The 1940s saw the rise of nationalist and anti-colonial movements across what we now know as the developing world, including South Africa. In the same decade the African National Congress (ANC) was transformed from a small elite body using courteous and constitutional forms of protest into an extra-parliamentary organisation attempting mass-based mobilisation of all unenfranchised groups in South Africa, and working alongside whites and others committed to non-racialism. In 1947 the ANC entered into an alliance with the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), which was joined in September 1953 by the South African Coloured People's Organisation (SACPO), followed a month later by the white South African Congress of Democrats (SACOD).

In 1956 the Congress Alliance endorsed the Freedom Charter (drawn up the year before), a statement of principle that envisaged a future South Africa based on full equality for all people of all races. The principle that came to guide the ANC – remarkably, given the exigencies of white rule in the guises of both segregation and (after 1948) apartheid – was its commitment to a non-racial future. How did this come about? Why, in the midst of a race-based society, did the ANC espouse a racially inclusive vision rather than an exclusive African nationalism?

The integration of all races in a struggle against the race-based ideology of apartheid, and behind a national liberation struggle led by the ANC, was difficult. The incorporation of whites in the struggle against white supremacy was particularly difficult. This chapter analyses the roots of non-racialism in the post-war years by reviewing the rise of the Congress movement after the Second World War and the responses of whites who supported a non-racial future but differed over its exact form and how (and when) it could be achieved.

The impact of the war years

The impact of the war years The years of the Second World War were a remarkable period in twentieth-century South African history, marked by the partial relaxation of discriminatory legislation, a 50% increase in real average earnings for black industrial workers, and rising hopes for a more liberal government policy.