The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa in 1996 after the end of apartheid. Authorised by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Desmond Tutu, the commission invited witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations to give statements about their experiences, and selected some for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution.
Ciskei, officially the Republic of Ciskei, was a Bantustan for the Xhosa people, located in the southeast of South Africa. It covered an area of 7,700 square kilometres (3,000 sq mi), almost entirely surrounded by what was then the Cape Province, and possessed a small coastline along the shore of the Indian Ocean.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe OMSG was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), serving as the first president of the organization.
Helen Beatrice Joseph OMSG was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Born in Sussex, England, Helen graduated with a degree in English from the University of London in 1927 and then departed for India, where she taught for three years at Mahbubia School for girls in Hyderabad. In about 1930 she left India for England via South Africa. However, she settled in Durban, where she met and married a dentist, Billie Joseph, whom she later divorced.
The Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), formerly known as Poqo, was the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress, an African nationalist movement in South Africa. In the Xhosa language, the word 'Poqo' means 'pure'.
Earthlife Africa is a South African environmental and anti-nuclear organisation founded in August 1988, in Johannesburg. Initially conceived of as a South African version of Greenpeace, the group began by playing a radical, anti-apartheid, activist role. ELA is arguably now more of a reformist lobby or pressure group. Considered by some to be a key voice in the emerging environmental justice movement, Earthlife Africa has been criticised for being too radical, and by others for "working with traditional conservation movements" in furthering the environmental struggle.
The United Democratic Front (UDF) was a South African popular front that existed from 1983 to 1991. The UDF comprised more than 400 public organizations including trade unions, students' unions, women's and parachurch organizations. The UDF's goal was to establish a "non-racial, united South Africa in which segregation is abolished and in which society is freed from institutional and systematic racism." Its slogan was "UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides." The Front was established in 1983 to oppose the introduction of the Tricameral Parliament by the white-dominated National Party government, and dissolved in 1991 during the early stages of the transition to democracy.
The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was an important force for liberalism and later radicalism in South African student anti-apartheid politics. Its mottos included non-racialism and non-sexism.
The South African Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) was a government-sponsored death squad, during the apartheid era. The CCB, operated under the authority of Defence Minister General Magnus Malan. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee pronounced the CCB guilty of numerous killings, and suspected more killings.
The Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) was established in Johannesburg in July 2000 by activists and organisations involved in two key anti-privatisation struggles: the struggle against iGoli 2002, and the struggle against Wits 2001 at Wits University. The APF had affiliates from the unions, communities, students and the left: while most affiliates were township-based community movements, it also included small leftwing political groups, like Keep Left and the anarchist Bikisha Media Collective.
Looksmart Khulile Ngudle [22 May 1922–5 September 1963 (aged 41)] was a South African politician. He was a Member of the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP), an Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Commander and South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) leader in the Western Cape. Ngudle's death is controversial, as he was the first person to die in detention during South Africa's Apartheid Era.
Louis Marius Schoon was a white anti-apartheid activist of Afrikaner descent. Marius died from lung cancer, after a long call from Nelson Mandela, thanking him for his sacrifice against the struggle.
Community House situated in Salt River, Cape Town is a unique and historic site of living heritage. It has always been known as a site of activism from around the mid-1980s which has shaped and continues to shape the socio-political landscape of its extended communities. The building itself houses NGO's and Trade Unions as well as a labour and community history museum centered on the Trade Union Library and its archive. It presently houses twenty-four organizations that focus on labour research, popular education, gender advocacy, HIV/AIDS education, environmental issues, youth development, media production and union organization.
The Beer Hall Boycott of South Africa was a nationwide, women-led campaign of boycotting and demonstrating against municipal beer halls stretching from roughly the 1920s to the 1960s. The Native Beer Act of 1908 had made it illegal for South African women to brew traditional beer. Police raided homes and destroyed home-brewed liquor so that men would use municipal beerhalls. In response, women attacked the beerhalls and destroyed equipment and buildings.
The potato boycott of 1959 was a consumer boycott in Bethal, South Africa during the Apartheid era against slave-like conditions of potato labourers in Bethal, Transvaal. The boycott started in June 1959 and ended in September 1959. Prominent figures of the movement included Gert Sibande, Ruth First, Michael Scott and Henry Nxumalo.
Joyce Piliso-Seroke is a South-African educator, activist, feminist and community organizer. A former vice president of the World YWCA, she traveled internationally to speak about the effects of apartheid, overcoming imprisonment and attempted censorship in her pursuit of justice and gender equality. She is a member of South Africa's national Order of the Baobab in Gold, and was appointed the first chair of the South African Commission for Gender Equality.
Florence Matomela OLG (1910–1969) was a South African anti-pass law activist, communist, civil rights campaigner, ANC veteran, teacher and mother who dedicated her life to fighting against Apartheid laws in South Africa. Matomela was the provincial organiser of the African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL) and vice-president of the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) in the mid 1950s.
Jo Ractliffe is a South African photographer and teacher working in both Cape Town, where she was born, and Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the oldest of six sisters born to artist Barbara Fairhead and business leader Jeremy Ractliffe.
Nomkhitha Virginia Mashinini was a South African apartheid detainee, the mother of political figure Tsietsi Mashinini, and a community worker.
Medu Art Ensemble was a multiracial, Pan-African, and anti-colonial collective of cultural activists based in Gaborone, Botswana during the height of the anti-apartheid resistance movement during the late twentieth century. The collective formed originally in 1979 and was formed to give voice to South Africa’s apartheid policy of racial segregation (1948-1994) and liberation struggles in neighboring countries Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The group was formed after the 1976 Soweto Uprising, when many South African activists were forced into exile. The group was composed of over 60 musicians, performance artists, visual artists, researchers, writers, and poets. Most of the members were South African, but some were from the United States of America, Canada, Cuba, Brazil, Sweden, and Botswana. As a "non-aligned" group, Medu worked with artists from various racial, social, political, and cultural backgrounds. Medu’s members, or “cultural workers” as they preferred to be called, eventually organized and relocated to Gaborone, Botswana in 1978. They felt that the term "cultural workers" was far more fitting to their mission rather than referring to themselves as artists because the such a pursuit was regarded as something trivial and therefore inherently elitist and white. With the support of the African National Congress (ANC), in Gaborone, Medu officially registered as a cultural organization with the Botswanan government. Medu means “roots” in the Northern Sotho language Sepedi, and describes the collective's underground operations. The collective’s cultural work was divided into six units; Publications and Research, Graphic Arts and Design, Music, Theatre, Photography, and Film.
