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Literary opposition to apartheid came from internationally known figures in South African literature like Roy Campbell and Alan Paton, and in Afrikaans literature by Uys Krige, Ingrid Jonker, Breyten Breytenbach, André Brink and from Afrikaner Calvinist dominies like Beyers Naudé.
The reforms promised in the speech included the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and other anti-apartheid organisations, the release of political prisoners including Nelson Mandela, the end of the state of emergency, and a moratorium on the death penalty. [2] [3] [4] [5]
The speech describes why the ANC had decided to go beyond its previous use of constitutional methods and Gandhian non-violent resistance and adopt sabotage against property (designed to minimize risks of injury and death) as a part of their activism against the South African government and its apartheid policies (while also training a military wing for possible future use).
An anti-apartheid Defiance Campaign had been announced in the run up to the whites-only general election.With many political organisations banned and leaders in prison or detained without trial, the campaign was led by a broad cross-section of leaders, including religious leaders, community leaders and trade union activists, sometimes operating under the banner of the Mass Democratic Movement.
The United Nations took note and called the apartheid policy a "threat to peace". [15] In the middle of April 1953, Chief Albert Luthuli, the President-General of the ANC, proclaimed that the Defiance Campaign would be called off so that the resistance groups could reorganize taking into consideration the new political climate in South Africa. [17]
The Congress of the People, consisting of around 3,000 people, gathered in Kliptown, part of Soweto (a large township outside Johannesburg) on 26 June 1955 in a field surrounded by chicken-wire to give it a lawful claim of being a private gathering, [5] [6] so that it was not prevented from assembling by the South African government. [5]
Repercussions from the decades of apartheid continue to resonate through every facet of South African life, despite copious amounts of legislation meant to alleviate inequalities. [3] Post-apartheid South Africa struggles to correct the social inequalities created by decades of apartheid. [1]
In the late 1960s South Africa's apartheid regime became increasingly politically isolated, both internationally and continental. Under Prime Minister B.J. Vorster it developed the so-called "outward-looking policy", an effort to bind southern African countries economically, and in this way to discourage them from openly criticising its repressive internal politics.