Uprising of the ANC
Uprising
In 1959 a militant group of "Africanists" split from the of ANC and former the Pan African Congress (PAC), led by Robert Sobukwe. For the first time the ANC was challenged as the leading voice against apartheid.
On March 21, 1960 over 5,000 Blacks held a protest against the pass books law in a township called Sharpeville. The demonstrators deliberately left their pass books behind challenging the police officers to arrest them. However, instead of arresting the demonstrators the police opened fire shooting 249 people and killing 69. Fearing wide spread violence in the wake of the shooting, the government declared a nation wide State of Emergency, and on April 8, 1960 the ANC and PAC were banned. The Sharpeville tragedy focused the worlds attention, for the first time, to the racial problems of South Africa and brought apartheid into the social conscience.
For more information on what happened at Sharpeville take a look at The Sharpeville Massacre: A Watershed in South Africa (external link) an essay written by The Rt. Reverend Ambrose Reeves. Or, The Sharpeville Massacre: Its historic significance in the struggle against apartheid (external link) by David M. Sibeko.
Women played an important role in the resistance to apartheid by participating in such organizations as the Federation of South African Women (FSAW). In 1954 17 April 1954 at the Founding of the Federation of South African Women conference held in Johannesburg, the FSAW adopted the Women's Charter which stated:
We, the women of South Africa, wives and mothers, working women and housewives, African, Indians, European and Colored, hereby declare our aim of striving for the removal of all laws, regulations, conventions and customs that discriminate against us as women, and that deprive us in any way of our inherent right to the advantages, responsibilities and opportunities that society offers to any one section of the population.
Click here for the full text of the Federation of South African Women's Women's Charter.
For more information on women and the fight against apartheid take a look at: Women in the Apartheid Society by Fatima Meer and the ANC's Women's Struggle site.
On June 16, 1976, 15,000 Black students in Soweto gathered at a local school to protested compulsory learning of Afrikaans in their classrooms. They were met by government troops and ordered to disband. Moments later the government forces opened fire killing two students and injuring many. This sparked riots and protest in Soweto and township across South Africa that lasted for twelve months with official numbers claiming 575 dead and 2,389 wounded.
The Chicago riot was the most serious of the multiple that happened during the Progressive Era. The riot started on July 27th after a seventeen year old African American, Eugene Williams, did not know what he was doing and obliviously crossed the boundary of a city beach. Consequently, a white man on the beach began stoning him. Williams, exhausted, could not get himself out of the water and eventually drowned. The police officer at the scene refused to listen to eyewitness accounts and restrained from arresting the white man. With this in mind, African Americans attacked the police officer. As word spread of the violence, and the accounts distorted themselves, almost all areas in the city, black and white neighborhoods, became informed. By Monday morning, everyone went to work and went about their business as usual, but on their way home, African Americans were pulled from trolleys and beaten, stabbed, and shot by white “ruffians”. Whites raided the black neighborhoods and shot people from their cars randomly, as well as threw rocks at their windows. In retaliation, African Americans mounted sniper ambushes and physically fought back. Despite the call to the Illinois militia to help the Chicago police on the fourth day, the rioting did not subside until the sixth day. Even then, thirty eight
The Apartheid took place mostly within the country of South Africa along with a few minor independent city states such as Peoria and other countries in the vicinity of South Africa. It also took place internationally.
The blacks were overpowered through various regulations for over forty years. During the apartheid, blacks were to be relocated to “homelands.” The white government allocated that all black citizens be assigned to “tribes,” and were forced to return to “homelands” within the boundaries given by the government. There were soon eleven countries and ten black tribal National states. Blacks were now prohibited from leaving the “homelands” without work passes. White minority lived in luxury while the 80% of the population, black, lived on 17% of the poorest land. The National Party was able to eradicate human rights of the black South Africans while maintaining absolute control of the government. Most international communities ignored the apartheid in South Africa due to the Cold War concerns in the United States and Europe. This enabled the South African government to operate with little contact with international parties. There were uprisings like the Sharpeville killings of 1960 and Soweto of 1976 but were rare occurrences. South Africa, not depending on national ties to other countries, grew into a weakening economy. Soon the United Nations had a cultural boycott prohibiting international artists from performing in South Africa. Despite the boycott, artists such as Frank Sinatra and Elton John ignored this boycott and performed in Sun City (a white resort in
In 1840, the roots of Seneca Falls women’s rights convention can be traced. Two women by the name of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton attended the World’s Anti-slavery Convention in London as delegates along with their husbands. It was ruled by the credentials committee that women were “constitutionally unfit for public and business meetings”. During these meetings, women were segregated from the men and were unable to speak and state their opinion. Men were the only ones allowed to speak. Stanton and Mott came together in an attempt to build a platform to address the rights of women. This action was the start of the women’s rights movement.
... set on fire. As a result, the governor called in the National Guard. On May 4, 1970 the guardsmen confronted students at a rally. The students threw rocks and bottles and the guards retaliated with tear gas. However, without warning, a group of guardsmen fired their rifles into the crowd and killed four students and wounding nine. New of this violence soon spread to other campuses and more protests erupted nationwide.
Fed up with the sexism she faced in society, a woman decided she wanted to bring about an end to such oppression. She, along with a few other women, led a convention addressing social and civil conditions, along with the rights women deserve.
