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in SOUTH AFRICA

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1912

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The 1914 South African Native National Congress delegation to Britain (L-R: Walter Rubusana, Thomas Mapikela, Saul Msane, John Dube, and Sol Plaatje).

The African National Congress (ANC) has been the governing party of the Republic of South Africa since 1994. The ANC was founded on 8 January 1912 in Bloemfontein and is the oldest liberation movement in Africa.

Called the South African Native National Congress until 1923, the ANC was founded as a national discussion forum and organised pressure group, which sought to advance black South Africans' rights at times using violent and other times diplomatic methods. Its early membership was a small, loosely centralised coalition of traditional leaders and educated, religious professionals, and it was staunchly loyal to the British crown during the First World War. It was in the early 1950s, shortly after the National Party's adoption of a formal policy of apartheid, that the ANC became a mass-based organisation. In 1952, the ANC's membership swelled during the uncharacteristically militant Defiance Campaign of civil disobedience, towards which the ANC had been led by a new generation of leaders, including Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu. In 1955, it signed the Freedom Charter, which - along with the subsequent Treason Trial - cemented its so-called Congress Alliance with other anti-apartheid groups.

At the turn of the decade, a series of significant events in quick succession changed the course of the movement. First, in 1959, a group of dissidents broke away from the ANC to form the rival Pan Africanist Congress, objecting to the ANC's new programme of multi-racialism as embodied in the Freedom Charter. This was one of two significant splits in the ANC on the basis of its racial policies - in 1975, the so-called Gang of Eight was expelled for objecting to the ANC's 1969 decision to open its membership to all races. The second major shift came when in March 1960, following the Sharpeville massacre, the ANC was banned, marking the beginning of a period of escalating state repression. Forced underground, the ANC and South African Communist Party (SACP) founded Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which was to become the ANC's military wing. Announcing the beginning of an armed struggle against apartheid, MK embarked upon a sabotage campaign.

By 1965, pursuant to the imprisonment of many of its top leaders in the Rivonia Trial and Little Rivonia Trial, the ANC was forced into exile. It remained in exile until it was unbanned in 1990. For most of this period, the ANC was led by Tambo, headquartered first in Morogoro, Tanzania, and then in Lusaka, Zambia, and primarily supported by Sweden and the Soviet Union. Its exile was marked by an increasingly close alliance with the SACP, as well as by periods of significant unrest inside MK, including the Mkatashinga mutinies in 1983-84. Throughout these years, the ANC's central objective was the overthrow of apartheid, by means of the "Four Pillars": armed struggle; an internal underground; popular mobilisation; and international isolation of the apartheid regime. After the 1976 Soweto uprising, MK received a large influx of new recruits, who were used to escalate the armed struggle inside South Africa; ANC attacks, for the first time, killed large numbers of civilians. Yet even as the armed attacks continued, the ANC embarked upon secret talks about a possible negotiated settlement to end apartheid, beginning with a series of meetings with civil society and business leaders in the mid-1980s, and complemented by Mandela's own meetings with state officials during his imprisonment.

The ANC was unbanned on 2 February 1990, and its leaders returned to South Africa to begin formal negotiations. Following his release, Mandela was elected president of the ANC at its 48th National Conference in 1991. Pursuant to the 1994 elections, which marked the end of apartheid, the ANC became the majority party in the national government and most of the provincial governments, and Mandela was elected national president. The ANC has retained control of the national government since then.

The organisation was founded as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) in Bloemfontein on 8 January 1912, in the aftermath of the foundation of the Union of South Africa and not long before the passage of the Natives Land Act. Zulu hymns were sung at the founding meeting. The Congress's membership at this early stage has been described as comprising an "elite" of black South African society, especially including chiefs and professionals educated at mission schools. Its founding leaders were John Dube (President), Sol Plaatje (Secretary), and Pixley ka Isaka Seme (Treasurer), of whom historian Tom Lodge says:

These were men who retained close ties with the African aristocracy, the rural chieftaincy, who, while anxious to promote the general advancement and 'upliftment of the race', were also conservatives, concerned with protecting a moral and social order they correctly perceived to be under attack. Congress was intended to function first as a national forum to discuss the issues which affected 'the dark races of the subcontinent', and second as an organised pressure group. It planned to agitate for changes through 'peaceful propaganda', the election to legislative bodies of Congress sympathisers, through protests and enquiries, and finally, through 'passive action or continued movement' - a clear reference to the tactics which were being employed by Gandhi and his followers in the South African Indian community.

The Congress did indeed have moderate objectives and methods during its early years, engaging in what Raymond Suttner calls "the politics of petitioning". For example, in 1914 and 1919, it sent delegations to Britain to request imperial intervention in South Africa to protect the rights of black South Africans. Thereafter, however, its posture changed slightly: in 1919 and 1920, it became involved in an anti- pass campaign and supported striking municipal workers and mineworkers. The pass laws were a consistent target of the Congress over its first few decades, as those laws were gradually extended and entrenched, such as through the 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act. Possibly inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's concept of satyagraha, developed only years earlier in South Africa, the Congress protested the pass laws through a (somewhat sporadic) programme of passive resistance.

The 1920s were notable in South Africa for what has been characterised as intensive growth in class consciousness, including the growing popularity of bodies such as the International Socialist League and, after its establishment in 1921, the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) - a growing number of Congress members were socialists. Such influences had additional scope to operate locally in the early Congress, which was significantly decentralised: the national organisation met only once annually, at the national conference. For another example of decentralisation, membership was officially open only to black men (with women allowed to join only from 1943), but the practice appears to have been different at the local level.

The ANC, having been renamed in 1923, was led by Josiah Gumede from 1927, and in the same year announced that it planned to embark on a course of mass mobilisation, including by constructing local branch memberships. This did not fully materialise, but the ANC did support the CPSA-founded League of African Rights, a body intended to agitate for various civil and political rights, and Gumede was elected its president. However, in late 1929, the ANC overruled Gumede and declined to support the League's mass anti-pass demonstrations. The League collapsed shortly afterwards, and in April 1930 Gumede was voted out of his ANC office. Gumede's successor was Seme, who pursued the support of the traditionalist chiefs and moved ANC policy back to the right. The ANC under Seme has been described as being at "the nadir of [its] influence". Relations with the CPSA soured when the ANC refused to support pass-burning demonstrations in Johannesburg in 1930, and the (short-lived) Independent ANC was formed in a split by dissidents from the left-leaning region that is now the Western Cape.

A just and permanent peace will be possible only if the claims of all classes, colours and races for sharing and for full participation in the educational, political and economic activities are granted and recognised.

- Alfred Xuma, foreword to the 1943 African Claims document
However, amid a surge of trade union activity in the 1940s, the ANC experienced a revival and moderate radicalisation under President-General Alfred Bitini Xuma. In response to the publication in 1941 of the Allied Powers' Atlantic Charter, in 1943 the ANC's national conference signed the "African Claims" document. Notably, the document included demands for self-government and for black political rights, thus marking a shift in the ANC's objectives. Xuma proved willing to form tactical alliances with the CPSA - he chaired a joint CPSA-ANC anti-pass committee - and with the Indian Congresses (the Transvaal Indian Congress and Gandhi's Natal Indian Congress), who at the time were protesting the Asiatic Land Tenure and Representation Act. On 9 March 1947, the ANC signed a co-operation agreement, the so-called "Three Doctors' Pact", with the Indian Congresses. By that year, the ANC had swelled to a record 5,517 members, more than half of them in the Transvaal. This represented a larger and more informal following than the ANC had had in the past, attracted in particular by large mass meetings it had begun to organise.

