SA Chapter 2

• Increased Opposition to Apartheid

  1. Peaceful protest in the 1950s had achieved little due to repressive legislation and the Treason Trial

  2. ANC and PAC split in 1959, dividing the opposition but helping mobilise new communities

  3. Growth of rural movements challenging the government at the local level

  4. Pass laws, municipal rents, and prohibitions on liquor sales at the heart of protest
• Sharpeville incident in 1960
• PAC's challenge to the ideology of the CA and rejection of the Freedom Charter


  • Had an ill-defined idea of freedom
  • Thought mass anger would sustain a mass movement
  • Simple philosophy that gained support in the Witwatersrand and rural areas
  • Estimated that by 1959 its membership exceeded the ANC by as many as 25,000
• Sharpeville incident details


  1. Sobukwe decided upon mass action on 21st March 1960

  2. Activists offered themselves up for arrest to cripple the police and judiciary

  3. Sharpeville was politicised by various factors

  4. Police opened fire on the crowd resulting in casualties

  5. At least 69 killed and 187 injured

  6. Photographs of Sharpeville provoked outrage nationally and internationally

  7. UN Security Council resolution condemning Sharpeville and calling for a reversal of apartheid
• Protests in Cape Town on 21st March 1960
• Protests in Cape Town

  • Townships of Langa and Nyanga were major centres of protest
  • Philip Kgosana and Christopher Mlokoti in charge of the PAC branch in Cape Town
  • Crowd of 6000 gathered in Langa and police response
  • Rioting spread throughout the night
  • African workers on strike and demonstrations led by Kgosana
  • Police violence and armed forces deployment to break the strike
• State response to Protests

  1. The government showed readiness to use force and violence to impose authority

  2. State of Emergency declared on 30th March 1960
• A series of clashes occurred at Cato Manor in Durban for several days
• Government response to Protests

  The government showed it was prepared to use force and violence to impose its authority
• State of Emergency declared. Public meetings outlawed and police could detain people without restriction. Over 10,000 subsequently arrested under the Public Safety Act of 1953


  30th March 1960
• Mandela was arrested in Orlando during a dawn raid. Luthuli was arrested and assaulted. Slovo was arrested as he was about to appear in court defending the families of black miners
• Unlawful Organisations Act passed, banning parties that threatened public order, aimed at ANC and PAC

  8th April
• Attempted assassination of Verwoerd


  9th April
• In response to pass-burnings, Africans were told they could no longer draw their pensions without them
• Vorster, appointed in 1961, instituted a new part-time Police Reserve-Unit, which developed into the Security Police
• Sabotage Act passed, imposing death penalty for sabotage and onus on accused to prove innocence. Allowed to use torture, including electric shocks, to extract confessions


  1962
• General Law Amendment Act passed, allowing arrest of anyone for 90 days without charges. Could be extended indefinitely. New radio network set up for direct communication between police stations and HQ in Pretoria


  1963
• Bantu Laws Amendment Act came into effect, allowing authorities to deport any African from urban or white farming areas for any reason


  1964
• The 'Sobukwe clause' allowed the police to keep prisoners beyond their jail terms. Sobukwe was the first victim
• Rural Rebellion in Mpondoland
• South Africa becomes a Republic in 1961
• NP wanted SA to be free from British constitutional authority remnants and held a whites-only referendum in 1960
• 1958 election - NP had a secure majority - 66% seats and 55% white votes
• British PM Harold Macmillan visited SA in February 1960 as part of a tour of Africa
• Macmillan's 'Wind of Change' speech in February 1960 praised SA's achievements and highlighted links with British industry
• MacMillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ speech

  February 1960
• MacMillan praised SA’s achievements and highlighted the links with British industry
• MacMillan wasn't trying to call for radical change but articulating conservative realism guiding decolonisation
• Verwoerd emphasised white determination to stay in power in response to MacMillan's speech
• 90% turn-out, 52% white South Africans voted for a republic


  October 1960
• Most support for the republic in Transvaal and Orange Free State, opposition in Natal due to sizeable British population
• South Africa became a republic

  31st May 1961
• South Africa left the Commonwealth after Verwoerd's undiplomatic behaviour at the Commonwealth Conference in March 1961
• Britain was a major destination for those fleeing South Africa and the centre of the AAM founded in London in 1960
• South Africa continued to be economically and strategically important for Britain with massive overseas investment in the 1960s
• ANC called for sanctions in 1959, leading to UN resolutions in 1962 advocating an arms embargo
• ANC decided on armed struggle in June 1961, leading to the formation of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) led by Mandela and Slovo
• ARM, an armed offshoot of the white Liberal Party, carried out attacks in South Africa, including a bomb attack at Johannesburg railway station in 1965
• The PAC's grassroots networks of migrant workers led to the formation of Poqo in 1961, a movement prepared to go beyond non-violent protest
• Poqo maintained Africanist ideologies and justified violence against white people, leading to attacks such as the 1962 Paarl attack and the Mbashe Bridge killings in 1963