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IN CONTEXT

IDEOLOGY

Racial equality

FOCUS

Civil disobedience

BEFORE

1948 The Afrikaaner-dominated National Party is elected to power, marking the start of apartheid in South Africa.

1961 Frantz Fanon writes The Wretched of the Earth, outlining the process of armed struggle against an oppressor.

1963 Martin Luther King delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC.

AFTER

1993 The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Mandela for his work toward reconciliation in South Africa.

1994 In the country’s first free and multiracial elections, Mandela is voted the first black president of South Africa.

The fight against apartheid in South Africa was one of the defining political battles of the late 20th century. From 1948, the election of the apartheid National Party spelled the beginning of a period of oppression by the white minority. Nelson Mandela was at the forefront of the resistance, organizing public protest and mobilizing support through his involvement in the African National Congress (ANC) party. This grew in response to the legislation implemented by the new government and, by the 1950s, a popular movement was taking part in the resistance to apartheid, drawing its inspiration from civil rights leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

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"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society."

Nelson Mandela

For freedom

The strategy pursued by the ANC was intended to make effective government impossible, through a mixture of civil disobedience, the mass withdrawal of labor, and public protest. By the mid-1950s the ANC and other groups within the anti-apartheid movement had articulated their demands in the Freedom Charter. This enshrined the values of democracy, participation, and freedom of movement and expression, which were the mainstays of the protesters’ demands. However, it was treated by the government as an act of treason.

From protest to violence

The effect of this dissent on the apartheid regime was gradual, but telling. By the 1950s, although the democratic process was still closed to most nonwhites, a number of political parties had begun to promote some form of democratic rights—albeit only partial—for black people in South Africa.

  This was significant since, by gaining the support of some of the politically active white minority, the antiapartheid movement was able to demonstrate that it was not mobilizing along racial lines. This fit Mandela’s view of the struggle, which was inclusive in its vision of a new South Africa. He emphasized that the primary motivation for the protest was to combat racial injustice and white supremacy, rather than to attack the white minority themselves. Despite the well-organized and active approach of the ANC, dramatic reform was still not forthcoming, and demands for a full extension of voting rights were not met. Instead, as the intensity of protest escalated, the government’s response became ever more violent, culminating in the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when police shot dead 69 people who were protesting against laws that required black people to carry pass books.

  However, the struggle against apartheid was not wholly peaceful itself. Like other revolutionary figures, Mandela had come to the conclusion that the only way to combat the apartheid system was through armed struggle. In 1961, Mandela, with other leaders of the ANC, established Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, an act which contributed to his later imprisonment. Despite this, his belief in civil protest and the principle of inclusion gained worldwide support, culminating in Mandela’s eventual release and the fall of apartheid.

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The battle to end apartheid was not an attack on South Africa’s white minority, Mandela asserted, it was against injustice, and as such was a more inclusive call for change.

NELSON MANDELA

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in the Transkei, South Africa, in 1918. His father was advisor to the chief of the Tembu tribe. Mandela moved to Johannesburg as a young man and studied law. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) party in 1944 and became involved in active resistance against the apartheid regime’s policies in 1948. In 1961, he helped establish the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, partly in response to the Sharpeville Massacre a year earlier. In 1964, he received a sentence of life imprisonment, remaining incarcerated until 1990, and spending 18 years on Robben Island.

  On his release from prison, Mandela became the figurehead of the dismantling of apartheid, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and becoming president of South Africa in 1994. Since stepping down in 1999, he has been involved with a number of causes, including work to tackle the AIDS pandemic.

Key works

1965 No Easy Walk to Freedom

1994 Long Walk to Freedom

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