The ANC (African National Congress) is the oldest national civil rights
organizati
on in South
Africa. It was founded in 1912. Mandela and his colleagues Tambo and Sisulu,
led by Anton Lembede saw that the strategies of the
old guard leadership of the ANC and its polite entreating of the government
proved to be unsuitable to achieve the national self-determination they wanted.
Changing the ANC's strategy
So, in September 1944 they formed the African National Congress Youth
league (ANCYL). Their League began to get support from the ANC as a result of
its members' hard work. In 1945, the ANC's annual conference elected Lembede and
another ANCYL leader, Ashby P. Mda to their National Executive Committee (NEC).
In the same year, the National Party (which applied the racial division
policies known as 
Apartheid) won the all-White elections. The ANCYL policies of
strike, boycott, and civil disobedience were adopted by the ANC in 1949. To
ensure the application of this programme of action, older leaders of the ANC were
replaced by younger men. Walter Sisulu was elected Secretary General and Mandela
was elected to the NEC in 1950. During that same year Mandela became the ANCYL
president.
A group of sixty young members of the ANC began working on changing its
policies during the Second World War. Among them were Tambo, Walter Sisulu,
William Nkomo, Ashby Mda and Mandela. Their leader was Anton Lembede. They all
lived around the Witwatersrand. They wanted to transform the ANC into a
mass movement, to get its power and motivation from the unlettered millions of
working South African people in urban and rural areas. They wanted all South
Africans to achieve their political rights. Mandela was a co-author in ANCYL
policy documents that focused on the redistribution of the land & on education
for both children & adults.
Mandela stands for his people's rights
Through the fifties Mandela stood for his country's rights & suffered
all forms of repression. He was a leader in the resistance of the removals to
Western Areas, the abuse of labour,
& in making the Freedom Charter -adopted by the Congress of the People in
1955- popular. He fought against closing the open universities to black
students, & against the pass laws, which controlled the movements of the
coloured in the country.
In 1951, he criticized the separate homeland (Bantustan) policy for the blacks strongly (Click here for map of Bantustans). Very early, he concluded that it was a political swindle & predicted mass removals & police terror.
At first, Mandela opposed working with other
racial groups, but he changed this attitude in 1952 during the course of the
Defiance Campaign, a campaign launched by the ANC against the unjust laws.
Mandela was its elected national volunteer-in-chief. He travelled
around the country to organise
resistance. As a result of his efforts, he became the president of the Transvaal
region of the ANC by the end of this year. He thus became deputy national
president of the ANC itself. After that, he supported united (racial) action
against the government’s apartheid policies.
