Known as the chief architect of apartheid, HF Verwoerd served as minister of native affairs under Malan and eventually as the seventh prime minister of South Africa. As minister of native affairs, Verwoerd was instrumental in crafting the most insidious apartheid laws, including the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act and the Pass Laws Act. As prime minister, he engineered the forced relocation of blacks in 'homelands' and the reclassification of white South Africa as its own Republic. After surviving two bullets to the face in 1960, Verwoerd was fatally stabbed six years later.
Punishment that illustrated just how archaic the government was.
The bans effectively sidelined Mandela from active involvement in the ANC for the next two years and he fell back on his day job. Somehow, whfle dedicating countless hours to the Youth League, Mandela managed to earn his law degree. In August 1952, together with Oliver Tambo, Mandela rented a cramped space in downtown Johannesburg and opened the law offices of Mandela & Tambo, the first and only black law partnership in South Africa. The pair swapped fighting the cruelties and absurdities of apartheid from the streets to the courts.
The stairs leading to their office were packed day and night with poor Africans desperate for an advocate against unjust laws. As Mandela recounts in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom: ”...it was a crime to walk through a Whites Only door, a crime to ride a Whites Only bus, a crime to use a Whites Only drinking fountain, a crime to walk on a Whites Only beach, a crime to be on the streets past eleven, a crime not to have a pass book and a crime to have the wrong signature in that book, a crime to be unemployed and a crime to be employed in the wrong place, a crime to live in certain places and a crime to have no place to live."
Mandela proved a capable and charismatic courthouse lawyer, while Tambo handled the legal research. With his tailored suits, imposing physical stature and handsome grin, Mandela the crusading lawyer earned a celebrity following in black Johannesburg and an army of enemies in the white establishment. He was routinely followed by plainclothes government security officers and barred from leaving Johannesburg for important cases. Despite Mandela and Tambo's pioneering legal work, the police state was hugely effective at smothering organised opposition. Isolated from other banned ANC leaders, Mandela feared an all-out ban on its existence. The ANC, he decided, needed to have a plan to go underground. In 1953, Mandela crafted the so-called 'M-Plan' that called for an underground network of secret ANC cells across South Africa. While the M-Plan was never implemented, it set the groundwork for the not-too-distant day when Mandela and his freedom fighters would be driven into the shadows.
When Malan's National Party strengthened its position in parliament in the 1953 general election it became clear that the United Party were failing to propose a viable alternative to apartheid. The ANC called for all enemies of apartheid, regardless of race or creed or political ideology, to convene in a massive Congress of the People. The mission of this Congress was to produce a Freedom Charter, a 'constitution' that called for racial equality and liberty in South Africa. The Congress met in 1955 with Mandela in secret attendance.
As the Freedom Charter was read in three languages, approving cries of "Afrika!" reverberated from the 3,000 delegates in attendance. However, on the second day of meetings, armed Afrikaner detectives raided the meeting hall and seized the microphone, telling all in attendance that they were part of an investigation into acts of treason. Most in the ANC dismissed this as a publicity stunt and few took the investigation seriously. However, early on a December morning in 1956 Mandela awoke to the banging of fists on his door and was met with three white policemen with a warrant for his arrest on charges of high treason. It wasn't an isolated event.
Mandela'S Prisons
World History
