HIST2614 PART 2

THE RISE OF APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE RESISTANCE AGAINST IT (c. 1948 – 1976)

Theme Two Slides

Urban Resistance against Apartheid (1948-1960)
Introduction
•For this theme we are examining the various forms of resistance adopted by groups that were racially
marginalized by the apartheid system in the period 1948 to 1960
•We will unpack key moments, activities, actors, and organizations of internal resistance during the first 12
years of apartheid and the response of the state.
•These encompass:
 The Defiance Campaign
 The Congress of the People and The Freedom Charter
 Treason Trial
 Sharpeville Massacre.
•Overall, this theme focuses on the impact of the rise of the NP and its apartheid system; the strategies
deployed to challenge it, its successes and failures, and the broader consequences for both the state and the
anti-apartheid struggle.
Transition from pre-1948 to post-1948

 In the previous lecture we established that racial segregation was economically, socially, and politically
stifling and burdensome particularly to black South Africans from the earliest times since arrival of whites
at the Cape in 1652.
 These groups would express their anger towards the white system in many but disconnected and less
organized ways.
 However, systematic and organized resistance against racial segregation emerged after 1948 in response to
the particularly harsh segregationist policies.
 Forms of resistance mutated from individual, small group passive resistance to more organized, moree
conformational mass challenges to the state.
Key organisations

There were many organisations that challenged the more oppressive apartheid system in 1948. But we will
focus on the activities of the most visible and representative of these organizations: ANC and, later on, the PAC.
African National Congress

 The most visible representation of organized resistance was the ANC Youth League.
 Frustrated by the establishment of state-backed racialization of society in 1948.
 Believed ANC was more pacifist, reformist, moderate and narrow in appeal; and the struggle stagnant
 Led by Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Nelson Mandela, it rejuvenated the struggle for racial equality.
 ANCYL became the primary force in opposition to the government after 1948
 Advocated a radical black nationalist programme that combined Africanist and Marxist ideas
 South “to unite the largest possible cross-section of South Africans” to overthrow white authority through
mass campaigns.
 It laid out plans for, and carried out, strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience, with occasional violence.
Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC)

 The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) presented itself as more radical than the ANC.
 It broke away from the African National Congress in 1959, as it rejected ANC's idea that "the land belongs to all who live in it both white
and black" and its multiracialist worldview. It sought a South Africa based on black African nationalism.
 Aggrieved that the ANC abandoned the more radical 1949 Programme of Action with the more racially inclusive Freedom Charter of
1955.
 Robert Sobukwe and PAC believed that the ANC’s alliance with white, Coloured, and Indian organizations had impeded the struggle for
Black liberation: South Africa belonged to indigenous African people and that the “oppressed and oppressor”, “exploiter and exploited”,
the “land dispossessor and the dispossessed" could not be reconciled.
 Even sympathetic whites could not be trusted as they had dual loyalties: in Africa and in Europe.
 On 21 March 1960, the PAC organised a campaign against pass laws in Sharpeville.
 Immediately after the Sharpeville massacre the NP Government banned both the PAC, forcing the organization to form an armed wing,
Azanian People's Liberation Army.
 Read one of its statements: “We aim, politically, at government of the Africans by the Africans, for the Africans, with everybody who
owes his only loyalty to Africa and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being regarded as an African."
 It is Pan Africanism emphasized three principles: African nationalism, socialism, and continental unity. Its body of ideas drew largely from
the teachings of Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, and W. E. B. Du Bois.
 For PAC, the “liberated” South Africa would be renamed Azania: land of Black people.
Defiance Campaign of 1952: Rebellion
Against Unjust Laws
 The post-1948 period saw the ANC abandoning its traditional reliance on tactics of moderation such as
petitions and deputations and the deployment of the POA.
 The period 1950 - 1952 began with a commitment to more forceful African nationalism and mass action and
to tactics of boycotts, strikes and civil disobedience.
 The period culminated in the Defiance Campaign of 1952, the largest and first post-1948 mass scale non-
violent resistance ever seen in South Africa and the first campaign pursued jointly by all racial groups under
the leadership of the ANC and the South African Indian Congress (SAIC). It challenged 6 apartheid laws:
 The pass laws
 Group Areas Act
 Separate Representation of Voters Act
 Bantu Authorities Act
 Suppression of Communism Act
 The stock limitation laws
Prelude to the Defiance Campaign

