In 1948-1956
Nelson Mandela’s commitment to politics and the ANC grew stronger after
the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, which
introduced a formal system of racial classification and segregation—apartheid—
that restricted nonwhites’ basic rights and barred them from government while
maintaining white minority rule. The following year, the ANC adopted the
ANCYL’s plan to achieve full citizenship for all South Africans through boycotts,
strikes, civil disobedience and othernonviolent methods. Mandela helped lead the
ANC’s 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, traveling across the
country to organize protests against discriminatory policies, and promoted the
manifesto known as the Freedom Charter, ratified by the Congress of the People in
1955. Also in 1952, Mandela and Tambo opened South Africa’s first black law
firm, which offered free or low-cost legal counsel to those affected by apartheid
legislation.
On December 5, 1956, Mandela and 155 other activists were arrested and
went on trial for treason. All of the defendants were acquitted in 1961, but in the
meantime tensions within the ANC escalated, with a militant faction splitting off
in 1959 to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). The next year, police opened
fire on peaceful black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people;
as panic, anger and riots swept the country in the massacre’s aftermath, the
apartheid government banned both the ANC and the PAC. Forced to go
underground and wear disguises to evade detection, Mandela decided that the time
had come for a more radical approach than passive resistance.
NELSON MANDELA AND THE ARMED RESISTANC