Nelson mandela and the african national congress

Nelson Mandelas commitment to politics and the ANC grew stronger after the 1948 election victory of the Afrikanerdominated National Party, which introduced a formal system of racial classification and segregationapartheidthat restricted nonwhites basic rights and barred them from government while maintaining white minority rule. The following year, the ANC adopted the ANCYLs plan to achieve full citizenship for all South Africans through boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and other nonviolent methods. Mandela helped lead the ANCs 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, traveling across the country to organize protests against discriminatory policies, and promoted the manifesto known as the Freedom Charter, ratified by the Congress of the People in 1955. Also in 1952, Mandela and Tambo opened South Africas first black law firm, which offered free or lowcost legal counsel to those affected by apartheid legislation.

On December 5, 1956, Mandela and 155 other activists were arrested and went on trial for treason. All of the defendants were acquitted in 1961, but in the meantime tensions within the ANC escalated, with a militant faction splitting off in 1959 to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). The next year, police opened fire on peaceful black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people, as panic, anger and riots swept the country in the massacres aftermath, the apartheid government banned both the ANC and the PAC. Forced to go underground and wear disguises to evade detection, Mandela decided that the time had come for a more radical approach than passive resistance.