The 1948 general election brought to power the Afrikaner nationalist National Party, which would not be voted out for the next 46 years. The party had campaigned on a platform of apartheid, an explicit policy of institutionalised racial segregation. Upon his election, Prime Minister D. F. Malan set about implementing apartheid, particularly through a series of laws which further restricted the civil, political, and economic rights and freedoms of non-white South Africans. This naturally wrought a significant shift in the agenda and approach of non-white political organisations, including the ANC. Of immediate significance to the ANC (and to the CPSA, which was banned) was the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, whose notoriously broad definition of communism was used to justify banning orders on several ANC members and leaders, limiting their political activity and freedom of movement. Eleven of the 27 members of the 1952 National Executive Committee (NEC) were banned; and by 1955, 42 ANC leaders, including Walter Sisulu, had been banned.

During the 1950s, while the ANC intensified its domestic programme of protest action, it also began calling in the international arena for sanctions against the apartheid state. In 1958 in Ghana, ANC President Albert Luthuli called for sanctions. The next year, a group of ANC members went into exile in London and launched the British "Boycott South Africa" movement there.

[A]t the time I first joined, the ANC was an organisation of teachers, intellectuals, clergymen - all the elite of African society. Young people were not very much interested in the ANC. They felt it was an organisation of elderly people. As a result, the ANC never became progressive until it was joined by younger people: the Tambos, Mandelas and so on... It was when those young people came into the ANC that there was transformation in so far as the ideology was concerned, because in the past the elderly people believed in demonstrations, reconciliation with the powers that be and so on. They weren't very much interested in action against the government.

While the state was introducing formal apartheid, the ANC was itself changing by virtue of the rise of a younger generation of activists from the ANC Youth League, including Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, and Oliver Tambo. The League had been formed in 1944 by Anton Lembede and was known for its "Africanist" ideology, closely resembling that later adopted by the Pan Africanist Congress and emphasising indigenous leadership and national self-determination. At the ANC's 38th National Conference in December 1949 in Bloemfontein, in a "remarkable putsch", the Youth League successfully campaigned for the replacement of incumbent ANC President Xuma by James Moroka, as well as for the instalment of Sisulu as Secretary-General and for six seats on the ANC NEC. The League tabled a broad and systematic Programme of Action. The Programme explicitly advocated African nationalism and called for the use of grassroots and mass mobilisation techniques - such as strikes, stay-aways, and boycotts - which in the past had been used successfully by other groups, such as the CPSA, but not by the ANC itself.

Thus from 1950 the ANC began to participate more consistently in mass-based action. In 1950, the ANC, under Moroka, supported a May Day stay-away, known as the "People's Holiday", which led to the deaths of 18 people in clashes between protesters and the police. ANC support for the stay-away was not, however, unanimous - the Youth League, in particular, was concerned that the socialist or internationalist connotations of May Day were at odds with the Africanist position of the Programme of Action. There was broader support for the subsequent "Day of Protest", a stay-at-home on 26 June 1950 organised with the Indian Congress in protest of the May Day shootings and Suppression of Communism legislation.

In 1951, the ANC, the Indian Congress, and the coloured Franchise Action Council began planning for a joint campaign of mass civil disobedience, inspired by a 1946-48 resistance campaign organised by the Indian Congresses and in turn inspired by campaigns led by Gandhi earlier in the century. This joint campaign became the Defiance Campaign, launched on 26 June 1952. It targeted six laws - including the Group Areas Act, Suppression of Communism Act, and Voters' Representation Act - whose repeal the ANC had demanded in a January 1952 ultimatum to the Prime Minister. Although the protests remained non-violent, the notion of "defiance" represented a rhetorical escalation from the ANC's earlier programme of "passive" resistance. Thousands of volunteers were trained to carry out acts of civil disobedience, and on one estimate 8,000 people were arrested over subsequent months. The campaign wound down in late 1952 and officially ended in 1953, when further repressive legislation was passed: the Public Safety Act enabled the government to call a state of emergency, while the Criminal Law Amendment Act punished civil disobedience with a three-year prison sentence and/or flogging.

In July 1952, 20 or 21 non-white leaders of the campaign, including Mandela, Sisulu, and ANC President Moroka, were charged with violating the Suppression of Communism Act. Judge Franz Rumpff found them guilty of "statutory communism" - it was clear that Moroka, for example, was not ideologically a communist - and suspended their sentences. However, Moroka had fallen out of favour with the ANC during the trial - he had pursued a separate legal defence and had publicly disowned the Defiance Campaign and the ANC's objective of racial equality. In December 1952, Luthuli, who had risen to prominence during the Defiance Campaign, beat Moroka in a vote to become ANC President.

ANC membership rose from around 7,000 to 100,000 over the course of the Defiance Campaign. In late 1953, in response to this expansion - and anticipating further legal constraints on the ANC's activities - Mandela proposed a new organisational system, known as the "M Plan", under which branches would be divided into "cells", each centred around a single street and headed by a steward. It was most effectively implemented in the Eastern Cape. The new legislation made civil disobedience infeasible, and the ANC turned to other methods, including boycotts, demonstrations, and non-cooperation. The years following the Defiance Campaign were also notable for the ANC's renewed commitment to collaboration with other anti-apartheid groups. For example, in November 1952 in Johannesburg, the ANC and Indian Congress held a public meeting at which Tambo and Yusuf Cachalia called for the establishment of an anti-apartheid organisation open to whites and able to coordinate with the Congresses. This led to the foundation of the South African Congress of Democrats in 1953.

The People Shall Govern!
All National Groups Shall Have Equal Rights!
The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth!
The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It!
All Shall Be Equal Before The Law!
All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights!
There Shall Be Work And Security!
The Doors of Learning And of Culture Shall Be Opened!
There Shall Be Houses, Security And Comfort!
There Shall Be Peace And Friendship!

At an ANC meeting in August 1953, Z. K. Matthews proposed a national convention which would represent all groups of South African society and could "draw up a Freedom Charter for the democratic South Africa of the future". The next month, the ANC national conference endorsed this proposal, and the Congress of the People was held, with the cooperation of other groups, in Kliptown, Soweto, in June 1955. The alliance of the groups present at the congress, which endured long afterwards, later became known as the Congress Alliance. The congress ratified the Freedom Charter, a document based on demands articulated during a process of mass participation and which became a fundamental document for the anti-apartheid struggle.

Suttner says of the charter, "Its strength lay at once in its being a statement of general freedoms found in most human rights documents and also in its speaking directly to the specific form of rights violation under apartheid." The content of the charter and the composition of the congress were both explicitly multi-racial, even as the individual groups present were separated along racial lines. Famously, part of it reads (with a crucial phrase later included in the preamble to the post-apartheid Constitution of 1996):

We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people... And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won... Let all who love their people and their country now say, as we say here: 'THESE FREEDOMS WE WILL FIGHT FOR, SIDE BY SIDE, THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES, UNTIL WE HAVE WON OUR LIBERTY.'

In addition to its claims to civil and political equality, the charter incorporated demands for the nationalisation of South Africa's mineral wealth and other economic sectors. According to Lodge, the ANC's endorsement of the charter reflected the changing character of its leadership and membership, who in 1955 were more likely to have legal, trade union, or non-professional backgrounds than the earlier generation of professional and religious leaders.

In December 1956, 156 prominent figures in the Congress Alliance were arrested and charged with treason, with the text of the Freedom Charter considered important evidence for the charges. The initial defendants in the resulting Treason Trial included Mandela, Sisulu, Tambo, ANC President Luthuli, and most of the rest of the ANC's NEC. All the defendants were released or acquitted by 1961, but the protracted trial apparently led to the neglect of organisational and administrative duties by ANC leadership. However, the trial has been interpreted as cementing the ties among Congress Alliance members (and with several communist leaders, such as Joe Slovo and Ruth First, who were also charged). Mandela later joked that the detention of the defendants in communal cells enabled "the largest and longest unbanned meeting of the Congress Alliance in years".

