Motsoaledi, Elias (clan name, Mokoni)
(1924–94). Trade unionist, anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. Member of the ANC, SACP and Council of Non-European Trade Unions (CNETU). Banned after the 1952 Defiance Campaign. Helped to establish SACTU in 1955. Imprisoned for four months during the 1960 State of Emergency and detained again under the ninety-day detention laws of 1963. Sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial and imprisoned on Robben Island from 1964 to 1989. Elected to the ANC’s National Executive Committee following his release. Awarded the ANC’s highest honour, Isitwalandwe Seaparankoe, in 1992.
Naicker, Dr Gangathura Mohambry (Monty)
(1910–78). Medical doctor, politician and anti-apartheid activist. Co-founder and first chairperson of the Anti-Segregation Council. President of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC), 1945–63. Signatory of the ‘Doctor’s Pact’ of March 1947, a statement of cooperation between the ANC, TIC and NIC, which was also signed by Dr Albert Xuma (president of the ANC) and Dr Yusuf Dadoo (president of the TIC).
Nair, Billy
(1929–2008). Politician, anti-apartheid activist, political prisoner and MP. Member of the ANC, NIC, SACP, SACTU and MK. Charged with sabotage in 1963 and imprisoned on Robben Island for twenty years. Joined the UDF on his release. Arrested in 1990 and accused of being part of Operation Vula. MP in the new democratic South Africa.
National Party
Conservative South African political party established in Bloemfontein in 1914 by Afrikaner nationalists. Governing party of South Africa, June 1948 to May 1994. Enforced apartheid, a system of legal racial segregation that favoured minority rule by the white population. Disbanded in 2004.
Ndobe
(See Mhlaba, Raymond)
Ngoyi, Lilian Masediba
(1911–80). Politician, anti-apartheid and women’s rights activist, and orator. Leading member of the ANC. First woman elected to the ANC Executive Committee, 1956. President of the ANC Women’s League. President of FEDSAW, 1956. Led the Women’s March against pass laws, 1956. Charged and acquitted in the Treason Trial. Detained in the 1960 State of Emergency. Detained and held in solitary confinement for seventy-one days in 1963 under the ninety-day detention law. Continuously subjected to banning orders. Awarded the ANC’s highest honour, Isitwalandwe Seaparankoe, in 1982.
Nokwe, Philemon Pearce Dumasile (Duma)
(1927–78). Lawyer and political activist. Member of the ANCYL. Leading member of the ANC. Secretary of the ANCYL, 1953–58. Participated in the Defiance Campaign. Prevented from teaching, he studied law and became the first black lawyer to be admitted to the Transvaal Supreme Court. However he could not practise as he was an accused in the 1956–61 Treason Trial. He was elected secretary general at the ANC’s annual conference in 1958, a post he held until 1969. He was ordered by the ANC to flee into exile, and he left the country in 1963 with Moses Kotane. He helped establish the ANC in exile, lobbying at many international forums.
Nzo, Alfred Baphetuxolo
(1925–2000). Leading member of the ANCYL and ANC. Participant in the 1952 Defiance Campaign, and the Congress of the People. In 1962, Nzo was placed under twenty-four-hour house arrest, and in 1963 he was detained for 238 days. After his release the ANC ordered him to leave the country. He represented the ANC in various countries including Egypt, India, Zambia and Tanzania. He succeeded Duma Nokwe as secretary general in 1969, and held this post until the first legal ANC conference in South Africa in 1991. He was part of the ANC delegation that participated in talks with the De Klerk government after 1990. Appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the newly democratic South Africa, 1994. Received a number of awards including the Order of Luthuli in Gold, 2003.
OR
(See Tambo, Oliver.)
Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)
Breakaway organisation of the ANC founded in 1959 by Robert Sobukwe, who championed the philosophy of ‘Africa for Africans’. The PAC’s campaigns included a nationwide protest against pass laws, ten days before the ANC was to start its own campaign. It culminated in the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March 1960, in which police shot dead sixty-nine unarmed protestors. Banned, along with the ANC, in April 1960. Unbanned on 2 February 1990.
