain and other African states seeking support and advice on fighting the apartheid regime16. As Mandela travelled he received the nick name of the ‘black pimpernel.’17 He had close encounters with police. Mandela once disguised himself as a chauffeur and managed to dodge the police successfully. His most important work, however, was leading the MK and keeping newspapers informed of its political aims and of the next sabotage attack. However, in August 1962, Mandela was arrested in Natal and received a three year sentence for incitement.
Rivonia Trial 1963
The activities of Nelson Mandela and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) came to a sudden halt when the police arrested MK’s executive including Walter Sisulu at a hide out on Lilliesleaf farm in Rivonia, Johannesburg. The police found evidence that MK was planning a large scale military operation code named Mayibuye (restoring, giving back)18. Members of the ANC and whites in the South African Communist Party were arrested and charged with treason against South Africa. They were all charged with sabotage, Mandela being brought from prison to stand trial with them. The white government was outraged that a banned organisation was planning a black revolution. The involvement of the Communist Party was made the central issue in the prosecution of the MK leaders. In the context of the Cold War and decolonisation in other African states, the government was determined to see the ‘Traitors and Terrorist’, executed for violence against white society.
Fortunately for the members on trial, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Govan Mbeki, the world’s attention was on the Rivonia Trial, and the death penalty was begrudgingly withdrawn by the government. The accused were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison on Robben Island, a small desolate island off Cape Town.
The Rivonia Trial and the life sentences of ANC leaders broke not only the leadership of MK but to some extent its immediate spirit of resistance. The role of Nelson Mandela during the trial was highly significant in recharging the spirit of resistance.
Mandela, a trained and articulate lawyer, used the trial as a platform to respond to the oppression of white society in South Africa. During the trial, Nelson Mandela made an historic address to the white members of the court.
“During my life I have dedicated my life to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony, and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if needs be, its is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”19
The courage of Nelson Mandela to defy white law under the threat of death and to make a stand on universally moral grounds elevated the ‘struggle’ of black South Africans and their representatives in the ANC. Mandela gained a high international profile and become the focus point and international figure head in anti-apartheid protests then and for years to come.
Questions to consider:
- Why did Mandela abandon the tactics of non-violent resistance?
- What methods did he push the ANC to adopt?
- What was the significance of the Rivonia Trial in 1963?
- Why was the death penalty withdrawn?
- Explain why Mandela’s role during the trial was so important in the fight against apartheid.
d) The significance of Steven Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement.
The banning of the ANC and the PAC left a political vacuum in Black politics in South Africa during the 1960s. This void was filled by BCM, the Black Consciousness Movement. BCM was led by Steven Biko, a young medical student at the University of Natal. Biko was a powerful writer and was able to express the intellectual theories of Black Consciousness which were coming out of the United States and apply it to the struggle against apartheid.20 Biko formed the SASA (South African Students Association), a break away group from the National Union of Students, which demanded change and argued that whites in South Africa would not take the necessary steps to end apartheid and that only pride in black culture and history and an advancement of black consciousness could end apartheid.
Biko expressed the theory of Black Consciousness in SASA newsletters entitled ‘I write what I Like’. He argued that only blacks could liberate themselves as white society was too accustomed to the racist policies of apartheid. Blacks must end all economic and social dependence on whites to be free. Nicholas Southey of the Department of History -University of South Africa states that:
“Black Consciousness was the promotion of the view that South Africa was a black country on a black continent and that black leadership, interest and values had to be asserted and had to dominate”.21
In order to advance black consciousness and reach more black people, Biko and other University students set up Community Health Clinics, to give free medicine and treatment to those in need. Biko’s work in setting up these Clinics and his published criticisms of white oppression, gained him national and international attention. As a result the apartheid regime had Biko banned in 1973. He was detained without trial.22
From 1973 onwards, Biko come under close scrutiny by the SA police for his political and community programmes. I977 he was once again arrested and held naked in a cell for eighteen days. He was interrogated and beaten into a coma. Biko lay dying from internal bleeding and head wounds and was driven over one thousand kilometres from his King William’s Town cell to a Pretoria army hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.23
The death of Biko was listed as an accident by prison officials. The Minister for Police Kruger stated nationally that: ‘Biko’s death leaves me cold’ and that it was a mystery. The BCM was immediately banned and the medical clinics destroyed by the South African Police.
Questions to consider:
- What methods did Biko use to promote the black cause?
- What was the philosophy of the Black Consciousness Movement?
1976 SOWETO Uprising
The philosophy of black self-empowerment espoused by BCM, and the noble actions and callous death of Steven Biko, influenced many young blacks in South Africa. Steven Biko became a rallying point against the growing oppression of the apartheid regime. Biko’s death fuelled political militancy in many black youth particularly students who linked BCM’s philosophy of education and independence to defeating apartheid.24In 1975 the Minister for Bantu Education M.C. Botha, made it official education policy that half the subjects in school would be taught in Afrikaans (the language of the white oppressor). Most black teachers were unable to instruct in Afrikaans. Black students knew that their education would suffer as a result of this policy.
In June 1976, in SOWETO, a township south west of Johannesburg, school children began rioting against these policies and overcrowding, lack of resources and high fees. Most black students began to realise that the objective of apartheid policy in education, was to prepare black students to be servants. Protestors were also angered by the general poverty in the township and the rising level of unemployment. Over twenty thousand protestors marched in the streets of SOWETO. The police eventually opened fired on the protestors. A thirteen year old primary school boy, Hector Pieterson was the first child to die in the riots.
The uprising in SOWETO was eventually crushed by police, but it had a major impact on white society. The SOWETO uprising was the single largest challenge to the government and the apartheid system ever. The government of Prime Minster J.B Vorster and the white community could no longer ignore the demands for change coming from black people in South Africa. The world also cast it attention on the methods of and tactics of oppression used by the apartheid regime.25 SOWETO was the major turning point in the struggle against apartheid. Some historians have argued that it marked the beginning of the end of apartheid26.
Question to consider:
- The uprising in SOWETO highlights one of the major historical debates in post-apartheid South Africa. Did internal pressure and resistance bring down the apartheid state? Or was it international criticism and economic pressure?
2. Understanding Apartheid: Apartheid Museum, (South Africa, Oxford University Press, 2006) p 53
6. Understanding Apartheid, op cit, p 60.
11. M. Roberts, op cit, pp 44-45.
14. JP. Brits op cit, pp 58-59
17. N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, (London, Abacus, 1994) p 342.
19. N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, (London, Abacus, 1994), p 438.
20. Nicholas Southey, Development in internal black politics (1969-1978): in: JP.Brits, Modern South Africa: Afrikaner power, the politics of race, and resistance, 1902 to the 1970’s (Pretoria, University of South Africa Press, 2005), p 63.
21. Nicholas Southey, Development in internal black politics (1969-1978): in: JP.Brits, Modern South Africa: Afrikaner power, the politics of race, and resistance, 1902 to the 1970’s (Pretoria, University of South Africa Press, 2005), p 64.
24. Nicholas Southey, Development in internal black politics (1969-1978): in: JP.Brits, Modern South Africa: Afrikaner power, the politics of race, and resistance, 1902 to the 1970’s (Pretoria, University of South Africa Press, 2005), p 66.
25. JP. Brits, Modern South Africa: From Soweto to Democracy, p 1.
26. Understanding Apartheid, op cit, p 71.
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