By the late 1950s, decades of peaceful protest against apartheid had brought no real change. The government kept passing harsher laws, and Black South Africans had no vote and no legal way to change the system. This pushed resistance in a new, more radical direction.
- African National Congress (ANC) — founded in 1912; by the 1950s it led the Defiance Campaign and mass protests, but stayed committed to non-violence
- Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) — broke away from the ANC in 1959, arguing resistance should be led by Black Africans alone and pushed further, faster
- Pass laws — rules forcing Black South Africans to carry identity documents controlling where they could live and work; a hated daily symbol of apartheid
Sharpeville Massacre, 21 March 1960: The PAC organised a protest against pass laws at the police station in Sharpeville. Police opened fire on the unarmed crowd, killing 69 people and wounding over 180. It was a turning point: the government banned both the ANC and PAC, and many resistance leaders concluded peaceful protest alone could never work.
After Sharpeville, both the ANC and PAC went underground and formed armed wings. The ANC created Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"), led in its early years by Nelson Mandela. It targeted government buildings and infrastructure, avoiding civilian deaths, aiming to pressure the state through sabotage rather than start a full uprising. In 1962 Mandela was arrested; at the Rivonia Trial (1963–64) he and other ANC leaders were convicted of sabotage and jailed for life — Mandela was sent to Robben Island, where he remained for 27 years.
Why resistance radicalised: Cause and effect: pass laws + no vote → peaceful protest fails → Sharpeville massacre → ANC/PAC banned → armed struggle (Umkhonto we Sizwe) → Rivonia Trial → Mandela imprisoned but resistance continues underground.
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With the ANC and PAC banned and their leaders in jail or exile, a new form of resistance grew inside South Africa in the late 1960s and 1970s: the Black Consciousness movement, led by Steve Biko.
Steve Biko's message
Biko argued Black South Africans had internalised feelings of inferiority under apartheid. He called for psychological liberation first — pride, unity and self-reliance — before political liberation could succeed.
Organising a generation
Biko helped found the South African Students' Organisation (SASO) in 1968, building a network of Black student activism that reached schools and townships across the country.
Death in custody
Biko was arrested in 1977 and died from injuries suffered during police interrogation. His death caused international outrage and made him a lasting symbol of apartheid's brutality.
Biko: pride first, politics second — but the state silenced him.
Soweto Uprising, 16 June 1976: The government ordered Black schools to teach half their lessons in Afrikaans, a language most students and teachers barely used and associated with the oppressor. On 16 June 1976, students in Soweto marched in protest; police opened fire, killing Hector Pieterson, a 12-year-old boy, among hundreds of others killed over the following months. The uprising spread to townships nationwide and drew global media attention to apartheid's violence.
Through the 1980s, township unrest became almost continuous. Rent boycotts, school boycotts, strikes and mass funerals-turned-protests kept pressure on the state, which responded with repeated States of Emergency (from 1985), mass arrests, and heavy security force deployment. Despite this, resistance networks — often coordinated through the United Democratic Front (UDF), formed in 1983 — kept apartheid ungovernable in many areas.
Link the two decades: For Paper 3, connect the 1976 Soweto generation to the 1980s unrest: many students radicalised in 1976 became the organisers of 1980s township resistance. Continuity, not just a single event, is what examiners reward.
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Resistance inside South Africa was only half the story. From the 1960s onward, growing international opposition made apartheid increasingly costly for the South African state and economy.
| Form of pressure | What it involved | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Sporting boycott | South Africa banned from the Olympics (1964) and most international sport | Isolated white South Africans from a source of national pride |
| Trade and economic sanctions | UN and Western governments restricted trade, investment and loans from the 1970s–80s | Squeezed an economy already struggling under apartheid's inefficiencies |
| Disinvestment campaigns | Foreign companies and universities pulled investment; consumer boycotts (e.g. of South African goods) in the US and UK | Cut off capital and pressured governments to act |
| Arms embargo | UN mandatory arms embargo from 1977 | Limited the state's ability to arm its security forces |
Why the economic boycott mattered: By the mid-1980s, South Africa's economy was shrinking, foreign debt was unpayable without new loans, and business leaders — including within the white community — began pushing the government toward reform, fearing continued isolation would cause total economic collapse.
By the late 1980s, F.W. de Klerk, who became president in 1989, recognised that apartheid could not survive. On 2 February 1990, he lifted the ban on the ANC, PAC and other resistance organisations, and announced the release of political prisoners. On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela walked free after 27 years, immediately resuming leadership of the ANC and calling for a negotiated end to apartheid rather than revenge or civil war.
- CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) — talks beginning in December 1991 between the government, the ANC and other parties to negotiate a new constitution
- Obstacles to negotiation — continued political violence (including clashes between the ANC and the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party) repeatedly threatened to derail talks
- 1994 elections — South Africa's first democratic election open to all races, held 27 April 1994; the ANC won a large majority and Nelson Mandela became the country's first Black president
Mandela's role in transition: Mandela's insistence on reconciliation rather than retribution — working with, not against, De Klerk — was crucial to a relatively peaceful transition. This became a widely used comparative theme in Paper 3 answers on transitions from authoritarian rule.