 D.F. Malan's National Party’s 1948 electoral victory facilitated a massive social engineering programme,
whose cornerstone was the enactment of new apartheid laws and stricter application of existing
discriminatory legislation.
 Blacks, Indians and coloureds were widely affected.
 Policy was not simply a small-scale social rearrangement, but a large-scale process to deny political
representation and participation of non-whites, restricting political power to white people.
 Its intensity triggered the tide of popular resistance to the apartheid state in the 1950s.
 All sections of the society were aggrieved: workers, students, women, farmers, artists, sportspersons etc.
ANC was galvanized to consider civil disobedience – demonstrations, mass action, boycotts, strikes etc –
under the “Programme of Action” adopted on 17 December 1949
The ANC’s Programme of Action

 The POA was influenced by the ‘African Claims in South Africa’ document which was earlier adopted by the
ANC in 1943, itself influenced by the ‘Atlantic Charter’ of 1941.
 The ‘African Claims’ document, adopted by the ANC at its national conference in Bloemfontein in 1943,
called for self-determination, demanded universal suffrage, rejected all forms of discrimination, included a
bill of rights and was adopted in response to the principles set out in the ‘Atlantic Charter’. It spelled out the
ANC’s vision for South Africa following the Second World War. However, these hopes were dashed by the
outcome of the 1948 General Election.
 POA was welcomed by both radical Africanists within the ANC and multi-racialists.
Atlantic Charter
•Adopted by then US President, Franklin Roosevelt, and then UK Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in 1941
during the Second World War. The basis for the modern United Nations, it called for respect for self-
determination and self-government, and better social and economic conditions for all.
• But some within the ANC did not like it, advocating a narrow, black nationalist ideological approach to
resistance and favoured radical resistance, including violence.
The 1952 Confrontation

 In 1952, the Joint Planning Council, made up of members from the ANC, the South African Indian Congress
and the Coloured People's Congress (and other smaller organisations) demanded from the government a
repeal six apartheid laws.
 PM Malan and the Native Affairs Department rejected the ultimatum.
 In April 1952 the ANC invited volunteers to sign the following Defiance Campaign pledge:
• I, the undersigned, Volunteer of the National Volunteer Corps, do hereby solemnly pledge and bind
myself to serve my country and my people in accordance with the directives of the National
Volunteer Corps and to participate fully and without reservations to the best of my ability in the
Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws. I shall obey the orders of my leader under whom I shall be
placed and strictly abide by the rules and regulations of the National Volunteer Corps framed from
time to time. It shall be my duty to keep myself physically, mentally and morally fit.
The Course of the Defiance Campaign

