Topic 2

• Hope

  • South Africans who opposed apartheid were hopeful that they could make an impact due to their steadily increasing numbers
  • The splitting of the ANC into the ANC and PAC divided organisations but also helped to mobilise new communities
  • Even rural political movements with a limited connection to the ANC or PAC challenged the government at a local level
• Frustration with Pass Laws

  • Pass laws dominated the new political dynamism (energy), causing more people to join the cause
  • The frustration with the limited movement between towns and cities, and the constant demands of the police to see pass books caused resentment against apartheid and the pass laws in general
  • By 1960, the punishment for a pass offence was a £5-£8 fine or imprisonment for 5-8 weeks, which was a severe fine for many African people as 80% of them lived on less than £20 a month – so this fine was more than 2 weeks wages
  • Across South Africa, 1000 cases daily went through the courts relating to pass laws and many felt that the accused were often treated unjustly, causing them to fight against the system
• Challenges from the PAC

  • The PAC felt that mass anger and violence would sustain a mass movement, directly challenging the ANC's policies of peaceful protest
  • Robert Sobukwe (leader of the PAC) had limited experience in political campaigning but focused on the pass laws
  • The ANC were planning to stage a mass protest against pass laws on 31st March 1960, so the PAC planned one for the 21st March, in an attempt to outdo the ANC
  • Their strategy was similar to that of the Defiance Campaign – activists would offer themselves up for arrest at so many police stations that it would make the pass laws inoperable
• Origins of the Massacre

  • Sharpeville was a small township in the Vaal Triangle (a heavily industrialised area South West of Johannesburg, in which PAC presence was most prominent), founded in 1942
  • The town was a centre of protest and was associated with apartheid repression
  • The Vaal Triangle was known for coal mining and was home to South Africa's state-owned Iron and Steel Corporation Factories
  • In 1958, 10,000 people were forcibly relocated to Sharpeville under the Group Areas Act, meaning that there was little housing and rents increased
  • The area was populated by migrant workers from Lesotho (a separate British colony) who had even more insecure rights than people from rural areas, yet they were equally dependent on wages – some came illegally and so pass raids were stepped up in 1959
  • A PAC branch was founded in Sharpeville in 1959 by Nyakane Tsolo (a trade unionist), who mobilised the community quickly to respond to Sobukwe's short notice for the March pass campaign
  • PAC membership in Sharpeville was not more than a few hundred but they spread the word of the protest, encouraging participation and threatening those who didn't
• The Night Before the Protest

  1. Youths moved onto the street and a policeman was stabbed

  2. The police responded by opening gunfire and breaking up crowds with use of batons

  3. A meeting by protestors was broken up by police at midnight

  4. Two protestors died
• The Massacre

  1. On the morning of 21st March 1960, 5,000 protestors gathered outside the police station and demanded the police to arrest them all

  2. They believed that the police would have to suspend the pass laws as they could not all be arrested

  3. Many were not PAC members and were simply there out of curiosity

  4. The crowd were relaxed and friendly and protesting peacefully

  5. Police started to arrive and by 1pm there were 200 white police (with rifles) and about 200 black police (with clubs)

  6. These policeman came from an outside area and were commanded by an aggressive chief of police (Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar)

  7. Many policemen were nervous and inexperienced, and they knew that 9 policemen had been killed at a revolt in Cato Manor a few weeks before

  8. The policemen told Tsolo to ask the crowd to disperse – he refused and was consequently arrested

  9. This caused the crowd to surge forward

  10. Pienaar lined up the police and ordered them to load their guns

  11. It is said that a gangster fired, causing the shooting to begin, but it was probably a member of the police force who started the shooting

  12. Overall, 69 people were killed and 187 injured

  13. The police fired a first round of bullets into the first row of protestors, who were unable to move or get back

  14. They then fired again at people running away from the scene

  15. The police carried on the violence even after the shooting: they were accused of kicking and killing wounded people, and they also placed stones at the scene to frame the protestors for throwing stones at them before the police opened fire
• Effects of the Massacre

