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.
Tip
- 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.
Common Mistake
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.
- In June 1964, despite the prosecution’s call for the death penalty, the judge sentenced eight of the accused, including Mandela, to life imprisonment.
- This outcome was influenced by global pressure, including a UN resolution and testimony from anti-apartheid figures like novelist Alan Paton.
Note
- The role of the international community in the Rivonia Trial.
- The trial attracted intense international press coverage, especially toward the end, with journalists and photographers from around the world reporting on the proceedings and spotlighting apartheid’s injustices.
- Prestigious newspapers like The Guardian and The Times (UK), The New York Times (USA) and Le Monde (France) portrayed the accused not as terrorists, but as freedom fighters battling racial oppression, contributing to the shifting international opinion against the apartheid regime.
- In June 1964, just before the verdict, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the South African government to end the trial and offer amnesty to the accused, to which only four countries (USA, UK, France, Brazil) abstained.
- After the Sharpeville Massacre, Oliver Tambo had been sent to London to harness international support.
- He led major campaigns to raise awareness, in particular in 1964, where large demonstrations were held in Trafalgar Square and outside South Africa House in London.
Global Effects
- The Rivonia Trial crushed the ANC and MK’s internal leadership, with most senior members either in prison or in exile.
- For over a decade, opposition within South Africa quieted, and the apartheid regime remained relatively unchallenged until 1976.
- Internationally, however, the ANC remained active, especially under Oliver Tambo in exile, maintaining its status as the face of the anti-apartheid movement, even as its military impact remained limited.
- Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment turned him into a global symbol of resistance, inspiring future generations and helping to sustain the freedom struggle throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
- The legacy of the trial included the rise of new resistance movements, like Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness and later the UDF (see the section on Education).
- Strikes in 1973 and the Soweto Uprising in 1976 reignited mass protest, eventually contributing to apartheid’s collapse in the 1980s.
Historiography
- How can we explain the sentence during the Rivonia Trial?
- The apartheid government had shown a consistent attitude to hardening their actions against the anti apartheid movement.
- Why did the accused get off “lightly” and only get life imprisonment instead of death sentence?
- One historiographical perspective argues that international pressure, especially from the UN, global media, and anti-apartheid groups in London, played a critical role in persuading the apartheid state to avoid executing the Rivonia accused.
- The UN Security Council resolution (June 1964), the global media attention, and lobbying by exiled ANC leaders like Oliver Tambo made the trial a global spectacle.
- The government feared turning Mandela and the others into martyrs, which could ignite further domestic and international resistance. In this sense, the state’s sentence was partially a public relations calculation.
- A second perspective sustained by historians like Antony Sampson (Mandela’s biographer), emphasizes that Alan Paton's testimony, the defense team’s legal strategy, and Judge Quartus de Wet’s own legal pragmatism were decisive.
- Alan Paton was the president of the Liberal Party of South Africa, a respected writer and vocal anti-apartheid figure.
- He wrote the novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), a globally acclaimed book that exposed the deep injustices of apartheid.
- The international popularity of the book made Paton a credible moral voice.
- During the Rivonia Trial, he testified in mitigation, arguing for clemency and warning that executing Mandela would lead to greater unrest.
- Moreover, Mandela’s decision to take moral responsibility — while denying intent to harm civilians — gave the court a way to appear firm yet merciful.
- Finally, Sampson argues that Judge de Wet sought to avoid creating martyrs inside South Africa, especially as the ANC had already been weakened.
- Which perspective looks stronger?
- Think about the role of the international community before Rivonia, but also think about the nature of the crime the leaders of the ANC and MK were accused of.
- Is it a new type of crime?
- Or is it the same kind of resistance against apartheid?
