2F.2 KT3 - Redefining resistance and challenges, 1968-83

Enquiry Frame and Chronology

This lesson covers the exact Pearson Edexcel 9HI0 topic Redefining resistance and challenges
to National Party power, 1968-83. The enquiry is not simply: "what happened at Soweto?"
It is broader: how did resistance recover after the repression of the 1960s, and why did
National Party power face more serious domestic and external challenges by 1983?

Keep three layers of change in view:

The pressure map below is a useful way to keep the interaction clear. Each challenge mattered partly on its own, but its full significance came from forcing the National Party state to spend more effort on reform, repression and justification at the same time.

[DIAGRAM: asset_name: 1968-83 pressure web; asset_slug: p2_2f2_03_redefining_resistance_and_challenges_to_national_party_power_1968_83__diagram_01; recommended_method: image_gen; description: Pressure-web schematic on a white background showing the National Party state receiving pressure from Black Consciousness, ANC revival, labour and townships, and external pressure, with a downward response of reform plus repression across 1968-83]

Read every later example as part of that pattern. Soweto, unions, regional change, ANC diplomacy and white political division did not have identical causes, but together they made apartheid harder to govern and harder to defend.

Use this chronology as the spine of the lesson:

For Paper 2, strong answers should not describe resistance as one smooth upward line. The
state scored real victories: it banned organisations, detained activists, raided neighbouring
states and used reform to divide opponents. The best judgement is about interaction: Black
Consciousness helped revive internal confidence; Soweto supplied recruits and international
outrage; the ANC and global anti-apartheid movement gave the struggle structure; and the
National Party's own responses created new divisions and costs.

Black Consciousness and Soweto

Black Consciousness developed in the space created by repression. After the ANC and PAC were
banned in 1960, and after major leaders were imprisoned or exiled, open African nationalist
politics inside South Africa became extremely difficult. Black university students, however,
still had some room to organise. They were frustrated not only by apartheid but also by the
dominance of white liberals in supposedly anti-apartheid student politics.

Steve Biko was central to this new mood. In 1968, black students met to discuss creating
their own student organisation. In July 1969, at Turfloop, the South African Students'
Organisation (SASO) held its founding congress, and Biko became its first president. SASO
did not mean "black" in the narrow apartheid sense of only African people. Black Consciousness
used "black" politically to include Africans, Coloureds and Indians who were oppressed by
white supremacy.

The idea was psychological as well as organisational. Biko argued that apartheid worked partly
by making black people internalise inferiority and dependence. Black Consciousness therefore
emphasised pride, self-reliance, community projects, cultural confidence and black leadership.
This was why the state found it dangerous. It did not immediately produce a mass party able
to defeat the National Party, but it attacked one of apartheid's foundations: fear.

SASO helped create a wider Black Consciousness network. The Black People's Convention
(BPC) was founded in 1972 to take Black Consciousness beyond campuses. Biko was banned in
1973, restricting his movement and speech, but his influence continued through students,
community activists, health projects and the wider language of black self-assertion.

The Soweto uprising grew from this political atmosphere, but it also had a specific school
cause. In 1974 the state ordered that Afrikaans should be used alongside English as a medium
of instruction in parts of African secondary schooling, including subjects such as mathematics
and social science. For many students, Afrikaans symbolised police, officials and white
National Party rule. The policy also exposed the wider injustice of Bantu Education, which
trained black children for inferior social and economic positions.

Students began resisting before June 1976. School boycotts and protests developed in Soweto
in early 1976. The South African Students' Movement (SASM) and local student leaders,
including Tsietsi Mashinini, helped coordinate action. On 13 June 1976, hundreds of students
met in Orlando and planned a peaceful march for 16 June.

On 16 June 1976, thousands of schoolchildren marched through Soweto. They intended to
gather at Orlando Stadium and protest against Afrikaans and Bantu Education. Police blocked
the march near Orlando West. Accounts differ over the exact sequence, but police used force
and then live ammunition. Among the first students killed were Hastings Ndlovu and
Hector Pieterson, whose photographed dying body became an international symbol of
apartheid violence.

