1918: - 1918 saw the anti-pass campaign by women ending in triumph, led by the Bantu Women's League of South Africa - the Women's Branch of the ANC formed by Charlotte Maxeke.
May 1918: The bucket strike in which African sanitary workers in Johannesburg downed buckets demanding a 6d rise. 152 strikers were sentenced to two months' hard labour for breach of contract under the Masters and Servants Act. The ANC launched a campaign for the release of the prisoners, which soon turned into a campaign for a general wage increase of Is a day and the threat of a general strike. The strikers were released.
1919: In 1919 the ANC organised a campaign on the Rand against the pass laws. 1919 also saw 70 000 African miners strike against their whole status and pig-level existence. It was highly disciplined and organised, and an alarmed government threw police cordons around each of the compounds preventing co-ordination of demands and actions. Troops broke through the workers' barricades, with bayonets fixed, killing three and wounding 40. Police and armed white civilians attacked a meeting of solidarity with the striking miners, killing eight and wounding 80.
May 24, 1921: The Bulhoek Massacre took place near Queenstown when Colonel Theodore Truter, a police commissioner, led six squadrons, a machine gun and an artillery detachment against the Israelite religious sect collected at their annual gathering on the land of their leader and prophet, Enoch Mgijima at Ntabalanga. The slaughter took ten minutes and cost 190 lives. Mgijima and his two brothers were sentenced to six years - their crime? The refusal to demolish huts built on crown land and defiance of white authority.
June 1930: Non-European Convention held in Kimberley as a climax to a campaign of protest meetings and resolutions against the pass laws and the Hertzog Bills. It was ttended by more than 100 delegates representing the ANC, the APO, the Indian Congress, the Native Voters' Association, the Bantu Union and religious and welfare societies from all over Southern Africa. Dr Abdurahman was elected to the chair.
Dec 16, 1935: At the All-African National Convention 400 delegates gathered in loemfontein to oppose the Hertzog Bills, first formulated in 1925, which propose to remove the limited franchise the Cape Africans enjoyed and define, once and for all the area to be allocated to the Africans in the Natives' Land and Trust Bill.
Also in 1935 the National Liberation League for Equality, Land and Freedom launched with Mrs Zaibunissa (Cissy) Gool as president and James la Guma as general secretary. Its foundation conference adopted a programme and constitution pledged 'to unite all individuals, organisations and other bodies in agreement with the programme of the League to struggle for complete social, political and economic equality of Non-Europeans with Europeans in South Africa', reflecting the need for unity against the white minority.
December 15-18, 1939: Statement by ANC Conference in Bloemfontein:
'Unless and until the government granted the Africans full democratic and citizenship rights the ANC was not prepared to advise the Africans to participate in the present war (World War II) in any capacity'.
August 1941: Policy and platform statement of the ANC issued by Dr Xuma in Inkululeko calling for racial unity. the ANC being the mouthpiece of the African people throughout South Africa. Also in 1941, the Council for Non-European Trade Unions founded with Gana Makabeni as President and D Gosani as secretary.
1943: Foundation of the ANC Women's League. December 16, 1943. ANC annual conference presented the African Claims in South Africa.
1943/4: Formation of the ANC Youth League headed by Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, O.R.Tambo, Walter Sisulu, AP Mda and others.
1944/5: Anti-pass campaigns carried the struggle for national liberation forward.
June 13, 1946: Indian Passive Resistance Campaign led by Y M Dadoo and Dr G M Naicker against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Acts (Ghetto Acts) enacted by the Smuts Government commenced.
August 12-19, 1946: 100,000 African miners strike from the East to the West Rand. Police, with bayonets drawn, charged and opened fire, forcing the workers back underground. Hundreds of workers were killed and injured. No official figures of dead were released and the strike was broken by the lawlessness and ruthlessness of the state. 52 people. including Kotane, Dadoo, Bunting, Fischer, J B Marks and Harmel are accused of conspiracy to bring about the strike.
March 1947: Xuma-Naicker-Dadoo Pact was signed on behalf of the ANC, the NIC and the TIC and laid a firm foundation for the fighting Congress Alliance, the national liberation front of our country.
1948: The Nationalist Party came to power entrenching white minority domination of South Africa.