Nationalist historiography portrays the struggle for liberation as an inexorable unfolding of an heroic past by the nation in process of creation, resulting in ultimate triumph over the forces of oppression. Indeed, the making of a new nation as was required by transitions from colonialism or minority rule entailed the deliberate construction of an historical memory of how the nation had been forged and how it was to imagine itself. Yet while the rigidity of settler colonialism invoked its contradiction in the form of militant nationalist movements, the processes whereby the latter developed were often messy, incoherent, partial, and far from complete: they divided as much as they united. Even so, it is possible to identify the steady evolution of nationalist sentiment and organization across the decades.

Early currents of protest

Save for the completion of white conquest in northern South West Africa following the defeat of German forces during 1914–15, the ‘primary resistance’ of African societies to white conquest and their desire to establish Union in South Africa met with failure. The swift formation of the ANC (initially known as the South African Native National Congress) in 1912 by a mission-educated elite represented the first attempt to organize resistance along genuinely national lines, to overcome inter-ethnic divisions, and to secure the support of the chiefly aristocracy. Guided by Christian and liberal precepts, its protestations were made on moral and constitutional grounds.