At its conference in December 1951, the ANC decided to launch the Defiance Campaign. The story of this dignified, disciplined, and peaceful campaign is well known. It won many friends for the African cause in South Africa and abroad, and served to focus the attention of influential sectors of world opinion on the South African political scene. Within South Africa, the Defiance Campaign strengthened the liberation movement and set the tone for future action. Although toward the end of the campaign the Africans were provoked into some violence, they had amply demonstrated their capacity for self-discipline and their readiness for militant struggle. This meant that it was possible, without resorting to violence, to force the government into a position in which its policy became unworkable.
In the years following 1952 hundreds of leaders were banned from taking part in political activities or attending gatherings. Many were restricted to defined areas while others were banished from their homes. Scores were imprisoned, and meetings and processions were prohibited in many parts of the country. Despite all this, however, and despite the fact that the most influential leaders were cut off from the people, the pressures of mass political action throughout the country continued to rise, compelling the government to fall back on an ever-increasing list of repressive and restrictive laws. It made greater use of the police force, equipping it with a growing pile of arms, ranging from locally produced pistols to tanks supplied by Great Britain.
When these measures failed, the government resorted to banning political organisations and placing the whole or parts of the country under a State of Emergency. The reaction of the ANC to its banning in 1960 was to announce that it would conduct the liberation struggle underground. The March 1961 (All-in African) conference of 1 500 delegates representing 145 organisations, at which Nelson Mandela was the main speaker, was organised largely under illegal conditions. It demonstrated the power of the underground organisation and the unity of the people. Following this conference, preparations started for a three-day national strike to commence on 29 May 1961. The strike drew unprecedented support from the mass of the African population and was fully backed by the Indian and coloured communities. Faced with this tremendous political demonstration – which was a triumphant breakthrough for a liberation movement operating under a cloud of repressive legislative prohibitions and restrictions – the Verwoerd government abandoned the political fight and took to arms. The unarmed demonstrators and would-be strikers were confronted with practically the entire South African Army, fully equipped and ready for war.
An intensive policy of soliciting and mobilising world condemnation of apartheid started shortly after the launching of the Defiance Campaign. Visitors to South Africa – numerous journalists, distinguished authors, leading world personalities, and representatives and members of overseas organisations – were briefed in detail on the tyranny of apartheid. By means of annual memoranda sent by the ANC and the SAIC to the United Nations and by South African delegations attending international conferences, the word “apartheid” spread to many parts of the world. The arrest of African leaders on charges of high treason followed by an appeal by Africans for an international boycott of South African goods further increased world support, and offered people and organisations in different countries an opportunity to give tangible expression to their sympathies for our cause. By 1960 the degree of world interest in South Africa was such that the Sharpeville massacres provoked an explosive and universal barrage of indignant protests. This cold-blooded carnage brought the whole of mankind face to face with the essentially inhuman and barbarous nature of apartheid.
Many people and organisations in different countries, notably in Britain, Scandinavia, and the United States, took up the issue, and, since 1960, campaigns have been organised to rally support for the boycott of South African goods and for other economic sanctions. Several governments, particularly the newly independent African states, Asian nations, and the socialist countries, have supported United Nations resolutions calling for economic sanctions against South Africa. The United States and Great Britain, which, of all the UN member states, have the biggest stake in the South African economy, have, however, consistently and strenuously resisted the move to impose sanctions on South Africa. This has so far made it impossible for the UN to employ the only form of peaceful and effective intervention open to it, and has consequently enabled the South African government to pursue its policies with only limited interference from the outside world. Hence the emergence of violent methods of struggle in South Africa.
It would be wrong to conclude that it is now too late to influence the trend of events in South Africa by way of external pressures. On the contrary, the challenge of the present situation is the greater not only to those who abhor racialism and all that goes by the name of apartheid and white minority rule, but also to those who disapprove of all violence. The sooner South Africa is isolated economically, politically and culturally, the shorter will be the duration of this, the last and bitterest phase of the struggle for human rights and freedom in Africa.
Fight to be free
(Report of the National Executive Committee to the ANC annual conference, 17-18 December 1955)
We of the African National Congress meet once again to review South African and world events; our Congress policy of rights and progress for all the people of our country; our desire for world peace and friendship among the peoples of the world.
Apartheid is enslaving the people of South Africa today but in the great world outside, race discrimination and colonialism are being replaced by human brotherhood and the independence of nations. Countries which less than one decade ago were the subjects of colonial powers have thrown off their bonds and asserted their right to take part in international affairs as complete equals. In the last ten years the maps have had to be redrawn, the face of the world has changed, the people of great parts of Asia have risen to their feet, and now the freedom struggle is spreading to our own continent, Africa. Centuries of colonial oppression have been ended for many millions and for millions more the struggle for liberation is reaching new heights. We do not doubt that within our lifetimes the millions still oppressed throughout the world will govern themselves freely.
The road to freedom is no easy one. Savage wars have been unleashed against the peoples of Kenya, Malaya and Vietnam; savage campaigns of annihilation against the peoples of French Africa, by those seeking to stamp out the people’s freedom movements. The colonialists strive to prevent the floodlight of world enquiry being focussed on what happens in their colonies; they seek to deny the United Nations the right to discuss their policies and to actively safeguard those liberties enshrined in the UN Charter and Declaration of Human Rights.
The deprivation of human liberties; policies of genocide or mass extermination against a subject people; the denial of rights to a people because of their colour; these evils are not the domestic concern of ruling nations: they are the affair of all peoples. Even from those colonies in Africa where the people have been kept in the most dire subjection, denied rights of assembly and organisation and cut off from contact with the outside world, the demands for self-government, for independence and for freedom are ringing out.
Colonialism will be overthrown. It will take longer in some countries than others. Nowhere will freedom come about independently of the people’s struggles, and everywhere the colonial and master powers will fight bitterly to retain their possessions. But everywhere the people’s movements are growing, developing, maturing; new militant forms of struggle are adopted; a new determination is growing among the people; a brotherhood and a confidence for freedom are being forged and the day to liberation draws nearer.
This was the great significance of the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in April of this year. The conference of 29 Asian and African powers represented the new era of colonial liberation and was therefore one of the most important events of our time.
There entered into the world arena a great new force for freedom and for peace. The resurgent peoples of Asia and Africa who for centuries experienced the bitterness of colonial oppression will not rest until all are liberated from this evil. So the conference at Bandung pledged to fight until the last