The Bantu Women's League launches anti-pass resistance

The Union government enacted a literacy test and broad exclusion powers that particularly restricted Asian immigration. Indian communities organized against this racial legislation.

The law confined African land purchase and tenancy to designated reserves comprising about seven percent of the country. It accelerated dispossession, labour coercion and rural poverty.

More than 2,000 striking Indian workers, including women and children, crossed from Natal into the Transvaal in defiance of immigration controls and the three-pound tax.

The act recognized Indian marriages and abolished the three-pound tax on former indentured workers. Other racial restrictions remained, but the settlement ended the mass satyagraha campaign.

The troopship sank after a collision, killing more than 600 members of the South African Native Labour Contingent and crew. Black servicemen had been recruited for wartime labour while denied equal...

Clements Kadalie helped establish a dockworkers' union in Cape Town that grew into a mass organization of Black and Coloured workers and rural tenants during the 1920s.

Tens of thousands of African mineworkers struck over wages and working conditions. Police repression and the compound system helped employers break the action.

Police attacked the Israelites at Ntabelanga near Bulhoek after the religious community resisted eviction. At least 160 people were killed and many more wounded or arrested.

Socialist organizations united in Cape Town to form the CPSA. The party later adopted a Black-majority orientation and became an important ally of national liberation and labour movements.

The state used troops, artillery and aircraft against striking white mineworkers. The revolt also exposed the racial labour order because many strikers demanded protection of skilled jobs for whites.