the power of traditional leaders over their growing numbers of black South African subjects.52 The Citizenship Act transformed passes into passports between societies that had autonomous governments, however few states recognized them as such, other than the apartheid state. The National Party also sought to develop the infrastructure necessary to rationalize “separate development” with quasi-state institutions such as regional parliamentary buildings in the homelands. Of course, political representation was limited to the homelands themselves, which did not correlate to voting rights in the broader political context of apartheid South Africa.
Intensified racial segregation exacerbated underlying inequities in South African social organization. Forced removals from urban to rural areas intensified an emerging crisis of social reproduction for black South Africans living in the rural reserves. As discussed above, the Land Act (1913) had sequestered 87 percent of South African land for whites, which resulted in increasing numbers of black South Africans engaging in subsistence agriculture in the rural Bantustans. Growing demand for land and increasing densification in the rural reserves led to soil degradation and lower agricultural yields, placing additional pressure on migrant wage earners.53 The apartheid state sought to address the crisis by shifting industrial production from urban areas to the rural Bantustans (Wolpe 1972). However, the industrial sector developed during apartheid largely sacrificed efficiency for the racial logic of separate-but-unequal development. The consequences of inefficient import-substitution industrialization during the apartheid era would come full circle years later, following the negotiated political transition out of apartheid.
As a social reproduction crisis escalated in rural areas, black South Africans responded with increasing levels of self-organization and resistance to apartheid. The violence of forced removals concentrated the black urban population into periurban townships, but it also led to increased levels of political organization and opposition.54 A long-standing source of opposition to white rule, the ANC had lost standing among black urban residents due to ineffectual leadership amid growing state violence. The ANC’s “young Turks,” led by Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu, revitalized the ANC by working with the SACP to challenge the implementation of apartheid laws. Walter Sisulu’s election as secretary general reflected a shift within the ANC away from an approach based on moderation to direct action and civil disobedience. The Defiance Campaign (1952) built upon growing opposition to apartheid in urban areas and consisted of nonviolent protests.55 Critically, the South African Indian Congress aligned with the ANC to build a nonracial platform for the campaign. Strikes, boycotts, and nonviolent resistance were the responses of an emerging alliance of anti-apartheid activists.
A significant development for the anti-apartheid campaign was the adoption of the Freedom Charter by the ANC, the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People’s Congress, and the South African Congress of Democrats in 1955. The Freedom Charter set the foundations for a nonracial mass movement to end apartheid, and it formalized several demands: a democratic political system, equality in political rights, equality in human rights, the equitable allocation of the country’s wealth, freedom of movement, access to land, and the nationalization of the country’s banks, mines, and industry. The aims of the anti-apartheid movement set out in the Freedom Charter were highly influential for the subsequent emergence of a broad-based movement to end apartheid that transcended the lines of race and class. The ANC played a leading role in formulating the Freedom Charter, but it did so in a consultative manner. Approximately fifty thousand ANC volunteers canvassed the townships and rural areas, gathering input from black South Africans on how the anti-apartheid movement should self-organize. Former Lovedale Mission Station attendee and ANC member Z. K. Matthews played a central role in compiling the charter.56
The National Party met this opposition to apartheid rule with violent repression. The year following the Congress of the People, the meeting at which the Freedom Charter had been drafted and adopted, the National Party arrested 156 meeting attendees on treason charges. While the case failed to secure a single conviction, the Treason Trials showed how apartheid security forces actively undermined the anti-apartheid movement via surveillance and prosecution. Presaging subsequent events, security forces opened fire and killed fourteen protesters at one protest in the mining town of Kimberley in November 1952. The apartheid security forces responded aggressively to the Defiance Campaign, using deadly force, and the period of open defiance toward the apartheid state came to a halt with the Sharpeville Massacre. On March 21, 1960, at a protest against the pass laws organized by the Pan-Africanist Congress, sixty-nine men, women, and children were shot and killed by state security forces. Within South Africa, the National Party responded by further repressing political activity. The ANC, Pan-Africanist Congress, SACP, and other organizations tied to the anti-apartheid movement were banned, and their members went into hiding. Internationally, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution condemning the killing of nonviolent protesters by apartheid security forces and calling for an end to apartheid. The Sharpeville Massacre was a turning point in the mass movement against the apartheid state, one that led to the militarization of political struggle in South Africa.
The Sharpeville Massacre and subsequent militarization of the apartheid state transformed the organizational composition of the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC moved its leadership into exile and formed its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (meaning “spear of the nation” and abbreviated as MK), to engage in guerilla warfare against the apartheid government. Nelson Mandela was a founding member of MK and led a campaign to pressure the National Party to negotiate a new constitution. The campaign targeted government installations across South Africa and included a series of bombings over an eighteen-month period between 1961 and 1963. MK leaders were captured by state security services and prosecuted for “violent acts of revolution” in what became known as the Rivonia Trials (1963–1964). ANC and SACP leaders including Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, and Walter Sisulu were sentenced to life in prison for their involvement in the MK attacks. The intensification of internal repression against the anti-apartheid movement shifted the military conflict from a domestic to a regional affair, with the ANC in exile serving as the apartheid state’s primary target.
During the 1970s, the apartheid state shifted from racially “ordering” South African society to becoming a regional military and intelligence apparatus. However, the expansion of apartheid state violence across Southern Africa led to international isolation. In 1961, the National Party held a referendum, and white South Africans voted to withdraw from the British Commonwealth.57 South Africa’s exit from the British Commonwealth also entailed a transformation of Botswana’s political status. Formerly the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana had been subsumed into the Union of South Africa as part of the political compromise leading to unified white rule. South Africa’s exit from the British Commonwealth foreclosed the possibility of Botswana’s incorporation into South Africa, and following the development of a constitution in 1961 the British approved an application for self-government in Botswana. While South Africa maintained political control over South-West Africa (today known as Namibia), Botswana emerged as an important “frontline state” in the militarized campaign against apartheid along with Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, and Angola. Given Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban support for African anticolonial movements, the regional conflict against the anti-apartheid movement was framed through a Cold War lens. While powerful international partners such as the United States became allies of the apartheid state, new variants of political struggle emerged within South Africa that challenged the racial logic and state violence of the apartheid era.
Black Consciousness, the Soweto Uprising, and Late Apartheid
The intensification of state repression following the Sharpeville Massacre led to an interregnum for ANC-led internal opposition to apartheid, but it was followed by a new form of social justice activism in South Africa. The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) traced its roots to the South African student movement and aimed to transform black South African social life. Growing out of transnational movements for black liberation and Frantz Fanon’s revolutionary thought, the BCM worked to undermine the discourse of white supremacy and set the foundations for the Soweto Uprising, which would take place in 1976. As the National
