·
·
·
·
The failure of Gandhian style of
non-violent resistance led to the emergence of more militantly uncooperative
and semi- violent form of protest.
·
The rising influenced by Gandhian
resistance marked the outbreak of a wide spread national resistance movement
involving school children, university students and urban workers throughout out
the county, which was spearheaded by the new black consciousness organizations.
·
The Black Consciousness Movement
that grew before 1976 was inspired largely by an outstanding and brilliant
young leader Steve Biko 1946-77.
·
Steve Biko was born in King
William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, studied medicine at Natal University where
he observed the multi-racial approach to opposition to apartheid of the white
led National Union of South Africa Students (NUSAS)
·
Steve Biko became the theoretician
of the theory of Black Consciousness, where white power was seen as the enemy
and the only answer to it was the gradual building up of black strength.
·
According to Biko, first of all
black aware ness of the nature of the problem was necessary and independent
planning of their aims and tactics, and had overcome independence both on white
liberals and on ethnics, they could move forward in unity and in total
conviction.
·
Before 1976, the Black Consciousness
Movement was largely a student movement and a cultural one. It is also said to
have started in 1968 when Biko founded the South African Students Organization
(SASO) for black University Students.
·
Biko became SASO's first President
and eventually two organizations were set up. The South African Student
Movement (SASM) for secondary school students and the Black People's Convention
(BPC) for non-students.
·
In the early 1970's, SASO, SASM and
BPC expanded steadily as they recruited Africans, coloreds and Asians and
strove to conquer feelings among their members of black Inferiority.
·
The movement worked within the law
and was non-violent, excluded whites. Biko however, was a theoretician and
started the Zimele Trust Fund, which supported former detainees and their
families.
·
He helped to organize self- help
schemes, especially clinics. With his colleagues, he suffered political
repression frequently from the Vorster government and in 1973, Biko and other
Black Consciousness leaders were banned from political involvement, he was
restricted to his home for five years.
·
From 1973 to 1977 he was arrested
frequently for breaking banning orders and was held for 75 days without charge
or trial. His colleague, Abraham Tito was killed by a parcel bomb posted to him
in Botswana in 1974.
·
The Black Consciousness Movement
played a role in inspiring and organizing the Soweto rising and the Soweto
Students' Representative Council (SSRC), which lead the rising was strongly
influenced by Steve Biko's ideas.
·
Due to worse conditions like - poor
housing, health, unemployment, lack of social amenities, among others thousands
were murdered in 1974. By 1976 the government had imposed compulsory teaching
in Afrikaans language, which led to strikes.
·
There were several uprising
spearheaded by the Black Consciousness oriented SSRC and SASM where they
battled police with petrol bombs, stones and radical violence.
·
As opposition grew throughout the
country, it extended from a focus on education to one, which expressed many of
the basic grievances of the black people with problems like- lack of jobs, low
wages, inadequate or non-existent social services, and no control over, or participation
in the decisions affecting their daily lives. The results were that Soweto
schools were closed for many months.
·
In 1977, state repression led to the
death of Steve Biko in police custody on 12th September of multiple
brain and body injuries. He was murdered either on government order or by an
overzealous torturer and died under interrogation.
·
Steve Biko was considered dangerous
because he was not a terrorist but the government feared that Black
Consciousness ideas were undermining apartheid, he had emerged as an
articulate, skilful and powerful advocate of non-violent change, and he allied
political organizational skills to a charismatic personality.
·
His ideas had won over black
students in universities, teacher training institutes, theological seminaries
and secondary schools and those on the SSRC.
·
The ability of non-violent tactics
under Steve Biko, among other leaders had failed due to the failure of the
country wide protests at Biko's death.
·
By either killing Biko or allowing
him to be killed, the Nationalist Party managed to drive many young Black South
Africans to support violence and the result was intensification of the guerilla
struggle as thousands of young blacks fled abroad to escape police repression
between 1976-77 to enlist in the ANC guerilla army. They wanted to emulate
Samora Machel and the MPLA in Mozambique and Angola respectively.
·
South Africa continued to be rocked
by school boycotts and workers strikers and by 1980, the police had not many
anti-apartheid demonstrators.
·
In 1978, the Black Consciousness
Movement was revived into the Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO) that linked
up with strikes in Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, Soweto, Cape Town,
Bloemfontein, Durban and Transvaal by natives, coloureds and Indians.
·
By 1975, the Best organized black
political movement was Inkatha Freedom Party of Chief Gatsha Buthelezi , the
Chief Minister of the Kwa-Zulu Bantustan, but the basis of his support was
dangerously ethnic was an obstacle to black unity and to the development of
Black Consciousness in South Africa.
