Nonviolent Discipline and Radical Flanks
Channel: ICNC - International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: 2012-08-07

Dr. Howard Barrell / Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University

Part Two - It's the Politics, Stupid! Civil Resistance and Violent Flanks - The Case of South Africa's Struggle Against Apartheid:  This talk examines how simultaneous campaigns of civil resistance and organised military violence against apartheid interacted with each other in the case of South Africa. It examines a complex and paradoxical relationship that developed between popular civil resistance inside South Africa and the ANC's armed campaign. It argues that the ANC's almost exclusive focus on armed struggle between 1961 and 1979 severely undermined civil resistance, ironically also held back the development of armed struggle itself, and retarded the achievement of ending apartheid. It concludes that civil resistance inside South Africa led by the United Democratic Front (UDF) eventually far surpassed armed activity as a force for change in South Africa in the 1980s. The presentation will offer reasons for this outcome.