AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS YOUTH LEAGUE:
The beginning of the revolution
"The formation of the African National Congress Youth League is an answer and assurance to the critics of the national movement that African Youth will not allow the struggles and sacrifices of their fathers to have been in vain. Our fathers fought so that we, better equipped when our time came, should start and continue from where they stopped."
-anc youth league manifesto, 1944
The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) was at the core of incorporating the populace into a revolutionary movement against apartheid. The Youth League was created in the 1940’s by Oliver Tambo and other young members of the African National Congress (ANC) who were concerned with the lack of militancy and youth involvement within the ANC. They believed that not just the black elite but also the unskilled and uneducated black workers should be active in achieving the ANC's goals. The petitioning and lobbying undertaken by the ANC to create change was ignored by the South African government. This led to the Youth League proposing mass protest in their Manifesto at the Provisional Executive Committee in March, 1944 and by 1949 the ANC Conference decided to adopt the Youth League’s Programme of Action calling for boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience. This was the foundation of the Defiance Campaign and the Congress of the People.
This image is of black workers participating in peaceful protest. Blacks were not afforded the right to vote and were paid slave-labor wages.
|
This image displays black South Africans engaging in civil disobedience by deliberately by waiting at the white only counter.
|
The Youth League was also extremely influential in changing the leadership within the ANC and Oliver Tambo himself was elected onto the ANC’s National Committee. Oliver Tambo believed in the necessity of action to create change. Tambo felt that all the people of South Africa had to fight against apartheid collectively in order for the South African government to amend their social laws. In order for change to occur the people had to unite in a way where the ANC could no longer be ignored. The former tactic of making pleas to the government had clearly been ineffective. It was by mobilizing the majority, the nonwhites, in protest, that placed more pressure on the government to create social change. By having the majority of the population participating in civil disobedience, the economic chaos caused significant strain on the government. It is clear that without the founding of the Youth League, the ANC would not have transformed into such a revolutionary movement nor would it have been as effective in moving the masses against apartheid.