The big idea: Between 1948 and 1964, one group in South Africa built a system of racial control called apartheid, and other groups fought to end it. To understand this period, you need to know who these key actors were and what each of them wanted.
In 1948, the National Party won the whites-only election. It then began passing laws that separated people by race and gave power and privilege to the white minority.
Apartheid was the name for this system. It touched almost everything, from where you could live and work to who you could marry.
On the other side stood groups who wanted equal rights. The oldest and largest was the ANC, which had been campaigning peacefully since 1912.
By 1959 a second group broke away from the ANC. It was called the PAC, and it wanted a faster, bolder fight led by Africans alone.
Groups that BUILT apartheid
- The National Party, in power from 1948, which passed the apartheid laws
- D.F. Malan, the first apartheid prime minister (1948–1954)
- Hendrik Verwoerd, later called the 'architect of apartheid'
- The whites-only government, police and courts that enforced the laws
Groups that FOUGHT apartheid
- The ANC, the largest resistance movement, at first peaceful
- The PAC, a more radical breakaway formed in 1959
- The wider Congress Alliance, partners who joined the ANC's campaigns
- Leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Albert Luthuli and Robert Sobukwe
Paper 1 source tip: Sources often use different words for the same thing.
• 'The government', 'the regime' or 'the Nationalists' usually means the National Party.
• 'The liberation movements' usually means the ANC and PAC together.
Spotting who a source speaks for helps you judge its purpose.
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Each side of the apartheid struggle contained several actors, and they did not all think alike. To answer Paper 1 questions well, you need to know what each group actually did and why.
The key actors and what they wanted
The National Party government
In power from 1948, it built apartheid through laws. D.F. Malan began the system, and Hendrik Verwoerd made it far harsher. Their aim was to keep permanent power and privilege for the white minority.
The ANC
The largest resistance group. In 1952 it led the Defiance Campaign. In 1955 it helped adopt the Freedom Charter. Its aim was a non-racial democracy, at first through peaceful protest.
The Congress Alliance
The ANC did not act alone. It worked with Indian, Coloured and white anti-apartheid groups in a partnership called the Congress Alliance. Together they organised the Congress of the People.
The PAC
Formed in 1959 by Robert Sobukwe, who broke from the ANC. The PAC rejected working with other races and wanted an 'Africa for the Africans'. It called the anti-pass protest that led to Sharpeville in 1960.
Government imposes → ANC resists peacefully → PAC pushes harder → armed struggle begins
The ANC and the PAC agreed that apartheid was wrong, but they disagreed sharply about how to fight it and who should lead. Understanding that split is often the key to comparing sources from this period.
The ANC's approach
- Founded in 1912, the older and larger movement
- Wanted a non-racial South Africa shared by all groups
- Worked with other races through the Congress Alliance
- Backed the Freedom Charter of 1955 as its programme
- Preferred peaceful protest such as the Defiance Campaign
The PAC's approach
- Broke away in 1959 under Robert Sobukwe
- Wanted an Africa run by Africans, not a shared state
- Rejected working with white or Indian allies
- Distrusted the Freedom Charter's non-racial vision
- Pushed for bolder, faster direct action against the pass laws
| Date | Actor / event | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1948 | National Party wins the election | Brings apartheid to power and starts the flood of racial laws. |
| 1952 | ANC leads the Defiance Campaign | Shows mass, organised, peaceful resistance and grows ANC membership. |
| 1955 | The Freedom Charter is adopted | Sets out the resistance's aims and later becomes a target for the government. |
| 1958 | Verwoerd becomes prime minister | The 'architect of apartheid' makes the system tougher and more rigid. |
| 1959 | PAC founded by Robert Sobukwe | Splits the resistance and pushes for a more radical, Africa-first campaign. |
Mini-case: two movements, one goal: Imagine two protest leaders in 1959.
One is an ANC organiser who wants Africans, Indians, Coloureds and sympathetic whites to march together for a shared country. The other has just joined the new PAC, and believes only Africans should lead, for Africans alone.
Why this matters: They both hate apartheid, yet they would run very different campaigns. When a source praises one movement and criticises the other, this split is usually the reason. Naming it shows the examiner you understand the actors, not just the events.
Paper 1 judgement tip: Don't just say: 'The ANC and PAC both opposed apartheid.'
Instead explain the difference: the ANC wanted a non-racial state and worked with allies, while the PAC wanted Africans alone to lead and rejected those allies. That contrast is exactly what a compare-and-contrast question rewards.
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The turning point: 1960 changed everything. After the Sharpeville massacre, the government banned the main resistance groups, and the ANC and PAC decided that peaceful protest alone was no longer enough.
On 21 March 1960, the PAC organised a protest against the pass laws in the township of Sharpeville. People gathered outside the police station without their passes.
The police opened fire on the crowd, killing about 69 people, many shot in the back as they fled. News of the Sharpeville massacre spread around the world and shocked opinion everywhere.
How Sharpeville pushed the struggle towards violence
The protest
On 21 March 1960 the PAC led an anti-pass protest at Sharpeville. Crowds gathered peacefully outside the police station, leaving their pass books at home.
The massacre
Police opened fire, killing about 69 unarmed people and wounding many more. Photographs of the dead reached newspapers across the world.