  • Except for Cape Town and the Vaal Triangle, the PAC demonstration failed BUT the Sharpeville shootings sent waves of shock through South Africa and internationally
  • Many photographs were taken of the Sharpeville shootings, showing graphic evidence of the police brutality
  • The massacre provoked international denunciation of South Africa: on April 1st, 1960, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning Sharpeville and calling for a reversal of apartheid and racial discrimination in South Africa, which represented a new level of international concern about apartheid, though this didn't have a lot of impact because Britain and France abstained but both Britain and the USA supported a later resolution condemning apartheid
  • Oliver Tambo (ANC Vice-President) was sent to Bechuanaland (a British controlled territory) to mobilise international support, which led to Britain beginning to boycott South African goods and distance itself from the National Party, which led to South Africa leaving the Commonwealth in 1961
  • The massacre also showed the extent the government was willing to go to, in order to enforce authority and apartheid
• ANC Response to the Massacre

  • On 28th March the ANC organised a pass burning in which several leaders (including Albert Luthuli) publicly burnt passes in front of the media
  • At the end of March, the ANC organised a stayaway from work
  • They also organised a day of mourning for the Sharpeville victims
• The Follow-Up Protest

  1. On 30th March, the South African government, faced with criticisms both nationally and internationally, declared a State of Emergency

  2. On the same day, 30,000 Africans marched in a peaceful protest six miles from Langa to Cape Town

  3. Led by Kgosana, African protestors gathered at a police station in Caledon Square, near to where the whites-only Parliament was debating the protests

  4. Protestors were told that the Minister for Justice would meet with the PAC delegation if the crowd dispersed

  5. Kgosana persuaded the protestors to turn back as he did not want a violent confrontation

  6. He was double-crossed as this meeting never happened, so he returned that afternoon with another group of protestors and was arrested

  7. The next day, there was a further protest at Cato Manor where activists tried to stop workers from going to town, leading to clashes between protestors and the police, as well as between protestors and those going to work
• Declaring a State of Emergency

  1. The State of Emergency was declared on 30th March 1960 to strengthen police powers and try to convince the world that the Africans were the ones causing the violence

  2. Public meetings were outlawed and police had the power to detain people without court restriction

  3. Over 10,000 opposition political leaders were arrested by police using the Public Safety Act of 1953 which required no warrants to arrest 'threats to public safety' (i.e. political activists)

  4. Many leaders were arrested before they could protest, including Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo
• Banning Political Parties

  1. On 8th April 1960, the government (with the support of the United Party) passed the Unlawful Organisations Act, banning parties that threatened public order, which was aimed at the ANC and PAC, consequently making them illegal organisations

  2. This made resistance harder as activists had to work in secret and underground, and was a particular blow to the ANC because they had nothing to do with Sharpeville, so were banned for no reason
• Police and Security

  • John Vorster was appointed as the Minister for Justice in 1961 and instituted a part-time Police Reserve Unit, which developed into the Security Police
  • He also set up secret, quasi-legal bodies to undertake assassinations of opposition figures and co-ordinate security matters, whose activities remained state secrets even when they were formally integrated into BOSS (Bureau for State Security)
  • A network of spies and informers were set up to infiltrate opposition forces and act as agent-provocateurs (provoke opposition into breaking the law so they could arrest them)
  • In 1963 a new radio network was set up to offer direct communication between over 1000 police stations and police headquarters in Pretoria, facilitating a rapid response to incidents
• Legislation


  1. The Sabotage Act of 1962 meant that acts of sabotage could have the death penalty and placed the onus on the accused to prove themselves innocent, while also allowing security and police to resort to torture (especially electric shocks) to extract confessions

  2. In 1963 the General Law Amendment Act allowed authorities to arrest anyone for 90 days without charges against them or even access to a lawyer, and this could be extended indefinitely

  3. The 'Sobukwe' clause allowed the security forces to keep people in prison beyond the end of their sentence, with Robert Sobukwe being the first victim

  4. The Bantu Laws Amendment Act 1964 empowered the authority to depart Africans from any urban area or white farming area with no reason, and allowed the Minister of Bantu Affairs to establish quotas in certain areas and deport unemployed Africans back to their homelands
• Background


  • Cape Town was another major centre of protest on 21st March 1960
  • African population was in a minority
  • African migrant workers were in a particularly vulnerable position as the government was keen to limit their entry and wanted to protect jobs for coloured people
  • Most Africans lived in townships, called Langa and Nyanga, which were separate from coloured people
• The PAC in Cape Town

