Apartheid imposed heavy burdens on most South Africans. The economic gap between the wealthy few, nearly all of whom were white, and the poor masses, virtually all of whom were Black, Coloured, or Indian, was larger than in any other country in the world. While whites generally lived well, Indians, Coloureds, and especially Blacks suffered from widespread poverty, malnutrition, and disease. Most South Africans struggled daily for survival despite the growth of the national economy.

After the ANC Youth League emerged in the early 1940s, the ANC itself came to life again under a vigorous president, Albert Luthuli, and three younger men—Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Nelson Mandela (the latter two briefly had a joint law practice in Johannesburg). The South African Indian Congress, which had also been revitalized, helped the ANC organize a defiance campaign in 1952, during which thousands of volunteers defied discriminatory laws by passively courting arrest and burning their pass books. A mass meeting held three years later, called Congress of the People, included Indians, Coloureds, and sympathetic whites. The Freedom Charter was adopted, asserting that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black or white, and no Government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.” The government broke up the meeting, subsequently arrested more than 150 people, and charged them with high treason. Although the trial did not result in any guilty verdicts, it dragged on until 1961. To prevent further gatherings, the government passed the Prohibition of Political Interference Act (1968), which banned the formation and foreign financing of nonracial political parties.

Robert Sobukwe, a language teacher at the University of the Witwatersrand, led a group of Blacks who broke away from the ANC in 1959 and founded the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) because they believed that the ANC’s alliance with white, Coloured, and Indian organizations had impeded the struggle for Black liberation. The PAC launched a fresh antipass campaign in March 1960, and thousands of unarmed Blacks invited arrest by presenting themselves at police stations without passes. At Sharpeville, a Black township near Johannesburg, the police opened fire on the crowd outside a police station. At least 67 Blacks were killed and more than 180 wounded, most of them shot in the back. Thousands of workers then went on strike, and in Cape Town some 30,000 Blacks marched in a peaceful protest to the center of the city. Rebellion in rural areas such as Pondoland also erupted at this time against the controls of homeland authorities. The government reestablished control by force by mobilizing the army, outlawing the ANC and the PAC, and arresting more than 11,000 people under emergency regulations.

After Sharpeville the ANC and PAC leaders and some of their white sympathizers came to the conclusion that apartheid could never be overcome by peaceful means alone. PAC established an armed wing called Poqo, and the ANC set up its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), in 1961. Although their military units detonated several bombs in government buildings during the next few years, the ANC and PAC did not pose a serious threat to the state, which had a virtual monopoly on modern weaponry. By 1964 the government had captured many of the leaders, including Mandela and Sobukwe, and they were sentenced to long terms at the prison on Robben Island in Table Bay, off Cape Town. Other perpetrators of acts of sabotage, including John Harris (who was white), were hanged. Hundreds of others fled the country, and Tambo presided over the ANC’s executive headquarters in Zambia.