In April 1959, in an escalation of longstanding ideological tensions, a group of young Africanists broke away from the ANC to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), under the leadership of the charismatic Robert Sobukwe. The Africanist bloc had generally opposed the Freedom Charter and the broader Congress Alliance, feeling that the influence of the latter had steered the ANC away from the African nationalism asserted in the 1949 Programme of Action, in favour of a new de facto policy of accommodating whites and communists. The complexity of the rationale for the bloc's opposition to multi-racialism is reflected in Sobukwe's opening address to the PAC's founding convention:

...multi-racialism is in fact a pandering to European bigotry and arrogance. It is a method of safeguarding white interests irrespective of population figures. In that sense it is a complete negation of democracy. To us the term 'multi-racialism' implies that there are such basic insuperable differences between the various national groups here that the best course is to keep them permanently distinctive in a kind of democratic apartheid. That to us is racialism multiplied, which probably is what the term truly connotes. We aim, politically, at a government of the Africans by the Africans for Africans, with everybody who owes his only loyalty to Afrika and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being regarded as an African. We guarantee no minority rights, because we think in terms of individuals, not groups.

According to Lodge, another aspect of the disagreement concerned differing pictures of the ANC's role in mass mobilisation. The Africanists believed that a nationalist platform would be more effective at garnering a mass following than would the coalition of sectional interests represented by the Congress Alliance. At the same time, Sobukwe argued that the role of a liberation movement was only to "show the light" to the masses, who by spontaneous action would "find their way", while the ANC leadership of the time tended towards a view on which it should take a more active role in directing and channeling the aspirations of the people. The ANC and PAC immediately became rivals.

On 21 March 1960, in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre, the police opened fire on an anti-pass demonstration organised by the PAC, killing 69 people and injuring 180 others. The PAC had organised its protest for that date in order to pre-empt the ANC's own anti-pass campaign, which was scheduled to begin later in March. In response to the massacre, the ANC declared a day of mourning and leaders publicly burned their passes in protest. The government declared a state of emergency and, on 8 April, both the ANC and the PAC were banned. They were not unbanned until February 1990, almost thirty years later.

Following the Sharpeville massacre, the ANC abandoned its policy of exclusively non-violent resistance. In December 1960, the reconstituted CPSA underground, now the South African Communist Party (SACP) - which included several ANC leaders, including Mandela and Sisulu - resolved that the Congress movement should reconsider its reliance on non-violence. In June 1961, Mandela presented a proposal to the ANC NEC, and then to the joint leadership of the Congress Alliance, which entailed a "turn to violence". Accordingly, later that year, a military body was formed, called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, Spear of the Nation). Mandela was its first commander-in-chief and its High Command also included Sisulu and Joe Slovo of the SACP. At this stage, MK was not yet an official ANC body, nor had it been directly established by the ANC NEC: it was considered an autonomous organisation, established and staffed by members of the SACP as well as the ANC. Importantly, this meant that MK membership was open to all races, during a period in which ANC membership remained open only to black Africans. This non-racial membership policy remained in place after the ANC had formally recognised MK as its armed wing in October 1962.

It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle, and to form Umkhonto we Sizwe. We did so not because we desired such a course, but solely because the Government had left us with no other choice.

- Nelson Mandela's 1964 statement from the dock
The ANC's official rationale for initiating the armed struggle - that it had been an unavoidable and unanimous response to increased state repression - has since been complicated by historians. In particular, several have argued that some groups within the ANC had supported a strategy of armed resistance in the years prior to Sharpeville, for separate reasons - especially to improve the ANC's international standing and to fulfil the demands of some of its constituents - and, controversially, have argued that ANC President Luthuli in fact remained staunchly opposed to the use of violence.

The launch of MK was marked by the inauguration of a campaign of sabotage attacks, beginning on 16 December 1961 with a wave of bombings against government installations which were (at the instruction of the High Command) unoccupied. In May 1962, a memorandum co-authored by Mandela, Tambo, and Robert Resha referred to the MK sabotage attacks as "the first phase of a comprehensive plan for the waging of guerrilla operations", a position endorsed by the ANC's national conference in October 1962. Yet sabotage attacks, not guerrilla warfare, remained the primary activity of MK, with about 200 such attacks taking place between December 1961 and December 1964.

After its banning in April 1960, the ANC was driven underground. In the following years, many of its leaders were banned or arrested, including Mandela in 1962 and much of the rest of MK's top leadership in 1963 during the raid on Liliesleaf farm. Mandela, Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, and several others were sentenced to life imprisonment during the subsequent Rivonia trial, with still others joining them on Robben Island pursuant to the Little Rivonia trial. Luthuli remained banned and under house arrest in Zululand until his death in 1967 (though he was permitted to accept his 1960 Nobel Peace Prize). Thus from around 1963, the ANC effectively abandoned much of even its underground presence inside South Africa and operated almost entirely from its external mission, with headquarters first in Morogoro, Tanzania, and later in Lusaka, Zambia. Tambo, who had been directed to set up the external mission in March 1960, thus became the ANC's de facto leader, and when Luthuli died in 1967 he became acting ANC President. From 1963, MK training was organised in Dar es Salaam, and by 1965 MK activities were concentrated at its Kongwa camp, one of its four Tanzanian military bases. According to historian Stephen Ellis, "it is no exaggeration to say that the ANC was in danger of extinction inside South Africa" during this period.

Southern Africa in 1973.

In its early years of exile, while MK focused on training its recruits and re-establishing an organisational structure under the command of Joe Modise, the MK rank-and-file reportedly grew frustrated with the paucity of its operational activity inside South Africa. In 1967 and 1968, MK launched the Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns, both joint campaigns with the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army. The campaigns, which aimed to infiltrate MK cadres back into South Africa through Zambia and Rhodesia, were considerable failures. Following armed confrontations with joint Rhodesian and South African security forces, a majority of the MK operatives involved were killed or imprisoned. When two veterans of the Wankie campaign returned from prison in Botswana - one of them Chris Hani, who had been the commissar of MK's "Luthuli Detachment" and was then in his mid-20s - they and five other cadres wrote a memorandum, known as the Hani memorandum, criticising the "wrong policies and personal failures" of the ANC leadership. The memorandum cited corruption, nepotism, and a misplaced focus on garnering international support over fighting on the home (South African) front; and it specifically named Modise and ANC Secretary-General Duma Nokwe as culprits. All seven signatories to the memorandum were suspended.

In response to the Hani memorandum and other signs of "crisis" in the MK ranks, Tambo called the landmark Morogoro Conference, the ANC's first consultative conference and first conference in exile, held between 25 April and 1 May 1969. Most dramatically, at the conference Tambo referred to a "loss of confidence in the men who have been leading our struggle from Lusaka" and offered his resignation as acting ANC President. Once he had left the meeting, the conference passed an unopposed vote of confidence in him, and he ultimately remained acting President until his appointment was formally confirmed in 1985. The conference also reinstated Hani and the other six cadres who had been suspended, and it adopted a new "Strategy and Tactics" document, drafted by Slovo. The document affirmed that the seizure by force of state power in South Africa was a central objective of the struggle, but, acknowledging a position expressed by the Hani memorandum, it clarified the relationship between military and political struggle:

[O]ur movement must reject all manifestations of militarism which separates armed people's struggle from its political context... The primacy of the political leadership is unchallenged and supreme and all revolutionary formations and levels (whether armed or not) are subordinate to this leadership.

The conference resolved to open membership of the ANC to non-blacks. Although the NEC remained open only to black members, the conference also established the powerful and multi-racial Revolutionary Council, on which MK and the SACP were well represented. The council, chaired by Tambo, oversaw both political and military aspects of the ANC's internal anti-apartheid struggle, until it was replaced by the Politico-Military Council in 1983.

After 1969, a dissident Africanist faction, known as the "Gang of Eight" or "Group of Eight", objected to the influence given at Morogoro to non-Africans and the SACP. As their objections became more boisterous, they were expelled from the ANC in 1975. The group included Tennyson Makiwane, his brother Ambrose, and at least one other member of the NEC. At a public gathering in 1975, Makiwane read out a statement which claimed that the SACP used the ANC as its "front organisation", and that a "non-African clique" had "hijacked the ANC" and was attempting "to substitute a class approach for the national approach to our struggle". The Central Committee of the SACP published a statement on the group's expulsion in its journal, the African Communist, under the title "The Enemy Hidden Under the Same Colour", comparing the group to the Africanist faction which had broken away to form the PAC in 1959.

