Several independent sectors of South African society opposed apartheid through various means, including nonviolent resistance, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Mass action against the ruling National Party (NP) government, coupled with South Africa's growing international isolation and economic sanctions, were instrumental in leading to negotiations to end apartheid, which began formally in 1990 and ended with South Africa's first multiracial elections under a universal franchise in 1994.
Apartheid was adopted as a formal South African government policy by the NP following their victory in the 1948 general election. From the early 1950s, the African National Congress (ANC) initiated its Defiance Campaign of passive resistance. Subsequent civil disobedience protests targeted curfews, pass laws, and "petty apartheid" segregation in public facilities. Some anti-apartheid demonstrations resulted in widespread rioting in Port Elizabeth and East London in 1952, but organised destruction of property was not deliberately employed until 1959. That year, anger over pass laws and environmental regulations perceived as unjust by black farmers resulted in a series of arsons targeting sugarcane plantations. Organisations such as the ANC, the South African Communist Party, and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) remained preoccupied with organising student strikes and work boycotts between 1959 and 1960. Following the Sharpeville massacre, some anti-apartheid movements, including the ANC and PAC, began a shift in tactics from civil disobedience to the formation of military wings.
Mass strikes and student demonstrations continued into the 1970s, powered by growing black unemployment, the unpopularity of the South African Border War, and a newly assertive Black Consciousness Movement. The brutal suppression of the 1976 Soweto uprising radicalised a generation of black activists and greatly bolstered the strength of the ANC's guerrilla force, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK). From 1976 to 1987 MK carried out a series of successful bomb attacks targeting government facilities, transportation lines, power stations, and other civil infrastructure. South Africa's military often retaliated by raiding ANC safe houses in neighbouring states.
The NP made several attempts to reform the apartheid system, beginning with the Constitutional Referendum of 1983. This introduced the Tricameral Parliament, which allowed for some parliamentary representation of Coloureds and Indians, but continued to deny political rights to black South Africans. The resulting controversy triggered a new wave of anti-apartheid social movements and community groups which articulated their interests through a national front in politics, the United Democratic Front (UDF). Simultaneously, inter-factional rivalry between the ANC, the PAC and the Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO), a third militant force, escalated into sectarian violence as the three groups fought for influence. The government took the opportunity to declare a state of emergency in 1986 and detain thousands of its political opponents without trial.
Secret bilateral negotiations to end apartheid commenced in 1987 as the National Party reacted to increased external pressure and the atmosphere of political unrest. Leading ANC officials such as Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu were released from prison between 1987 and 1989, and in 1990 the ANC and PAC were formally delisted as banned organisations by President F. W. de Klerk, and Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The same year, MK reached a formal ceasefire with the South African Defence Force. Further apartheid laws were abolished on 17 June 1991, and multiparty negotiations proceeded until the first multi-racial general election held in April 1994.
Background
Although its creation predated apartheid, the African National Congress (ANC) became the primary force in opposition to the government after its moderate leadership was superseded by the organisation's more radical Youth League (ANCYL) in 1949. Led by Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, elected to the ANC's National Executive that year, the ANCYL advocated a radical black nationalist programme that combined the Africanist ideas of Anton Lembede with Marxism. They proposed that white authority could only be overthrown through mass campaigns. The ideals of the ANC and ANCYL are stated in the ANC official web site and state, concerning the Tripartite Alliance: "The Alliance is founded on a common commitment to the objectives of the National Democratic Revolution, and the need to unite the largest possible cross-section of South Africans behind these objectives," citing the actionable intent and their goal to end oppression.
When the ANCYL took control of the ANC, the organisation advocated a policy of open defiance and resistance for the first time, which unleashed the 1950s Programme of Action, instituted in 1949, that emphasised the right of the African people to freedom under the flag of African Nationalism. It laid out plans for strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience, resulting in mass protests, stay-aways, boycotts, strikes and occasional violent clashes. The 1950 May Day stay-away was a strong, successful expression of black grievances.
In 1952, the Joint Planning Council, made up of members from the ANC, the South African Indian Congress and the Coloured People's Congress, agreed on a plan for the defiance of unfair laws. They wrote to Prime Minister D. F. Malan and demanded that he repeal the Pass Laws, the Group Areas Act, the Bantu Administration Act and other legislation, warning that refusal to do so would be met with a campaign of defiance. Malan referred the council to the Native Affairs Department and threatened to treat insolence callously.
