The introduction of apartheid policies coincided with the adoption by the ANC in 1949 of its Program of Action, which expresses the renewed militancy of the 1940s.

The Program embodied a rejection of white rule and a call to action in the form of protests, strikes, and demonstrations. A decade of turbulent mass action followed in resistance to the imposition of even harsher forms of segregation and oppression.

The Challenge Campaign of the early 1950s took mass mobilization to new heights under the banner of nonviolent resistance to pass laws. These actions were based on the philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi.

A critical step in the rise of non-racism was the formation of the Congressional Alliance, which included the Congress of India, the Congress of the Colored People, a small organization of white congresses (the Congress of Democrats), and the South African Congress. of Trade Unions.

The Alliance gave formal expression to an emerging unity across racial and class lines that manifested itself in the Challenge Campaign and other mass protests of this period, which also saw women’s resistance take on a more organized character with the formation of the Federation of South African Women.

In 1955, a Freedom Charter was drawn up at the People’s Congress in Soweto. The Charter enunciates the principles of the struggle, linking the movement to a culture of human rights and not racism. Over the next several decades, the Freedom Charter rose to an important symbol of the freedom struggle.

The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), founded by Robert Sobukwe and based on the philosophy of Africanism and anti-communism, broke away from the Congressional Alliance in 1959. The CAP motto “Africa for Africans” was strongly pan-African in nature.

The initial response from the state, harsh as it was, was not yet as draconian as it was going to be. His attempt to prosecute more than 150 anti-apartheid leaders for treason, in a trial that began in 1956, ended in acquittals in 1961. But by then, organized mass opposition had been banned.

Things came to a head in Sharpeville in March 1960 when 69 anti-pass protesters from the PACs were killed. A state of emergency was imposed and detention without trial was introduced.

Black political organizations were banned and their leaders went into exile or were arrested. In this climate, the ANC and the PAC abandoned their long-standing commitment to nonviolent resistance and turned to armed struggle, waged from the independent countries of the north.

Top leaders still within the country, including members of the newly formed military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), were arrested in 1963. In the ‘Rivonia trial’, Mandela, Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada and other convicts for sabotage (in exchange for treason, the original charge) they were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The 1960s was a decade of overwhelming repression and relative political disorder among blacks at home. The armed action beyond the borders was effectively contained by the State.

The resurgence of resistance politics in the early 1970s was dramatic. The Black Awareness Movement, led by Steve Biko (who was assassinated while in custody in 1977), reawakened a sense of pride and self-worth in black people. The news of Steve Biko’s brutal death resonated around the world and sparked unprecedented outrage.

As capitalist economies sputtered with the 1973 oil crisis, black unions revived. A wave of strikes reflected a new militancy that implied a better organization and was attracting new sectors, in particular intellectuals and the student movement, to the mass struggle and to the debate on the principles that sustained it.

The year 1976 marked the beginning of a sustained revolt against apartheid. In June, Soweto school students rose up against apartheid education, followed by youth uprisings across the country. Youth activism became the most effective arm of resistance politics in the 1980s.

The United Democratic Front and the informal umbrella, the Democratic Mass Movement, emerged as legal vehicles of the democratic forces fighting for liberation. Clergymen played a prominent public role in these movements.

The participation of workers in the resistance acquired a new dimension with the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the National Council of Trade Unions.

Popular anger was directed against all those who were seen as collaborating with the government in achieving its goals, and the black neighborhoods became practically ungovernable. Since the mid-1980s, regional and national states of emergency have been enforced.

The Inkatha movement, which from 1979 became increasingly opposed to the external liberation movement, played a role somewhere between the eighties. Emphasizing Zulu ethnicity and traditionalism, Inkatha claimed a massive following in the rural areas of KwaZulu’s homeland.

Its leader, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, carved out a distinctive niche, refusing “independence” for KwaZulu but squeezing the sponsorship of the apartheid state by placing Inkatha in the role of loyal opposition. The state sought to use the Inkatha structures as substitutes in its war against the liberation movement.

The battles for territory between Inkatha and the ANC became a very destructive accompaniment to South Africa’s transition to democracy. Developments in neighboring states in the face of massive resistance to the white minority and colonial rule, notably the Portuguese decolonization in the mid-1970s and the abdication of the Zimbabwean minority regime in 1980, left South Africa exposed as the last. bastion of white supremacy.

The government embarked on a series of reforms, an early example being the recognition of black unions to stabilize the workforce. In 1983, the Constitution was amended to allow Indian and minorities of color limited participation in separate and subordinate Houses of Parliament. The vast majority of these groups rejected the Tricameral dispensation, yet the apartheid regime kept it intact.

PW Botha further modified the Westminster constitutional model by instituting an executive presidency and eliminating the role of prime minister. In 1986, the pass laws were removed. These initiatives went hand in hand with the militarization of society and the predominance of the State Security Council, which usurped the role of the executive in crucial aspects.

Under states of emergency, a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy was implemented to combat what, in the mid-1980s, was an insurrectionary spirit endemic to the land. At the same time, the international community strengthened its support for the anti-apartheid cause. A series of sanctions and boycotts were instituted, both unilaterally and through the United Nations (UN).

FW de Klerk, who had replaced Botha as state president in 1989, announced at the opening of Parliament in February 1990 the lifting of the ban on liberation movements and the release of political prisoners, notably Nelson Mandela.

Several factors led to this step. International financial, commercial, sporting and cultural sanctions were clearly scathing, even if South Africa was nowhere near collapse, militarily or economically.

These sanctions were requested in a strategy coordinated by the internal and external anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The ANC, widely recognized as the leading liberation organization, was increasingly seen as a government on hold. International support for the liberation movement came from various countries around the world, in particular the former Eastern Bloc and the Nordic countries, as well as the Non-Aligned Movement.

During the 1980s, the ANC moved its headquarters from London, England to Lusaka, Zambia. The other liberation organizations experienced increasingly diverse internal and external pressures and did not enjoy much popular support.

Massive internal and external resistance continued and it was obvious that Botha’s reform strategy combined with repression had failed to stabilize the internal situation.

To outside observers, and also in the eyes of a growing number of white South Africans, apartheid was exposed as morally bankrupt, indefensible and impervious to reform. The collapse of global communism, the withdrawal of Soviet and Cuban support for the MPLA regime in Angola, and the negotiated independence of Namibia, formerly South West Africa, administered by South Africa as a mandate from the League of Nations since 1919, did much to change the mentality. of whites. Whites could no longer demonize the ANC and the PAC as fronts of international communism.

White South Africa had also changed more profoundly. Afrikaner nationalism had lost much of its raison d’être. Many Afrikaners had become urban, middle-class, and relatively wealthy. Their ethnic grievances and their attachment to ethnic causes and symbols had greatly diminished.

Much of the central NP constituency was willing to explore broader national identities, including across racial divisions, and yearned for international respectability. Apartheid looked more and more like a straitjacket than a safeguard. By 1982, the disenchanted hardliners had separated from the NP to form the Conservative Party, leaving the NP open to more flexible and modernizing influences. After this split, factions within the Afrikaner elite began to speak openly in favor of a more inclusive society, leading to further friction with the NP government, which became increasingly militaristic and authoritarian.

Several business, student and academic Afrikaners held public and private meetings with the ANC in exile. Secret talks were held between the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and government ministers about a new dispensation for South Africa in which blacks are an important part.

Within the country, mass action became the order of the day. The laws and symbols of petty apartheid were openly challenged and eliminated. Coupled with a declining economy and mounting international pressure, these events made historic changes inevitable.