List of major attacks attributed to MK, 1980-1983.

From the mid-1970s, conditions for an armed struggle improved: Angola and Mozambique achieved independence in 1975, allowing the ANC to set up facilities considerably closer to the home front, and, from 1976, the Soweto uprising in South Africa saw thousands of students cross the borders to seek military training. According to one estimate, the ANC in exile expanded from 1,000 members in 1975 to 9,000 members in 1980, with most of the increase accounted for by new MK cadres. Most of the new recruits, beginning with the "June 16 Detachment", were sent to MK camps in Angola, and small numbers were infiltrated back into South Africa to carry out attacks. In March 1979, the ANC leadership, by then headquartered in Lusaka, undertook a strategic review following a 1978 visit to Vietnam. Its report was published in March 1979 as the "Green Book" and outlined the "Four Pillars of the Revolution": armed struggle; an internal underground; popular mobilisation; and international isolation of the apartheid regime. The new military strategy emphasised urban areas, in contrast to the rural guerrilla war originally envisaged. Also in 1979, Tambo directed Slovo to establish a special operations unit, whose focus became "armed propaganda": attacks on symbolic state targets, partly aimed at attracting new MK recruits under the slogan, "Swell the Ranks of Umkhonto we Sizwe". Perhaps most memorably, on 1 June 1980 the unit bombed the Sasol oil refinery complex, causing damage estimated at R66 million. Likewise, a 1982 special operations bombing of the Koeberg nuclear power station was reported to cost the state between R20 million and R100 million in damages.

At last... the ANC has stopped blowing up walls. It's now doing the right thing. It can't make sense to continue blowing up pylons if we're going to get massacred for it and going to get hanged. It's not going to be possible for us to continue our action on the exclusive basis that no civilians shall be killed. That is implicit in our idea of intensifying the struggle... People are very resentful and feel they want to hurt... They somehow felt the ANC had been denying them this.

- ANC statement on the 1983 Church Street bombing, which killed 19 people
MK guerrilla activity increased steadily over this period, with one estimate recording an increase from 23 incidents in 1977 to 136 incidents in 1985. By 1986, the most common type of incident was attacks on or clashes with the police, including black policemen; MK operatives also targeted community councillors and bantustan politicians, and attacked infrastructure instalments using landmines, limpet mines, and grenades. The ANC had maintained that any civilian casualties would be regrettable and unintended, but a number of civilians were killed in these attacks, including in the 1983 Church Street bombing, the 1985 Amanzimtoti bombing, the 1986 Magoo's Bar bombing, and the 1987 Johannesburg Magistrate's Court bombing. There was apparently some disagreement within the ANC (and within the ANC-MK-SACP bloc) as to whether MK attacks aimed to initiate an armed insurrection or only to weaken the apartheid government's position. Publicly, Tambo suggested the latter, telling the media in 1986 that the ANC's main objective was not "military victory but to force Pretoria to the negotiating table".

During this period, the South African Defence Force engaged in a number of raids and bombings on ANC bases in the countries neighbouring South Africa, such as the 1981 raid on Maputo, 1983 raid on Maputo, and 1985 raid on Gaborone. Several ANC members, such as Dulcie September and Joe Gqabi, were targeted for assassination during the 1980s.

The ANC's national intelligence and security department (commonly known as NAT) had greatly expanded during the post-1976 influx of recruits, among whom the ANC worried there might be state agents and whom NAT screened. The security wing of NAT became known as Mbokodo ( the Grinding Stone), and by 1980 Tambo was concerned that it was suppressing ideological disagreement and alienating the rank-and-file. There were later widespread allegations that dissident MK cadres had faced torture, detention without trial, and even execution.

In 1980 and 1981, worsening relations between MK and the Zambian government - primarily due to a large undeclared weapons cache found by Zambian security forces on an ANC farm outside Lusaka - triggered a "panic" within the ANC leadership about poor discipline among MK members, first in Zambia and then also in Angola. Concerns included drug smuggling, car theft, dagga abuse, drunk driving, and a general element of ill discipline, as when in 1981 a group of MK members refused to transfer from Zambia to Angola because they perceived the Angolan camps as a place of punishment ("the ANC's Siberia"). This was followed by a major clean-up operation, known as "Shishita", during which NAT rounded up dozens of MK cadres and transferred them to Angola for detention and interrogation. In the so-called Shishita report of 1981, formally titled the "Report on subversive activities of police agents in our movement", NAT claimed to have uncovered an extensive spying ring and a plot to assassinate the ANC leadership. Although most of the confessions had been extracted under torture, with several people dying during interrogation, the confessed spies were executed in Angola in the years that followed.

In December 1983, at the MK camp in Viana, Angola, unrest broke out on such a scale that it is generally characterised as a mutiny. Known as Mkatashinga (derived from a Kimbundu word meaning exhausted soldier), the revolt was triggered by cadres' demand that they be sent to fight the apartheid state in South Africa, rather than to fight further battles in the Angolan Civil War. Cadres also objected to the conduct of Mbokodo. During the ensuing fights between the mutineers and loyalists, several MK members died, and others were arrested and detained in prison camps, some to be tried later by military tribunals. It has been called "the most shameful episode in the history of the ANC".

Between the mutiny at Viana and a second only months later at the Pango camp, the ANC appointed the Commission of Inquiry into Recent Developments in the People's Republic of Angola, chaired by MK commissar Hermanus Loots ( code-named James Stuart), to probe cadres' grievances. Its 1984 report, known as the Stuart report, found no evidence to substantiate rumours that enemy agents were responsible for the "disturbances", and made several recommendations for improving conditions in the camps. The report was not made public until almost ten years later.

Owing to the mutinies, the ANC's second consultative conference, held in Kabwe, Zambia, in mid-1985, was, like the first consultative conference in Morogoro, called pursuant to a "crisis" among the MK rank-and-file. Indeed, one of the mutineers' demands was that such a conference should be called. A report to the conference admitted that some NAT personnel had made "bad, sometimes terrible mistakes", and the conference did attempt to act on the findings of the Stuart report: it agreed with Stuart's recommendation that NAT should be overhauled, and it adopted a code of conduct and established internal judicial procedures for the first time. Also at Kabwe, the NEC (now enlarged) was fully elected, rather than appointed by leadership, for the first time in decades, and Tambo was elected permanently to the ANC presidency, which he had already held in an acting capacity for 18 years. All racial barriers to NEC membership were removed, and Slovo became the first white to be elected. Finally, it was resolved that the ANC should hold consultative conferences, with elections, every five years.

These changes at Kabwe followed an organisational restructuring in 1983, which had replaced the Revolutionary Council with the Politico-Military Council, established various Regional Politico-Military Committees, and formalised the military command structure of MK. In 1987, NAT was put under the oversight of the President's Council, also known as the National Security Committee and chaired by Tambo, and the body previously known as "Political HQ" was replaced by the augmented Internal Political Committee, responsible for the ANC's political underground inside South Africa.

In 1979, eminent historian Martin Legassick and three others were suspended from the ANC on the basis of papers they had published, supporting a Trotskyist position and calling for the ANC to revise the strategy underlying its armed struggle. They argued that the armed struggle should aim to elicit mass participation in overthrowing apartheid and bringing about a socialist revolution. They formed the Marxist Workers' Tendency within the ANC in 1981 - the ideology of which was anonymously condemned as "economistic and workerist" in the African Communist - and were permanently expelled in 1985.

