Politics
South Africa: ANC marks 100th aniversary
Black nannies cared for white children and prepared elaborate meals for white families, then went to hovels in the backyards of mansions to feed their own children “ration meat” — bones and fat less nutritious than the meals served to white families’ dogs.
A turning point came in 1960 when police turned their guns on about 300 people peacefully protesting “pass laws” restricting them to certain areas and requiring them to leave white areas where they worked by nightfall.
At least 69 people were killed and scores wounded in the Sharpeville massacre. The unprovoked slaughter attracted international condemnation that formed the roots of the global anti-apartheid movement.
The government declared a state of emergency and banned South Africa’s two liberation movements — the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which had organized the Sharpeville protest, and the ANC.
ANC leaders declared there was no longer any space to organize nonviolent resistance and formed Umkhonto we Sizwe, Zulu for “Spear of the Nation,” an army that would wage a guerrilla war for liberation.
“The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit, but we shall fight back by all our means within our power for the liberation of our motherland,” said the guerrilla army manifesto.
After Mandela’s 1990 release from prison, he was elected president of ANC and went on to become South Africa’s first black president after the historic 1994 election.
While the ANC confronted a common enemy in apartheid, it became a catchall for people of many different ideological persuasions. Once the enemy was defeated, it is not surprising that differences have arisen.
“We would like to think it (the ANC) has teething problems, but it’s not really only teething problems,” said Amina Cachalia, a political activist who joined the ANC in the 1940s. “I think suddenly it’s become a different platform for different ideologies and for different people with different agendas, and that’s a pity, a great pity.”
