1960–1994: (From Sharpeville to the Rainbow Nation — The 1960 Massacre Where Police Shot Unarmed Demonstrators in the Back, the ANC and PAC Banned, Umkhonto …

1960–1994: (From Sharpeville to the Rainbow Nation — The 1960 Massacre Where Police Shot Unarmed Demonstrators in the Back, the ANC and PAC Banned, Umkhonto we Sizwe Founded, Mandela Sentenced to Life in 1963, the 1976 Soweto Uprising Against Bantu Education, Steve Biko’s Death in Custody, Botha’s 1985 State of Emergency, De Klerk Cancelling the Population Registration and Group Areas Acts in 1989, Mandela Released in 1990, and the 1994 Elections Bringing the ANC to Power): While Suez marked one watershed, at the other end of the continent the apartheid regime was hardening. The turning point came in 1960 at Sharpeville, where police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators — most were shot in the back as they fled. The government banned the ANC and PAC, pushing the struggle underground. The ANC founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, and many leaders went into exile, but in 1963 Mandela and others were captured and sentenced to life imprisonment. By the 1970s, resistance diversified through worker protest and the Black Consciousness movement under Steve Biko. In 1976 police fired on 15,000 schoolchildren protesting inferior education in Soweto, sparking a wave of revolt tantamount to civil war in some areas. Biko died in police custody. Through the 1980s, townships became ungovernable, and in 1985 President Botha declared a state of emergency. International condemnation increased as even Britain and the US could no longer justify their stance. In 1989, de Klerk initiated a dramatic reassessment — cancelling the Population Registration and Group Areas acts, lifting bans on the ANC and PAC, and releasing Mandela in 1990. Protracted negotiations, against a background of rising township violence, led in 1994 to the first free non-racial elections. Mandela became president, and his vision of the rainbow nation — combined with the ANC’s pragmatic administration — brought stability without the predicted civil war or backlash against white South Africans. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought to heal apartheid’s wounds. Yet the majority of South Africans remained mired in poverty, and the vast inequity in economic opportunity persisted — the freedom that had been won was political, while economic liberation remained, as it remains, the unfinished revolution.