The first national Freedom Day protest takes place

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.

The ANC, Communist Party and trade unions called workers to stay home for political rights and against repression. Police killed at least eighteen people in clashes on the Witwatersrand.

Facing the Suppression of Communism Act, the CPSA dissolved publicly. Members later reorganized underground as the South African Communist Party.

The act authorized compulsory residential and business segregation and became a major legal instrument for mass forced removals from multiracial neighbourhoods.

Every resident was assigned a racial classification. These classifications determined residence, schooling, employment, political rights and everyday movement under apartheid.

The law created state-controlled tribal, regional and territorial authorities. It laid administrative foundations for the Bantustan system and excluded Africans from common citizenship.

While the state celebrated three centuries of white settlement, the ANC and SAIC held mass meetings and called for defiance of six discriminatory laws.

Thousands attended the Day of the Volunteers shortly before civil disobedience began. Participants committed themselves to disciplined, nonviolent defiance of apartheid laws.