For much of its time in exile, the ANC was treated with hostility by the United States and United Kingdom. In a 1986 speech, U.S. President Ronald Reagan condemned acts of "calculated terror" by elements of the ANC, which he said were "creating the conditions for racial war". Two years later, the U.S. State Department classified the ANC as a terrorist organisation, noting that, though it publicly denied targeting civilians, it had been responsible for civilian deaths. Neither the ANC nor Mandela were removed from the U.S. terror watch list until 2008. U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also called the ANC a terrorist organisation in 1987, although the ANC continued to maintain its London office in Islington, which it occupied from 1978 to 1994 and which is now marked with a plaque.

We draw immense satisfaction and inspiration from the fact that the Soviet Union is resolved to contribute everything within its possibilities and, within the context of our own requests, to assist the ANC, SWAPO and the peoples of our region to achieve these objectives... the Soviet Union is acting neither out of consideration of selfish interest nor with a desire to establish a so-called sphere of influence.

- Tambo in 1986, following a meeting at the Kremlin with Mikhail Gorbachev
On the other side of the Cold War divide, the ANC had a close relationship with the Soviet Union, which was staunchly opposed to the apartheid government, including in regional conflicts in Angola and Mozambique. Ellis has suggested that much of the Soviet support to the ANC came through the ANC's close relationship with the SACP, but, according to Vladimir Shubin, another historian, the ANC had "direct access" to the Soviet leadership from the 1960s. In 1961, SACP leaders Moses Kotane (also a senior ANC member) and Yusuf Dadoo visited Moscow to outline the party's plans to launch an armed struggle, and secured the support of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Tambo himself visited Moscow in April 1963, and in subsequent years the ANC sent regular delegations to Moscow.

In return, the organisation received substantial Soviet support. From 1962, ANC members identified as potential leaders were sent to the Soviet Union for academic and political training, and thousands of MK recruits were sent for basic and specialised military training in the Soviet Union over subsequent decades. Between 1979 and 1989, at Tambo's request came to Angola to lead training programmes at the MK camps. According to the Russian government, between 1963 and 1990, the Soviet Union provided the ANC with assistance worth about 61 million roubles, including 36 million roubles for military supplies (including tens of thousands of guns), 12 million roubles for other supplies, and the rest for technical assistance and training. This financial and technical support continued well into 1990, with the relationship remaining close enough that Slovo and ANC Secretary-General Alfred Nzo were reportedly in Moscow when the South African government announced Mandela's release and the ANC's unbanning.

From the mid-1980s, mounting international and domestic pressure made the apartheid government's position appear increasingly unsustainable, and the attention of some ANC leaders turned to the prospect of negotiating with the South African government to end apartheid. From September 1985, the ANC hosted in Lusaka and Harare several formal deputations from South African civil and labour groups, presumably with an eye to building partnerships and discussing aspects of a potential settlement. These groups included the Progressive Federal Party, the Soweto Parents' Crisis Committee, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the National Union of South African Students, and the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce. Also in 1985, the ANC met with a group of prominent businessmen, led by the chairman of Anglo American; and ANC representatives, especially Tambo's protégé Thabo Mbeki, continued secretly to engage with businessmen and government officials. However, the armed struggle continued, and within the ANC there was disagreement and perhaps uncertainty about the prudence of pursuing a peaceful settlement, a risky strategy if it alienated the ANC's constituency or resulted in a fruitless renouncement of armed struggle.

In this context, in 1986 Tambo sanctioned the initiation of the clandestine Operation Vula, through which the ANC would seek to re-establish an armed underground and political leadership inside South Africa. Through Operation Vula, ANC leaders, including Mac Maharaj and Ronnie Kasrils of the NEC, secretly returned to South Africa after many years in exile. They also established a secret direct channel of communication between Tambo and Mandela, who, still imprisoned, was also in contact with the government on the ANC's behalf. When the police uncovered Vula in 1990, eight ANC leaders were charged with terrorism, causing a major scandal at an early phase of the formal negotiations to end apartheid.

On 2 February 1990, State President F. W. De Klerk unbanned the ANC and other illegal organisations and announced the beginning of formal negotiations for a peaceful settlement. Mandela was released shortly thereafter. These decisions by the apartheid regime have been attributed to a number of factors and combinations thereof, among them the end of the Cold War, a growing economic crisis inside South Africa, mounting international pressure, and a sustained front of internal dissent. Unbanned, the ANC's exiled leaders were able to return to South Africa to establish overt structures and to participate in the negotiations. It had its new headquarters at Shell House in Johannesburg, until in 1997 it relocated to its current headquarters at Luthuli House.

The Tripartite Alliance was established in mid-1990, comprising the ANC (recognised as the Alliance leader), the SACP, and the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Like the SACP, COSATU had already been aligned to the ANC in prior years - in 1987, two years after it was founded, it and many of its affiliates had adopted the Freedom Charter. The membership and leadership of all three bodies also already overlapped significantly.

In December 1990 in Johannesburg, the ANC held a third national consultative conference, its first inside the country, followed by a rally in Soweto with addresses by Mandela and Tambo. This was the first official meeting between exiles, underground members, and formerly imprisoned members of the ANC, and it affirmed the composition of the NEC as elected at the 1985 Kabwe conference. Tambo had returned to South Africa from Lusaka the day before the conference began - after over three decades in exile - and the conference endorsed a message of gratitude to Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda and the people of Zambia for hosting the ANC in exile. The conference also resolved that it would consider suspending negotiations if the state did not release all political prisoners, allow the return of all exiles, and repeal all repressive legislation before 30 April 1991.

In July 1991, at its 48th National Conference in Durban, the ANC elected a new NEC and top leadership. Tambo had stepped down after 24 years as president following a stroke; Mandela was elected to replace him, and Sisulu was elected his deputy. Notably, influential trade unionist Cyril Ramaphosa was elected secretary-general, reflecting the gradual merger that was taking place not only between the former wings of the ANC (that in exile, that underground, and that on Robben Island), but also between the ANC and other anti-apartheid groupings that had been influential inside the country while the ANC was in exile. Also elected to the NEC were leaders of the United Democratic Front (UDF), such as Trevor Manuel, Terror Lekota, and Cheryl Carolus. When the UDF formally disbanded the next month, the ANC was to absorb still more of its former leaders and members.

Our own tasks are very clear. To bring about the kind of society that is visualised in the Freedom Charter, we have to break down and destroy the old order. We have to make apartheid unworkable and our country ungovernable. The accomplishment of these tasks will create the situation for us to overthrow the apartheid regime and for power to pass into the hands of the people as a whole.

- ANC President Tambo on Radio Freedom in July 1985
Political violence inside South Africa, often involving ANC supporters, had escalated throughout the 1980s. The campaign to make the townships "ungovernable", which had played a significant role in heightening the internal pressure on the regime to begin negotiations, had also led to the rise of local vigilantes (so-called self-defence units and self-protection units) and kangaroo courts. ANC-aligned groups sometimes executed opponents and suspected collaborators, often by necklacing. There were also violent clashes, especially in the Transvaal and Natal, between groups aligned to Inkatha and groups aligned to the ANC or to the UDF, which in turn was aligned to the ANC. Yet it is debatable how much control the ANC in exile had over its supporters inside South Africa during the 1980s. One historian argues that when Tambo encouraged South Africans to render the country "ungovernable", he was "trying to place the ANC at the head of an [already] unfolding social revolution". On the practice of necklacing, which received international condemnation, ANC Secretary-General Alfred Nzo said in 1986, "Whatever the people decide to use to eliminate those enemy elements is their decision. If they decide to use necklacings, we support it."

The political violence worsened during the transition to democracy between 1990 and 1994, with as many as 14,000 or 15,000 people killed during that period. Significant confrontations included the 1992 Boipatong massacre and the 1994 Shell House massacre. It was during this period that ANC leaders began to implicate a state-aligned " third force" in the violence. As early as 1990, the ANC's position was that the violence was "part of a deliberate attempt by the state and its allies to destabilise the ANC and to sow terror and chaos amongst our people". Such allegations have since been partially substantiated. Widespread ANC-IFP violence dissipated by 1996, although there were further localised conflicts in following years.

