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Unlock This CourseIn the later 1950s, before and during the Treason Trials, ordinary people kept resistance alive with their own forms of civil disobedience and protest.
Remember, reference books were being issued to African women from 1956. On 9 August 1956 about 20,000 women of all races marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the seat of government. Led by Lilian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph, they left piles of signed protests at the prime minister's office and stood in silence for half an hour.
When the bus fare from Alexandra township to Johannesburg went up by a penny, tens of thousands of workers refused to ride. From January 1957 they walked about nine miles each way instead. After months of walking, the old fare was brought back.
These protests showed that mass action could work, and that anger at the pass laws ran deep. The women's march did not stop passes for women, but it proved that thousands were ready to defy the government.
Remember, the Africanists inside the ANC disliked the Freedom Charter and the part played by white and Indian allies. They believed that Africans should free themselves, by their own efforts and under their own leaders. They also thought the ANC was too cautious and too slow.
In April 1959 the Africanists left the ANC and founded the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) at a meeting in Orlando, Johannesburg. Its president was Robert Sobukwe, a university lecturer and a powerful speaker. The PAC's slogan was 'Africa for the Africans'. It took heart from Ghana and the other African countries that were winning their freedom from European rule.
The breakaway mattered. Resistance was now split between two rival organisations, each trying to prove that it was the true voice of Africans. That rivalry led straight to Sharpeville.
Key terms:
The ANC announced a campaign against the pass laws, to begin on 31 March 1960. The PAC decided to get in first. It called its own campaign for Monday 21 March, ten days earlier.
The PAC's plan was simple. African men would leave their passes at home, walk to the nearest police station and ask to be arrested. Sobukwe's rule was 'no bail, no defence, no fine'. If enough people did this, the prisons would overflow, the factories would have no workers and the pass laws would break down. Sobukwe insisted that the campaign must be non-violent. On the morning of 21 March he walked to Orlando police station in Soweto and was arrested. He was later sent to prison for three years.
In most places few people turned out. Sharpeville, a township near Vereeniging, south of Johannesburg, was different. A crowd of several thousand gathered outside the police station. Estimates of its size run from about 5,000 to 20,000. Most witnesses said the crowd was noisy but not violent. Facing it were about 300 police with armoured cars.
Early in the afternoon there was a scuffle near the fence, and the police opened fire. Nobody gave the crowd a warning to leave. The police kept firing as people ran away.
The police said that they had been in danger from a crowd throwing stones. On the same day, at Langa township near Cape Town, police also fired on protesters and killed at least two people.
Protest spread. Strikes and marches broke out across the country. Chief Luthuli of the ANC burned his pass in public and called a stay-at-home as a day of mourning on 28 March. On 26 March the government was so shaken that it suspended the pass laws for a short time. On 30 March Philip Kgosana, a young PAC student, led about 30,000 people from Langa into the centre of Cape Town.
On 30 March 1960 the government declared a state of emergency. Remember, the Public Safety Act of 1953 allowed this. It lasted until the end of August. More than 11,000 people were detained without trial, including Luthuli and Mandela.
Parliament rushed through the Unlawful Organisations Act. On 8 April 1960 the ANC and the PAC were both banned. It was now a crime to be a member. Both went underground. Expecting a ban, the ANC had already sent Oliver Tambo abroad at the end of March to keep the organisation alive in exile (working from outside South Africa).
Photographs of the dead went round the world. On 1 April 1960 the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that blamed the government's policies and called on South Africa to abandon apartheid. Britain and France abstained (they voted neither for nor against).
More on world reaction. Foreign investors feared a revolution. They pulled their money out, and share prices in Johannesburg fell sharply. In Britain a small boycott group renamed itself the Anti-Apartheid Movement and grew quickly. Other Commonwealth countries attacked apartheid so strongly that in 1961, when South Africa became a republic, it left the Commonwealth.
The government stood firm. Verwoerd refused to change course, even after a white farmer shot and wounded him on 9 April 1960. The pass laws came back, most white voters stayed loyal to him, and within a couple of years the panic among investors had passed.
Why was Sharpeville a turning point? It ended almost fifty years of legal, peaceful protest by the ANC. With their organisations banned and peaceful crowds shot down, many leaders decided that non-violence had failed. You will see what they did next in the lesson Spear of the Nation and Mandela's Imprisonment. Sharpeville also turned apartheid into a major world issue: it was the first time the United Nations Security Council acted against it.
Don't say the ANC organised the Sharpeville protest. It was the PAC's campaign, called for 21 March to beat the ANC's own campaign planned for 31 March. And don't say world reaction ended apartheid in 1960. The United Nations criticised South Africa and investors panicked, but the government answered with more repression, not reform.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history book)
From a modern history textbook.
'The people who gathered at Sharpeville carried no weapons. They had come only to hand themselves in for leaving their passes at home. Without a word of warning, the police poured bullets into men, women and children, and went on shooting as they fled. Many of the 69 dead were hit in the back. Officers later talked of stones and danger, yet no policeman was seriously hurt. It was a slaughter of the defenceless.'
What impression does the author give about the actions of the police at Sharpeville? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that the police at Sharpeville acted brutally and had no excuse for what they did. The language is chosen to shock. The police 'poured bullets' into the crowd, which suggests heavy, careless firing, and the event is called 'a slaughter of the defenceless', which makes it sound like killing without any fight. The author stresses the points that make the police look worst: the crowd 'carried no weapons', there was not 'a word of warning', and the dead were 'hit in the back' as they 'fled'. The police's own explanation is brushed aside in a few words. They only 'talked of' stones and danger, and this is at once undercut by 'yet no policeman was seriously hurt'. The author says nothing about the size of the crowd or how the police may have felt, so the reader sees only cruelty.
What lifts this to the top level: it names one clear impression and proves it from the author's choice of words, what the author stresses and what the author leaves out, instead of just retelling the extract.
Start with the impression in your first sentence, here 'brutal and without excuse'. Then pick out two or three loaded phrases such as 'poured bullets' and say what each one suggests. Finish with what the author plays down or leaves out. You do not need your own knowledge of Sharpeville for this question. For more on this question type, see the Exam Skills lesson Paper 1 Question (a): What Impression Does the Author Give?