4. Reigniting the Struggle – The 1970s through the Release of Nelson Mandela
“Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to
emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression—the blackness of their skin—and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.”
Steve Biko, “The Quest for a True Humanity,” I Write What I Like, 1978
After a decade of relative quiescence due to the government crackdown on liberation
movements in the early 1960s, black workers and students reignited resistance against
apartheid in the 1970s. The apartheid regime responded with a mix of harsh repression and modest reforms inside South Africa and violent attacks on the liberation movements and their allies outside the country. Yet a combination of growing protest, international support, and significant changes in the political context of the region changed the balance of power by 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison and negotiations for a new democratic South Africa began in earnest.
Unrest among workers in the manufacturing sector erupted into wildcat strikes in January
1973 in Durban. Discontent was high among the city’s 165,000 African factory workers, whose lack of union rights was made worse by the combined effect of high inflation and shortage of manufacturing jobs. As one group of workers won wage increases, others would walk out on strike. Stoppages soon spread to factories on the Rand and the Eastern Cape. Unable to stop the strikes or replace trained workers in high demand, companies accepted strikers’ demands in order to restart production. As a result of the successful strikes of 1973, independent labor unions emerged, which further politicized industrial workplaces and forced the government to extend some labor rights to Africans (e.g. the right to strike), thus conceding the central importance of black workers to apartheid capitalism.
In addition to more militant workers, new youth and Black Consciousness groups developed in South Africa in the late 1960s and expanded their influence in the early 1970s. These young men and women were informed by the experiences of African liberation struggles, especially in Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe, and by black theology and the Black Power movement in the United States. The major figure of this movement was Stephen Bantu Biko, whose inspired leadership of the Black Consciousness Movement and death at the hands of police in 1977 made him a martyr. Calling for self-help, racial pride, and psychological liberation, Biko and his supporters worked autonomously from white liberals. The emergence of black student groups, often inspired by black consciousness, was a new and powerful development in the
1970s.
A watershed event in the history of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid took place on
June 16, 1976. Acting independently of the African National Congress and other formal political organizations, thousands of primary and secondary school students in Soweto – the massive African township in Johannesburg (Soweto is an acronym for South Western Townships) – marched peacefully against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in the classroom. Police fired into the crowd to stop the demonstration, killing and wounding many students. Thirteen-year-old Hector Pieterson was one of the first youths to be killed. Sam Nzima’s famous photograph of Pieterson bleeding to death in the arms of a fellow teenager shocked the world. Nzima and Peter Magubane (working for the Rand Daily Mail) captured the popular and spontaneous nature of the protests, which eventually spread across the country and lasted into 1977. Tens of thousands of people were jailed and tortured.
After 1976 many young black South Africans left South Africa for neighboring countries to join the armed struggle. Some exiles attended the ANC’s Solomon Mahlangu Freedom School (Somafco) in Tanzania where political and standard education went hand in hand. Bolstered by the arrival of so many young men and women, the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), carried out isolated guerilla activities inside South Africa. For example, in December 1982, it blew up the Koeberg nuclear power plant near Cape Town (which had not yet begun operation), which cost $500 million in damages. These and other guerrilla actions meant that MK took on almost mythical proportions among the youth, even though the ANC’s armed faction could not seriously challenge the South African military forces.
Meanwhile, the world community increasingly isolated the apartheid regime. In 1975,
Mozambique and Angola became independent from Portugal, and in 1980 black majority rule was finally achieved in neighboring Zimbabwe. Namibia, too, fought a sustained war for independence (which it eventually won in 1989). Pretoria destabilized the “frontline states” (i.e. neighboring countries) by conducting invasions and assassinations and fomenting civil war by backing groups such as Renamo in Mozambique and UNITA in Angola, at very large human cost. South Africa also conducted military raids into Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zambia. Despite the apartheid regime’s aggressive campaigns, the frontline states continued to support the South African liberation movements politically and through material support. Overall, these developments meant that white minority-rule in southern Africa had finally begun to crack.