·
·
African
nationalism, the Gandhian Policy and its failure in the liberation struggle
·
·
Up to about 1960, non-white
nationalism in South Africa was deeply affected by Gandhi’s policy of
non-violent civil disobedience.
·
Gandhism has origins in South
Africa. Between 1906 and 1908, the policy was launched in South Africa under
the leadership of Gandhi, directed against laws in Transvaal, which required
Indians to carry registration certificates or passbooks.
·
Gandhism had an impact on African
opinion in South Africa. There were a series of Gandhian protests South Africa
in the those early years.
·
In Bloemfontein, African women used
the technique of civil disobedience in 1913 in their protests against the
extension of pass laws to the by them by the municipalities in the Orange Free
State and the Woman's Movement spread to other towns.
·
In 1919, the ANC experimented the
technique of Gandhism in Johannesburg. In 1930, the communist party also
wentGandhism and the Indians in similar way in 1946, against the Asiatic land
tenure and Indian representation Act.
·
By 1952, the policy captured the
imagination of politically conscious blacks in South Africa against the-
Natives Act, which required all African men and women to carry reference books
at all times and many thousands of Africans had been arrested for not carrying
passes.
·
In the early 1950's, Gandhism was an
alliance between blacks and Indians in union with a joint planning council to
coordinate the efforts of Africans, Indians and coloreds in a mass campaign for
the repeal of the pass laws, the Group Areas Act on racial segregation, the
Separate Representation of Voters Act that violated the political rights of
coloreds and the Bantu Authorities Act to ensure a re- tribalisation of
Africans.
·
The Campaign was successful due to
union of three groups, but failed in terms of aims. By this time, Gandhism had
limits as a system and was closing up and getting more intolerant.
·
Civil disobedience, which
concentrated on protests, fasting, and marching long distances and against
segregated public places, had no effect on government, which had no guilty
conscience about using the police and the courts in severe repressive measures.
·
A new law, which became the Criminal
Law Amendment Act, was directed against civil disobedience and many
demonstrators were imprisoned on Pass offences, and the leaders banned and the
apartheid government had achieved thus with enforcement of treason trials.
·
By 1953, the new President General
of the ANC was Chief Albert Luthuli (1898-1967), who was a former teacher and
government chief in Zululand and an admirer of Gandhi and Gandhism.
·
In spite of restrictions from
1953-56, he inspired the ANC with a series of boycotts (a bus boycott in
Alexandra Town ship against high fares, in which African workers walked to work
and back for three months), which forced the companies to reduce the new fares
and the Potato boycott against hiring and working conditions on some European
farms.
·
The high point of Luthuli leadership
was the 1955 with a higher level of interracial political cooperation that
supported the Freedom Charter. The Charter stated that- South Africa belongs
to all who live in it- Black and white, and called for a Bill of Rights,
and advocated democratic not majority rule. In other words, the Charter called
for an inclusive form of nationalism by all racial groups than exclusive
African nationalism.
·
The response of the apartheid
government to the Charter was a new wave of raids, mass arrests and banning.
The ANC generation became impatient with Gandhism- with non-violence and inter
racial cooperation, and the supporters of an- exclusive African nationalism
·
The PAC broke away from ANC in 1958
to form Pan -Africanist Congress in 1959.
·
PAC was not only committed to
non-violence and inters racism but was more Socialist in aims than ANC. The
ANC, however, continued to attract more African support than PAC.
·
PAC leader and founder, Robert
Mangalisho Sobukwe (1924-78), by 1957 the editor of the Africanist and a
language assistant at the University of Witwatersrand was held in prison in
1960 until 1963, when he was transported to Robben Island.
·
Luthuli received the Noble Peace
Prize for 1960 in Europe, December 1961 for his efforts towards non-violent
changes in South Africa, but non-violence had failed and the more militant
activists of the ANC and PAC formed Umkhonto we Sizwe and Poqo.
·
Attachments
·
The
Struggle Continued 1945-1994
·
·
Continuos
Problems Of South African Liberation Struggle And The Un Factor In The Area
·
Over the years after 1945, the UN
had taken a number of actions against white minority governments in Southern
Africa including South Africa.
·
The Apartheid government adopted
discriminatory policies against blacks, who made up a large majority of the
region’s population.
·
The discrimination led to civil wars
and other unrest in Southern Africa. The UN action affected the nations of
South Africa, Namibia (which was ruled by South Africa until 1990 and Rhodesia
now called Zimbabwe)
·
The Republic South Africa as the
largest country of southern Africa and was dominated by a white minority since
1990. A similar situation existed in nearby Rhodesia.
·
The whites continued to be in power
in these countries long after white rule had ended in most of Africa.
