All-in Africa Conference in Pietermaritzburg, Natal
65 years ago, on 25 – 26 March 1961, the two-day All-in African Conference – with approximately 1,400 delegates from 145 religious, cultural, peasant, intellectual and political bodies – was hosted in the Manaye Hall in Plessislaer, Pietermaritzburg, Natal. The conference called for a national convention of elected representatives of all adult men and women, regardless of race, colour or creed, which was in direct reaction to the white racist National Party declaring South Africa to be a republic. The Republic, it declared, “rests on force to perpetuate the tyranny of the minority”.
Two years after taking office, apartheid architect and then Prime Minister of South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd realised his “White” republican dream, when a White-only referendum supported his plea for a republic. The date, 31 May 1961, was earmarked for the whites-only Republic of South Africa to be established. According to the resolution of the All-in African Conference, if the apartheid government ignored the demand for a national convention, the people were called upon to organise mass demonstrations on the eve of the proclamation of the Republic.
In December 1960, prior to the All-in Africa Conference, Chief Luthuli and other African National Congress (ANC) leaders convened a Consultative Conference of African Leaders in Orlando, Soweto, to consider united action following the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist C