Peake, George
(1922–). Political activist, founding member and national chairperson of the South African Coloured People’s Organisation (later the CPC), 1953. Charged and acquitted in the Treason Trial. Subjected to banning orders and detained for five months in the 1960 State of Emergency. Cape Town city councillor from March 1961 until he was charged with sabotage and imprisoned for two years in 1962. Fled South Africa in 1964.
Plaatje, Solomon Tshekisho (Sol)
(1876–1932). Author, journalist, linguist, newspaper editor and political publicist, and human rights activist. Member of the African People’s Organisation. First secretary general of the SANNC (renamed as the ANC in 1923), 1912. First black South African to write a novel in English (Mhudi, published 1913). Established the first Setswana/ English weekly, Koranta ea Becoana (Newspaper of the Tswana), 1901, and Tsala ea Becoana (The Friend of the People), 1910. Member of the SANNC deputation that appealed to the British Government against the Land Act of 1913, which severely restricted the rights of Africans to own or occupy land.
Pokela, John Nyathi
(1922–85). Anti-apartheid activist. Member of the ANCYL. Co-founder and leading member of the PAC. Sentenced to thirteen years’ imprisonment in 1966 for his participation in Poqo, the PAC’s armed wing. President of the PAC from 1981.
Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison
Prison in the suburb of Tokai, Cape Town. Mandela was moved there along with Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba, Andrew Mlangeni and, later, Ahmed Kathrada in 1982.
Qunu
Rural village in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province where Mandela lived after his family moved from his birth place of Mvezo.
Radebe, Gaur
(1908–c.1968). Political and anti-apartheid activist. Mandela’s colleague at Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman who encouraged him to attend ANC and SACP meetings. Member of the ANC. Co-founder of the African Mine Workers Union, 1941. Assisted in organising the Alexandra bus boycotts, 1943–44. Assisted Selope Thema in the formation of the National-Minded Bloc, a conservative wing of the ANC which opposed its alliance with the SACP. Leading member of the PAC after it was formed in 1959.
Resha, Robert
(1920–1973). Political and anti-apartheid activist. Leading member of the ANCYL and the ANC. Acting president of the ANCYL, 1954–55. Participated in the Defiance Campaign. Active in the campaign against the forced removal of people from Sophiatown. Acquitted in 1961 with the last group of thirty in the 1955 Treason Trial. He left the country soon after and played a leading role in the exiled ANC, representing it at many forums, including the United Nations. He accompanied Mandela to Oujda, Morocco, during his trip to Africa in 1962, and represented the ANC in an independent Algeria.
Rivonia Trial
Trial between 1963 and 1964 in which ten leading members of the Congress Alliance were charged with sabotage and faced the death penalty. Named after the suburb of Rivonia, Johannesburg, where six members of the MK High Command were arrested at their hideout, Liliesleaf Farm, on 11 July 1963. Incriminating documents, including a proposal for a guerrilla insurgency named Operation Mayibuye, were seized. Mandela, who was already serving a sentence for incitement and leaving South Africa illegally, was implicated, and his notes on guerrilla warfare and his diary from his trip through Africa in 1962 were also seized. Rather than being cross-examined as a witness, Mandela made a statement from the dock on 20 April 1964. This became his famous ‘I am prepared to die’ speech. On 11 June 1964 eight of the accused were convicted by Justice Qartus de Wet at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria, and the next day were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Robben Island
Island situated in Table Bay, seven kilometres off the coast of Cape Town, measuring approximately 3.3 kilometres long and
1.9 kilometres wide. Has predominantly been used as a place of banishment and imprisonment, particularly for political prisoners, since Dutch settlement in the seventeenth century. Three men who later became South African presidents have been imprisoned there: Nelson Mandela (1964–82), Kgalema Motlanthe (1977–87) and Jacob Zuma (1963–73). Now a World Heritage Site and museum.
Sampson, Anthony
(1926–2004). Writer and journalist. Mandela’s biographer for Mandela: The
Authorised Biography (published 1999). Edited the South African magazine Drum, a leading magazine for an urban black South African readership, in Johannesburg in the 1950s.