The Programme of Action was launched with the Defiance Campaign in June 1952. By defying the laws, the organisation hoped to incite mass arrests that would overwhelm the government. Mandela led a crowd of 50 men down the streets of a white area in Johannesburg after the 11 pm curfew that forbade black people's presence. The group was apprehended, but the rest of the country followed its example. Defiance spread throughout the country and black people disregarded racial laws; for example, they walked through "whites only" entries. At the campaign's zenith in September 1952, more than 2,500 people from 24 different towns were arrested for defying various laws. After five months, the African and Indian Congresses decided to call off the campaign because of the increasing number of riots, strikes and heavier sentences on participants. During the campaign, almost 8,000 black and Indian people had been detained; at the same time, ANC membership grew from 7,000 to 100,000, and the number of subdivisions went from 14 at the campaign's beginning to 87 at its end. There was also a change in leadership: shortly before the campaign ended, Albert Luthuli was elected as the new ANC president.
By the end of the campaign, the government was forced to temporarily relax its apartheid legislation. Once things had calmed down, however, the government responded harshly and took several extreme measures, among which were the Unlawful Organisations Act, the Suppression of Communism Act, the Public Safety Act and the Criminal Procedures Act. Criminal Law Amendment Act No 8 stated that "[any] person who in any way whatsoever advises, encourages, incites, commands, aids or procures any other person ... or uses language calculated to cause any other person to commit an offence by way of protest against the law... shall be guilty of an offence." In December 1952, Mandela, Sisulu and 18 others were tried under the Suppression of Communism Act for leading the Defiance Campaign. They received nine months' imprisonment, which was suspended for two years.
The government also tightened the regulation of separate amenities. Protesters had argued to the courts that different amenities for different races ought to be of an equal standard. The Separate Amenities Act removed the façade of mere separation; it gave the owners of public amenities the right to bar people on the basis of colour or race and made it lawful for different races to be treated inequitably. Sisulu, Mandela, Albert Luthuli, other famous ANC members, Indian Congress, and trade union chiefs' activities were all proscribed under the Suppression of Communism Act. The proscription meant that the headship was restricted to their homes and adjacent areas and they were banned from attending public gatherings.
On the global stage, India demanded that apartheid be challenged by the United Nations, which led to the establishment of a UN commission on apartheid.
Although the movement was subjected to increasing restrictions, it was still able to struggle against the oppressive instruments of the state. Collaboration between the ANC and NIC increased and strengthened through the Defiance Campaign. Support for the ANC and its endeavours increased. On 15 August 1953, at the Cape ANC conference in Cradock, Professor Z. K. Matthews proposed a national convention of the people to study the national problems on an all-inclusive basis and outline a manifesto of amity. In March 1954, the ANC, the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), the Coloured People's Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats (SACOD) and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) met and founded the National Action Council for the Congress of the People. Delegates were drawn from each of these establishments and a nationwide organiser was assigned. A campaign was publicised for the drafting of a freedom charter, and asked for 10,000 volunteers to help with the conscription of views across the country and the Congress of the People. Demands were documented and sent to the local board of the National Action Council in preparation for drafting the Charter.
The Congress of the People was held 25–26 June 1955 in Kliptown, south of Johannesburg. 3,000 delegates gathered under police watch to revise and accept the Freedom Charter that had been endorsed by the ANC's National Executive on the eve of the Congress. Among the organisations present were the Indian Congress and the ANC. The Freedom Charter articulated a vision for South Africa that radically differed from the partition policy of apartheid. It:
emphasised that South Africa should be a just and non-racial society,
called for a one-person-one-vote democracy within a single unified state,
stated that all people should be treated equally before the law,
that land should be "shared among those who work it" and
that the people should "share in the country's wealth" – a statement often been interpreted as a call for socialist nationalisation.
The congress delegates had consented to almost all the sections of the charter when the police announced that they suspected treason and recorded the names and addresses of all those present.
