Official response: the Rivonia trial (1963-1964) and the imprisonment of the ANC leadership
The Rivonia Trial
- The Rivonia Trial (1963-64) was named after the Liliesleaf Farm hideout in Johannesburg
- This was where ANC and MK leaders were captured and charged with sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the apartheid state after police found their guerrilla warfare plan, Operation Mayibuye.
- Operation Mayibuye was a secret plan drafted by members of the ANC and MK high command, outlining a strategy to launch a guerrilla war against apartheid using clandestine rural bases to escalate the armed struggle across South Africa.
- The document was discovered by police during the raid on Liliesleaf Farm in July 1963, and it became key evidence in the Rivonia Trial, used to argue that the accused were planning a violent overthrow of the state.
Nelson Mandela
- Nelson Mandela, already imprisoned since 1962 for leaving the country illegally and inciting strikes, was added to the trial and chose to use the courtroom as a political platform
- He famously declared his readiness to die for a democratic and free South Africa.
The Rivonia Trial (1963-1964) and the Treason Trial (1956-1961) are sometimes confused by students.
- While both were major apartheid-era trials in South Africa involving ANC leaders, they had different contexts, charges, and outcomes.
- The Treason Trial was a response to the Freedom Charter. 156 anti apartheid activists, including Mandela, Sisulu and Luthuli were accused of plotting to overthrow the apartheid government.
- After 4+ years, all accused were acquitted. The government failed to prove that the Freedom Charter promoted violent revolution.
- In the Rivonia Trial of 1963-4, 11 MK and ANC leaders were accused of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the state, based on evidence from the guerilla warfare plan Operation Mayibuye.
- Eight leaders, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment (not death, as many feared).
- The Rivonia Trial marked the end of legal opposition in South Africa for a decade and made Mandela a global icon. It reflected the ANC’s shift to armed struggle after nonviolence was brutally suppressed.
Imprisonment
- The accused admitted to sabotage but denied endangering lives, using the trial to justify the ANC’s turn to armed struggle in the face of relentless state repression and lack of political rights under apartheid.
