🗳 Rights for all
'The People Shall Govern!' Every man and woman would have the vote. All national groups would have equal rights, and all would be equal before the law.
Resisting Apartheid, 1955-78 » The ANC, the Freedom Charter and the Treason Trials
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Edexcel spec: Paper 1, Depth study 8, Key topic 3
- How the ANC built a wider alliance against apartheid in the mid-1950s
- What the Freedom Charter (1955) said and why it mattered
- The part Nelson Mandela played in these years
- How the government hit back with the Treason Trials (1956-61), and their effects
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Unlock This CourseThe ANC after the Defiance Campaign
Remember, the Defiance Campaign of 1952 had turned the ANC into a mass movement, but the government had answered with bans and harsh new laws. By 1955 open law-breaking was too costly. The ANC needed a new way to keep resistance alive.
Its answer was to work with others. The ANC joined with the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Organisation, the Congress of Democrats (a small group of white opponents of apartheid) and the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Together they were known as the Congress Alliance. This was a development in the nature of resistance. The ANC had worked with the Indian Congress before, but now organisations from every racial group were joined in one lasting alliance.
In 1953 Professor Z.K. Matthews of the ANC suggested a great meeting, a Congress of the People, to draw up a picture of the South Africa people wanted. Volunteers went round townships, farms and factories and asked ordinary people for their demands. Thousands of replies came back, many written on scraps of paper.
Key terms:
- Congress Alliance: the ANC and its Indian, Coloured, white and trade union partners, working together against apartheid
- Congress of the People: the mass meeting at Kliptown in June 1955 that approved the Freedom Charter
- Freedom Charter: the statement of aims for a free, non-racial South Africa, adopted in 1955
- High treason: the crime of trying to overthrow the government of your own country
The Freedom Charter, 1955
On 25 and 26 June 1955 about 3,000 delegates of all races met on a football field at Kliptown, near Johannesburg. The Charter was read out section by section and approved by a show of hands. It opened with the words that 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white'.
💰 Sharing the wealth
The mines, the banks and the biggest industries would be owned by the people as a whole. The land would be shared among those who worked it.
📚 A better life
'The doors of learning and of culture shall be opened!' The Charter also promised houses, security, fair wages and an end to the pass laws.
👮 The police arrive
On the second afternoon armed police surrounded the meeting. They took the name of every delegate and seized papers as evidence. The reading of the Charter carried on while they did so.
Why was the Charter significant?
- It gave the movement a clear aim. Until now the ANC had mostly said what it was against. Now it said what it was for. The ANC formally adopted the Charter in 1956 and kept it as its main statement of aims for the rest of the struggle.
- It was non-racial. It answered apartheid's idea of separate 'nations' with one country shared by all.
- It gave the government a weapon. Ministers said the demands to take over the mines and banks proved that the Alliance was communist and was planning a revolution.
- It caused an argument inside the ANC. A group called the Africanists disliked the words 'belongs to all' and the part played by white and Indian allies. You will see where this led in the lesson Anti-Pass Protests and Sharpeville, 1960.
Nelson Mandela in the 1950s
Mandela was now one of the ANC's leading younger figures. In 1952 he and Oliver Tambo had opened a law firm in Johannesburg, the first in the country run by black lawyers. Every day they defended Africans charged under the apartheid laws.
The government kept Mandela under banning orders for most of these years, so he could not speak at meetings or openly hold a post in the ANC. He carried on working in secret. He drew up the 'M-Plan', a scheme to organise the ANC in small local groups, street by street, so that it could keep going if it was ever banned. The plan was only partly carried out. Mandela could not attend the Congress of the People openly, so he watched from the edge of the crowd.
Enforcing apartheid: the Treason Trials, 1956-61
The government did not just pass apartheid laws. It enforced them by going after its opponents. Leaders were banned, the police Special Branch watched meetings, and in September 1955 police searched hundreds of homes and offices for evidence.
Then, at dawn on 5 December 1956, the police began arresting leaders of the Congress Alliance across the country. In all, 156 people were charged with high treason: 105 Africans, 23 whites, 21 Indians and 7 Coloureds. They included Chief Albert Luthuli, Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Tambo and Z.K. Matthews. The punishment for high treason could be death.
The government's case was that the Freedom Charter was a communist plan and that the Alliance meant to overthrow the state by violence. The trial dragged on for more than four years:
- The accused were let out on bail after about two weeks, but had to attend the hearings day after day.
- By early 1958 the charges against 61 of them, including Luthuli and Tambo, had been dropped.
- In the end only 30 were put on trial, in Pretoria. Mandela was one of them and gave evidence that the ANC's policy was non-violent.
- On 29 March 1961 the judges found all the remaining accused not guilty. The state had failed to prove that the ANC planned to use violence.
The effects of the Treason Trials
📉 They weakened the ANC
The leaders were tied up in court for years. Many lost their jobs, and Mandela and Tambo's law firm lost most of its work. With its best organisers in the dock, the ANC found it harder to run campaigns, and its Africanist critics grew stronger.
🤝 They backfired on the government
The trial brought leaders of all races together for months, which strengthened the Alliance. A Treason Trial Defence Fund paid for lawyers and helped the families, with money raised in South Africa and in Britain. The trial gave the ANC publicity abroad, and the not guilty verdict was a humiliating defeat for the state.
There was one more effect. The government learned that the ordinary courts could not be relied on to crush its opponents. In later years it would turn to harsher methods that did not need a fair trial.
Common mistakes
Don't say the Freedom Charter was written by the ANC alone, or by Mandela. It was approved by the Congress of the People, a meeting of the whole Congress Alliance. And don't say the accused in the Treason Trials were found guilty. Every one of them walked free, but the trial still damaged the ANC by taking up more than four years.
Exam-style question
Explain two effects of the Treason Trials (1956-61) on the ANC. [8 marks]
Model answer
One effect of the Treason Trials was that they weakened the ANC's ability to organise resistance. In December 1956 the police arrested 156 leaders of the Congress Alliance, including Luthuli, Mandela, Sisulu and Tambo, and charged them with high treason. Although they were given bail, they had to attend court day after day, and the last of them were not cleared until 29 March 1961. This meant the ANC's most experienced organisers were kept away from their work for more than four years and many lost their incomes, so the ANC found it much harder to plan and lead mass campaigns.
A second effect was that the trials strengthened unity and support for the ANC. The accused came from every racial group, 105 Africans, 23 whites, 21 Indians and 7 Coloureds, and the months they spent together in court drew the Congress Alliance closer. The trial was also reported abroad, and a Treason Trial Defence Fund raised money in South Africa and Britain for lawyers and for the families. As a result, the government's attempt to destroy the leadership instead won the ANC sympathy and publicity, and the not guilty verdicts showed that the state could not prove the ANC was violent.
What lifts this to the top level: two separate effects, each backed by precise facts (dates, names, numbers) and each with a clear explanation of how the trials led to that effect.
Exam tip
One effect alone cannot score more than half marks, however well you explain it, so always give two. Here a strong pair is one harmful effect and one helpful effect on the ANC. Use linking phrases such as 'this meant that' and 'as a result' to show how the trials caused each effect. For more on this question type, see the Exam Skills lesson Paper 1 Question (b): Explain Two Effects.