Biography

An African Nationalist comes of age (1940s):

In 1940 Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) and soon became part of a ginger group of young intellectuals that included Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Anton Lembede, and Ashley Mda. The group articulated its dissatisfaction with the way the ANC was being run, critiqued the policy of appeasement, and became the driving force in the formation of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) in 1944. The Youth League was influenced by the militant action of the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses 1946 Passive Resistance campaign and the mineworkers strike and began drafting what came to be known as the Programme of Action for the ANC.

In 15 July 1944 Mandela married Evelyn Mase, a nurse and Walter Sisulu's. The newly weds moved to live with Evelyn's married sister and become neighbors with Esâkia (Es'kia) Mphalele, a teacher and later a noted journalist, writer and activist.

1945 Evelyn Mandela gave birth to the couple's first child, a boy named Tembi. They were able to get a council house in Orlando, No 8115. It had three rooms, with neither electricity nor inside toilet. Mandela's younger sister, Nomabandla (Leaby), came to live with them and enrolled at Orlando High School. Evelyn was the breadwinner in the family while as Mandela studied law at Wits where he devoted more of his time to politics.

In 1948 the National Party narrowly won whites-only national elections on the platform of a new policy of total racial segregation called apartheid (literally apartness). By that stage, Mandela was National Secretary of the ANCYL. Mandela, Sisulu and Tambo began lobbying the ANC to embark on militant mass action against a plethora of new legislations that the Nationalists were drawing up to enforce give effect to apartheid. The lobbying paid off and the following year, at the ANC’s annual conference, the Youth League’s Programme of Action adopted by the parent organization. Perhaps more importantly for the influence of the ANCYL, Walter Sisulu was elected Secretary General of the ANC.

From its inception, the ANCYL was heavily influenced by the strident African nationalism espoused by Anton Lembede, the League’s foremost ideologue. Mandela was a strong advocate of the Lembede line that the ANC should stand on its own and not enter into alliances with the Indian congress, the Communists Party or the Non-European Unity Movement. The Youth League’s policy of going it alone brought it into conflict with the ANC and led to the League opposing some of the most important campaigns of the 1940s, including the Mine Workers Strike, the Passive Resistance Campaign and the cooperation pact signed between the ANC President Dr Xuma and the South African Indian Congress. In 1950, when the Communists Party, the Transvaal and Natal Indian Congresses, and the ANC jointly endorsed the Free Speech Convention, Mandela was strident in his criticism, believing that the endorsement undermined the ANC Program of Action and the ANC’s position as the leading liberation organisation. Notwithstanding his Africanist political stance, Mandela did not allow this to influence his personal relationships to Indian, White and African communist leaders.

A pivotal moment came in May 1950. The ANC, Communists Party and South African Indian Congress jointly called a national strike to protest the proposed banning of the Communist Party. The May Day (1 May) strike was immensely successful and the government responded with unrestrained brutality. This experience was the spark that convinced Mandela that freedom would only come from forging a broad-based non-racial alliance against apartheid and white minority rule. Confronted by opposition from the ANC’s Africanist wing, Mandela stuck by this new position and together with Tambo and communists party general secretary Moses Kotane, they joined their friend Walter Sisulu in forging what came to be know as the Congress Alliance.

In 1952 the Congress Alliance embarked on the first of its national campaigns against a select number of Apartheid governments laws. The campaigns were modeled on the earlier passive resistance campaigns of the 1940s. In 1952 the Congress Alliance launched the Defiance Campaign, which continued for two years. While the Defiance Campaign did not succeed in changing any laws, the campaign transformed the ANC into a mass-based and militant organization and the largest of the liberation movements, growing from 7000 to over 100 000 by the time the campaigned ended in 1954. The Defiance Campaign and the increasing stature of the ANC changed the nature of the South African freedom struggle.

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