African mineworkers launch a mass strike

The law formalized African reserve areas and created the South African Native Trust. Although it promised additional land, it entrenched territorial segregation and enabled further removals.

Parliament chose war on Germany and replaced Prime Minister Hertzog with Jan Smuts. Black South Africans served and worked for the war effort while racial inequality continued at home.

The document applied the Atlantic Charter's language of freedom to South Africa and demanded full citizenship, equal rights, land, education and social welfare for Africans.

A younger generation formed the Youth League to press the ANC toward mass action and African nationalism. Its founders included Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo.

Resisters occupied land in Durban to defy the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, known as the Ghetto Act. More than 2,000 people were eventually imprisoned.

After India raised the treatment of people of Indian origin, the UN General Assembly declared that relations between the two countries should conform to international obligations and the UN Charter.

Alfred Xuma, Yusuf Dadoo and Monty Naicker signed a declaration of cooperation, committing their organizations to joint struggle for full democratic rights.

The National Party came to power on an apartheid platform despite receiving fewer votes overall than its opponents. The Black majority had no national vote.

Violence between African and Indian residents erupted amid poverty, racial segregation and labour competition. More than 140 people died, exposing divisions produced and manipulated by colonial rule.

The programme called for boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and non-cooperation. It marked a shift from petitions toward mass mobilization against white minority rule.