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Apartheid: Non-violent protest & resistance

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Apartheid in South Africa - non-violent protest & resistance

Key concepts: Change & Consequence

Essential Questions:

  • What factors determined the various strategies adopted by the anti-apartheid movement between 1948 and 1964?
  • To what extent were the various protests and campaigns against apartheid successful?
  • pps. 50 - 64 of the Rights and Protest Course Companion book supports the resources on this topic

The Defiance Campaign, 1952 - 1953 

  • Harness the political potential of ordinary Africans in a coordinated campaign of defiance against new apartheid laws.  ANC leaders and other volunteers would deliberately break the law while crowds of onlookers would provide them with support and encouragement.
  • The Defiance Campaign shone a light on the contrast between it's philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience and the heavy-handed response of the authorities.
  • The sheer volume of arrests of Defiance Campaign protesters quickly overwhelmed South Africa's police, courts and jails.
  • The organizers of the Defiance Campaign welcomed other racial groups including the South African Indian Congress (SAIC).

Evidence of the experiences of participants in the Defiance Campaign:

Freedom Charter poster

This poster was produced by the democratic movement in 1986 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Freedom Charter.  Many of the principles of the South African Constitution (passed in 1994 after the fall of apartheid) were inspired by the demands of the Freedom Charter.

South Africa, Johannesburg: Poster- anti apartheid, struggle days ,The Freedom Charter -The people shall govern. Graeme Williams/South. Photo. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016. 
quest.eb.com/search/160_208450/1/160_208450/cite. Accessed 21 Jan 2019.

The Freedom Charter, 1955

Read and consider the connecting questions posed by Facing History.

Protest music

By the late 1950s racial discrimination had intensified, and church songs were adapted in a much more forthright way, as exemplified in the following song which originally spoke of believers’ resolve to follow Jesus:

 

Somlandela, somlandel’ uThuli, Luthuli

Somlandela yonke indawo Somlandela

Somlandela, somlandel’ uThuli Luthuli

Lapho aya khona somlandela Somlandela

 

Bhek’ ijele Bhek’ ijel’ igcwel’ uyalandela Bhek’ ijele (Chorus x3)

Lapho aya khona somlandela Somlandela

 

English translation

[We will follow him, we will follow Uthuli, Luthuli

We will follow him all over We will follow him

We will follow him, we will follow Uthuli Luthuli

Wherever he goes we will follow We will follow him

 

Look at the jail Look at the jail, it’s full, you will follow Look at the jail (Chorus x3)

Wherever he goes we will follow We will follow him]

 

(From: South African Freedom Songs)

 
Groenewald, H. C. "The Role of Political Songs in the Realisation of Democracy in South Africa." The Literator, vol. 26, no. 2, July 2005, pp. 121-36, doi:10.4102/lit.v26i2.231. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019.

Bus Boycotts

During the first three decades after the ANC’s coming into being the movement did not direct itself to the masses in its fight for democracy, but sought to get the support of the small black middle class. The ANC’s political action consisted of petitions and appeals to the government. Gradually it became clear to the ANC that it was primarily the poorer section of the population that was suffering most under repressive laws. The full potential of the collective action of the poor and repressed became clear when, in the early 40s, workers staged many bus boycotts in Alexandra Township in protest against rising fares. The result was that bus fare price increases were delayed.  In the early 40s workers staged about sixty strikes against mines and other companies. Ten years later, bus boycotts were still evident, for example, in about 1954 bus boycotts erupted in Evaton, a township south of Johannesburg.

 

A song from that time castigated the Italian owners of the bus service and alluded to the disruption resulting from the boycott:

Koloi tsa Motariana

Di entse moferefere

Ba bang ba re di a palangwa

Ba bang ba re ha di palangwe.

 

English translation:

Vehicles of the Italian

Have brought strife

Some say they can be boarded

Others say they dare not be boarded.

(Groenewald & Makopo, 1991:85)

 

Groenewald, H. C. "The Role of Political Songs in the Realisation of Democracy in South Africa." The Literator, vol. 26, no. 2, July 2005, pp. 121-36, doi:10.4102/lit.v26i2.231. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019.