It’is also the month in which the ANC under the presidency of Nelson Mandela of the Madiba clan led the ANC to its historic victory after 84 years of the freedom struggle that grew from humble petitions to political authorities in loco, and deputations to colonial overlords sitting in Westminster. The ANC liberation struggle is recognised as the longest of the African struggles. Besides starting at low gear it slowly gathered speed as it climbed up the mountain ridge; one marvelous thing about the ANC was it spread its wings across the colonial borders. The High Commission Territories (HCT) the British Protectorates of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland were full members from the onset. Dikgosi/amakhosi/chiefs and their subjects joined en bloc.
From the handwringing petitioner, through the Native Representative Council (NRC), until exposed by firebrand Paul Mosaka, as a ‘toy telephone,’ through the cap-in-hand deputations across choppy seas to London, the ANC developed into an organisation of all seasons, that repaid the rising fury of the enemy’s viciousness with compound interest. Racial discrimination initially known as the ‘colour bar’ reflected in ‘passes laws’ and night curfew for Bantu, drastically assumed alarming proportions in residential segregation, Immorality Act, Bantu Education Act, and Bantu homelands with all-white Parliament inciting whites outside to hate and terrorising blacks. Dr Malan quizzed his audience whenever he opened his public rally speeches: “Waar staan ek (where do I stand)? When they roared back that he was standing on speaker’s platform, he’d correct them, “Nee, ek staan op die kaffir se nek (no, I am standing on the kaffir’s neck)!”
