The defiance expressed by detainees during their mass hunger strike early this year, assumed the form of a nationally organised campaign in the weeks leading up to elections to South Africa's segregated parliament on 6 September.
Trade unions, religious and student bodies and some restricted organisations implemented a programme of action co-ordinated by the loose and informal alliance of anti-apartheid organisations which has come to be known as the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM).
Thousands were involved in actions which included breaches of laws imposing segregation and challenges to the State of Emergency and the Labour Relations Amendment Act of 1988. The campaign galvanised opposition and consolidated the drive towards greater unity.
The state's response was uneven, but involved extensive repression including the killing of a large number of people close to election day. Key leaders of the campaign and those breaking restriction orders were detained, thus provoking hunger strikes inside prison. Activists were also charged under various apartheid laws and gatherings broken up by the police.
The MDM focussed its challenge on segregated facilities and restrictions on free association. Despite warnings by health authorities in some areas that they would refuse entry to 'whites-only' hospitals to those without permission, on 2 August over 270 black patients marched in the company of supporters to such hospitals throughout the country and were given treatment. In Pretoria, however, police roadblocks stopped people marching to hospitals.
Students, and in some cases staff, of various schools and universities took action in protest at such issues as the presence of police and the use of their premises as polling stations. On 28 August students in the Eastern Cape who marched to exclusively white schools demanding that they be de-segregated met with police action. In Queenstown police stopped a march by 2,000 people and allowed a delegation of only 20 students into the school; they later fired teargas to disperse the marchers. Police stopped a march by 3,000 students in Fort Beaufort before it could get to the local white school. In East London and King William's Town police took similar actions.
In Johannesburg, on the same day, black passengers were shut out of whites-only buses as they attempted to board. They had valid tickets, but bus drivers were instructed to keep them off and to drive past stops where black people were waiting.
In Durban some 10,000 people swam and picnicked for about two hours at a 'whites-only' beach before police broke up the protest and arrested 58 of them. The protesters raised ANC flags. In Cape Town police whipped and baton-charged black people at an exclusively white beach. On the mines, members of the National Union of Mineworkers used changing rooms, kitchens and canteens reserved for their white colleagues. On 20 August, a march to the white Dutch Reformed Church in King William's Town registered opposition to racism and apartheid in the church.
We can no longer jail ourselves, nor accept segregation and racial division, nor stand silent in the face of crushing economic problems of the mass of our people.
MDM statement at a press conference on 3 August attended by restricted people.
On 20 August, the sixth anniversary of the United Democratic Front (UDF), meetings were held proclaiming the legality of organisations restricted in terms of emergency regulations and restricted people broke their 'banning' orders. At a meeting at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town 3,000 people declared their organisations unrestricted. The flags of the UDF, End Conscription Campaign (ECC), South African Youth Congress (SAYCO) and many others were unfurled. Some people wore T-shirts with the emblems of restricted organisations. Individuals addressed the meeting in further contravention of their restriction orders. In Johannesburg police prevented a similar meeting by blockading the venue at the University of the Witwatersrand. In another act of defiance some papers published material quoting 'listed' people. In spite of repressive action the campaign grew and assumed greater momentum during the elections.
On 6 and 7 September an MDM-organised two-day stayaway by about three million workers and a large number of students coincided with the elections. The size of the protest ranged from 40 per cent in the Western Cape to 80 per cent in Durban and the Eastern Cape. According to the MDM a month-long consumer boycott was due to start on 13 September. In protest against the killing of over 20 people in Cape Town, a march of more than 50,000 people to parliament culminated in a mass rally outside the town hall. A similar march in Johannesburg presented a list of demands to senior police officers at John Vorster Square police headquarters.
