The Fight against Apartheid: Nelson Mandela

  Nelson Mandela (born in 1918) was a leader of the African National Congress (ANC), a movement against Apartheid, a system of racial segregation in South Africa.  In 1948, the National Party came to power in South Africa.  The National Party was a racist party that instituted Apartheid or forced segregation of the races.  This white-minority party disenfranchised the black African majority.  The ANC was formed to combat Apartheid.  It engaged in passive resistance against the regime.  In the late 1950s, Mandela became a leader of the ANC and tried to move the party in a more radical direction.  He was tried for treason in 1956 but acquitted after a five-year trial.  In 1960, sixty-nine black anti-apartheid protestors were killed by the police in the Sharpeville Massacre.  The government banned the ANC.   In response to the ban, the ANC abandoned nonviolence.  In the 1960s, Mandela was sentenced to life in prison and held in the Robben Island prison and later in Pollsmoor Prison.  In prison, he became a symbol of the injustice of Apartheid system.  In 1990, in response to international pressure, the South African government released Mandela.  In 1991, Mandela became the leader of the ANC and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. De Klerk, the President of South Africa.  The following year, Nelson Mandela was elected the first black President of South Africa in the nation’s first multi-racial election.

 

Primary Source: An excerpt from “Mandela’s Call” after the Soweto riots of 1976

“…Successive white regimes have repeatedly massacred unarmed defenseless blacks…Apartheid is the embodiment of the racialism, repression and inhumanity of all previous white supremacist regimes…The rattle of gunfire and the rumbling of Hippo armored vehicles since June 1976 have once again torn aside that veil. Spread across the face of our country, in black townships, the racist army and police have been pouring a hail of bullets killing and maiming hundreds of black men, women and children…Apartheid is the rule of the gun and the hangman. The Hippo, the FN rifle and the gallows are its true symbols.”

Questions:

1: Who was Nelson Mandela? ________________________________________________________________________

2: According to Mandela’s primary source, what was apartheid? ________________________________________________________________________

3: Why was the ANC opposed to apartheid? ________________________________________________________________________

4: Why was Mandela imprisoned in Robben Island? ________________________________________________________________________

5: What happened in 1991 and the following year? ________________________________________________________________________