Sharpeville Massacre
Confrontation in the township of Sharpeville, Gauteng Province. On 21 March 1960, sixty-nine unarmed anti-pass protestors were shot dead by police and over 180 were injured. The PAC-organised demonstration attracted between 5,000 and 7,000 protesters. This day is now commemorated annually in South Africa as a public holiday: Human Rights Day.
Sidelsky, Lazar
(1911–2002). Member of the Law Society of the Transvaal. Employed Mandela as an articled clerk at his legal practice, Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, in Johannesburg in 1942. Granted mortgages for Africans at a time when few firms were prepared to do so.
Sikhakhane, Joyce
(1943–). Journalist and anti-apartheid activist. Wrote about the families of political prisoners, including Albertina Sisulu and Winnie Mandela, which resulted in her being arrested under the Protection Against Communism Act, then re-detained under the Terrorism Act and forced to spend eighteen months in solitary confinement. Banned on her release. She fled South Africa in 1973. Employed by the Department of Intelligence in the democratic South Africa.
Sisulu (née Thethiwe), Nontsikelelo (Ntsiki) Albertina
(1918–). Nurse, midwife, anti-apartheid and women’s rights activist, and MP. Leading ANC member. Married Walter Sisulu, whom she met through her nursing friend, Evelyn Mase (Mandela’s first wife), 1944. Member of the ANCWL and FEDSAW. Played a leading role in the 1956 women’s anti-pass protest. The first woman to be arrested under the General Laws Amendment Act, 1963, during which time she was held in solitary confinement for ninety days. Continually subjected to banning orders and police harassment from 1963. She was elected as one of the three presidents of the UDF at its formation in August 1983. In 1985 she was charged with fifteen other UDF and trade union leaders for treason in what became known as the Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial. MP from 1994 until she retired in 1999. President of the World Peace Council, 1993–96. Recipient of the South African Women for Women Woman of Distinction Award 2003, in recognition of her courageous lifelong struggle for human rights and dignity.
Sisulu, Walter Ulyate Max (clan names, Xhamela and Tyhopho)
(1912–2003). Anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. Husband of Albertina Sisulu. Met Mandela in 1941 and introduced him to Lazar Sidelsky who employed him as an articled clerk. Leader of the ANC, and generally considered to be the ‘father of the struggle’. Co-founder of the ANCYL in 1944. Arrested and charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for playing a leading role in the 1952 Defiance Campaign. Arrested and later acquitted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Continually served with banning orders and placed under house arrest following the banning of the ANC and PAC. Helped established MK, and served on its High Command. Went underground in 1963 and hid at Liliesleaf Farm, in Rivonia, where he was arrested on 11 July 1963. Found guilty of sabotage at the Rivonia Trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964. He served his sentence on Robben Island and at Pollsmoor Prison. Released on 15 October 1989. One of the ANC negotiating team with the apartheid government to end white rule. Awarded the ANC’s highest honour, Isitwalandwe Seaparankoe, in 1992.
Skota, Mweli
(c.1880s). Clerk, journalist, court interpreter, businessman and newspaper publisher. Leading member of SANNC (later renamed ANC). Founder and editor of AbantuBatho, the ANC newspaper. Member of the AAC.
Slovo, Joe
(1926–95). Anti-apartheid activist. Married Ruth First, 1949. Leading member of the ANC and the CPSA. Commander of MK. Joined the CPSA in 1942 and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand where he met Mandela and was active in student politics. He helped establish the COD, and was accused in the 1956 Treason Trial. Detained for six months during the 1960 State of Emergency. He assisted in setting up MK. Went into exile from 1963 to 1990 and lived in the UK, Angola, Mozambique and Zambia. General secretary of the SACP, 1986. Chief of staff of MK. Participated in the multi-party negotiations to end white rule. Minister of Housing in Mandela’s government from 1994. Awarded the ANC’s highest honour, Isitwalandwe Seaparankoe, in 1994.
