AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

INTRODUCTION

African National Congress (ANC), South African political organization that has been the country’s ruling party since 1994. That year, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the ANC won South Africa’s first election in which the black majority could vote. Mandela was elected the nation’s first black president. In 1997 veteran leader Thabo Mbeki replaced Mandela as ANC president. The ANC was returned to power in 1999 elections and selected Mbeki to succeed Mandela as South Africa’s president. Jacob Zuma succeeded Mbeki as ANC president in 2007.

FOUNDING OF THE ANC

The ANC was founded in 1912 as a nonviolent civil rights organization that worked to promote the interests of black Africans. With a mostly middle-class constituency, the ANC stressed constitutional means of change through the use of delegations, petitions, and peaceful protest. In 1940 Alfred B. Xuma became ANC president and began recruiting younger, more outspoken members. Among the new recruits were Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu, who helped found the ANC Youth League in 1944 and soon became the organization’s leading members.

GROWTH OF THE ANC

ANC membership greatly increased in the 1950s after South Africa’s white-minority government began to implement apartheid, a policy of rigid racial segregation, in 1948. The ANC actively opposed apartheid and engaged in increasing political combat with the government. In 1955 the ANC issued its Freedom Charter, which stated that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.” ANC members who believed South Africa belonged only to black Africans formed a rival party, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), in 1959. Seeking to displace the ANC, the PAC organized mass demonstrations that led to the massacre of black protesters in Sharpeville in March 1960. In response to the demonstration, the government declared a state of emergency and banned all black political organizations, including the ANC and PAC.

THE ANC UNDERGROUND

In 1961, after the government had banned the organization, the ANC formed a military wing called Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), which began a campaign of sabotage against the government. During the unrest of the next several years, Mandela and Sisulu were sentenced to life in prison for their ANC activities, and Tambo left South Africa to establish an external wing of the ANC. For the next 30 years the ANC operated as an underground organization, with its principal leaders imprisoned or living outside South Africa. In 1976 a revolt in Soweto, a black community outside Johannesburg, led to a reawakening of black African politics and a renewed assault on apartheid. ANC membership continued to grow throughout this time.

THE ANC GAINS POWER

In 1990 the government lifted its ban on the ANC and other black African organizations. In that same year Mandela was released from more than 27 years in prison as the recognized leader of the ANC. No longer forced to work underground, the ANC evolved into a political party seeking power through the ballot.

In 1993 the ANC and the government agreed to a plan that would form a transitional government to rule for five years after the country’s first all-race elections scheduled for April 1994. In the months before the election, violence erupted between the ANC and supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Zulu nationalist movement. Nevertheless, from April 27 to 30, 1994, millions of South Africans of all races participated in the country’s first democratic elections. On May 2, after the ANC’s victory, President F. W. de Klerk conceded the presidency to Mandela, who promised a new, multiracial government for South Africa.

Once in power, the ANC pursued policies to establish a fully multiracial South Africa, within constraints dictated by free-market economic policies and the need to retain the loyalty of white South Africans. Within the government of national unity the party suffered from a deterioration in its relations with Inkatha, led by Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, and with the National Party of de Klerk. Inkatha and the National Party left the government in 1995 and 1996, respectively.

THE ANC AFTER MANDELA

In late 1997 the aging Mandela, who had announced that he would not be seeking another term as president, formally stepped down as head of the ANC. The party’s convention chose ANC veteran leader Thabo Mbeki as the new party president. In June 1999 elections the ANC won close to two-thirds of the seats in the legislature and selected Mbeki as South Africa’s second black president. Despite the country’s high levels of crime and unemployment, the ANC retained its dominance in 2004 elections, winning almost 70 percent of the seats in the legislature. At a tumultuous party convention in 2007, Jacob Zuma, a former deputy president of South Africa, defeated Mbeki to be elected leader of the ANC.