radical wing, the ANC Youth League, developed under leaders Mandela, Tambo and Sisulu.
unambiguously belonged to the indigenous people by right. Its adopted by the ANC as a whole in 1949, called for weapons: immediate boycott, strike, civil disobedience, non co-operation and such other means as may being about the accomplishment and realisation of our aspirations.' The ANC Youth League stated Programme of Action, the following founding principles. and active jected this it, black and white', ANC Youth League was distinguished not just by its militancy tion of our people.
African nationalism specifically did not consider itself Communist. That position, in turn, has to £l per be put in the context of the role of white working class organisations and of the of South Africa In 1922 striking white miners had president. world fight and unite for a white South White CPSA of the Africans, dapted to white pressure. It made under the pressure of the Communist The ultra-left third period line of regarded as African.' Opposing then purged the CPSA of successive oppressed, During World War II the CPSA wards the Allies' war effort. In 1947, back in standing candidates — allegedly on a as against the ANC.
It is not suprising therefore that in mass The ANC response under CP prompting, was to convene the 'Congress of the People' in 1956. This adopted the Freedom Charter (published in Socialist Action No. 111) which is now considereu vy me sive as part DE 1S A militant wing of the ANC redevelopment. Robert up. Sobukwe, who emerged as spokesperson of the opposition denounced the hrase in the Freedom Charter readins 'South Africa belongs to all who live in Sobukwe proclaimed that 'African Nationalism is the sole ideological basis for the salvaAgainst a background of militant bus boycotts, a popular campaign for a minimum wage, generalised uprisings in the townships, the polarisation within the ANC grew. Faced with exclusion the dissidents in 1959 launched the Pan African Congress (PAC) with Robert Sobukwe as 'We aim, politically, at government for the Africans', Sobukwe stated, 'with everybody who owes his loyalty only to Africa and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being all collaboration with either the government or with white parties, the PAC declared 'there can be no cooperation between oppressor and dominating Although PAC influence afterdrastically declined measure orts support or me ume can be seen from the fact that the government 'survey' in 1963 found that 57 pei cent of all Africans supported the PAC In December 1959 the PAC called for civil disobedience against the pass laws, and the ANC then called for a day of action against the same laws in March. This was the political background to the date that is engraved acuon, bou orgamsawons at tne mme isolated themselves from the next wave of mass actions in the 1970s.
The next decisive developments in the black population were those produced by the capitalist nature of apartheid itself. The black urban working class grew inexorably despite all attempts to segregate it, deport it, deprive it of rights of settlement, and break it Dorawing semi-legal townships shot up on the fringes of the industrial centres.
The movement which finally gave expression to the burning frustration of the youth of these townships is symbolised for the world in the person of Steve Biko.
Biko Biko had led an all-black split from the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) in 1968, forming the South African Students' Organisa tion (SASO) in 1969. SASO became the nucleus of the Black Consciousness movement: the proclamation thai Africans, Indians and 'coloured' consituated a single black nation in South Africa. As well as hearkening back to the Africanism of the ANC Youth League and the PAC, the black consciousness movement was strongly influenced by black American radicals and revo utionaries such as Malcolm y The movement was propelled by the defeat of the Portuguese colonialists on South Africa's northern borders.
It was under this movement's influence that, on May 17, 1976, school students in Soweto organised a boycott of Orlando West Junior Secondary school in protest against the new policy of making Afrikaans the main teaching language in the Transvaal.
The name 'Soweto' joined that of Sharpville in the world's memory as a symbol of anti-Apartheid struggle: but with a difference. For if Sharpville was the symbol of white repression, Soweto was the symbol of black revolt.
Since then the struggle in its different forms has never stopped.