As opposition to apartheid continued to grow in South Africa and around the world, Pretoria pursued a divide-and-rule strategy, especially through support for homeland leaders. Between 1976 and 1981, it granted Transkei, Ciskei, Boputhatswana, and Venda a very limited form of political “independence,” which was not recognized by the international community. By the mid-1980s this policy led to heightened conflict in black communities. Most notably, Inkatha, a Zulu ethnic nationalist movement led by Gatsha Buthelezi, head of the KwaZulu homeland, challenged the power of the ANC and its allies and brought a wave of political violence that swept across the Rand and Natal. By the early 1990s, this conflict had caused more than 10,000 deaths.
Prime Minister P. W. Botha assumed power in 1978 and introduced some reforms to appease international criticism and defuse growing resistance at home. Black unions grew rapidly following the 1979 Wiehahn Commission’s recommendations to legalize African trade unions.
In 1983, in the face of mounting pressure from the world community and some South African business leaders, P.W. Botha called a whites-only referendum and changed the constitution to create a Tricameral Parliament. The new parliament featured separate, but token, legislatures for Coloureds and Indians, in addition to the all-powerful and all-white House of Assembly.
Africans, representing nearly three-quarters of the population, remained totally excluded. This purely cosmetic reform had the unintended effect of unifying and radicalizing opponents of apartheid. The overwhelming majority of Coloured and Indian voters boycotted the election for these new bodies and, instead, many of them united with Africans in growing mass protests.
The United Democratic Front (UDF) was created in 1983 to provide a forum to oppose the
Tricameral Constitution. It came to include more than five hundred political, labor, youth, sport, religious, and community organizations from across the country. The UDF adopted the Freedom Charter, and linked itself increasingly openly with the still-banned African National Congress.
Youths were active in the UDF and continued to demonstrate over education issues. The
emergence of indigenous liberation theology and the increased brutality of the state toward
people advocating equality and justice pushed religious organizations into the UDF, exemplified by the activism of Desmond Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. White protest voices were increasingly heard: anti-conscription and underground ANC activists, such as Raymond Suttner, went to jail; Afrikaner rebels, including the poet Breyten Breytenbach and cleric Beyers Naudé, spoke out; and organizations such as the Black Sash, formed by white women in 1955, continued to campaign vigorously against apartheid.
Union growth culminated in the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions
(COSATU) in December 1985. COSATU soon became the country’s largest labor federation, with 500,000 members in thirty-three unions, most notably the National Union of Mineworkers. COSATU adopted the ANC’s Freedom Charter principles and linked up with the UDF. When UDF leaders were arrested, COSATU leaders often took their place. The combined power of the UDF and COSATU was a major factor in forcing the apartheid regime to negotiate. Their national influence was grounded in the efforts of many community activists and workers throughout the country. For example, Mandlenkosi Makhoba, a metalworker on the East Rand, was active in union opposition to apartheid. Emma Mashinini was a textile worker who was jailed in the 1980s for her union leadership. After working for thirteen years at a Natal factory that made tires for the military vehicles used against people in his township, Alfred Qabula became a popular “worker poet,” reciting the oral literary genre of izibongo (praises) at labor and political meetings.
The broad unity of the UDF and the militancy of the unions posed real threats to the domination of the apartheid state. As a result, the government struck back in mid-1985 by declaring a State of Emergency (martial law). It banned eighteen political organizations; it gave police broad powers to stop “unrest activities”; and imposed heavy censorship on media coverage of anti-apartheid activities. In addition, army troops were deployed in African townships for the first time; tens of thousands of people were detained.
Freedom songs served to inspire and bind together protestors in the face of bullets and
sjamboks (metal-tipped whips). The ANC anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, and a new militant
dance, the toyi-toyi, imported from guerrilla camps in Zimbabwe, were widely heard at mass demonstrations and activists’ funerals that attracted large crowds and became politicized.
“People’s poets” such as Mzhwakhe Mbuli captured the imagination of crowds with their militant poetry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0n_YxtK4is
Resistance arts blossomed also in exile. For instance, the ANC musical group “Amandla!” (meaning “power” in Xhosa and Zulu) toured the world spreading the anti-apartheid message in song, and the Medu Arts Ensemble performed in Botswana. Young South Africans creatively employed these new cultural forms of political expression, sometimes in alliance with gangsters and criminals (tsotsis). Outside South Africa, filmmakers Richard Attenborough (Cry Freedom) and Peter Davis produced powerful feature films and documentaries that captured the public imagination in the West and strengthened the anti-apartheid movement.
