The United Democratic Front, 1983
Botha's new constitution gave Coloured and Indian people a place in parliament and left Africans out. He hoped this would divide his opponents. It did the opposite. With the ANC still banned, a new body grew up inside South Africa to fight the plan in the open.
Key terms:
- United Democratic Front (UDF): an alliance of hundreds of anti-apartheid organisations, launched in August 1983 to oppose Botha's new constitution
- Ungovernable: the ANC's aim for the townships from 1985: to make it impossible for the government to run them
- Comrades: the young township activists who led the unrest of the mid-1980s
- Consumer boycott: refusing to buy from white-owned shops in order to put pressure on white businesses and the government
- South African Council of Churches (SACC): the body that linked most of the main Christian Churches and spoke out against apartheid
- Kairos Document: a statement by Church thinkers in 1985 saying that Christians must take the side of the oppressed
In January 1983 the Reverend Allan Boesak, a Coloured Church minister, called for a 'united front' of every group that rejected the constitution. On 20 August 1983 the UDF was launched at Mitchells Plain, near Cape Town. More than 500 organisations joined: trade unions, student and youth groups, women's groups, churches, sports clubs and local residents' groups called civics. Its slogan was 'UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides'.
The UDF mattered for three reasons:
- It was non-racial. African, Coloured, Indian and white members worked together, which was the opposite of what Botha wanted.
- It was legal and hard to crush. It was a loose alliance, not one party, so arresting its leaders did not stop the local groups.
- It carried the ANC's ideas. Its aims matched the Freedom Charter. Albertina Sisulu, the wife of the jailed ANC leader Walter Sisulu, was one of its three presidents, and Mandela was named as a patron.
Its biggest early campaign was a boycott of the Coloured and Indian elections of August 1984. Only about 30 per cent of registered Coloured voters and about 20 per cent of registered Indian voters took part.
The ANC in exile and Mandela in prison
🌍 The ANC in exile
Oliver Tambo led the ANC from Lusaka, in Zambia. Its armed wing, MK, now had recruits who had fled after Soweto, and its attacks grew bolder. It bombed the Sasol oil plants in June 1980 and the Koeberg nuclear power station in December 1982. In May 1983 a car bomb outside air force offices in Church Street, Pretoria, killed 19 people, including civilians. In January 1985 Tambo called on people to make South Africa 'ungovernable'. In September 1985 a group of white business leaders, led by Gavin Relly of the mining company Anglo American, flew to Zambia to meet the ANC. Some powerful whites now saw the ANC as a future government.
✊ Mandela as a symbol
Mandela had been in prison since 1962, and it was illegal to publish his words or his picture. Yet he became the best-known prisoner in the world. In 1980 a Johannesburg newspaper, the Sunday Post, began a 'Free Mandela' petition. In 1982 he was moved from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison, near Cape Town. In January 1985 Botha offered to free him if he gave up violence. His daughter Zindzi read out his answer to a crowd in a Soweto stadium on 10 February 1985: 'Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.' By refusing, Mandela showed that he could not be bought, and his name united the whole movement.
Township unrest, 1984-86
On 3 September 1984, the day the new constitution came into force, the townships of the Vaal Triangle, south of Johannesburg, rose up. The spark was a rent rise set by the black township councils. Crowds attacked council offices and the homes of councillors, and several councillors were killed, including the deputy mayor of Sharpeville. In October about 7,000 soldiers and police sealed off the township of Sebokeng and searched it house by house. From now on the army, not just the police, was used in the townships.
The unrest spread across the country. On 21 March 1985, exactly 25 years after Sharpeville, police opened fire on a funeral march at Langa, near Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, and killed at least 20 people. Each funeral became a political rally, and each rally risked more shooting.
🏫 Schools
Hundreds of thousands of pupils stayed away from school. The slogan of the young comrades was 'Liberation before education'.
🛒 Boycotts
Families refused to pay rent to the councils. Consumer boycotts of white-owned shops, strongest in the Eastern Cape in 1985, hit white businesses hard.
🏠 People's power
Many councillors resigned and councils collapsed. Street committees and 'people's courts' took over, so in some townships the government had lost control.
The unrest had a dark side. People accused of being police informers were sometimes killed by crowds, and fighting broke out between rival black groups. This gave the government a reason to call the unrest plain violence and crime. Its answer is covered in the lesson The State of Emergency, 1985-90.
Church leaders
When political leaders were banned or jailed, Church leaders could still speak. They were harder to silence, because the government claimed to be Christian and the world was watching.
- Desmond Tutu became general secretary of the SACC in 1978. He called for peaceful change and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, which made him famous around the world. In 1986 he became the first black Archbishop of Cape Town, the head of the Anglican Church in southern Africa. He condemned apartheid and also condemned violence by crowds: in July 1985, at Duduza township, he helped to save a man who was about to be killed as a suspected informer.
- Allan Boesak led the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which in 1982 declared apartheid a heresy, meaning a belief that goes against Christian teaching. This was a blow to the Dutch Reformed Church, which had long backed apartheid.
- Beyers Naudé, an Afrikaner minister who had turned against apartheid, followed Tutu as head of the SACC in 1985.
In September 1985 more than 150 Church thinkers signed the Kairos Document, which said the Church could not stay neutral. In February 1988 the government banned the UDF and 16 other organisations from all activity. Days later Tutu, Boesak and other Church leaders tried to march to parliament in Cape Town and were arrested for a short time. The Churches had stepped into the gap.
Common mistakes
Don't write that the UDF was the ANC under a new name. It was a separate, legal alliance that shared the ANC's aims. Don't say Mandela led the protests of the 1980s: he was in prison throughout, and mattered as a symbol. And don't muddle the ANC in exile, which used armed attacks, with the UDF and the Church leaders, who used boycotts, marches and speeches.
Exam-style question
Explain two effects of the setting up of the United Democratic Front (1983) on opposition to apartheid in South Africa. [8 marks]
Model answer
One effect was that opposition inside South Africa became united. Before 1983 the ANC was banned and its leaders were in prison or exile, so protest was scattered among many small groups. The UDF, launched at Mitchells Plain in August 1983, brought more than 500 organisations, including unions, churches, youth groups and civics, into one non-racial alliance. Because African, Coloured, Indian and white members now worked together, Botha's plan to divide them failed. This was shown when the UDF's boycott kept turnout in the Coloured elections of August 1984 to about 30 per cent of registered voters.
A second effect was that opposition turned into mass action that the government struggled to control. Because the UDF linked local groups in townships across the country, protests could spread quickly. After the Vaal Triangle rising of September 1984, its member groups organised rent boycotts, school boycotts and consumer boycotts of white-owned shops. As a result many township councils collapsed and street committees took over, so parts of the country became 'ungovernable', which was exactly what the ANC had called for.
What lifts this to the top level: each paragraph names one clear effect, supports it with precise facts and dates, and explains how the setting up of the UDF led to it.
Exam tip
Don't describe how the UDF was launched. Start each paragraph with the effect, then prove it. You need two effects: one alone cannot score more than 4 of the 8 marks. For more help, see the Exam Skills lesson Paper 1 Question (b): Explain Two Effects.