The decade from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s was a crucial period for the NIC in the broader struggle against apartheid. The impetus from students and workers would see the organisation tap into networks that consolidated into what would become known as the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), and an anti-apartheid struggle that was rapidly becoming a global phenomenon.

On 16 June 1976 student protests broke out in Soweto and then spread rapidly across the country. Since the repression of the liberation movements in the early 1960s, the Soweto uprising was the most sustained confrontation with the apartheid state. As Fatima Meer wrote at the time:

Mewa Ramgobin later reflected that ‘1976 was the catalytic point in lots of people's lives. There is an affirmation in us that even though we were banned at that stage, that you cannot keep a people down.’

Students at UDW sprang into action in solidarity. On 19 August, Yunus Carrim and fellow student leaders Lloyd Padayachee and Rashid Meer (son of anti-apartheid activists Fatima and I.C. Meer) were detained without trial for organising demonstrations against the killing of students in Soweto. The NIC formed a parents’ committee to support the students, which included Fatima Meer (until her arrest), Hassan Mall and Chota Motala.

State repression

The Soweto revolt led to a brutal crackdown in which the state resorted to detention without trial on a massive scale. Fatima Meer was arrested at the end of August 1976, days after the arrest of her son Rashid. She had formed the Institute for Black Research (IBR), which cut across political divides, especially between the BCM and the Charterists. She worked closely with the South African Students Organisation (SASO), as well as with Winnie Mandela, with whom she had formed the Black Women's Federation. She was held in detention at the Johannesburg Fort Prison until December 1976, and chronicled her 113 days in incarceration in her book Prison Diary. The artworks she produced in prison are now housed at the Constitutional Hill heritage site (formerly the Old Fort Prison Complex). Winnie Mandela was a fellow inmate.