The experiences of individuals who were imprisoned and in exile form an important part of the story of political activism in this period. Nomaindia Mfeketo, an ANC underground operative in the 1980s, had her baby while in a prison cell. White and Indian South Africans also were incarcerated for their resistance. The prison diaries of Ruth First, Fatima Meer, and Raymond Suttner show how torture failed to break the spirit of opponents of apartheid; they each rebounded upon their release to continue the struggle by publicizing their ordeals. Lesser known were the men and women of the underground, such as Robert McBride and Jean Middleton.
The published memoirs, diaries, letters, and biographies of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Walter and Eleanor Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, and Eddie Daniels among others, capture the actions, moods, and memories of prisoners on Robben Island, which they skillfully transformed into a “university of struggle.” The Robben Island experience of shared incarceration and political debate brought together ANC veterans such as Mandela and Mbeki with the youthful “1976 generation”; this interaction helped to overcome ideological and generational differences between the prisoners and laid the foundations for a new democratic culture. The ANC in exile, led by Oliver Tambo, through its political and diplomatic work, continued to build support around the world for its “government-in-waiting”, which could truthfully boast of having more diplomatic representation than Pretoria.
In 1985, President P.W. Botha was expected to give a “crossing of the Rubicon” address to announce a significant break with apartheid; instead he aggressively reiterated his “total
strategy” first articulated more than ten years earlier against what was described as the “total onslaught” of a “Communist threat” to South Africa. This speech prompted increased
international sanctions and isolation that threatened to cripple the South African economy.
Financial sanctions were very effective. Banks ceased rolling over loans, which led to a flight of capital from the country and a plunge in the value of the South Africa’s currency, the rand. In 1986, the United States, Europe, and the British Commonwealth imposed comprehensive sanctions, although oil and arms continued to reach the apartheid state secretly. Cultural and sporting boycotts further isolated the white community.
In addition to these events taking place inside South Africa, the international anti-apartheid
movement made a major contribution to ending white domination. It developed a successful form of global networking and social movement solidarity that involved large sections of society.
Unions imposed trade bans. Writers and religious leaders spoke out eloquently against
apartheid. Musicians, artists, and scholars were drawn into boycotts. Millions took part in rallies and concerts that called for the release of Nelson Mandela. The global anti-apartheid movement made good use of popular culture and mass media. It used star performers, musicians, rock concerts, and pop songs to spread the message of freedom and democracy. People around the world watched nightly television news broadcasts showing police dogs and sjambok whips tearing into defenseless people. This played an important role in destroying the credibility of the Pretoria regime and its supporters. In India and some Scandinavian countries, the anti-apartheid movement could rely on the support of government, making the tasks of the resistance organizations somewhat easier. The United Nations remained prominent in its opposition to apartheid.
In the United States, the anti-apartheid movement successfully convinced the American public and Congress to support sanctions against South Africa.
There were also many specific campaigns such as the Bank Campaign and Shell Oil boycott, based at the United Mineworkers, and fervent organizing by church, student, and community groups.
By the late 1980s, the struggle between the South African government and the liberation
movements had reached a stalemate. Foreign investment declined while domestic defense spending mounted to finance wars and repression. The reforms which dismantled some “petty” apartheid laws, including the hated pass laws in 1986, did little to stem the hemorrhage of capital or to stop mass defiance. However, a different political climate emerged in 1989 with P. W. Botha’s replacement by the more pragmatic F. W. de Klerk. And behind the scenes, the ongoing crisis prompted secret meetings between Mandela and government officials.
LINKS
Anti-apartheid songs : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVmZWrrBulw
South Africa’s post-apartheid generation: http://youtu.be/elrWczhTZBk
SOUTH AFRICA SINCE APARTHEID
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/27/business/south-africa-since-apartheid/