8, key topic 3 - Resisting apartheid, 1955–78

Freedom Charter And Trial

In 1955, apartheid was not only a set of laws. It was a political system that tried to control where Black South Africans lived, worked, travelled, learned and voted. Resistance therefore had to answer a big question: should opponents ask for small reforms, or should they challenge the whole structure?

The African National Congress (ANC) chose a broad challenge. It worked with allies in the Congress Alliance, including Indian, Coloured, white and trade-union organisations. The major statement of this approach was the Freedom Charter, adopted at the Congress of the People at Kliptown in June 1955. It called for a South Africa in which "the people" would govern, land and resources would be shared more fairly, and legal equality would replace racial domination.

The importance of the Freedom Charter was not just its wording. It showed the nature of resistance in the mid-1950s:

Nelson Mandela was important because he helped push the ANC towards more active mass resistance. He had already helped form the ANC Youth League in the 1940s, and by the 1950s he was a leading organiser and lawyer. In this period he did not act alone. Mandela mattered because he represented a wider change inside the ANC: a move away from polite appeals and towards organised defiance.

The apartheid state treated this as dangerous. In December 1956, 156 activists were arrested and accused of high treason. The Treason Trial lasted until 1961. It was an attempt to portray the Freedom Charter and Congress Alliance as revolutionary threats to the state. In the end, the accused were acquitted, but the trial still helped the government by exhausting leaders' time, draining resources and warning others that legal opposition could bring heavy punishment.

So the Freedom Charter and Treason Trial show both sides of the struggle. Resistance became broader and more confident. Enforcement also became more systematic, using courts and security laws to slow that resistance down.

Passes And Sharpeville

Pass laws were one of apartheid's most hated controls. Black African South Africans had to carry documents that restricted movement and employment. Police could demand passes, arrest people without the right documents and use the system to push people out of "white" urban areas. This made pass laws a natural target for civil disobedience.

Anti-pass protest mattered because it attacked apartheid at the level of daily life. A person refusing to carry a pass was not only making a speech. They were openly rejecting a law that controlled their body, work and movement.

The most important anti-pass confrontation in this key topic was Sharpeville. In March 1960, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a rival movement that had broken from the ANC, organised protests against the pass laws. Protesters gathered at the police station at Sharpeville, many intending to offer themselves for arrest without passes.

On 21 March 1960, police opened fire. Sixty-nine people were killed and many more were wounded. Many had been shot in the back as they fled. Sharpeville became a turning point because it exposed the violence behind apartheid enforcement.

The consequences were immediate and long term:

Sharpeville did not end apartheid. In the short term, it helped the government crush open opposition. But in a deeper sense it weakened apartheid's moral and international standing. It showed that the state would use lethal force against unarmed protesters, and it helped push resistance into new forms.

Misconception check: Sharpeville was not an ANC protest. It was led by the PAC. It still belongs in this lesson because it was part of wider anti-pass resistance and had consequences for all anti-apartheid movements, including the ANC.

Underground And MK

After Sharpeville, the ANC and PAC were banned. Their leaders could be arrested, meetings could be broken up and publications could be suppressed. This changed the development of resistance. Opponents of apartheid did not disappear, but they had to work more secretly.

The ANC's biggest strategic change was the creation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, usually called MK and translated as Spear of the Nation, in 1961. Nelson Mandela was closely associated with its formation. MK used sabotage against targets such as power lines, offices and communications. The stated aim was to damage the apartheid state while avoiding loss of life where possible.

Why did this matter? It showed that some ANC leaders no longer believed nonviolent protest by itself could work. Their reasoning was that the state had banned peaceful organisation and used violence at Sharpeville. If legal protest was blocked, they argued, underground sabotage was a way to keep pressure alive.

That did not mean armed resistance immediately became effective. MK had serious limits:

The state responded forcefully. Mandela was arrested in 1962. In the Rivonia Trial of 1963-64, Mandela and other leaders were tried for sabotage and related charges. Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. This removed a major leader from active politics, but it also turned him into an international symbol of resistance.

The judgement is double-edged. MK did not overthrow apartheid by force. The state remained far stronger in military and police terms. Yet MK changed the meaning of resistance after 1960: apartheid now faced not just petitions and marches, but an underground liberation movement willing to use sabotage.