The ban
The government declared a state of emergency and banned both the ANC and the PAC in 1960. The main resistance movements were now illegal.
Going underground
Banned, the movements could no longer protest openly. Leaders like Nelson Mandela began to organise in secret.
The armed struggle
In December 1961 the ANC launched its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which began a sabotage campaign against government targets.
The state hit back hard. In 1963 police raided a secret ANC hideout at Rivonia, near Johannesburg, and captured much of the movement's leadership.
At the Rivonia Trial that followed, Nelson Mandela and seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1964. By then the open resistance of the 1950s had been crushed, and its leaders were in jail or exile.
Mini-case: why the ANC chose sabotage: Put yourself in the ANC's position in 1961.
For nearly fifty years the movement had protested peacefully. Yet the government answered Sharpeville with bullets and then made the ANC illegal, so marches and petitions were no longer even allowed.
Why this matters: MK was created to attack buildings and power lines rather than people, aiming to pressure the government without starting a race war. This helps you explain a hard exam point: the ANC did not turn to violence lightly, but only after peaceful methods were shut down.
Albert Luthuli: the ANC president who approved MK
Notice whose voice is missing from that story so far: Albert Luthuli. He was ANC president from 1952 until his death in 1967, which means he was the ANC's leader through the Defiance Campaign, the Freedom Charter, Sharpeville, the banning of the ANC, and the creation of MK in 1961 — the whole period this section covers.
Who Luthuli was: Luthuli was a Zulu chief in Natal and a committed Christian, and for most of his career he was the ANC's clearest champion of non-violence — he believed in strikes, boycotts and mass protest, not weapons. In 1960 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first African to receive it, in recognition of his non-violent leadership of the anti-apartheid struggle.
Why Luthuli's position is the exam-relevant detail
A lifelong pacifist
Through the 1950s Luthuli led the ANC's non-violent campaigns and was repeatedly banned and restricted by the government for it. Non-violence was not a slogan for him — it came from his Christian faith and his belief that it was the morally right path.
Sharpeville tested that belief
After the 1960 massacre and the banning of the ANC, younger leaders (including Mandela) argued that peaceful methods had been shut down by the state itself, so non-violence could no longer work on its own.
A reluctant approval, not a conversion
As ANC president, Luthuli did not abandon his own beliefs. He reluctantly accepted that the ANC as a whole would allow a separate armed wing, MK, to form in 1961 — while he personally remained committed to non-violence.
Why 'reluctant' matters for Paper 1
May 2022 Q13 tests exactly this nuance: the ANC's shift to armed struggle in 1961 was not a united, enthusiastic decision. It happened under a president who still believed in non-violence but judged that the movement needed a violent option to survive.
Luthuli: Zulu chief, Christian, Nobel Prize 1960, ANC president 1952–67 — approved MK in 1961, reluctantly.
Don't collapse Luthuli into Mandela: It is tempting to describe 1961 as simply "the ANC turned to violence." A stronger answer names both men and their different relationships to that decision: Mandela helped found and organise MK, while Luthuli, as ANC president and a committed pacifist, gave the movement's overall approval only reluctantly, never personally abandoning non-violence. That tension — one leader's peace-prize legacy sitting alongside the party's new armed wing — is precisely what May 2022 Q13 rewards you for explaining.
Before Sharpeville: the Treason Trial and the ANC's multi-racial turn
Before the government turned to bullets at Sharpeville, it first tried the courts. Going back a few years shows how that legal route was tried — and failed — and who exactly was standing together in the dock.
- Nelson Mandela — a lawyer and rising ANC figure who helped found the ANC Youth League in the 1940s.
- Walter Sisulu — a founding leader of the ANC Youth League alongside Mandela, and one of the ANC's most senior organisers through the 1950s.
- Oliver Tambo — the third of this Youth League trio, who worked closely with Mandela and Sisulu to push the wider ANC away from its older, cautious approach.
- Together, these three younger leaders argued the ANC should move from small, polite protest towards mass action — and, crucially, towards working with Indian, Coloured and white anti-apartheid groups rather than acting alone. By the early 1950s this multi-racial cooperation had become official ANC strategy, seen in the Defiance Campaign (1952) and the Congress Alliance that produced the Freedom Charter in 1955.
The Treason Trial (1956–1961): Months after the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955, the government struck back — through the law, not yet the gun.
In December 1956, police arrested 156 leaders of the resistance and charged them all with high treason, accusing them of plotting to overthrow the state. The accused included Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Albert Luthuli, alongside white, Indian and Coloured allies from the Congress Alliance — proof of just how multi-racial the movement had become.
The Treason Trial dragged on for over four years. One by one, charges were dropped, and by 1961 every remaining defendant had been acquitted.
Why the Treason Trial matters for Paper 1: Source extracts from 1956–1961 (or reflecting back on this period) often come from Treason Trial testimony, press coverage of the arrests, or ANC statements about the accused. May-2019 and Nov-2019 papers both drew on this context.
Key point to make: the Treason Trial shows the government first tried legal repression — mass arrests and a courtroom battle — before Sharpeville (1960) pushed both sides towards violence. The trial's collapse in acquittals also shows the state failing to make its case, which is exactly why Sharpeville and the subsequent bannings mattered so much: the courts hadn't worked, so the government changed tactics.