African National Congress

The ANC was founded on 8 January 1912 by Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Sol Plaatje, John Langalibalele Dube, Walter Rubusana and others to advocate for the rights of black South Africans; its early members came largely from the conservative, educated and religious professional classes. From around 1920 it moved beyond the politics of petitioning to passive resistance against the pass laws. Josiah Gumede, president from 1927, advocated mass mobilisation and cooperation with the Communist Party but was voted out in 1930.

Alfred Bitini Xuma revived the organisation in the 1940s, and in 1944 Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and others formed the ANC Youth League. After the National Party came to power in 1948 on a platform of apartheid, the new generation pushed through a Programme of Action of strikes, stay-aways and boycotts, which culminated in the Defiance Campaign of civil disobedience in 1952–53. In June 1955 the Congress of the People at Kliptown adopted the Freedom Charter, thereafter the basic document of the anti-apartheid struggle. In 1959 African nationalists led by Robert Sobukwe broke away to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). According to the English-language source the ANC was banned in April 1960, shortly after the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March, and remained illegal until February 1990; the Afrikaans-language source says it was banned after the 1964 Rivonia trial, in which Mandela and others received life sentences.

In 1961 leaders of the SACP and the ANC formed the armed organisation uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), which the ANC formally recognised as its armed wing in October 1962. From around 1963 the ANC lost almost all of its underground presence at home and operated as an external mission with headquarters first in Morogoro, Tanzania, and then in Lusaka, Zambia; Tambo led it throughout the exile years. In the 1960s MK mainly carried out sabotage against unoccupied government installations. The 1969 Morogoro Conference was called in response to a critical memorandum by Chris Hani. After the Soweto uprising of 1976 thousands of students crossed the border for military training and MK activity grew; one estimate counts an increase from 23 incidents in 1977 to 136 in 1985, and attacks in the later 1980s killed civilians. The governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan condemned the ANC as a terrorist organisation, and according to the English-language source neither the ANC nor Mandela was removed from the US terror watch list until 2008. The ANC received financial and technical support from the Soviet Union.

In February 1990 President F. W. de Klerk announced the unbanning of the ANC and others and Mandela's release. In the Pretoria Minute of August 1990 the ANC committed itself to suspending armed struggle, and the Tripartite Alliance with the SACP and COSATU was formalised the same year. After the Boipatong massacre of June 1992 the ANC withdrew from negotiations, but talks resumed and produced an interim constitution in November 1993. In the first democratic election on 27 April 1994 the ANC won 62.65% of the vote and Mandela became president.

In the post-apartheid era the Congress of the People (2008) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (2013) broke away from the ANC, and in July 2024 Jacob Zuma was expelled for campaigning for a rival party, the MK party. Its share of the vote fell below 50% for the first time in the 2021 local elections, and in the 2024 general election it won about 40% and lost its parliamentary majority for the first time. It remained in power through a Government of National Unity with parties holding 72% of the seats. Cyril Ramaphosa has been its president since 18 December 2017.