African National Congress
I | INTRODUCTION |
African National
Congress (ANC), South African political organization that has been the
country’s ruling party since 1994. That year, under the leadership of Nelson
Mandela, the ANC won South Africa’s first election in which the black majority
could vote. Mandela was elected the nation’s first black president. In 1997
veteran leader Thabo Mbeki replaced Mandela as ANC president. The ANC was
returned to power in 1999 elections and selected Mbeki to succeed Mandela as
South Africa’s president. Jacob Zuma succeeded Mbeki as ANC president in 2007.
II | FOUNDING OF THE ANC |
The ANC was founded in 1912 as a nonviolent
civil rights organization that worked to promote the interests of black
Africans. With a mostly middle-class constituency, the ANC stressed
constitutional means of change through the use of delegations, petitions, and
peaceful protest. In 1940 Alfred B. Xuma became ANC president and began
recruiting younger, more outspoken members. Among the new recruits were Mandela,
Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu, who helped found the ANC Youth League in 1944
and soon became the organization’s leading members.
III | GROWTH OF THE ANC |
ANC membership greatly increased in the 1950s
after South Africa’s white-minority government began to implement apartheid, a
policy of rigid racial segregation, in 1948. The ANC actively opposed apartheid
and engaged in increasing political combat with the government. In 1955 the ANC
issued its Freedom Charter, which stated that “South Africa belongs to all who
live in it, black and white.” ANC members who believed South Africa belonged
only to black Africans formed a rival party, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC),
in 1959. Seeking to displace the ANC, the PAC organized mass demonstrations that
led to the massacre of black protesters in Sharpeville in March 1960. In
response to the demonstration, the government declared a state of emergency and
banned all black political organizations, including the ANC and PAC.
IV | THE ANC UNDERGROUND |
In 1961, after the government had banned the
organization, the ANC formed a military wing called Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of
the Nation”), which began a campaign of sabotage against the government. During
the unrest of the next several years, Mandela and Sisulu were sentenced to life
in prison for their ANC activities, and Tambo left South Africa to establish an
external wing of the ANC. For the next 30 years the ANC operated as an
underground organization, with its principal leaders imprisoned or living
outside South Africa. In 1976 a revolt in Soweto, a black community outside
Johannesburg, led to a reawakening of black African politics and a renewed
assault on apartheid. ANC membership continued to grow throughout this time.
V | THE ANC GAINS POWER |
In 1990 the government lifted its ban on the
ANC and other black African organizations. In that same year Mandela was
released from more than 27 years in prison as the recognized leader of the ANC.
No longer forced to work underground, the ANC evolved into a political party
seeking power through the ballot.
In 1993 the ANC and the government agreed to a
plan that would form a transitional government to rule for five years after the
country’s first all-race elections scheduled for April 1994. In the months
before the election, violence erupted between the ANC and supporters of the
Inkatha Freedom Party, the Zulu nationalist movement. Nevertheless, from April
27 to 30, 1994, millions of South Africans of all races participated in the
country’s first democratic elections. On May 2, after the ANC’s victory,
President F. W. de Klerk conceded the presidency to Mandela, who promised a new,
multiracial government for South Africa.
Once in power, the ANC pursued policies to
establish a fully multiracial South Africa, within constraints dictated by
free-market economic policies and the need to retain the loyalty of white South
Africans. Within the government of national unity the party suffered from a
deterioration in its relations with Inkatha, led by Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi,
and with the National Party of de Klerk. Inkatha and the National Party left the
government in 1995 and 1996, respectively.
VI | THE ANC AFTER MANDELA |
In late 1997 the aging Mandela, who had
announced that he would not be seeking another term as president, formally
stepped down as head of the ANC. The party’s convention chose ANC veteran leader
Thabo Mbeki as the new party president. In June 1999 elections the ANC won close
to two-thirds of the seats in the legislature and selected Mbeki as South
Africa’s second black president. Despite the country’s high levels of crime and
unemployment, the ANC retained its dominance in 2004 elections, winning almost
70 percent of the seats in the legislature. At a tumultuous party convention in
2007, Jacob Zuma, a former deputy president of South Africa, defeated Mbeki to
be elected leader of the ANC.
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