June 26 1952: Defiance Campaign launched

After the successes of 6 April the date for the start of the Defiance Campaign was set for 26 June 1952. A “Day of the Volunteers” on Sunday 22 June, preceded the opening of the campaign. Volunteers signed the following pledge:

I, the undersigned, Volunteer of the National Volunteer Corps, do hereby solemnly pledge and bind myself to serve my country and my people in accordance with the directives of the National Volunteer Corps and to participate fully and without reservations to the best of my ability in the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws. I shall obey the orders of my leader under whom I shall be placed and strictly abide by the rules and regulations of the National Volunteer Corps framed from time to time. It shall be my duty to keep myself physically, mentally and morally fit.

The first group of volunteers including Nelson Mandela, Yusuf Dadoo, Moses Kotane, J.B. Marks, David Bopape and Walter Sisulu defied apartheid laws in Johannesburg and other major city centres. The defiers who began the campaign did so with a sense that history was being made. For the first time Africans and Indians, with a few whites and coloureds were engaging in joint political action under a common leadership. A national action committee, whose key members were Sisulu and Ismail ‘Maulvi' Cachalia, and a national volunteer board, with Mandela as the volunteer-in-chief, conducted the campaign.

Defiance Campaign mass meeting.

Groups of volunteers went into action, small in numbers but high in spirits. During the campaign, acts of defiance were accompanied by freedom songs and the thumbs-up sign (introduced by the Cape ANC in 1949 as a sign of unity), cries of “Afrika!” and “Mayibuye!” and cheers from supporting onlookers. 52 Africans and Indians, including Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and Ismail Cachalia, marched into Boksburg location near Johannesburg without permits. All were arrested. Mandela and Cachalia were present only as observers since they planned to avoid arrest. However, that evening they were among a group of protestors who were arrested in Johannesburg when they left a hall after curfew. In Port Elizabeth, 30 people entered a railway station through the “Europeans Only” entrance and were arrested. Others were arrested for entering the European sections of the post offices, sitting on benches marked for whites, or violating other apartheid regulations.

Slowly the campaign spread, from Port Elizabeth and East London to smaller towns in the Eastern Cape Province, from Johannesburg to a number of centres on the Witwatersrand, to Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Durban. During the last few days of June, 146 volunteers were arrested; in July 1 504; during August 2015; and in September 2 058. The campaign gained momentum until October, but in November rioting erupted and the number of defiers began to fall. However, by mid-December an additional 2 334 were arrested bringing the total number to 8 057.

Because offences were minor, the penalties were usually no more than short-term imprisonment with the options of fines not exceeding ten pounds. Sometimes defiers were acquitted, most notably in the case of 24 who entered a railway waiting room in Cape Town and were acquitted when the magistrate found that facilities for whites and non-whites were unequal. As the campaign continued, magistrates sometimes decided on whippings for defendants under the age of 21, and allegations of assault and ill-treatment in prison became more frequent.

 

 

-SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ONLINE