37.3.2: The African National Congress

Origins

The African National Congress (ANC) was formed on January 8, 1912, by Saul Msane, Josiah Gumede, John Dube, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, and Sol Plaatje. It grew from a number of chiefs, people’s representatives, and church organizations as a way to bring Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms. From its inception, the ANC represented both traditional and modern elements of South African black society, from tribal chiefs to church bodies and educated black professionals. Women, however, were only admitted as affiliate members from 1931, and as full members in 1943. The formation of the ANC Youth League in 1944 by Anton Lembede heralded a new generation committed to building non-violent mass action against the legal underpinnings of the white minority’s supremacy.

Native National Congress delegation to England, June 1914: Left to right: Thomas Mapike, Rev. Walter Rubusana, Rev. John Dube, Saul Msane, and Sol Plaatjie. The delegation tried to get the British government to intervene against the Land Act, but the outbreak of the First World War thwarted their hopes for intervention.

In 1946, the ANC allied with the South African Communist Party to assist in the formation of the South African Mine Workers’ Union. After the miners strike became a general labor strike, the ANC’s President General Alfred Bitini Xuma, along with delegates of the South African Indian Congress, attended the 1946 session of the United Nations General Assembly, where the treatment of Indians in South Africa was raised by the government of India. Together, they put the issue of police brutality and the wider struggle for equality in South Africa on the radar of the international community.

Opposition to Apartheid

The return of an Afrikaner-led National Party government by the overwhelmingly white electorate in 1948 signaled the advent of the policy of apartheid. During the 1950s, non-whites were removed from electoral rolls, residence and mobility laws were tightened, and political activities restricted. The successful increase of awareness to the plight of Indians in South Africa under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi inspired blacks in South Africa to resist the racism and inequality that they and other non-whites were experiencing. The ANC also realized it needed a fervent leader like Gandhi was for the Indians, who was, in the words of Nelson Mandela, “willing to violate the law and if necessary go to prison for their beliefs as Gandhi had”. The two groups began working together, forcing themselves to accept one another and abandon their personal prejudices, even jointly campaigning for their struggle to be managed by the United Nations.

In 1949, the ANC saw a jump in membership, which had previously lingered around 5,000, and began to establish a firm presence in South African national society. In June 1952, the ANC joined with other anti-apartheid organizations in a Defiance Campaign against the restriction of political, labor, and residential rights, during which protesters deliberately violated oppressive laws, following the example of Gandhi’s passive resistance in KwaZulu-Natal and in India. The campaign was called off in April 1953 after new laws prohibiting protest meetings were passed. In June 1955, the Congress of the People, organized by the ANC and Indian, Colored, and White organizations at Kliptown near Johannesburg, adopted the Freedom Charter, henceforth the fundamental document of the anti-apartheid struggle, demanding equal rights for all regardless of race. As opposition to the regime’s policies continued, 156 leading members of the ANC and allied organizations were arrested in 1956. The resulting “treason trial” ended with mass acquittals five years later.

The ANC first called for an academic boycott of South Africa in protest of its apartheid policies in 1958 in Ghana. The call was repeated the following year in London.

In 1959, a number of members broke from the ANC because they objected to the ANC’s reorientation away from African nationalist policies. They formed the rival Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), led by Robert Sobukwe.

Protest and Banning

The ANC planned a campaign against the Pass Laws, which required blacks to carry an identity card at all times to justify their presence in white areas, to begin on March 31, 1960. The PAC preempted the ANC by holding unarmed protests 10 days earlier, during which 69 protesters were killed and 180 injured by police fire in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre. In the aftermath of the tragedy, both organizations were banned from political activity. International opposition to the regime increased throughout the 1950s and 1960s, fueled by the growing number of newly independent African nations, the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain, and the civil rights movement in the United States. In 1960, the leader of the ANC, Albert Luthuli, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Murder at Sharpeville: Painting of the Sharpeville massacre, which took place March 21, 1960 in Gauteng province, South Africa. The painting, by Godfrey Rubens, is currently located in the South African Consulate in London.

Violent Political Resistance

Following the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, the ANC leadership concluded that methods of non-violence, such as those utilized by Gandhi against the British Empire, were not suitable against the apartheid system. A military wing was formed in 1961, called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), meaning “Spear of the Nation”, with Mandela as its first leader. MK operations during the 1960s primarily involved targeting and sabotaging government facilities. Mandela was arrested in 1962, convicted of sabotage in 1964, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island, along with Sisulu and other ANC leaders after the Rivonia Trial. During the 1970s and 1980s, the ANC leadership in exile under Oliver Tambo targeted apartheid government leadership, command and control, secret police, and military-industrial complex assets and personnel in decapitation strikes, targeted killings, and guerrilla actions such as bomb explosions in facilities frequented by military and government personnel. A number of civilians were also killed in these attacks. Examples include the Amanzimtoti bombing, the Sterland bomb in Pretoria, the Wimpy bomb in Pretoria, the Juicy Lucy bomb in Pretoria, and the Magoo’s bar bombing in Durban. ANC acts of sabotage aimed at government institutions included the bombing of the Johannesburg Magistrates Court, the attack on the Koeberg nuclear power station, the rocket attack on Voortrekkerhoogte in Pretoria, and the 1983 Church Street bombing in Pretoria, which killed 16 and wounded 130.

The ANC was classified as a terrorist organization by the South African government and some Western countries, including the United States and United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the ANC had a London office from 1978 to 1994 at 28 Penton Street in Islington, now marked with a plaque. During this period, the South African military engaged in a number of raids and bombings on ANC bases in Botswana, Mozambique, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Dulcie September, a member of the ANC investigating the arms trade between France and South Africa, was assassinated in Paris in 1988. In the ANC’s training camps, the ANC faced allegations that dissident members faced torture, detention without trial, and even execution.

Violence also occurred between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party, a political party that grew out of a 1920s cultural organization established for Zulus. Between 1985 and 1989, 5,000 civilians were killed during in-fighting between the two parties. Massacres of each other’s supporters include the Shell House massacre and the Boipatong massacre.

As the years progressed, ANC attacks, coupled with international pressure and internal dissent, increased in South Africa. The ANC received financial and tactical support from the USSR, which orchestrated military involvement with surrogate Cuban forces via Angola. However, the fall of the USSR after 1991 brought an end to funding and changed the attitude of some Western governments that previously supported the apartheid regime as an ally against communism. The South African government found itself under increasing internal and external pressure, and this, together with a more conciliatory tone from the ANC, resulted in a change in the political landscape. State President F.W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC and other banned organizations on February 2, 1990, and began peace talks for a negotiated settlement to end apartheid.

Attributions

• The African National Congress
  • “History of the African National Congress.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_African_National_Congress. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Apartheid.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Inkatha Freedom Party.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkatha_Freedom_Party. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “ANC1914.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ANC1914.jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.
  • “Murder_at_Sharpeville_21_March_1960.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Murder_at_Sharpeville_21_March_1960.jpg. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.