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The South African Youth Revolutionary Council (SAYRCO) was a South African political organisation. SAYRCO profiled itself as a 'third force' in the anti-Apartheid struggle. [1] It was associated with the Black Consciousness Movement. [2]
The group emerged from the non-ANC, non-PAC sector of the Soweto Student Representative Council (SSRC). The group was forced into exile after the 1976 Soweto uprising. [3] They first arrived in Botswana, and later relocated to Nigeria. [4] The group conducted fundraising tours in the United States, Western Europe and West Africa. In July 1979 the presidency of the group was passed from Tsietsi Mashinini to Khotso Seatlhoho. In this process the name SAYRC was adopted. As of 1981 SAYRCO obtained funding from the Nigerian government. [3] Seatlhoho received military training from the Palestine Liberation Organization in Syria and Lebanon. SAYRCO called for more offensive forms of armed struggle against the Apartheid regime, criticizing the established anti-Apartheid movements of being too defensive. [5]
The liberation of Zimbabwe open the possibilities for SAYRCO to launch its armed struggle inside South Africa. The ZANU-PF offered military training to SAYRCO cadres. [5] The organisation attempted to enter South Africa and build an armed force there. [3] [4]
On 18 June 1981 South African authorities arrested Seatlhoho and another SAYRCO member, Masabatha Loate. Seatlhoho was caught whilst in a meeting in Orlando East. [3] [4] They would be sentenced to ten and five years of imprisonment respectively. [3] Seatlhoho's captured was heavily publicized by the regime, the news was carried in many newspapers. [4] The Daily Telegraph ran a headline saying "The Scarlet Pimpernel of Soweto arrested!". [5] On 21 June 1981 the South African police claimed to have arrested a total of 8 SAYRCO leaders. [6]
Seatlhoho was jailed on Robben Island. [7] After Seatlhoho's arrest the organisation appeared to have become defunct. [3] The Nigerian government withdrew its support to the group, and returned to its former policy of supporting ANC and PAC (which, unlike SAYRCO, enjoyed recognition from the Organization for African Unity). [8]
uMkhonto we Sizwe was the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress (ANC), and was founded by Nelson Mandela in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre. Its mission was to fight against the South African government.
Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu was a South African anti-apartheid activist and member of the African National Congress (ANC), serving at times as Secretary-General and Deputy President of the organization. He was incarcerated at Robben Island, where he served more than 25 years' imprisonment.
Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu was a South African anti-apartheid activist, and the wife of fellow activist Walter Sisulu (1912–2003). She was affectionately known as "Ma Sisulu" throughout her lifetime by the South African public. In 2004 she was voted 57th in the SABC3's Great South Africans. She died on 2 June 2011 in her home in Linden, Johannesburg, South Africa, aged 92.
Raymond Mphakamisi Mhlaba was an anti-apartheid activist, Communist and leader of the African National Congress (ANC) also as well the first premier of the Eastern Cape. Mhlaba spent 25 years of his life in prison. Well known for being sentenced, along with Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu and others in the Rivonia Trial, he was an active member of the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP) all his adult life. His kindly manner brought him the nickname "Oom Ray".
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was a prominent South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), serving as the first president of the organization.
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'.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterized by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. According to this system of social stratification, white citizens had the highest status, followed by Indians and Coloureds, then black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day.
The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The BCM represented a social movement for political consciousness.
[Black Consciousness'] origins were deeply rooted in Christianity. In 1966, the Anglican Church under the incumbent, Archbishop Robert Selby Taylor, convened a meeting which later on led to the foundation of the University Christian Movement (UCM). This was to become the vehicle for Black Consciousness.
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.
Johannes "Joe" Modise was a South African political figure. He helped to found Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress, and was its longest serving Commander in Chief, deputised at different points in time by Joe Slovo and Chris Hani. Modise headed MK for a 25-year period, from 1965 to 1990. He served as South Africa's first black Minister of Defence from 1994 to 1999 and led the formation of the post-independence defence force.
Zephania Lekoame Mothopeng was a South African political activist and member of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC).
Internal resistance to apartheid in South Africa originated from several independent sectors of South African society and took forms ranging from social movements and passive resistance to guerrilla warfare. Mass action against the ruling National Party (NP) government, coupled with South Africa's growing international isolation and economic sanctions, were instrumental in leading to negotiations to end apartheid, which began formally in 1990 and ended with South Africa's first multiracial elections under a universal franchise in 1994.
The African National Congress (ANC) has been the governing party of the Republic of South Africa since 1994. The ANC was founded on 8 January 1912 in Bloemfontein and is the oldest liberation movement in Africa.
Zwelakhe Sisulu was a South African black journalist, editor, and newspaper founder. He was president of the Writers' Association of South Africa, which later became the Black Media Workers Association of South Africa, and he led a year-long strike in 1980 for fair wages for black journalists. He was a victim of the Apartheid-era government in South Africa and was imprisoned at least three times for his journalism. After Apartheid ended, he became the chief executive officer of the South African Broadcast Corporation.
Clarence Mlami Makwetu was a South African anti-apartheid activist, politician, and leader of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) during the historic 1994 elections.
Samuel Sisulu was a South African anti-apartheid activist, Soweto uprising student leader and founder of South African Freedom Organisation (SAFO). He was jailed at various prisons including Robben Island in 1978, two years after the 1976 Soweto uprising. Samuel Sisulu was charged under the Terrorism Act. Reported in WIP 3. He was mentioned in the indictment of Paul Langa and found guilty of founding SAFO, attempting to cripple the economy of the country by bombing the apartheid government, inciting persons to persuade taxi drivers not to transport workers to place of work, aid strikes, unlawfully aid students in their fight against Bantu education and was also found guilty of recruiting people for military training.
The apartheid regime in South Africa began in 1948 and lasted until 1994. It involved a system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy, and placed all political power in the hands of a white minority. Opposition to apartheid manifested in a variety of ways, including boycotts, non-violent protests, and armed resistance. Music played a large role in the movement against apartheid within South Africa, as well as in international opposition to apartheid. The impacts of songs opposing apartheid included raising awareness, generating support for the movement against apartheid, building unity within this movement, and "presenting an alternative vision of culture in a future democratic South Africa."
Jafta Kgalabi Masemola, also known as The Tiger of Azania and Bra Jeff, was a South African anti-apartheid activist, teacher, and founder of the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). He spent 27 years in South African prison during the apartheid era in South Africa, and was released in October 1989, shortly before the legalization of the PAC and the African National Congress by F. W. de Klerk. He served the longest sentence of any political prisoner in Robben Island prison in South Africa.
Maximum Security Prison is an inactive prison at Robben Island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometers (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa. It is prominent because Nobel Laureate and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there for 18 of the 27 years he served behind bars before the fall of apartheid. After that, three former inmates of this prison Nelson Mandela, Kgalema Motlanthe, and Jacob Zuma have gone on to become President of South Africa.
Joe Nzingo Gqabi was a South African African National Congress activist, who was the ANC's chief representative in Zimbabwe at the time of his assassination by South African Defence Force in Ashdown Park, Harare in 1981.
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