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Treason Trials
The Treason Trial was a trial in Johannesburg in which 156 people, including Nelson Mandela, were arrested in a raid and accused of treason in South Africa in 1956. The main trial lasted until 1961, when all of the defendants were found not guilty. During the trials, Oliver Tambo left the country and was exiled. Whilst in other European and African countries, he started an organisation which helped bring publicity to the African National Congress's cause in South Africa. Some of the defendants were later convicted in the Rivonia Trial in 1964. Chief Luthuli has said of the Treason Trial:The treason trial must occupy a special place in South African history. That grim pre-dawn raid, deliberately calculated to strike terror into hesitant minds and impress upon the entire nation the determination of the governing clique to stifle all opposition, made one hundred and fifty-six of us, belonging to all the races of our land, into a group of accused facing one of the most serious ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alone and over 14.8 million in the urban agglomeration, it is classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity and List of urban areas by population, one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. Johannesburg is the provinces of South Africa, provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, and seat of the country's highest court, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Constitutional Court. The city is located within the mineral-rich Witwatersrand hills, the epicentre of the international mineral and gold trade. The richest city in Africa by GDP and private wealth, Johannesburg functions as the economic capital of South Africa and is home to the continent's largest stock exchange, the Johannesburg Stock Exchang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frans Rumpff
Frans Lourens Herman Rumpff, (5 June 1912 – 4 April 1992) was the Chief Justice of South Africa from 1974 to 1982. Early life and education Born in Standerton, Transvaal, Rumpff was educated at the University of Pretoria, where he obtained a BA (1933) and LLB (1935). From 1936 to 1938, he was employed by the Department of Justice and then he became clerk of Judge Maritz of the Transvaal Provincial Division. Career In 1938, Rumpff decided to practice as an advocate and joined the Pretoria Bar and also taught part-time in private law at the University of Pretoria. He was appointed King's Counsel in 1951. He was appointed to the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa in 1951, and served on the court until 1961. He was the Judge President of the court from 1959 to 1961. In 1961, he was one of the judges who acquitted all the defendants in the Treason Trial. In 1961, he was appointed to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth First
Heloise Ruth First OLG (4 May 1925 – 17 August 1982) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and scholar. She was assassinated in Mozambique, where she was working in exile, by a parcel bomb built by South African police. Family and education Ruth First was born 4 May 1925 in Johannesburg to her Jewish parents, Julius First and Matilda Leveta. Julius emigrated to South Africa from Latvia when he was 10 years old, and Matilda emigrated from Lithuania when she was four years old. They were both anti-apartheid activists and became founding members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), the forerunner of the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ruth First was brought up in Kensington where she and her brother, Ronald First, were raised in a highly political household. At age 14, Ruth was a member of the Young Left Wing Book Club. Like her parents, she joined the Communist Party, which was allied with the African National Congress in its struggle to overthrow the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yusuf Dadoo
Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo OMSG (5 September 1909 – 19 September 1983) was a South African Communist and an anti-apartheid activist. During his life, he was chair of both the South African Indian Congress and the South African Communist Party, as well as being a major proponent of co-operation between those organisations and the African National Congress. He was a leader of the Defiance Campaign and a defendant at the Treason Trial in 1956. His last days were spent in exile in London, where he is buried at Highgate Cemetery; a few metres away from the Tomb of Karl Marx. Early life Yusuf was born on 5 September 1909 in Krugersdorp, in the West Rand, near Johannesburg. His parents, Mohammed and Fatima Dadoo, were Gujarati Muslim immigrants from Surat in Western India. As a young child, he had the formative experience of being scolded by his mother for climbing a tree in his neighbourhood park, which was reserved for White people only. Aged ten, the Krugersdorp Municipa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Calata
James Arthur Calata OLG (1895 – 1983) was a South African priest and politician. He was the Secretary-General of the African National Congress from 1936 to 1949. He was appointed a canon of the Grahamstown Cathedral making him the first Black canon in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. Early life James Arthur Calata was born in Debe Nek, near King William's Town in the Eastern Cape on 22 July 1895. His father, James was an uneducated farmer and a Presbyterian. His mother Eliza, reached Standard 4, practiced as a midwife and was an Anglican. He was educated at St Matthew's College in Keiskammahoek, from 1911 to 1914 and later worked as a teacher for a number of years. He married Miltha Mary Koboka in 1918, they went on to have three daughters. He was grandfather of Fort Calata who was also a politician. Career Calata became deacon in the Anglican Church in 1921, ordained priest in 1926, and worked briefly in Port Elizabeth, until he was sent to serve as a minister ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonia Bunting
Sonia Bunting, OLS (9 December 1922 – 24 March 2001) was a South African journalist, and a political and anti-apartheid activist. After being charged with treason and imprisoned, being detained a second time, and barred from publishing, she and her husband went into exile in London, where she joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and organised the World Campaign for the Release of South African Political Prisoners. When the African National Congress (ANC) ban was lifted in 1991, she returned to South Africa where she was involved in political activism until her death in 2001. She was posthumously honored by the government of South Africa with the Order of Luthuli in Silver in 2010. Early life Sonia Beryl Isaacman was born on 9 December 1922 in Johannesburg, South Africa to Dora and David Isaacman. Her parents were Jewish exiles, who had fled from Eastern Europe to escape anti-Semitic pogroms. After her matriculation from her secondary education, Isaacman enrolled at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lionel Bernstein
Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein (20 March 1920 – 23 June 2002) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. He played a key role in political organizations such as the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC). He helped form the South African Congress of Democrats to bolster white participation in the ANC, and he brought its allies together to establish a Congress of the People, working closely with Nelson Mandela. The anti-apartheid movement drew the ire of the South African government. They imposed severe restrictions on the movement, such as banning a publication Bernstein edited, banning a party he organized with, and detaining leaders including him for long periods of time. These actions culminated in him fleeing his home country after being detained following a police raid. To participate in the first post-apartheid elections in 1994, he returned to South Africa and resumed working for the ANC. Many instituti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacqueline Arenstein
Jacqueline Arenstein (born 6 June 1921) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. A member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) from the age of 21, she was a defendant in the 1956 Treason Trial and repeatedly banned from the 1960s through to the 1980s. In 1984 she was appointed as a legal adviser to Mangosuthu Buthelezi Prince Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi (; 27 August 1928 – 9 September 2023) was a South African politician and Zulu people, Zulu prince who served as the traditional prime minister to the Zulu royal family from 1954 until his death in 2023. He .... Life Arenstein is Jewish, and is a cousin to the former Minister of Intelligence Services Ronnie Kasrils. References 1921 births Possibly living people Jewish South African anti-apartheid activists South African anti-apartheid activists Members of the South African Communist Party White South African anti-apartheid activists {{AntiApartheid-activist-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constitution Hill, Johannesburg
The Constitution Hill precinct is the seat of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. It is located in Braamfontein, Johannesburg near the western end of the suburb of Hillbrow. The complex consists of the Constitutional Court, the Old Fort Prison and museum. In 2024 the Constitution Hill became a World Heritage Site, known as Nelson Mandela Legacy Sites. History The hill was formerly the site of a fort which was later used as a prison. The Old Fort Prison complex is known as Number Four. The original prison was built to house white male prisoners in 1892. The Old Fort was built around this prison by Paul Kruger from 1896 to 1899 to protect the South African Republic from the threat of British invasion. Later, Boer military leaders of the Second Boer War, Anglo-Boer War were imprisoned here by the British. The Old Fort prison was later extended to include "native" cells, called Section 4 and Section 5, and, in 1907, a women's section was added, the Women's Gaol. An awaiting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Congress Of Democrats
The South African Congress of Democrats (SACOD) was a radical left-wing white, anti-apartheid organization founded in South Africa in 1952 or 1953 as part of the multi-racial Congress Alliance, after the African National Congress (ANC) invited whites to become part of the Congress Movement. The establishment of the COD sought to illustrate opposition to apartheid among whites. The COD identified closely with the ANC and advocated racial equality and universal suffrage. Though small, COD was a key organization of the Congress Alliance. The COD took part in every Congress Alliance campaign until it was banned by the South African Apartheid government in September 1962. Relationship with the ANC and SACP The ANC viewed the COD as a way to put its views directly to the white public. Moreover, as Nelson Mandela wrote, "The COD served an important symbolic function for Africans; blacks who had come into the struggle because they were anti-white discovered that there were indeed white ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Indian Congress
The South African Indian Congress (SAIC) was an umbrella body founded in 1921 to coordinate between political organisations representing South African Indians, Indians in the various provinces of South Africa. Its members were the Natal Indian Congress (NIC), the Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC), and, initially, the Cape British Indian Council. It advocated Nonviolent resistance, non-violent resistance to discriminatory laws and in its formative years was strongly influenced by the NIC's founder, Mahatma Gandhi. Although the SAIC's members operated with a great deal of autonomy, the SAIC had a particularly important political role in the 1950s, when it represented the NIC and TIC in fostering more cooperative relations with the African National Congress. Pursuant to these efforts, the SAIC co-organised the Defiance Campaign and Congress of the People (South African political party), Congress of the People, and it became a signatory to the Freedom Charter and a member of the Congr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SACP
The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded on 12 February 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), and tactically dissolved itself in 1950 in the face of being declared illegal by the governing National Party under the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950. The Communist Party was reconstituted underground and re-launched as the SACP in 1953, participating in the struggle to end the apartheid system. It is a member of the ruling Tripartite Alliance alongside the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and through this it influences the South African government. The party's Central Committee is the party's highest decision-making structure. Although the party has not left the Tripartite Alliance, the SACP has announced its intention to break with the ANC and run its own candidates in the 2026 local elections, following the ANC's decision to enter a unity government with right-w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
