A combination of internal and international resistance to apartheid helped dismantle the white supremacist regime. A combination of internal and international resistance to apartheid helped dismantle the white supremacist regime. The formal end of the apartheid government in South Africa was hard-won.
Many stood alongside prolific world leader Nelson Mandela to weaken and later overcome the oppressive nature of apartheid in South Africa. Here are five anti-apartheid leaders that stood tall. “Real leaders must be ready to sacrifice all for the freedom of their people.” - Nelson Mandela
Reagan vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, but the U.S. Congress overrode his decision with a two-thirds majority, passing the act to impose sanctions on South Africa. The U.K. also imposed limited sanctions despite Thatcher’s objections.
Following authorities’ further brutal treatment of a 1961 labour strike, the ANC launched armed struggle against Apartheid through a military wing: Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). As a leader of MK, Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962 and subsequently sentenced to life in jail.
Many stood alongside prolific world leader Nelson Mandela to weaken and later overcome the oppressive nature of apartheid in South Africa. Here are five anti-apartheid leaders that stood tall.
Here are five anti-apartheid leaders that stood tall. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Former wife of Nelson Mandela, Minnie is prominently known in South Africa as “Mother of the Nation” and Mandela’s “voice” during his 27-year imprisonment. Born in Bizana, a village in Transkei, Winnie showed an interest in social work at an early age.
In 1967 he became president of ANC and rallied for defiant and aggressive resistance to the apartheid regime. In 1990, the ban was lifted and Tambo returned to his home country. In 1991, he turned over the presidency to Mandela and became the national Chairman until his death in 1993. Helen Suzman.
He advocated for non-violence even as the ANC adopted a more forceful stance. In response to Luthuli’s growing determination and authority, the government forced him to choose between his chieftainship and position with the ANC. He refused both options and was ultimately relieved from his chieftainship.
Friend of Nelson Mandela, Tambo is revered for keeping the political party, African National Congress (ANC), alive during the stronghold of apartheid. A student of law, science and education, political activism became evident in his college years.
He continued to work for the BCP, creating the Zimele Trust Fund in 1975 to help political prisoners and their families. On Aug. 18, 1977, he and a fellow colleague were stopped at a roadblock outside of King Williams Town. He was then taken into police custody where he was interrogated, arrested and severely beaten.
The ANC’s nonviolent approach changed direction in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre, a demonstration that turned violent when police opened fire on hundreds of protesters, killing and wounding more than 200 people.
Mandela thanked Tambo in his speech when he was released from prison. ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images. Robert Sobukwe (left) was a nationalist leader who left the African National Congress to found and head the Pan-Africanist Congress in 1959.
Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu is a beloved South African icon who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his efforts to end and heal the wounds of apartheid. He later chaired South Africa's reconciliation commission to examine apartheid-era crimes.
He died in 1978 from lung complications but remains to this day a celebrated figure in the fight against apartheid. OFF/AFP/Getty Images. Denis Goldberg stands in front of Liliesleaf Farm, the apartheid-era hideout for Nelson Mandela and freedom fighters in Johannesburg.
INGE GJELLESVIK/AFP/GettyImages. Oliver Tambo, an exiled politician and activist against apartheid, became President of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1958. Later, Tambo was sent abroad by the ANC to mobilise opposition to apartheid.
Sometimes you can go back to a particular moment in history and say that if it hadn’t been for one person, things would have been very different. This is the story of five of those people.
During the 1968 presidential campaign, Johnson’s chosen political heir, Hubert Humphrey, was widely regarded as having a lock on the race. His ace in the hole was continuing the Paris peace talks, which were expected to bring the increasingly unpopular US involvement in Vietnam to a close.
Using Madame Anna Chennault as a go-between, Kissinger opened a private channel to the government of South Vietnamese president Thieu. Hinting very strongly that the impending peace treaty would be unfavorable to South Vietnam, Kissinger persuaded Thieu to withdraw from talks, effectively sabotaging the peace process.
As a twelve-year-old boy, the future Khan (then known as Temujin) lost his father, a tribal chieftain, when he was poisoned by Tartars. Things like that usually ended with the slain chieftain’s whole family being wiped out, but Temujin escaped into the wilderness with his mother and a few loyal supporters.
It took decades of activism from both inside and outside the country, as well as international economic pressure, to end the regime that allowed the country’s white minority to subjugate its Black majority. This work culminated in the dismantling of apartheid between 1990 and 1994. On April 27, 1994, the country elected Nelson Mandela, an activist who had spent 27 years in prison for his opposition to apartheid, in its first free presidential election.
Campaigns for economic sanctions against South Africa gained steam in the 1980s, but faced considerable resistance from two important heads of state: United States President Ronald Reagan and United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Both Reagan and Thatcher condemned Mandela and the ANC as communists and terrorists at a time when ...
These negotiations lasted for four years, ending with the election of Mandela as president. In 1996, the country initiated a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in an attempt to reckon with the gross human rights violations during apartheid.
The banning of the ANC and the incarceration of its leaders forced many ANC members into exile. But it did not stop resistance within South Africa, says Wessel Visser, a history lecturer at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. “What many dissidents started to do inside the country was to form a kind of an alternative…resistance movement called ...
It isn’t everyone who manages to literally save the world. Vasili Arkhipov did just that, and he did it so quietly that nobody in the West knew a thing about it until he was dead.
The previous entries on this list all have something in common. They all, despite their diverse backstories, were men of power who rose through hierarchies to gain their influence. That is emphatically not true of Gavrilo Princip, the man who flipped the switch on the bloodiest century in human history.
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By Lidia Thorpe With 26 January looming, many Australians will be ashamed of the fact that First Nations people in this country are among the most incarcerated on the planet. […]
The Civilisation Program, the Indian Removal Act and the Cherokee Trail of Tears, 1776 – 1860. The diverse Native Americans of modern-day United States had lived in contact with European […]
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You are only able to read this article thanks to the development of the World Wide Web in 1994 at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science. But whom do you have to thank for that? Berners-Lee, an average British computer scientist.