Nelson Mandelas 1961 South African Stay-at-Home Strike Goals Fact-Checked

Few political organisations could have succeeded in conducting such a stubborn and relentless campaign under conditions which, for all practical purposes, amounted to martial law. But we did so. The steps taken by the government to suppress the campaign were a measure of our strength and influence ...

The ANC and the rival Pan Africanist ... began to seize and imprison the leaders. Mandela went underground and started to plan a stay-at-home strike against the government for May 1961....

Africans, who constituted approximately 70% of the population, were not entitled to vote, and were not even consulted. I undertook to be responsible for organising the national stay-at-home called to coincide with the declaration of the republic. As all strikes by Africans are illegal, the person organising such a strike must avoid arrest.

Passer la publicité ... Ces militants, qui luttent contre la politique de ségrégation et discrimination menée par le gouvernement, mettent en place des actions de sabotage et de grève générale.

Over the following months, Mandela used his free time to organise an All-In African Conference near Pietermaritzburg, Natal, in March 1961, at which 1,400 anti-apartheid delegates met, agreeing on a stay-at-home strike to mark 31 May, the day South Africa became a republic.

On 18 May 1961, the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail published a front-page news item alleging that the National Action Council had secret plans to bring thousands of non-whites into the central areas of cities. It also announced that the NAC had held a secret meeting the week before at which it decided to extend the duration of the stay-at-home beyond the three-day period.

Fifty per cent of the Asians were out at Durban and 25 per cent of the Cape Coloured. A split developed within the African leadership at the last moment. Nelson Mandela and the ANC had taken the initiative in organising the strike, but leaders of the banned PAC called on non-Whites to ignore it.

MANDELA: Well, my lord, for example in 1952 when we launched the Defiance Campaign, and secondly, my lord, you will notice that we frequently use 'stay-at-home', not 'strike' in the ordinary sense. Now, my lord, in a strike what is usually done is to withdraw workers from a particular industry and then have pickets to prevent the people from working in those industries which are boycotted.

Migrated from the Nelson Mandela Speeches Database (Sep-2018). ANC website. The statement reviewed the successes and weaknesses of the three day stay-at-home in May 1961, as well as the responses to it from journalists, students, trade unions, and from opposing groups like the Pan-Africanist Congress.

Of course it was not as bad as the South African Broadcasting Corporation reports would like us to believe – they claimed at one stage that 91 percent of Johannesburg’s labour force was at work; nor can we accept the reports of the daily newspapers who grossly underestimated or were ignorant of the responses in some areas. It took several days before we were able to gauge the response from all areas, and Nelson Mandela, spokesman for the committee that called the strike stated at the end of the first day that the strike had failed.

La foule de Langa, en colère, détruisit des bâtiments publics. L'événement déclenche une grève générale le 28 mars 1960 malgré les interdictions et mises en garde du gouvernement d'Hendrik Verwoerd qui déclenche le processus pour interdire l'ANC et le PAC et décréter l'état d'urgence.

Trois jours après son arrestation, Nelson Mandela est accusé officiellement d'avoir organisé une grève en 1961 et d'avoir quitté le pays illégalement. Le 25 octobre, il est condamné à cinq ans de prison. Alors qu'il purge sa peine, la police arrête plusieurs dirigeants de l'ANC à ...

Durch den auf das Massaker folgenden Abzug ausländischen Kapitals geriet die südafrikanische Wirtschaft in eine Schieflage. Als Gegenmaßnahme wurde 1961 der Blocked Rand eingeführt, der das Wechselkursrisiko für ausländische Unternehmen verringerte. ANC und PAC wandten sich nach dem Verbot der Organisationen vom Weg des gewaltfreien Widerstandes ab und gründeten die bewaffneten Untergrundbewegungen Umkhonto we Sizwe und Poqo.

Die Regierung erließ für einige Monate den Ausnahmezustand, ANC und PAC wurden verboten. Nach einem am 5. Oktober 1960 abgehaltenen Referendum entstand durch dessen zustimmendes Ergebnis am 31.

Nachdem im März 1960 beim Massaker von Sharpeville unbewaffnete Demonstranten erschossen und in der Folge der ANC und andere Anti-Apartheid-Gruppen verboten worden waren, unterstützten Mandela und seine Mitstreiter die vom ANC proklamierte Notwendigkeit des gewaltsamen Kampfes gegen die Apartheid. Mandela leitete trotz des Banns die am 25. und 26. März 1961 in Pietermaritzburg stattfindende All-In African National Conference.