late 1960s and early 1970s belonged to the generation of Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness (BC) movement, which had its roots in the black student movement. Biko argued that blacks had to shake off their inferiority complexes, ingrained by centuries of white oppression, if they were to achieve national liberation. He also called for democratic practices to be at the centre of the anti-apartheid struggle.
The 16 June 1976 Soweto uprising by high school pupils, led by the likes of Tsietsi Mashinini, brought a new radicalism to the ANC. They protested against the introduction of Afrikaans as the compulsory medium of instruction in black schools and were recruited en masse into the ANC, providing the organisation with a new street-smart generation.
Then came the 1980s, which brought two parallel waves within the ANC. First, the idea of the ‘intifada’ was brought to the organisation by a new generation who were prepared to sacrifice their lives for liberation. They used the slogan ‘victory or death’. At the same time there were ‘adult’ movements like the United Democratic Front (UDF) – an internal umbrella group of civil groups – nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and black professional associations, the revitalised trade union movement and white issue-based groups that were opposed to apartheid.
Throughout South Africa’s history, colonial and apartheid governments ruled blacks through divide-and-conquer tactics in an attempt to make effective black opposition against oppression impossible. Mac Maharaj, transport minister in the cabinet of former president Nelson Mandela, said the ANC’s key success was its ability to unify black people against these divisionary tactics. The ANC, through its fierce resistance, gave many blacks a sense of self-worth and a cause. It offered a positive alternative.
The ANC’s success as a liberation movement was due to its visionary leadership, its mission to be inclusive of all races, ethnicities and classes, and the fact that it practised inclusive democracy.
In the main, the ANC’s internal operation ethos, whether among cadres in exile or political prisoners on Robben Island, was one of consultation, inclusiveness, freedom of expression and the right to dissent. This is not to say that there were not incidences of autocracy or the torture of independently minded members, especially in the exiled armed wing and intelligence structures, or that there were not Stalinist elements, eager to crush dissent, but these were mostly held in check by more democratically minded members.
One of the ANC’s biggest successes as a liberation movement was to turn the struggle against apartheid into a moral battle which was fought on a global scale. This strategy was one of the reasons Western churches strongly backed the ANC from the 1980s onwards, generously providing funding and lobbying their governments and congregations to put pressure on the apartheid government.
The ANC produced visionary leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Albert Luthuli and Desmond Tutu. These leaders had moral authority – and by their individual ethical and moral conduct also reinforced the moral dimensions of the struggle. The influence of the church on the ANC during the struggle is often overlooked. In fact, many of the ANC’s leaders were deeply influenced by Christianity. They put morality and ethics at the heart of their leadership.
Although started mainly by Africans, the ANC transformed into an organisation which embraced South Africa’s diverse communities, including whites. The ANC was also allied to various social, civic, student, traditional and professional organisations. These organisations all influenced the ANC and this helped the movement to avoid becoming ideologically rigid or too narrow in its policy outlook. It was forced to come to terms with diversity, something which time and again helped to revitalise the ANC by providing it with a regular stream of new ideas, leaders and funding.
Historically, the ANC has also been able to successfully incorporate virtually all civil movements and grass-roots activism in South Africa into the party, frequently taking over some of the ideas and campaigns of these organisations and even of its rivals, such as the now almost defunct Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). This has helped the ANC to put itself at the centre of the official history of the South African liberation struggle.
For instance, ANC leaders actively sought to recruit Steve Biko and after his death they lured most of the brightest young talent from the BC movement to the organisation. This generation of black activists and intellectuals, with fresh ideas on genuine participatory democracy, helped the ANC to reach out to a younger, more radical black generation, who at that stage might have perceived the ‘old’ ANC as irrelevant.
In the 1980s, the organisation brought the new generation of democratic trade unions that had regrouped under the umbrella of COSATU into the ANC fold. It did the same with the 1980s ‘civics’ movements – where black communities formed their own councils and tried to manage their municipal affairs in a participatory manner.
The ANC also swallowed up the UDF, one of Africa’s most effective grass-roots civil movements. The UDF had galvanised a broad range of groups across different classes and races, including black professional organisations and the growing black middle class, who by the 1980s were starting to become sceptical of a ‘radical’ ANC. It also incorporated liberal white issue-based groups who opposed the apartheid government, such as the End Conscription Campaign.
Compared to other African liberation movements, the ANC had the unique ability to unite diverse groups within South Africa against apartheid. Most other African liberation movements were formed around one ethnic or regional group, and could never transcend this. The ANC created a broad-church alliance that spanned the ideological spectrum, from shopkeepers to communists, and became what was called a ‘multi-class’ organisation.
The ANC is also one of the few liberation movements that embraced minority communities, including what other liberation movements referred to as ‘settlers’ (white groups). Joel Netshitenzhe, former editor of the ANC journal Mayibuye, once said that ‘over the years, the organisation projected itself as a parliament, first, of the African people; and it later sought recognition as the legitimate representative of all the people of SA’. This was the strength of the ANC: the ability to portray itself as a more racially inclusive alternative to colonial and apartheid governments.
Three other constituencies – organised women’s groups, trade unions and churches – have also been influential in the ANC’s long history. In many other African liberation struggles these constituencies may have been present, but were not as prominent as in the ANC.
Of all the African liberation movements, the ANC had the most influential and organised women’s wing. Yet, when the ANC was formed it did not accept women as members.
In 1918 when the white-controlled government of the Union of South Africa threatened to introduce pass laws for black women, the ANC was going through one of its most vulnerable periods. Supporters and members of the party were disillusioned with the leadership’s ineffectual strategy of petitioning the Union government and the British monarch to give concessions to the oppressed black majority. The militancy of black female activists and their strategy of mass protests against the pass laws filled the conservative ANC male leadership with awe.
The Bantu Women’s League was formed in 1918, and joined as a branch of the ANC. It was later succeeded, in 1948, by the ANC Women’s League (the ANC first accepted female members in 1943). Women activists also played a part in the penning of the Freedom Charter of 1955.
The ANC has had an extraordinary number of capable churchmen – or lay clergymen – who cut their organisational teeth within the church, but became brilliant mass campaigners. James Calata, who was refused the bishopric of Transkei because he was black, stands out. During one of the ANC’s most lethargic periods just before the Second World War, when its finances were in a mess, James Calata was elected general secretary of the ANC. He set up new branches, re-energised dormant ones and balanced the books.
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