For centuries, educated and talented women were restricted to household and motherhood. It was only after a century of dissatisfaction and turmoil that women got access to freedom and equality. In the early 1960’s, women of diverse backgrounds dedicated tremendous efforts to the political movements of the country, which includes the Civil Rights movement, anti-poverty, Black power and many others (Hayden & King, 1965). The Africa...
Human history has been marked with long and painful struggles that fought for human rights and freedoms. Discrimination and racial oppression has always been one of the most controversial struggles for mankind. For South Africa, it was a country where black people were oppressed by the white minority. The colonization of South Africa began in the 18th century by the Dutch empire after Dutch trading companies started using its cape as a center for trading between Asia and Europe (sahistory.org.za). Soon after, the British took over the country and declared it part of the British Empire (sahistory.org.za). Decades after, Afrikaners, who descended from the original Dutch settlers that occupied South Africa, started working on creating a state that separates between black people and whites. Their plans were to create a separation between black people and whites that involved excluding blacks from all types of social, economic, and political activities within the country. All South African natives knew the bad conditions that their people were forced to live in but only a few of them took the responsibility of sacrificing their lives and freedom for the rights of their people. One South African citizen, Nelson Mandela, can be considered the main hero for the South African freedom revolution and the hero for millions of people fighting for their freedoms worldwide. Mandela’s long walk for freedom defined South African history and entered world history as one of the most influential fights for freedom and human rights in the world.
The word apartheid comes in two forms, one being the system of racial segregation in South Africa, and the other form is the form that only those who were affected by apartheid can relate to, the deeper, truer, more horrifying, saddening and realistic form. The apartheid era truly began when white South Africans went to the polls to vote. Although the United Party and National Party were extremely close, the National party won. Since they won, they gained more seats and slowly began to eliminate the black’s involvement with the political system. With the National Party in power, they made black South African life miserable which continues to exist in South Africa’s society today. To decrease the political power of black South Africans even more, they were divided along tribal lines. During apartheid in South Africa, The National Party, along with the help of the white social classes damaged the social and political life of black South Africans which continue to leave a devastating effect on South Africa today.
Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (2012). Print.
In 1944 Mandela and his associates form the ANC Youth League to organize mass support for the ANC. New apartheid policies were implemented by The National Party in 1948 and the following year the “ANC Youth League drafts a Program of Action calling for mass strikes, boycotts, protests, and passive resistance” against the apartheid policies ("Frontline: Mandela," n.d.). Mandela became the president of the ANC Youth League in 1951 and the following year more than 8,500 people take part in a nonviolent mass resistance. After his arrest later that year (1952) his sentence was suspended, he was banned, and was ordered to resign the ANC. In 1956 Mandela and over 150 others were tried for high treason. In 1960 anti-apartheid protesters gathered to challenge laws of segregation and after police open fire on the crowd, 69 people were killed, most with bullet wounds in their backs. Mandela fled South Africa and traveled around Africa and Euro...
In 1948, the leader of the Afrikaner National Party, Francois Malan, became president of South Africa and picks up apartheid. The government policy forces racial segregation across the country as Black African, Coloured, and Indians are discriminated against as minority and non-white citizens. The height of the Apartheid was between 1950 and 1960 where there was violence and riots across the countries as the coloured protestors tried to fight for their freedom. One protestor stood out from the rest. Nelson Mandela moved with his fellow minorities to fight for freedom and was one of the main causes for South Africa being broken from racial segregation. Although the legal side of the Apartheid was only abolished in 1991, Mandela worked for over 40 years trying to make South Africa an open country serving time in prison, being banned from his country, and making influential speeches encouraging the country to go against the segregated rule of the government. Nelson Mandela, in his No Easy Walk To Freedom speech in September of 1953 stated that the government’s attitude towards the racial segregation was extremely violent and forceful. “Let’s beat them down with guns and batons and trample them under our feet. We must be ready to drown this whole country in blood if only there is the slightest chance of preserving white supremacy.” (Mandela,
... that role and gained something unimaginable in early times.In 1961, Mandela, who was formerly committed to nonviolent protest, began to believe that armed struggle was the only way to achieve change. He subsequently co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, also known as MK, an armed offshoot of the ANC dedicated to sabotage and guerilla war tactics to end apartheid. In 1961, Mandela orchestrated a three-day national workers' strike. He was arrested for leading the strike the following year, and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 1963,
...rry their pass books (“Black’s resistance to Apartheid”). “During 1980 there were 304 major incidents concerning struggle with apartheid including arrests, tear gas violence, stoning, and strikes (“Black’s resistance to Apartheid”). In 1986 violent conflict forced the government to assert a national state of emergency (Wright, 68). The Public Safety Act increased penalties such as fining, imprisonment, and whippings for protesting the law (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”).
The history of women’s rights in Africa has affected its present state. Established in 2003, by the African Union (AU), (Meyersfeld 13) the Maputo Protocol promises women equal rights and the right to an abortion if the woman conceived he baby through incest, rape, or if having the baby would be injurious to the mother’s health. (Meyersfeld 12) However, as of 2013 the Maputo Protocol has yet to be ratified by eighteen countries. (African Business News 51) Africa is a continent in which there are countries where a woman needs permission from her husband to travel, to work, or to open a bank account. (Moleketi 10) To this day, women are still seen as subordinate to men. These primit...