In April 1993, the assassination of Chris Hani, who was by then an extremely popular figure in the ANC and an NEC member, led to an outbreak of violence. In an unprecedented televised address to the nation, Mandela delivered a plea for calm, which some remember as having prevented the spread of the unrest. Mandela said:

Tonight I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being. A white man, full of prejudice and hate, came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster. A white woman, of Afrikaner origin, risked her life so that we may know, and bring to justice, this assassin. The cold-blooded murder of Chris Hani has sent shock waves throughout the country and the world. Our grief and anger is tearing us apart... Any lack of discipline is trampling on the values that Chris Hani stood for. Those who commit such acts serve only the interests of the assassins, and desecrate his memory... We will not be provoked into any rash actions.

South Africa's first democratic elections were held between 26 and 29 April 1994. As widely expected, the ANC, running alongside its Tripartite Alliance partners, won comfortably, gaining 62.65% of the national vote and 252 of the 400 seats in the new National Assembly. It also won control of all nine provinces but two: the National Party, later reconstituted as the New National Party (NNP), narrowly won the Western Cape; and Inkatha, by then known as the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), won KwaZulu-Natal still more narrowly. The result in KwaZulu-Natal came to be known as "negotiated", in the infamous phrase of an electoral officer - despite allegations of foul play, the ANC opted to accept the IFP's victory, probably in order to avert further violence in the province. In line with the interim Constitution, the ANC formed a coalition Government of National Unity, intended to function as a transitional power-sharing mechanism. Mandela became South Africa's first black president and first democratically elected president, and Mbeki was his deputy. The National Party installed De Klerk as a second deputy president, having narrowly achieved the requisite 20% share of the national vote.

For the first time in the history of our country, we have under one roof, sharing the same vision and planning as equals, delegates from every sector of South African society, including those who hold the highest offices in the land... we can proudly say to the founders: the country is in the hands of the people; the tree of liberty is firmly rooted in the soil of the motherland!

- Mandela's political report to the 49th Conference
In December 1994, newly appointed to government, the ANC held its 49th National Conference in Bloemfontein, under the theme "From Resistance to Reconstruction and Nation-Building". Mandela was re-elected unopposed as ANC president, and Ramaphosa was re-elected unopposed as secretary-general. The composition of the rest of the top leadership changed, ushering in a younger generation - notably, Sisulu declined to stand for re-election and was replaced by Mbeki, while Jacob Zuma won the national chairmanship in a landslide. The expanded NEC contained several figures from the internal struggle against apartheid - the candidate who received the most votes was former Transkei politician Bantu Holomisa. The conference endorsed a substantive restructuring of the organisation for the post-apartheid era, and it reaffirmed several central policies, including the 1992 Ready to Govern policy, the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), and the Health Plan on national health insurance.

In the early 1990s, there was substantial media reporting on alleged abuses in MK camps in exile. The ANC set up two commissions of inquiry to investigate - the Skweyiya Commission, appointed in 1991, and the broader Motsuenyane Commission, appointed in 1993. Both reported substantial abuses, especially by NAT. In 1993, while accepting the findings of the Motsuenyane Commission, the ANC repeated an earlier call by NEC member Kader Asmal for the establishment of a commission to investigate all human rights abuses during apartheid. The ANC-led Government of National Unity established such a body, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), in 1995. In addition to testimony from individual members and leaders, the ANC made a detailed collective submission to the TRC. Providing evidence on the "just and irregular war for national liberation" it had conducted, the ANC, both in its submissions and in its oral testimony, acknowledged some abuses but emphasised that it had not intentionally sought to harm civilians.

In July 1996, Mandela fired Holomisa as deputy minister following his appearance before the commission; the next month, following internal disciplinary proceedings, he was expelled from the ANC for having brought the movement into disrepute. Holomisa had testified in May that that former Transkei politician Stella Sigcau, then an ANC cabinet minister, had accepted a "gift" of R50,000 in 1987 in relation to the Transkei government's decision to grant a gambling monopoly to Sol Kerzner. Deputy President Mbeki argued that Holomisa should not have made the allegation public without discussing it with the ANC beforehand.

The TRC has grossly misdirected itself in its 'Findings on the Role of the African National Congress', through the pursuit of objectives which are contrary to the spirit and the intention of the Act under which it was established. These 'findings' show an extraordinary refusal on the part of the Commission to locate itself in the context of the circumstances which related to the struggle against apartheid, both within and outside the country.

The TRC's five-volume report, published in 1998, recognised the ANC as a major victim of gross human rights abuses during apartheid, but also as a perpetrator of the same. Specifically, the TRC highlighted three categories of ANC actions: its landmine campaign during the 1980s and various bombings which harmed civilians; attacks on suspected collaborators or state witnesses; and the ill treatment, torture, and executions of ANC members in exile. It also assigned partial responsibility to the ANC for the political violence of the early 1990s, especially through its role in arming self-defence units without establishing adequate command-and-control structures.

When it received advance notice of the TRC's findings, the ANC sought to interdict the report's publication, and many of its leaders subsequently rejected the findings. TRC Chairperson Desmond Tutu said that he was "taken aback" by this response, given that the findings had been based on the ANC's own "very substantial, full and frank submissions". Yet in a parliamentary debate on the report, the ANC argued that the TRC's findings acted "to delegitimise or criminalise a significant part of the struggle of our people for liberation". A popular ANC talking point was that seeking to equate the actions of the ANC with the actions of the apartheid state was an acceptable form of "moral equivalence".

In the 1999 general election, Mbeki was elected national president, with Zuma as his deputy. Mbeki had ascended to the ANC presidency, unopposed, at the ANC's 50th National Conference in Mafikeng in December 1997. Mandela had since at least February 1995 made it clear that he intended to retire in 1999, and Mbeki was understood to be his preferred successor, with Mandela emphasising in the press that Mbeki had already assumed substantial responsibilities and was already "a de facto President". The conference was reportedly preceded by significant political manoeuvring and compromise-brokering, in an effort by the top leadership to ensure that Mandela's succession did not lead to internal conflict.

The 1999 elections, conducted under the new Constitution of 1996, marked the end of the Government of National Unity. The ANC had campaigned for, and narrowly received, a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, and it gained 14 additional seats. It performed markedly better in the Western Cape than it had in 1994, securing a plurality, but the NNP and Democratic Party formed a coalition, blocking ANC control of the province. The ANC likewise gained a plurality in KwaZulu-Natal and became the senior party in a provincial coalition with the IFP, and it comfortably retained control of the other seven provinces.

In December 1999, following several years of planning and negotiations during the Mandela presidency, the ANC-led government signed R30-billion in defence procurement contracts, under what is commonly known as the Arms Deal. The deal is commonly associated with the large-scale corruption that is alleged to have taken place during and after the procurement process, and some critics have said that it was a defining moment or turning point for the ANC government, less than five years into its tenure. Arms Deal-related corruption allegations have provided a series of political scandals in the years since then, and in 2003 the ANC Chief Whip Tony Yengeni pleaded guilty to fraud in a plea bargain. The ANC itself has been accused of profiting from the deal.

Arms Deal corruption was investigated by the Scorpions, an elite unit of the National Prosecuting Authority, which also, in a highly politicised trial, prosecuted the National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi for corruption. In 2008, the ANC-controlled Parliament disbanded the unit, a decision which faced severe criticism and which at least some commentators have linked to its investigations into ANC politicians, especially in relation to the Arms Deal. In 2011, the Constitutional Court ruled that the disbanding of the Scorpions had been unconstitutional.

HIV/AIDS policy

By 2002, there were widespread rumours of a rift between the ANC and the SACP, as well as tensions with the third Tripartite Alliance partner, COSATU, which held anti-privatisation protests in July of that year. At the centre of their disagreements was the economic policy of the Mbeki government, especially the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme, which leftists perceived as neoliberal. Relatedly, the ANC and SACP complained that they were being marginalised by Mbeki's increasingly centralised administration. Nonetheless, the ANC's 51st National Conference in Stellenbosch in 2002 proceeded without contest, although in an address to delegates Mbeki was scathing about the detrimental influence of "ultra-leftists".