·
In 1920, the League of Nations gave
South Africa mandate to manage the government and affairs of Namibia, a large
territory adjacent to South Africa and inhabited chiefly by blacks.
·
In 1948, the government of South
Africa established a policy of rigid, legal, racial segregation called
Apartheid. This policy was aimed at separating black Africans and whites
socially.
·
Numerous apartheid laws also
increased discrimination against blacks in employment, education, and all other
aspect of everyday life.
·
In 1974, the General Assembly of the
UN excluded South Africa's delegation from that year's session because of its
Apartheid policy.
·
In 1976, the Assembly passed a
series of resolutions that urged UN members to stop trading with South Africa,
to arms shipments there, and to refuse sports competition with South African
athletes.
·
In 1977, the Security Council
ordered all UN members to stop selling weapons to South Africa. The order was
the first of such action that was ever taken against a UN member.
·
The government of South Africa
gradually repealed the laws WHICH formed the legal basis of Apartheid. The last
such was repealed in 1991.
·
In the early 1990's, however, South
African law still denied blacks the right to vote in national and provincial
elections and to take part in the national government.
·
In addition, non- whites still faced
much unofficial segregation in South Africa.
·
In 1993, the South Africa government
agreed to hold multiracial national elections in April 1994.
·
After the repeal of South Africa's
apartheid laws, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that urged all
nation to give or allow South Africa to participate in international sports
events.
·
Many UN members resumed trade with
South Africa even though the UN ban on military and trade remained in effect.
·
Weaknesses
of UN in the liberation struggle of South Africa
·
Despite its role, the UN failed to
take a strong action against member states like Zambia, Malawi, and Britain,
which violated its economic and trade sanctions by transacting business deals
with the South African government.
·
The UN practiced double standards in
the South Africa conflict by condemning colonialism on the surface but in
reality its leading members like USA were responsible for fueling the continued
racial segregation in South Africa.
·
The UN proved to be weak in conflicts
involving the two leading super powers and members of the Security Council that
is USSR and USA, because they were the decision makers and the leading
financiers of the UN.
·
The UN is also accused of failing to
commit its peacekeeping force to water down the tension in South Africa.
·
Many NATO members continued to
support South Africa to the indifference and toothless ness of the UNO.
·
The UN also failed to organize a
general election where all races- blacks, Asians, coloureds and whites would be
involved
·
Worse racial discrimination was
carried out and other violations of Human rights and peoples fundamental
freedoms when the UN was just toothless contrary to the UNDHR of the UN.
·
·
Role of
United Nations Organization (UNO) in the Liberation struggle of South Africa
·
·
UNO was formed in 1945, to replace
the League of Nations to protect human rights, world peace, eradicate
colonialism and racial discrimination.
·
Therefore South African government
was opposed to UNO because it was dominated by racial discrimination, minority
white domination of the blacks, racial conflicts and worked not to reverse
this.
·
It created the trusteeship council to
handle and solve the problems of the oppressed people.
·
In 1945, the UN Charter was adopted
and in the UN General Assembly called on South Africa to abide by the
principles concerning racial equality in the Charter as a condition required
for UN membership.
·
In 1948, the UN adopted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights for equality of human beings, the right
to human dignity.
·
In 1962, the UN general assembly
made repeated appeals for South Africa to rethink her racial policies in
respect to the UN Charter.
·
In 1960, after the Sharpsville
massacre, the General Assembly and the Security Council met and condemned the
policy and voted against Apartheid.
·
In 1961, the General Assembly
appealed to member states to sanction diplomatic relation with South Africa by
closing embassies, discouraging migration to South Africa and appealed for
isolation.
·
A Special Committee in 1962 was to
influence international call on Apartheid. In 1964, the Security Council
supported by Britain and USA called for a ban on sale of arms to South Africa
to undermine South Africa's ability to contain the nationalists.
·
In 1965, UN in its efforts to
eliminate all forms of racism formed the International Convention. In 1966, the
general assembly passed a resolution ending the mandate of ~outh African
Apartheid regime's trust power.
·
In 1968, under the influence of
Afro-Asian countries, the UN expelled South Africa from her specialized
agencies like WHO, ILO and FAO. In addition, in 1969 the UN enforced these
sanctions.
·
In 1973, the UN adopted the
international convention on the suppression and punishment of crimes of
Apartheid.
·
However, the UN failed to supervise
sanctions, penalize countries, was manipulated by big powers until F.W.
De'Klerk came to power.
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