In 1956, the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) was founded and led by Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph and Amina Cachalia. On 9 August that year, the women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria and protested against the pass laws. On the morning of 5 December 1956, the police detained 156 Congress Alliance leaders: 104 African, 23 white, 21 Indian and eight Coloured people. They were charged with high treason and plotting a violent overthrow of the state, and replacing it with a communist government. The charge was based on statements and speeches made during the Defiance Campaign and the Congress of the People. The Freedom Charter was used as proof of the Alliance's communist intent and their conspiracy to oust the government. The State greatly relied on the evidence of Professor Arthur Murray, an ostensible authority on communism and socialism. His evidence was that the ANC papers were full of communist and socialist terms like "comrade" and "proletariat", which are often found in the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Halfway through the drawn-out trial, charges against 61 of the accused were withdrawn, and, five years after their arrest, the remaining 30 were acquitted after the court held that the state had failed to prove its case.
The Sharpeville Massacre
In 1958 a group of disenchanted ANC members broke away from the ANC and formed the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) in 1959. First on the PAC's agenda was a series of nationwide demonstrations against the pass laws. The PAC called for blacks to demonstrate against pass books on 21 March 1960. One of the mass demonstrations organised by the PAC took place at Sharpeville, a township near Vereeniging. The size of the crowd was estimated to be 20,000 people. The crowd converged on the Sharpeville police station, singing and offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their pass books. A group of police officers panicked and opened fire on the demonstrators shortly after the crowd approached the police station, killing 69 people and injuring 186. All the victims were black, and most of them had been shot in the back. Many witnesses stated that the crowd was not violent, but Colonel J. Pienaar, the senior police officer in charge on the day, said: "Hordes of natives surrounded the police station. My car was struck with a stone. If they do these things they must learn their lesson the hard way." The event became known as the Sharpeville massacre. In the aftermath the government banned the African National Congress (ANC) and the PAC.
Armed resistance and sabotage
The Sharpeville Massacre persuaded several anti-apartheid movements that nonviolent civil disobedience alone was ineffective at encouraging the National Party government to seek reform. The resurgent tide of armed revolutions in many developing nations and European colonial territories during the early 1960s gave ANC and PAC leaders the idea that nonviolent civil disobedience should be complemented by acts of insurrection and sabotage. Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu were instrumental in persuading the ANC's executive to adopt armed struggle. Mandela first advocated this option during the Defiance Campaign of 1952, but his proposal was rejected by his fellow activists for being too radical. However, with the subsequent success of revolutionary struggles in Cuba, French Indochina, and French Algeria, the ANC executive became increasingly more open to suggestions by Mandela and Sisulu that it was time for armed struggle.
From 1961 to 1963, the ground in South Africa was slowly being readied for armed revolution. A hierarchical network of covert ANC cells was created for underground operations, military aid solicited from sympathetic African states and the Soviet Union, and a guerrilla training camp established in Tanganyika. In June 1961, the uMkhonto we Sizwe (abbreviated as MK) had been set up by the ANC to coordinate underground militant activity throughout South Africa. By the end of 1962 the ANC established an MK high command consisting of Mandela, Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, and prominent South African Communist Party (SACP) activist Joe Slovo. Slovo and the SACP were instrumental in bolstering MK and developing its tactics for guerrilla warfare, inciting insurrection and urban sabotage. White SACP members such as Jack Hodgson, who had served in the South African Army during World War II, were instrumental in training MK recruits. The SACP was also able to secure promises of military aid from the Soviet Union for the fledgling guerrilla army, and purchased Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, just outside Johannesburg, to serve as MK's headquarters.
Throughout the 1960s, MK was still a relatively small unit of poorly equipped guerrilla fighters incapable of taking significant action against the South African security forces. Success of the MK's strategy depended on its ability to stoke the anger of a politically conscious black underclass and its armed struggle was essentially a strategic attempt at mass socialisation.This reflected the principles of Leninist vanguardism which heavily influenced SACP and ANC political theory to a lesser extent. MK commanders hoped that through their actions, they could appeal to the masses and inspire a popular uprising against the South African regime. A popular uprising would compensate for the MK's weaknesses as it offered a way to defeat the National Party politically without having to engage in a direct military confrontation which the guerrillas would have no hope of winning.