The uprising spread beyond one day and beyond Soweto. Funerals, school boycotts, solidarity
protests and confrontations spread through townships and other urban areas. The state
responded with police violence, detentions, trials and censorship. Casualty figures are
contested: the state-appointed Cillie Commission later gave 575 deaths and 3,907 injuries,
while other accounts use different figures. For exam judgement, it is safest to describe the
deaths as hundreds and to focus on the significance: schoolchildren had turned education
policy into a national and international crisis.

Soweto mattered in several ways:

Biko's death intensified this pattern. He was arrested near Grahamstown on 18 August 1977,
severely injured in police custody in Port Elizabeth, transported over 1,000 kilometres to
Pretoria, and died on 12 September 1977 aged 30. The police initially tried to avoid
responsibility. His death drew worldwide condemnation, and his funeral became a major
political event. On 19 October 1977, the government banned a range of Black Consciousness
organisations and closed the newspaper The World.

The impact of Biko's death needs balanced judgement. It removed a gifted and charismatic
leader and helped the state disrupt Black Consciousness organisations. Yet it also made Biko
a martyr. The regime had tried to crush a movement of black self-assertion; instead, it
confirmed the movement's central claim that apartheid depended on violent domination.

The ANC Re-strengthened

The ANC's revival was not automatic. In the early 1970s, the organisation was weak inside
South Africa. Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, Kathrada and other Rivonia leaders were imprisoned.
Many activists were banned, detained or driven underground. MK's early sabotage campaign had
been disrupted. The Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns of 1967-68, fought with ZAPU in Rhodesia,
showed bravery but did not create a secure route back into South Africa. Exiled cadres were
frustrated by distance, poor conditions and limited action.

The Morogoro Conference in Tanzania in 1969 was a response to that crisis. It was the
ANC's first major consultative conference in exile. It endorsed a strategy that connected
armed struggle, political mobilisation and international solidarity. It strengthened Oliver
Tambo's authority, created or confirmed structures for revolutionary work, and tried to
repair morale after criticism from younger militants. It did not solve every problem, but it
gave the ANC a framework for survival.

Tambo's importance was that he kept several difficult fronts connected:

External legitimacy grew in the 1970s. In 1974 the UN General Assembly refused to recognise
South Africa's credentials, a symbolic victory for anti-apartheid diplomacy. The ANC appeared
at UN and OAU forums, and international conferences increasingly treated apartheid as a
global issue rather than simply South Africa's internal affair. The global anti-apartheid
movement linked sanctions, prisoner-release campaigns, consumer boycotts, student activism,
church pressure, sporting boycotts and cultural isolation.

Soweto then changed the ANC's prospects. Many young people who fled South Africa after 1976
entered ANC camps, especially in Angola after its independence. This "Soweto generation" gave
the ANC new energy, but also new problems: training, discipline, political education and
safe infiltration routes all had to be managed. Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana,
Zambia and later Zimbabwe became important, though vulnerable, points in the regional network.

The ANC also reviewed its military strategy. In 1978-79, after Tambo and other ANC figures
studied Vietnam's experience, the ANC developed what became known as the Green Book. Its
aim was not to copy Vietnam mechanically but to think about how armed struggle, underground
work and mass mobilisation could support one another. A Special Operations Unit was created
in 1979 to strike high-profile state and economic targets.

MK activity became more visible. The SASOL attacks of 31 May 1980 were especially important
because SASOL represented strategic economic capacity: fuel production, industrial modernity
and the state's effort to survive sanctions and oil vulnerability. The attacks caused
significant damage and embarrassment. Later attacks, including the 1983 Church Street bombing
in Pretoria, showed increased MK reach, though they also raised difficult questions about
civilian casualties and gave the state propaganda opportunities.

The ANC's revival should therefore be judged carefully. It was not strong enough by 1983 to
defeat the South African state in a military contest. The police, army and intelligence
services remained far stronger. But the ANC had recovered from near invisibility inside the
country. It had recruits, regional routes, diplomatic legitimacy, a growing underground and
international supporters. That re-strengthening mattered because it turned anger after
Soweto into a longer struggle with organisation behind it.