The rift in the Tripartite Alliance worsened later in Mbeki's presidency, especially once SACP and COSATU's general secretaries, Blade Nzimande and Zwelinzima Vavi, became overt supporters of Zuma in his burgeoning rivalry with Mbeki. Further criticisms from the left targeted the Mbeki government's HIV/AIDS policy and its foreign policy on Zimbabwe, whose government was then led by Robert Mugabe. By 2006, both the SACP and COSATU had accused the ANC of becoming a bourgeois nationalist party, no longer representative of the interests of the poor and working class.

In the 2004 general election, the ANC gained 13 seats in the National Assembly. It retained its plurality in both KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, as well as its majority in the other provinces. In the Western Cape, it formed a coalition with the NNP to exclude the new Democratic Alliance (DA). In the aftermath of the elections, the NNP, which had performed very poorly - and which had in 2000 attempted a failed merger with the DA - announced that it would disband and that its members would join the ANC during the floor crossing period. This followed a 2002 cooperation agreement between the ANC and NNP, which had seen two NNP members appointed as national deputy ministers.

Although both Mbeki and Zuma were reappointed after the 2004 election, on 14 June 2005 Mbeki removed Zuma from his post as deputy president. This followed the conviction of Schabir Shaik on corruption charges, with the court finding that Shaik had made corrupt payments to Zuma in relation to the Arms Deal. Zuma was replaced by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Though he soon faced his own corruption charges (and from December a rape charge), he retained the ANC deputy presidency, after a brief suspension during the rape trial. An intense rivalry developed between him and Mbeki, with internal factions developing around each. Key points of contention between the two groups reportedly included cadre deployment, political prosecutions, and the ANC's relationship to its Tripartite Alliance partners. Allegations abounded that ANC politicians on both sides were abusing their state offices in service of the rivalry - in October 2005, for example, top Zuma-aligned officials in the National Intelligence Agency had been suspended for illegally spying on Saki Macozoma, an Mbeki ally. There were some disputes on the branch level during the run-up to the 2006 local elections, which were also preceded by service delivery protests, but the ANC ultimately performed well in the election.

By April 2007, it was clear that Mbeki intended to run for a third term as ANC President - although he was prohibited by the Constitution from standing again for the national presidency, the ANC has no such term limits internally. Some suspected that Mbeki intended to continue to exert substantial influence over the government through his ANC office. Zuma, with the support of the SACP and COSATU, emerged as a challenger to Mbeki in the run-up to the ANC's 52nd National Conference. This resulted in the party's first contested presidential election since that which had deposed Moroka in 1952. At the conference, held in Polokwane, Limpopo, in December 2007, Zuma won the ANC presidency, and a slate of Zuma-aligned candidates won other top leadership positions. No fewer than eleven members of Mbeki's cabinet, as well as several other stalwarts of the movement, failed to gain re-election to the NEC.

Speculation abounded that Mbeki would resign from, or be pushed out from, the national presidency before the end of his term in April 2009. When the corruption charges against Zuma were reinstated, Mbeki was accused of orchestrating a political conspiracy. In September 2008, High Court Judge Chris Nicholson, while dismissing the corruption charges against Zuma on a technicality, found that there was evidence of "political meddling" by Mbeki in Zuma's case. Nicholson's judgement was later overturned, but the Polokwane-elected NEC immediately called a special meeting and decided after 14 hours of debate that Mbeki should leave his office. The NEC, a party-political organ, had no legal authority to recall Mbeki directly, but the ANC-controlled Parliament would have had the authority to do so. Mbeki decided to accede and resign in order to avoid a protracted and high-profile battle in Parliament. About a third of his cabinet also resigned, in protest of the NEC's decision. Mbeki was replaced by Kgalema Motlanthe, who had been elected ANC deputy president at Polokwane. Motlanthe led what was viewed as an interim or caretaker administration while Zuma campaigned for the 2009 elections.

In response to Polokwane and to Mbeki's "recall", a group of pro-Mbeki ANC members broke away and in November 2008 announced the foundation of a new political party, the Congress of the People (COPE). They were led by former Defence Minister (and two-term ANC chairperson) Terror Lekota and former Gauteng Premier Sam Shilowa, both of whom had been influential in the anti-apartheid struggle but had failed to gain election to the NEC at Polokwane. In the 2009 general elections, COPE won 7.42% of the national vote and 30 parliamentary seats, becoming the second largest opposition party less than six months after its establishment.

In the 2009 elections, the ANC secured 65.9% of votes at the national level - still a comfortable win, but a loss of 15 seats from 2004 and the beginning of the gradual electoral decline ultimately undergone by the ANC between 2009 and 2018. At the provincial level, the ANC won control of eight of the nine provinces, with a significant jump in support in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma's home province. However, the ANC conclusively lost the Western Cape to the DA. This was due to its declining popularity among minority voters, especially coloured voters, who constitute a large proportion of the population of the Western Cape.

In the 2014 South African general election, and later in the 2016 South African municipal elections, the ANC again secured a majority of the votes, but a notably reduced majority. In 2016, the DA was able to take control over several key municipalities, including Johannesburg and Pretoria. The ANC also lost votes to the newly established Economic Freedom Fighters, which became South Africa's third biggest party.

Jacob Zuma was replaced as ANC president by Cyril Ramaphosa at the 2017 ANC national conference.

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23. ^ Booysen, Susan (2011), "Aluta continua, from Polokwane to Mangaung", The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power, Wits University Press, pp. 33-84, ISBN 978-1-86814-542-3, JSTOR 10.18772/12011115423.5, archived from the original on 10 December 2021

24. ^ Gevisser, Mark (12 December 2007). "South Africa Grows Up". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 10 December 2021.

25. ^ Terreblanche, Christelle (16 October 2005). "Alliance cracks widen as Zuma goes for broke". Independent Online. Archived from the original on 13 October 2006.

26. ^ "ANC poll rebels 'have as good as resigned". . 20 January 2006. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.

27. Gevisser, Mark (2007). "Home". ^ Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred. Jonathan Ball. ISBN 978-1-86842-301-9.

28. ^ Twala, Chitja (30 June 2012). "The road to the Mangaung (Bloemfontein) National Elective Conference of the African National Congress in December 2012: A political challenge to the Jacob Zuma presidency?". Southern Journal for Contemporary History. 37 (1): 213-231. ISSN 2415-0509. Archived from the original on 8 December 2021.

29. ^ Wolmarans, Riaan (18 December 2007). "Zuma is new ANC President". Mail & Guardian. Polokwane, South Africa. Archived from the original on 19 December 2007.

General histories

Early years

Exile years

Post-apartheid years

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History of the African National Congress - Wikipedia

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The African National Congress (ANC) has been the governing party of the Republic of South Africa since 1994. The ANC was founded on 8 January 1912 in Bloemfontein and is the oldest liberation movement in Africa.

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Nelson Mandela: The Fight for Freedom  BBC Full Documentary 2013 Nelson Mandela (1918 - 2013)

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Since 1950

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History Of 1964 | History Of Apartheid In South Africa | The Main Event | Episode 22

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Freedom of South Africa: Newborn Democracy 1964 

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Freedom of South Africa: Newborn Democracy 1964 

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formation of most beautiful constitution

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What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.

A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.

Racism was the form of discrimination that first galvanized the international community and from 1948, the Republic of South Africa (RSA) attracted particular concern with its violent and repressive practice of institutionalized racial segregation.

The ILO was one of the first organizations to impose sanctions on South Africa. It condemned the policy of apartheid implemented by the government of South Africa as contrary to the Declaration of Philadelphia (1944), which solemnly affirms the right of "all human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, ... to pursue both their material wellbeing and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity", and drew on the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111) to put forward two historic initiatives.