 The campaign started on 26 June 1952 declaring non-violence

 Openly defied apartheid laws to incite mass arrests which it was hoped would overwhelm the government.
 Volunteers, including Mandela, among other things, went to “white only” areas after curfew hours in major
city centres across South Africa.
 Upon arrest, volunteers would not defend themselves in court and would refuse to pay fines, hoping that
mass imprisonment would overwhelm the justice and security system.
 Some would avail themselves for arrest at police stations singing a song that included the words: “Hey
Malan, open the jail doors, we want to get in”.
Outcomes, Reactions and Significance of
the Defiance Campaign
 At the end of the campaign in December 1952, almost 8,000 had been arrested, and 26 Africans and 6
whites had died.
 The government passed or invoked tougher and more restrictive laws such as the Unlawful Organisations
Act, the Suppression of Communism Act, the Public Safety Act, and the Criminal Procedures Act.
 Although the campaign did not achieve the desired aim of overturning the apartheid laws, it was successful
in several other respects:
 ANC membership grew from 7,000 to 100,000: growing active opposition to apartheid
 The issue won United Nations recognition, and became of international concern.
 The Defiance Campaign saw the movement of the ANC from moderation to militancy.
 It also demonstrated the potential power of organized resistance.
 It marked the beginning of organized non-racial co-operation against apartheid.
Congress of the People and the Freedom
Charter (1955)
 As the 1950s wore on, it had become clear that the unity of organisations and races was beneficial in the
fight against apartheid.
 In 1953 prominent black academic Z. K. Matthews proposed that a “Congress of the People” be organised
to gather and document the wishes/vision of the people in the context of the yoke of apartheid.
 The Congress was eventually organised by the National Action Council, a multi-racial organisation which
later became known as the Congress Alliance (ANC, the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), the South
African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), the Coloured People's Congress (CPC), the South African
Congress of Democrats (COD)) and held in Kliptown, Johannesburg, on 26 June 1955.
 A document known as the Freedom Charter was developed and ratified by the over 3000 delegates.
 The Freedom Charter, engaged with issues of land, the economy, human rights, education, and law, among
others and became the statement of core principles of the Alliance and a key symbol of internal resistance
against apartheid.
The Freedom Charter
Some of its key points were that:
 South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black or white
 South Africa should be a just and non-racial society
 There should be one-person-one-vote democracy in a unified state
 All people should be treated equally before the law
 Land should be shared among those who work it
 People should share in the country's wealth
* The last two were used by the state as proof that this was a communist document.
The Congress of the People and the
Freedom Charter
•Significance of the Event
 The Congress of the People led to the anti-apartheid movement assuming a fully non-racial national
liberation movement in character.
 The Charter became the guiding document for the struggle throughout the remainder of the apartheid
years.
 Drew many organizations into a united front known as the Congress Alliance.
 Caught popular imagination in South Africa, and further internationalized the struggle.
 It broadened the geographical and social base of the liberation movement, raising the political
consciousness of the masses.
Freedom Charter and the 1956 Treason
Trial
 In December 1956 156 attendees and executive members of the ANC, SACP, SAIC, and COD, were eventually charged with high
treason.
 Indeed, the treason trial was meant to strike fear in “subversive minds”. Said Albert Luthuli:
“The treason trial must occupy a special place in South African history. That grim pre-dawn raid, deliberately calculated to strike terror
into hesitant minds and impress upon the entire nation the determination of the governing clique to stifle all opposition, made one
hundred and fifty-six of us, belonging to all the races of our land, into a group of accused facing one of the most serious charges in any
legal system.”
 The arrests, conducted by the dreaded Security Branch of the police, were under the notorious Suppression of Communism Act.
 Speeches at the gathering, the creation of the Freedom Charter, the need to seek help abroad, etc were used by the prosecution as
evidence of subversion.
 Over 5000 black South Africans would occasionally disrupt the proceedings by singing, chanting slogans, or seeking to forcefully
enter the court precincts.
 The defence argued that the Freedom Charter was not treasonous as it called for non-violence, peace, and racial harmony in South
Africa.
 The defense team successfully proved that the ANC was not a communist organization, that treason could be proven, and that
there was no evidence of violence being used to overthrow the state.
Select List of Treason Trial Defendants

