Biography

'Volunteer in chief' - A decade of defiance (1950s)

Mandela with Moses Kotane outside the Old Synagogue, Pretoria, on the day when the last of the accused were finally acquitted. (© Bailey's African History Archives)

During the Defiance Campaign, Mandela emerged as one of the most influential leaders of the liberation struggle, alongside Sisulu and Chief Albert Luthuli. Mandela was the public spokesperson and leader of the campaign and was appointed National 'Volunteer-in-chief'. Together with Maulvi Cachalia of the Indian Congress. Mandela and Cachalia were charged with recruiting and training ‘congress volunteers’ and travelled around South Africa enlisting volunteers to defy apartheid laws. The campaign officially began on 26 June 1952 when 51 volunteers led by the Gandhian Nana Sita and the white Liberal Party leader Patrick Duncan entered Boksburg Native Location in defiance of the law that demanded non-Africans have permits to enter an African location. In the course of the campaign thousands of volunteers served harsh prison terms, but Mandela was instructed not to break the law or court arrest to avoid the campaign been rendered leaderless should all the leaders be imprisoned at the same time. He was nevertheless arrested on several occasions during the course of the campaign and released after spending a few days in jail.

At the height of the Defiance Campaign, the ANC recognised the likelihood that the organisation would be banned as the Communist Party had been three years earlier. Asked by ANC executive to devise a contingency plan for such an eventuality, Mandela drew up what became known as the 'M Plan', which provided for the creation of street-based cell structures. During the same period, Mandela become more and more uneasy with the policy of non-violent resistance, but was held back by the ANC leadership’s strong advocacy of non-violence.

In December 1952, Tambo joined Mandela as a partner in his legal practice - the first African run legal partnership in the country. During the same month Mandela and leading congress alliance activists were arrested and charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. Mandela like all the others was sentenced to nine months imprisonment with hard labour, suspended for two years. He was also served with a banning order that prohibited him from attending gatherings for six months and from leaving the Johannesburg magisterial district. For the following nine years his banning orders were continually renewed.

During the next two years Mandela and Tambo worked in their legal practice defending hundreds of people effected by apartheid laws. Their practice became very successful. Although Mandela was officially the deputy national president of the ANC, he was not legally allowed to play any role in ANC activities because of the banning order. However, he continued to meet clandestinely with the ANC and Congress Alliance leadership and played a key role in the planning of all the major campaigns during the 1950s. The ANC-led Alliance called off the defiance campaign at the end of 1953 after the government had passed new legislation imposing very harsh sentences for people breaking apartheid laws.

One of the most important of the Congress Alliance campaigns was the Freedom Charter campaign, in which Mandela played a leading role, along with his banned colleagues, including Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, Moses Kotane, and Joe Slovo

The campaign culminated in the convening of the historic Congress of The People on 25-26th June 1955 in Kliptown near Soweto. Mandela, Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada viewed the proceedings of the Kliptown conference from the rooftop of a nearby Indian-owned shop because their banning orders prohibited their participation.

At the end of 1955, while Mandela was imprisoned for two weeks, his wife moved out of their home. He found his house empty when he was released on bail.

Mandela was one of 156 African, Indian, Coloured and White men and women leaders in the Congress Alliance who were arrested and charged with Treason following a dramatic police raid in December 1956. For four-and-a-half years the Treason Trial dragged with charges being periodically withdrawn against some of the accused. In 1958, half way through the trial, Nelson Mandela married Nomzamo Winnifred Madikizela, a social worker 16 years younger then him from Bizana in the Transkei. In March 1961, Justice Rumpff found Mandela and the remaining 36 accused not guilty and discharged them.

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