On 16 December 1961, MK operatives bombed a number of public facilities in several major South African cities, namely Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban. This programme of controlled sabotage was timed to coincide with the Day of the Vow, the anniversary of an important battle between the voortrekkers and the Zulu Kingdom in 1838. Over the next eighteen months, MK carried out 200 acts of sabotage, mostly targeting pass offices, power pylons, and police stations. In October 1962 the ANC publicly declared responsibility for the sabotage campaign and acknowledged the existence of MK.
Mandela began planning for MK members to be given military training outside South Africa and slipped past authorities as he himself moved in and out of the country, earning him the moniker "The Black Pimpernel". Mandela initially avoided arrest within South Africa, but in August 1962, after receiving some inside information, the police put up a roadblock and captured him. MK's success declined with his arrest and the police infiltrated the organisation.
In July 1963, the police found the location of the MK headquarters at Lilliesleaf. They raided the farm and arrested many major leaders of the ANC and MK, including Sisulu, Mbeki and Ahmed Kathrada. They were detained and indicted with sabotage and attempting to bring down the government. At the same time, police collected evidence to be used in the trial that allowed them to arrest others like Denis Goldberg. Particularly damaging was the information on Operation Mayibuye (Operation Comeback), a plan for bringing exiles back into the country. It also revealed that MK was planning to use guerrilla warfare.
The PAC's secretive martial arm was called Poqo, meaning "go it alone". It was prepared to take lives in the quest for liberation: it murdered whites, police informants and black people who supported the government. It sought to arrange a national revolution to conquer the white government, but poor organisation and in-house nuisances crippled the PAC and Poqo.
The PAC did not have adequate direction. Many PAC principals were taken into custody on 21 March 1960, and those released were hampered by bans. When Robert Sobukwe (who was jailed following the Sharpeville massacre) was discharged from Robben Island in 1969, he was placed under house arrest in Kimberley until he died in 1978. Police repeatedly lengthened his incarceration through the "Sobukwe clause", which permitted the state to detain people even after they had served their sentences.
The PAC's management difficulties also existed in exile. When they were outlawed, PAC leaders set up headquarters in places like Dar es Salaam, London and the United States. In 1962, Potlako Leballo left the country for Maseru, Basutoland, and became the PAC's acting president. Soon after he was elected as acting president, he made a public statement that he would launch an attack on South African Police with an army of 150,000 cadres. A few days after that statement, he sent two women PAC couriers, Cynthia Lichaba and Thabisa Lethala, to post letters in Ladybrand, a South African town near Lesotho. The letters contained instructions and details of Poqo cadres. The two women were arrested by Basutoland police and correspondence addressed to poqo cells was confiscated. 3,246 PAC and Poqo members were arrested.
In 1968, PAC was expelled from Maseru (where it was allied with the opposition Basutoland Congress Party) and Zambia (which was friendlier to the ANC). Between 1974 and 1976 Leballo and Ntantala trained the Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) and the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA) in Libya. American pressures split the PAC into a "reformist-diplomatic" group under Sibeko, Make, and Pokela, and a Ghanaian Maoist group led by Leballo. APLA was destroyed by the Tanzanian military at Chunya on 11 March 1980 for refusing to accept the reformist-diplomatic leadership by Make. Leballo was influential in the South African 1985 student risings and pivotal in removing Leabua Jonathan's regime in Lesotho, the stress of which caused his death. The PAC never recovered from the 1980 massacre of Leballo's troops and his death and only won 1.2% of the vote in the 1994 South African election.
The widely publicised Rivonia Trial began in October 1963. Ten men were accused of treason for trying to depose the government and sabotage. Mandela, along with those arrested at Lilliesleaf and another 24 co-conspirators, were tried. Many of them, including Tambo, had already fled the country.
The ANC used the lawsuit to draw international interest to its cause. During the trial, Mandela gave his "I am prepared to die" speech. In June 1964, eight were found guilty of terrorism, sabotage, planning and executing guerrilla warfare and working towards an armed invasion of the country. The treason charge was dropped and all eight were sentenced to life imprisonment. They did not get the death penalty, as it received too much international criticism. Goldberg was sent to the Pretoria Central Prison, and the other seven were imprisoned on Robben Island. Bram Fischer, the defence trial attorney, was also arrested and tried shortly thereafter. The instructions that Mandela gave to make MK an African force were ignored: it continued to be organised and led by the SACP. The trial was condemned by the United Nations Security Council and was a major force in the introduction of international sanctions against the South African government. After Sharpeville the ANC and PAC were banned. The SACP denied it existed, having dissolved in 1950 to escape banning as the CPSA. Leaders like Mandela and Sobukwe were either in jail or in exile. Consequently, there were serious mutinies in Angolan camps by Soweto and Cape student recruits angry at the corrupt and brutal consequences of minority control.
