ived. Its new president, Dr. Alfred Xuma, worked with the Communist Party to draft a set of demands, including full political rights for Africans. He also organized protests against the hated pass laws, but his overall caution disappointed a new generation of activists. In 1943 young ANC members, including Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, and Anton Lembede, formed the ANC Congress Youth League (ANC-CYL). Their passion and political savvy drove the ANC for the next 50 years.In 1949, a year after the newly elected National Party government began implementing its apartheid policies, the CYL took over the ANC leadership. Influenced by the principles of nonviolent action and passive resistance pioneered by Indian nationalist leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, in 1952 the ANC drafted the "Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws." The campaign's strikes, boycotts, and other acts of civil disobedience did not result in any legislative reforms, but they did help swell ANC membership from about 7000 to 100,000 members within a few months. In addition, the campaign ushered in a new era of cooperation with antiapartheid groups representing other racial constituencies, such as the Coloured People's Congress, the South African Indian Congress, and the mostly white Congress of Democrats.These groups, together with the ANC, formed the Congress Alliance, which met in 1955 to draft the Freedom Charter. The Charter called for multiracialism, economic equality, and full democratic rights for all South Africans, and was adopted by the ANC as its official program in 1956. Even as the ANC's membership and alliances grew, however, the organization faced new challenges. Increased harassment by the government resulted in treason charges against 156 members, and helped provoke the defection of several ANC leaders, who subsequently founded the more militant, black-only, Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959.The struggle against apartheid intensified after March ...