  • Phillip Kgosana and Christopher Mlokoti took over Cape Town's PAC branch in 1960 and organised mass meetings where Robert Sobukwe spoke about material concerns, municipal rents, bus fares, pass laws and police repression, linking these to poverty and social ills of African urban society, including gangs and alcohol
  • In Mlokoti's view, every white person was an oppressor
• The Protest


  1. On 21st March 1960, a crowd of 6,000 people gathered in Langa and Nyanga

  2. The police refused to make arrests and attempted to disperse the crowd using baton charges, Saracen armoured vehicles, and a volley of live ammunition, killing twenty people

  3. Rioting spread throughout the night with protestors mounting roadblocks and patrols to stop police activity

  4. By March 25th, 1960, 50% of Cape Town's African workforce were on strike, increasing to 95% by March 27th
• The Move Towards Armed Struggle

  • Why did the ANC/PAC radicalise after 1960? They needed to rethink their strategies after they were banned in April 1960, and the violence of the government (seen at Sharpeville) meant that they needed to fight violence with violence
  • Individual African activists/groups had occasionally expressed protests through violence of either people or property, but the ANC stayed true to peaceful protest and civil disobedience until recent uprisings in China, Cuba and Algeria encouraged Africans to start using violence
  • The South African Communist Party (CP) was the first to adopt the armed struggle, and Sisulu, Kotane and other African communists who were members of both the CP and the ANC, as well as Mandela who was close to the CP, attended secret meetings
  • In June 1961, the ANC decided to adopt armed struggle in a separate underground
• Most political detainees were released

  1960
• The violence of the government (seen at Sharpeville)


  Meant that they needed to fight violence with violence
• Individual African activists/groups had occasionally expressed protests through violence of either people or property
• Protests through violence

  • East London in 1952
  • Durban in 1959
• The ANC stayed true to peaceful protest and civil disobedience
• Recent uprisings in China 1940s, Cuba 1959 and Algerian nationalists against the French encouraged Africans to start using violence, as they could see it was successful
• ANC leaders still had to exhibit caution as the Treason Trial was still going on
• The South African Communist Party (CP) was operating in secret underground and was the first to adopt the armed struggle
• Sisulu, Kotane and other African communists were members of both the CP and the ANC, and Mandela was also close to the CP (but not a member) so attended secret meetings
• The ANC decided to adopt armed struggle in a separate underground organisation

  June 1961
• Umkhonto WeSizwe (MK)


  An organisation that was not formally linked to the ANC or CP, but was an independent military wing acting in support of the liberation movement
• MK


  • Led by Mandela (representing ANC) and Joe Slovo (representing CP)
  • Although neither the ANC nor MK was Communist, this mixing of the two parties gave the National Party more reasons to accuse MK and the ANC of Communism
  • It was an independent organisation because not everyone from either party was fully united in the decision to use violence, and to protect the ANC from further repression if MK were to be discovered by the government
• The Soviet Union made the largest contribution to MK, and other communist governments like East Germany helped with training and education
• In 1961, 5 men were sent to China for training in guerrilla tactics (placing armies in mountains and nature)
• MK


  • Focused on sabotage, and so targets were strategic sites such as communication posts and power units, NOT places where loss of life was at risk
• The first major act of sabotage by MK, which coincided with the Afrikaner holiday Dingaan's Day


  16th December 1961
• Poqo


  A movement among migrant workers with little central control from the PAC, which maintained Africanist ideologies of the PAC and justified violence against whites
• Poqo killings were well-publicised and seen by press as examples of African savagery
• Reasons why the armed struggle was not successful

  • Neither the ANC nor PAC had the capacity for an armed struggle as they had no physical base in South Africa nor any adjacent country, and had little training and little support from abroad
  • The repressive power of the state stopped the armed struggle from being too successful as both the ANC and PAC were illegal organisations, making it more difficult for them to operate underground
• Mandela himself was only able to operate from underground, and travelled abroad for 6 months trying to gain support but was arrested in 1962
• The headquarters of MK, at a small farm in Rivonia (north of Johannesburg) was raided in 1963, where they found MK operatives, caches of weapons and over 250 incriminating documents
• Most of the key leaders were arrested and tried
• Black Pimpernel


  The name authorities called Mandela because they couldn't trace him as he went underground and worked secretly