The government was able to dismantle the ANC's power within South Africa's borders by incarcerating leaders of MK and the ANC, and greatly affect its efficiency outside of them. The ANC faced many problems in the aftermath of the Rivonia Trial, as its inner administration was severely damaged. By 1964, the ANC went into hiding and planned guerilla activities from overseas. At the end of the 1960s, new organisations and ideas would form to confront apartheid. The next key act of opposition came in 1976 with the Soweto uprising.
The government's effort at defeating all opposition had been effective. The State of Emergency was de-proclaimed, the economy boomed and the government began implementing apartheid by building the infrastructures of the ten separate Homelands and relocating blacks into these homelands. In 1966, Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was stabbed to death in parliament, but his policies continued under B.J. Vorster and later P.W. Botha.
Despite these developments, the ANC was able to launch several successful guerrilla attacks against the South African Defense Force from their locations in-hiding. For example, On 20 May 1983, the ANC detonated a car bomb outside the South African Air Force headquarters in Pretoria, killing 19 people and injuring more than 200. The attack was one of the deadliest in the ANC's armed struggle against Apartheid. On 30 January 1981, ANC guerrillas launched a surprise attack on the SADF base in Matola, Mozambique, killing 16 SADF soldiers and wounding more than 40. On 8 December 1982, ANC guerrillas attacked the South African embassy in Maseru, Lesotho, killing three people and injuring several others and on 14 November 1987, the ANC targeted the Vlakplaas police station in Pretoria with a car bomb, killing three police officers and injuring 18 others. Vlakplaas was notorious for its role in the repression of anti-apartheid activists.
Black Consciousness Movement
Prior to the 1960s, the NP government managed to quell much of the anti-apartheid opposition within South Africa by outlawing movements like the ANC and PAC, and driving their leaders into exile or captivity. Tertiary-education organisations such as the University of the North and Zululand University began to resist apartheid; they were fashioned by the Extension of University Education Act of 1959, which guaranteed that black and white students would be taught individually and inequitably.
After the Rivonia Trial and the banning of the ANC and PAC, the struggle within South Africa was significantly suppressed. The age bracket that had seen the Sharpeville massacre became apathetic. A revival in anti-apartheid sentiment came in the late 1960s and mid-1970s from a more radical generation. During this epoch, new anti-apartheid ideas and establishments were created, and they gathered support from across South Africa.
The surfacing of the South African Black Consciousness Movement was influenced by its American equivalent, the American Black Power movement, and directors like Malcolm X. African heads like Kenneth Kaunda suggested ideas of autonomy and Black Pride by means of their anti-colonialist writings. Scholars grew in assurance and became far more candid about the NP's bigoted policies and the repression of the black people.
During the 1970s, resistance grew stronger through trade unions and strikes, and was then spearheaded by the South African Students' Organisation under Steve Biko's leadership. A medical student, Biko was the main force behind the growth of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), which stressed the need for psychological liberation, black pride, and non-violent opposition to apartheid.
The BCM faction was founded by Biko and materialised out of the ideas of the civil rights movement and Black Power movement in the USA. The motto of the movement was "Black is Beautiful", first made popular by boxer Mohammed Ali. BCM endorsed black pride and African customs, and did much to alter feelings of inadequacy while raising awareness of the fallacy of blacks being seen as inferior. It defied practices and merchandise that were meant to make black people "whiter", such as hair straighteners and skin lighteners. Western culture was criticised to be destructive and alien to Africa. Black people became conscious of their own distinctive identity and self-worth and grew more outspoken about their right to freedom.
The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was the first organisation to represent students in South Africa, but it had a principally white membership, and black students saw this as an impediment. White students' concerns were more scholastic than political, and although the administration was multiracial, it was not addressing many of the issues of the mounting number of black students since 1960. This resulted in the 1967 creation of the University Christian Movement (UCM), an organisation rooted in African-American philosophy.