Sobukwe, Robert Mangaliso
(1924–78). Lawyer, anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. Member of the ANCYL and the ANC until he formed the PAC based on the vision of ‘Africa for Africans’. Editor of The Africanist newspaper. Arrested and detained following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. Convicted of incitement and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Before he was released, the General Law Amendment Act No. 37 of 1963 was passed, which allowed for people already convicted of political offences to have their imprisonment renewed – this later became known as the ‘Sobukwe Clause’ – which resulted in him spending another six years on Robben Island. He was released in 1969 and joined his family in Kimberley, where he remained under twelve-hour house arrest and was restricted from participating in any political activity as a result of a banning order that had been imposed on the PAC. While in prison he studied law, and he established his own law firm in 1975.
South African Communist Party (SACP)
Established in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), to oppose imperialism and racist domination. Changed its name to the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1953 following its banning in 1950. The SACP was only legalised in 1990. The SACP forms one-third of the Tripartite Alliance with the ANC and COSATU.
South African Indian Congress (SAIC)
Founded in 1923 to oppose discriminatory laws. It comprised the Cape, Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses. Initially a conservative organisation whose actions were limited to petitions and deputations to authorities, a more radical leadership that favoured militant non-violent resistance came to power in the 1940s under the leadership of Yusuf Dadoo and Monty Naicker.
State of Emergency, 1960
Declared on 30 March 1960 as a response to the Sharpeville Massacre. Characterised by mass arrests and the imprisonment of most African leaders. On 8 April 1960 the ANC and PAC were banned under the Unlawful Organisations Act.
Stengel, Richard
Editor and author. Collaborated with Mandela on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom (published 1994). Co-producer of the documentary Mandela, 1996. Editor of Time magazine.
Suppression of Communism Act, No. 44, 1950
Act passed 26 June 1950, in which the state banned the SACP and any activities it deemed communist, defining ‘communism’ in such broad terms that anyone protesting against apartheid would be in breach of the act.
Suzman, Helen
(1917–2009). Academic, politician, anti-apartheid activist and MP. Professor of Economic History, University of Witwatersrand. Founded a branch of the United Party at University of Witwatersrand in response to the apartheid state’s racist policies. MP for the United Party, 1953–59, then later the anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party (1961–74). The only opposition political leader who was permitted to visit Robben Island.
Tambo (née Tshukudu), Adelaide Frances
(1929–2007). Nurse, community worker and anti-apartheid and women’s rights activist. Married Oliver Tambo, 1956. Member of the ANCYL. Participated in the Women’s March, 1956. Recipient of numerous awards including the Order of Simon of Cyrene, July 1997, the highest order given by the Anglican Church for distinguished service by lay people; and the Order of the Baobab in Gold, 2002.
Tambo, Oliver Reginald (O
R)
(1917–93). Lawyer, politician and anti-apartheid activist. Leading member of the ANC and founder member of the ANCYL. Co-founder, with Mandela, of South Africa’s first African legal practice. Became secretary general of the ANC after Walter Sisulu was banned, and deputy president of the ANC, 1958. Served with a five-year banning order, 1959. Left South Africa during the 1960s to manage the external activities of the ANC and to mobilise opposition against apartheid. Established military training camps outside South Africa. Initiated the Free Mandela Campaign in the 1980s. Lived in exile in London, UK, until 1990. Acting president of the ANC, 1967, after the death of Chief Albert Luthuli. Was elected president in 1969 at the Morogoro Conference, a post he held until 1991 when he became the ANC’s national chairperson. Awarded the ANC’s highest honour, Isitwalandwe Seaparankoe, in 1992.
Thema, Selope
(1886–1955). Journalist and political activist. Leading member of the ANC. Secretary of the deputation to the Versailles Peace Conference and the British government, 1919.
Treason Trial
(1956–61). The Treason Trial was the apartheid government’s attempt to quell the power of the Congress Alliance. In early morning raids on 5 December 1956, 156 individuals were arrested and charged with high treason. By the end of the trial in March 1961 all the accused either had the charges withdrawn or, in the case of the last thirty accused including Mandela, were acquitted.
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