 Ruth First, SACP, journalist and wife of Slovo

 Archie Gumede, ANC, later leader of the United Democratic Front.
 Helen Joseph, white trade unionist and women's leader (one of the final 30 defendants)
 Ahmed Kathrada, accused number three, secretary-general of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress (one of
the final 30 defendants)
 Moses Kotane, ANC delegate to the Asian-African Conference in Bandung
 Chief Luthuli, known as Chief Luthuli, then-president of the ANC, later released for lack of evidence.
 Nelson Mandela, ANC (one of the final 30 defendants)
 Joe Modise (ANCYL Leader, then a working class township youth working as a bus driver)
 Lillian Ngoyi (one of the final 30 defendants)
 Walter Sisulu, ANC (one of the final 30 defendants)
 Joe Slovo, SACP lawyer (one of the final 30 defendants)
 Oliver Tambo, released for lack of evidence, goes into exile to co-ordinate the ANC from abroad.
Sharpeville Massacre, 1960

 South African governments since the eighteenth century had imposed influx control measures on black South Africans into cities.
 Pass laws, intended to control, restrict, and direct this movement and employment, were updated in the 1950s.
 Individuals over 16 were required to carry passbooks, which contained an identity card, employment and influx authorisation from a
labour bureau, name of employer and address, and details of personal history.
 In 1960 the ANC prepared to initiate a campaign of protests against pass laws.
 These protests were to begin on 31 March 1960, but the rival PAC, led by Robert Sobukwe, decided to pre-empt the ANC by launching
its own campaign ten days earlier, on 21 March, arguing that the ANC could not deliver as it was reformist rather than radical.
 PAC actively organized the demonstration, distributing pamphlets and appearing in person to urge people not to go to work on the day
of the protest. They also engaged in coercive measures such as cutting telephone lines into Sharpeville, barricading roads and
intimidating drivers etc, to ensure a huge turnout.
 A crowd estimated to be between 7,000 and 10,000 (sometimes 20000) marched to the police station in the township of Sharpeville
offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their passbooks.
 The police opened fire on the crowd, killing 69 with 180 injured, including women and children. Some were shot in the back as they
fled. 11 000 were arrested under emergency regulations.
 In present-day South Africa, 21 March, the day of the Sharpeville massacre, is commemorated annually as the Human Rights Day.
Sharpeville Massacre: Responses and
Consequences
 The uproar among South Africa's black population was immediate, and the following week saw demonstrations, protest
marches, strikes, and riots around the country.
 On 30 March 1960, the government declared a state of emergency, detaining more than 18,000 people, including prominent
anti-apartheid activists who were known as members of the Congress Alliance including Nelson Mandela.
 A storm of international protest followed the Sharpeville shootings, including sympathetic demonstrations in many countries.
 The international media, artists, governments and organizations expressed outrage and began to give the issue more systematic
and sustained attention.
 April 1960, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 134, its strongest condemnation of the NP government.
 The country found itself increasingly isolated in the international community.
 The crisis also played a role in South Africa's withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Nations in 1961 (from which it was being
rejected anyway).
 The Sharpeville massacre contributed to the banning of the PAC and ANC as illegal organisations.
 The massacre was one of the catalysts for a shift from passive resistance and civil disobedience including student strikes, work
boycotts and other peaceful non-cooperation strategies between 1950 and 1960 to the post-1960 armed resistance by these
organisations.
• *Sharpeville marked a turning point in the history of South Africa.
Readings
The general readings for the theme are: Dubow, Saul. Apartheid, 1948-1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014, pp. 10-20, pp. 32-38, pp. 53-68; Posel, Deborah. “The Apartheid Project, 1948–1970.” In The Cambridge
History of South Africa, Volume 2, 1885-1994, edited by Robert Ross, Anne Kelk Mager, and Bill Nasson, 319-
368. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Read pp. 331-345.
Additional readings: Carrim, Yunis. “The Defiance Campaign: Protests Politics on the March”. Indicator SA,
Volume 6, No. 4, 1989, pp. 49-52; Reeves, Ambrose. “The Sharpeville Massacre of 20 March 1960: Its Historical
Significance in the Struggle Against Apartheid”. Centre against Apartheid, Special Issue, 1984; Karis, Thomas.
“The South African Treason Trial” Political Science Quarterly, Volume 76, No. 2, 1961, pp. 217-24.