In July 1967, the annual NUSAS symposium took place at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. White students were permitted to live on university grounds, but black students were relegated to accommodation further away in a church vestibule, which led to the creation of the South African Students' Organisation (SASO), under Biko, in 1969.
The BCM was an umbrella organisation for groups such as SASO. It was created in 1967, and among its members were the Azanian People's Organisation, the black Community Programme (which directed welfare schemes for blacks), the Black People's Convention (BPC) and the South African Students Movement (SASM), which represented high-school learners. The BPC originally attempted to unite charitable associations like the Education and Cultural Advancement of African People of South Africa before expanding into a political administration with Biko as its honorary president.
When the BCM's principles were revealed, a number of fresh organisations staunch in their endorsement of black liberation were founded. The Azanian People's Organisation was only launched in 1978, a long time after the birth of the Black Consciousness Movement, as a medium for its message.
The BCM drew most of its backing from high schools and tertiary institutions. Black Consciousness ethics were crucial in lifting consciousness amongst black people of their value and right to a better existence, along with the need to insist on these. The BCM's non-violent approach subsided in favour of a more radical element as its resolve to attain liberty was met with state hostility.
After the carnage in Soweto the ANC's Nelson Mandela grudgingly concurred that bloodshed was the only means left to convince the NP to accede to commands for an end to its apartheid policy. A subversive plan of terror was mapped out, with Biko and the BCM at the forefront. The BCM and other opinionated elements were prohibited during the 1970s because the government saw them as dangerous. Black Consciousness in South Africa adopted a drastic theory, much like socialism, as the liberation movement progressed to challenging class divisions and shifting from an ethnic stress to focusing more on non-racialism. The BCM became more worried about the destiny of the black people as workers and believed that "economic and political exploitation has reduced the black people into a class".
With Black Consciousness increasing throughout black communities, a number of other organisations were formed to combat apartheid. In 1972, the Black People's Convention was founded, and the black Allied Worker's Union, formed in 1973, focused on black labour matters. The black community programmes gave attention to the more global issues of black communities. School learners began to confront the Bantu education policy, which was designed to prepare them to be second-class citizens. They created the South African Student's Movement (SASM). It was particularly popular in Soweto, where the 1976 insurrection against Bantu Education would prove to be a crossroads in the fight against apartheid.
Biko was taken into custody on 18 August 1977 and brutally tortured by unidentified security personnel until he lapsed into a coma. He was not medically treated for three days and died in Pretoria. At the subsequent inquest, the magistrate ruled that no-one was culpable, but the South African Medical Association eventually took action against the doctors who had failed to treat Biko.
There was a strong reaction both within and outside South Africa. Foreign countries imposed even more stringent sanctions, and the United Nations imposed an arms embargo. Young blacks inside South Africa committed themselves even more fervently to the struggle against apartheid, under the catchphrase "Liberation before education". Black communities became highly politicised.
The Black Consciousness Movement began to change its focus during the 1980s from issues of nation and community to issues of class; as a result, they may have made of an impact than in the mid-1970s, though there is some evidence to suggest that it retained at least some influence, particularly in workers' organisations.
The role of Black Consciousness could be clearly seen in the approach of the National Forum, which believed that the struggle should hold little or no place for whites. The ideal of blacks leading the resistance campaign was an important aim of the traditional Black Consciousness groups, and it shaped the thinking of many 1980s activists, especially those in the workforce. Furthermore, the NF focused on workers' issues, which became more and more important to BC supporters.
The Azanian People's Organisation was the leading Black Consciousness group of the 1980s. Most of its support came from young black men and women—many of whom were educated at colleges and universities. The organisation received a lot of support in Soweto and also amongst journalists, who helped to popularise its views. It also focused on workers' issues, but refused to form any ties with whites.
Although it did not achieve quite the same level of support that it had in the late 1970s, Black Consciousness still influenced the thinking of a few resistance groups.
Soweto uprising
In 1974 the Afrikaans Medium Decree forced all black schools to use Afrikaans and English in a 50–50 mix as languages of instruction. The intention was to forcibly promote the use of Afrikaans among black Africans. The Afrikaner-dominated government used the clause of the 1909 Constitution that recognised only English and Afrikaans as official languages as a pretext.