African National Congress

South Africa's governing party since the establishment of majority rule in
May 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) was founded to defend the
rights of the black majority on January 8, 1912 in the city of Bloemfontein,
and counted poet and author Sol Plaatje among its founder members.

Formed initially to oppose the passage of the 1913 Land Act, the ANC from
its inception represented both traditional and modern elements, from tribal
chiefs to church and community bodies and educated black professionals,
though women were only admitted as affiliate members from 1931 and as full
members in 1943.

The formation of the ANC Youth League in 1944 by Nelson Mandela, Walter
Sisulu, and Oliver Tambo heralded a new generation committed to building
non-violent mass action against the legal underpinnings of white supremacy.
In 1947 the ANC allied with the Natal Indian Congress and Transvaal Indian
congress, broadening the basis of its opposition to the government.

The return of an Afrikaner-led National Party government by the
overwhelmingly white electorate in 1948 signaled the advent of the policy of
Apartheid (Afrikaans, "separateness" of the races, or political and social
segregation of black and white). During the 1950s non-whites were moved from
electoral rolls, residence and mobility laws were tightened and political
activities restricted.

In June 1952 the ANC joined with other anti-apartheid organisations in a
"Defiance Campaign" against the restriction of political, labour and
residential rights, during which protesters deliberately violated oppressive
laws, following the example of Mohandas Gandhi's passive resistance in Natal
and India. The campaign was called off in April 1953 after new laws
prohibiting protest meetings.

In June 1955 the "Congress of the People" organised by the ANC and Indian,
Coloured and white organisations at Kliptown near Johannesburg, adopted the
Freedom Charter, henceforth the fundamental document of the anti-apartheid
struggle with its demand for equal rights for all regardless of race. As
opposition to the regime's policies continued, 156 leading members of the
ANC and allied organisations were arrested in 1956: the resulting "Treason
Trial" ended in their acquittal five years later.

After undertaking a campaign against the Pass Laws (requiring blacks to
carry an identity card at all times to justify their presence in "white"
areas) in which 69 protesters were shot by police (March 1960), the ANC was
banned from political activity along with the Pan-Africanist Congress, which
had broken away from it the year before under the leadership of Robert
Sobukwe. The sympathetic South African Congress of Trade Unions was
subsequently driven underground.

International opposition to the regime increased throughout the 1950s and
1960s, fueled by the growing number of newly-independent nations and the
civil rights movement in the United States. In 1960 the leader of the ANC,
Albert Luthuli, won the Nobel Peace Prize, a feat that would be repeated in
1993 by Nelson Mandela.

Now underground or in exile, the ANC leadership came to the conclusion that
armed means had become a legitimate means of resistance, and in 1961
Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) was created to carry out armed
attacks against the government. Its commander, Mandela, was however arrested
in 1962 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 along with Sisulu and
other ANC leaders.

[Soweto 1976; BC; 1984 Constitution and UDF to follow]

With apartheid ever more evidently untenable, the ANC and PAC were unbanned
by president F.W. de Klerk on February 2, 1990. In April 1994, the ANC won a
landslide victory in the country's first non-racial elections and the party
has ruled the country in a series of voluntary coalitions with the New
National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party, under presidents Nelson
Mandela and (since June 1999) Thabo Mbeki. It also rules eight of the
country's nine provinces.

The ANC can be described as the parliamentary wing of a tripartite alliance
between itself, the Conference of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and
the South African Communist Party. By 2001, this alliance was evidently
showing signs of strain as the ANC moved to more right-wing economic
policies than its alliance partners were prepared to accommodate.