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E. I.1.a. internal resistance
Primarily on nonviolent action in townships during apartheid. Combines a national strategic overview by Jeremy Seekings of how the concept of civic struggle evolved in the period 1977-90 with detailed local accounts.
Authoritative account of COSATU’s early years by then National Coordinator.
Covers the period 1910- 60.
Biko, a key figure in the move to radical black consciousness, was killed while in custody by the security services.
Includes critical assessment of the 1960s campaigns and examination of trade union action in the 1970s.
Includes chapters on political unionism, the township revolts, student politics (school and university). Earlier version of the much-cited article Swilling, Mark , The United Democratic Front and the township revolt Durban, South Africa, South African History Archives (SAHA), , 1987, pp. 23 , reprinted here on pp. 90-113, are available online.
See also Drewett, Michael , Aesopian Strategies of Textual Resistance in the Struggle to Overcome the Censorship of Popular Music in Apartheid South Africa In Müller, Beate , Censorship & Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, , 2004, pp. 189-207 .
A critical study of the 1954-55 campaigns.
Part Three – ‘War: armed and mass struggles as gendered experiences’ – includes Jacklyn Cock, ‘”Another mother for peace”: Women and peace building in South Africa, 1983-2003, pp. 257-280, and Janet Cherry ‘”We were not afraid”: The role of women in the 1980s’ township uprising in the Eastern Cape’, pp. 281-313, and Pat Gibbs, ‘Women, labour and resistance: Case studies from the Port Elizabeth/Uitenhage area, 1972-94’, pp. 315-343.
Contends that the ANC ‘showed an increasing intolerance for the values upheld by the UDF, like criticism and self-criticism of elites and nonviolence’.
Sociological study of the 1952 ‘Defiance Campaign’.
Covers key campaigns up to Sharpeville and the Soweto student rebellion.
See also Lodge, Tom , The Interplay of Nonviolent and Violent Action in the Movements Against Apartheid in South Africa, 1983-94 In Roberts; Garton Ash, Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present (A. 1.b. Strategic Theory, Dynamics, Methods and Movements)New York, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 213-230 .
Autobiography of President of ANC from 1952 to 1967, and Nobel Prize winner.
Includes views on nonviolence and support for the turn to violent resistance. Mandela’s earlier articles, speeches and addresses at his trials are published in: Mandela, Nelson , No Easy Walk to Freedom [1965] London, Heinemann, , 1986, pp. 189 .
Examines relationship between strategies and different ideologies of resistance based on race, nation or class.
Analysis of (predominantly) white women’s organization publicly opposing apartheid since 1950, known especially for its vigils.
Washington Post journalist, who was in South Africa 1984-86, interviewed leaders of banned organizations and more conservative Africans. Less strong on post-1986 period.
Discusses the post-1990 statist supplanting of ‘the popular emancipatory project’.
Evaluates claims that ‘nonviolence, if adhered to more resolutely, would have ended apartheid sooner’, reminding readers of the high level of support for the ANC’s armed wing. Suggests that despite some over-simplifications, the claims for nonviolence, though speculative, are plausible.
Autobiography of Anglican priest who took the case of the Herero people of South West Africa to the UN, opposing their incorporation into the Union of South Africa. Chapter 8 describes the Indian resistance to discriminatory legislation in 1946.
Authoritative organizational history (commissioned by the UDF at the point when it disbanded).
Examples of nonviolent action from the 1950s to the 1990s. Brief extracts illustrate tactics such as boycotts, courting arrest, funerals, graffiti, ostracism, prayer, resisting removal, voluntary exile and ‘wading-in’ (against segregated beaches).
Revised and updated from the banned book Suttner, Raymond ; Cronin, Jeremy , 30 Years of the Freedom Charter Johannesburg, Ravan Press, , 1986, pp. 266 . Recounts the process of formulating as well as discussing the political implications of the Freedom Charter adopted in 1955. (Part of Unisa’s series ‘Hidden Histories’.)
Tutu influenced world opinion in the 1980s and 1990s and chaired the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Uses three case studies to illustrate the complexity of the UDF. Addresses generational tensions and conflicts between belief systems that the UDF itself, and most studies of it, tended to ignore.