Timeline: Nelson Mandela 1950 - 1959
- 1950
- In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Mandela trains at the Donaldson Orlando Community Centre. He excels at boxing and shares his love of the sport with his son, Thembekile. He enjoys the cinema and becomes secretary of the multi-cultural International Club where he meets Whites and forms some life-long friendships.
- March, The Johannesburg branch of the Communist Party, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC) jointly organize a 'Defend Free Speech Convention', attracting 10 000 people to Market Square. The meeting proposes a one-day stay-away on May Day (1 May) to protest the banning of communist leaders. Many ANC leaders, including Mandela, distrust the communist initiative and the ANCYL opposes the stay-away. Mandela and other ANC Youth League members disrupt communist meetings and heckle speakers.
- The May Day (1 May) strike is immensely successful and the government responds with unrestrained brutality. Across Soweto 18 Black people are killed and Mandela stays in a nurses' dormitory overnight where he shelters from the gunfire. The protest also leads to the Communist Party being banned. The experience is a pivotal moment in Mandela's life and convinces him that freedom will 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 sticks to this new position and together with Tambo and Communists Party general secretary Moses Kotane, they join their friend Walter Sisulu in forging what comes to be known as the Congress Alliance. The ANC and SACP call for a national day of action on June 26th
- 26 June, Mandela's second son, Makgatho, is born.
- 1951
- The ANCYL throws in its lot with the Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC) and together they organize a national work stoppage on 26 June. Walter Sisulu and Yusuf Cachalia are appointed joint secretaries of the Planning Council. The response is significant in Durban and the Eastern Cape.
- Mandela is elected President of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL).
- Mandela drives to Natal in a battered Volkswagen with ANCYL colleagues Joe Matthews and Diliza Mji. In discussion along the journey, Mandela argues for closer ties with communist party (relaunched underground as the South African Community Party (SACP)) and the discussions are crucial to the ANC's gradual movement towards formal alliance with the SACP.
- Mandela completes his articles at Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman and starts to work for the law firm of Terblanche and Briggish.
- 1952
- 31 May, The African National Congress (ANC) executive meets in Port Elizabeth and announces a new campaign, the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign, to commence on 26 June.
- 26 June, The Defiance Campaign begins. Mandela is appointed volunteer-in-chief with Maulvi Cachalia as his deputy. He is arrested late at night after a meeting at the Garment Workers Hall in Johannesburg and spends two nights in jail.Mandela is elected President of the Transvaal ANC to replace the banned J.B. Marks. Chief Albert Luthuli is elected President-General of the ANC. Evelyn Mandela leaves for Durban to study midwifery.
- 30 July, Mandela arrested on violation of the Suppression of Communism Act.
- August, Mandela opens his own law office. Zubeida Patel is his secretary.
- September, The trial of Mandela, J.S. Moroka, W Sisulu and other Defiance Campaign leaders, 21 in all, starts in a Johannesburg magistrates' court, before Justice F.L.H. Rumpff. They are charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. Moroka appoints his own defense and falls out of favour with the ANC, though he is later forgiven by Mandela. Justice Rumpff finds the accused guilty and sentences them to nine months' imprisonment with hard labour, suspended for two years - a surprisingly lenient sentence.
- Mandela is again arrested on charges related to the Suppression of Communism Act along with twenty Defiance Campaign leaders around the country. They are all freed on bail.
- Rioting in New Brighton near Port Elizabeth (Eastern Cape) leaves eleven dead, including four Whites.
- 18 October, Rioting spread to Port Elizabeth and Kimberley and 25 Africans are killed. In East London enraged Blacks kill two Whites, including a nun.
- October - November, The government bans 52 persons, including Nelson Mandela, and the newly-elected ANC president-general Chief Albert Luthuli. The Defiance Campaign is halted towards the end of December. Since 26 June, 8577 volunteers, mostly from the Eastern Cape, have courted imprisonment for defying unjust laws.
- December, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo open the first Black legal partnership in South Africa in Chancellor House, opposite the magistrates' courts in downtown Johannesburg. About these years Mandela later writes, "As an attorney, I could be rather flamboyant in court. I did not act as though I were a Black man in a White man's court, but as if everyone else - White and Black - was a guest in my court." He also states, "In Johannesburg, I had become a man of the city. I wore smart suits, I drove a colossal Oldsmobile and I knew my way around the back alleys of the city... But in fact I remained a country boy at heart, and there was nothing that lifted my spirits as much as blue skies, the open veld and green grass" (Long Walk to Freedom, p. 142, 149).
- 1953
- June, Mandela's first banning order expires. He throws himself into the campaign against forced removals from Sophiatown and the Western Areas and is banned for the second time. The Congress of Democrats is established following a meeting addressed by Oliver Tambo and Yusuf Cachalia.
- Anticipating that the ANC will eventually be banned, Mandea devises a plan, based on a clandestine cell network and contact mechanism, to continue the organization underground. The plan becomes known as the M-Plan and is eventually activated following the ANC's banning in 1960.
- 1954
- April, The Transvaal Law Society petitions the Supreme Court to strike Mandela off the roll because of his involvement in the Defiance Campaign. Walter Pollock QC, head of the Johannesburg Bar Council, successfully defends him, pro amico.
- Makaziwe, Nelson's eldest surviving daughter, is born.
- The ANC, the South African Indian Congress, the Congress of Democrats, the Congress of Trade Unions and the Coloured Peoples Organisation constitute the Congress Alliance and begin preparations to convene a Congress of the People.
- 1955
- 1 April, An indefinite school boycott in protest against the Bantu Education Act begins with mixed results. Mandela tells parents and ANC members that every home and community building must become a centre of learning.
- 26 June, The Congress of the People is convened in Kliptown near Soweto. 3000 delegates, including 320 Indians, 230 Coloureds and 112 Whites, adopt the Freedom Charter.
- The government intensifies its bannings. By the end of 1955, 48 ANC leaders are banned, including Mandela.
- Evelyn Mandela gives her husband an ultimatum to choose between her or the ANC. She is also distressed about rumours that Mandela has relations with other women. In December, while Mandela is imprisoned for two weeks, she moves out of their home. He finds the hous empty when he is released on bail.
- 1956
- Pass laws are extended to include women. The Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw) is founded and women take centre stage in the resistance movement.
Mandela briefly returns to the Transkei with Walter Sisulu to buy land in Umtata near his birthplace, thereby fulfilling a promise he had made earlier. - April 13, Mandela writes to the Minister of Justice asking why he had been served a banning order.
- 5 December, In the early hours of the morning, police raid and search Mandela's house and arrest him. Mandela is among the first of 156 leaders of all races and representing the leadership of most of the anti-apartheid organisations in South Africa arrested over a ten day period. All 156 are charged with high treason, thus beginning the infamous Treason Trial.
- 1958
- The Congress Alliance calls for a national work stoppage or stay-away. Tension erupts within the African National Congress (ANC) when an Africanist faction within the Orlando branch of the organisation challenges the leadership for deviating from the 1949 Plan of Action, handing over initiative to non-Africans and participating in the Advisory Board elections. Leaders such as Potlako Leballo, Zeph Mothopeng, Peter Raboroko and Josias Madzunya spearhead the formation of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and elect Robert Sobukwe as their leader.
- June, Nelson Mandela marries Nomzamo Winnifred Madikizela in Bizana.
- 1959
- The ANC and PAC organise separate anti-pass campaigns.
- 4 February, Mandela and Winnie's first child, Zenani, is born.