In June 1963, the ILO's Governing Body excluded South Africa from some of its trade committees. The following year, the International Labour Conference (June 1964) unanimously adopted the Declaration concerning the Policy of Apartheid of the Republic of South Africa (RSA). The Declaration condemned South Africa as detrimental to international peace and security, saying it "persistently and fragrantly violates this principle with the means of legislative, administrative and other measures incompatible with the fundamental rights of man, including freedom from forced labour." On the same day, the ILO Programme for the Elimination of Apartheid in Labour Matters was also unanimously adopted, prompting South Africa to withdraw from the ILO for the next 30 years.

The 1964 Declaration against Apartheid was unique in introducing an intense critical analysis of the situation in a single country. Every year, a special report on the application of the Declaration was submitted to the Conference, which included recommendations on measures which could end the policy of apartheid. ILO action evolved from initial recommendations to an unwilling government to mobilization of opinion against policies of apartheid and the promotion of a policy of isolation of the government of South Africa, until it abolished apartheid in 1994.

In 1990, the future South African President Nelson Mandela - who had just been released after 27 years of detention as a political prisoner - addressed the International Labour Conference, thanking the ILO for its support and path-breaking contribution to the defeat of apartheid in South Africa.

In 2007 the International Labour Organization awarded the first Decent Work Research Prize to Nelson Mandela and Carmelo Mesa-Lago.

We can change the world and make it a better place. It is in your hands to make a difference.

In 2009 the UN declared International Mandela day as a day to honour the legacy of Nelson Mandela. July 18th recognizes the former South African President's values and his dedication to the service of humanity in the fields of conflict resolution, race relations, the promotion and protection of human rights, reconciliation, gender equality and the rights of children and other vulnerable groups.

Mandela day is a global call to action that celebrates the idea that each individual has the power to change the world and make an impact.

As the revered leader remains in a critical condition, the UN marks this year's commemoration of Mandela with the message -- 'take action, inspire change' -- encouraging people around the world to devote at least 67 minutes of their time on 18th July to community service.

Related conventions

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1964 Declaration concerning the Policy of "Apartheid" of the Republic of South Africa

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What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead. A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.

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I have heard countless times from Italian media, politicians and Italians in general "we have the most beautiful constitution in the world". I've always disliked the remark. First, it would take a lot of work and time to go through the constitutions of all the countries in the world and make a beauty contest out of it, and I doubt anyone who made the remark has ever done so. Secondly, I am pretty sure that there are many democratic and free countries with solid pieces of work. It's like saying that my mum is the most beautiful mum in the world. She definitely is, but in my family only.

But when I read the opening lines of the South African constitution I genuinely thought: this must be the best constitution ever.

It reads:
"We, the people of South Africa, recognise the injustices of our past, honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity".

"The country belongs to those who live in it." Isn't it the most beautiful sentence a country can say?

Hoping that those are not just words, it is definitely a country I want to live in.

Sorry Mum.

Related

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

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South Africa: The most beautiful constitution in the world?

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I have heard countless times from Italian media, politicians and Italians in general "we have the most beautiful constitution in the world". I've always disliked the remark. First, it would take a lot of work and time to go through the constitutions of all the countries in the world and make a beauty contest out of it, and I doubt anyone who made the remark has ever done so.

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George Floyd

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Protests and demonstrations are held across the United States and the world on Saturday, calling for an end to racism and police brutality in one of the largest mobilisations since the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25.

Hundreds of mourners gathered in North Carolina on Saturday for a memorial service for Floyd.

Latest updates:

Sunday, June 7

12:25 GMT - New York: Curfew lifted early after peace protests

New York City is lifting its curfew spurred by protests against police brutality before schedule, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday morning.

The 8pm citywide curfew, New York's first in decades, had been set to remain in effect through at least Sunday, with the city planning to lift it at the same time it enters the first phase of reopening after more than two months of shutdowns because of the coronavirus.

"Yesterday and last night we saw the very best of our city," de Blasio tweeted in his announcement of the curfew's end "effective immediately". "Tomorrow we take the first big step to restart."

The move followed New York City police pulling back on enforcing the curfew on Saturday as thousands took to the streets and parks to protest against police brutality, sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

12:15 GMT - Minneapolis mayor jeered after refusing to back abolishing police department

The mayor of Minneapolis ran a gauntlet of angry, jeering protesters on Saturday after telling them he was opposed to their demands for defunding the city police following George Floyd's fatal encounter with law enforcement.

Mayor Jacob Frey, a former civil rights lawyer who took office two years ago promising to repair the police department's strained relations with minorities, was showered with angry chants of "go home, Jacob, go home" and "shame, shame", as he stalked away through the crowd, head bowed.

11:40 GMT - BTS, South Korean boyband, donates $1m to Black Lives Matter

Popular South Korean band BTS donated $1m to Black Lives Matter (BLM) in support of US protests against police brutality, its music label, Big Hit Entertainment, told Reuters news agency.

On Thursday, the seven-member BTS wrote on its Twitter account that they are against racism and violence with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

"We stand against racial discrimination. We condemn violence. You, I and we all have the right to be respected. We will stand together."

The hashtag went viral among the K-pop group's fans and started another wave of donations with a new hashtag, #MatchAMillion.

11:00 GMT - 14 officers injured in anti-racism protests: London police chief

Fourteen police officers were injured in "shocking and completely unacceptable" assaults during anti-racism protests in central London on Saturday, London police chief Cressida Dick said

After a largely peaceful day, small numbers of protesters briefly clashed with mounted police on Saturday after thousands gathered to voice their anger at police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

"I am deeply saddened and depressed that a minority of protesters became violent towards officers in central London yesterday evening. This led to 14 officers being injured," Dick, who is commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, said in a statement.

"The number of assaults is shocking and completely unacceptable."

The police said 13 officers were also hurt in protests earlier in the week and a number of arrests had been made.

10:05 GMT - Banksy supports Black Lives Matter with new work on Instagram

British artist Banksy showed his support for the Black Lives Matter movement with a painting he posted to his Instagram account on Saturday portraying a candle vigil under a US flag.

In the post, the secretive artist, who rose to fame for his graffiti, writes that the system is failing people of colour, and it is the responsibility of white people to fix the system, not theirs.

09:30 GMT - 'Justice for George Floyd': US protests in pictures

Tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied in Washington, DC, and other US cities on Saturday, demanding an end to racism and brutality by law enforcement, as protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd stretched into the 12th day.

A Lincoln Memorial rally and march to the White House marked the largest outpouring yet of protests nationwide since video footage emerged showing Floyd, an unarmed Black man in handcuffs, lying face down and struggling to breathe as a white police officer knelt on his neck.

Floyd's May 25 death has sparked a storm of protests in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, thrusting the highly charged debate over racial justice back to the forefront of the political agenda five months before the US presidential election.

09:00 GMT - UK minister says anti-racism protests increase risk of COVID-19 spread

Anti-racism protests attended by thousands of people in London and other major UK cities "undoubtedly" risk causing an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases again, British Health Minister Matt Hancock said.

Thousands of people attended protests on Saturday to voice their anger at police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, ignoring government advice to avoid large gatherings due to the risk from coronavirus.

Asked during an interview on Sky News whether the number attending protests made an increase in COVID-19 cases more likely, Hancock said: "It is undoubtedly a risk."

"I support very strongly the argument that is being made by those who are protesting ... but the virus itself doesn't discriminate and gathering in large groups is temporarily against the rules precisely because it increases the risk of the spread of this virus."

08:05 GMT - Australian minister calls Black Lives Matter protests 'self-indulgent'

Australians who defied public health rules and rallied in support of the US Black Lives Matter movement were reckless and self-indulgent, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said.

More than 20,000 people protested in Sydney and other cities on Saturday, in solidarity with the US anger over the killing of George Floyd and calling for an end to similar deaths of Indigenous Australians.

Cormann said the protesters risked a second outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

"I think it is incredibly selfish," Cormann told Sky News. "It's incredibly self-indulgent."

Australia has had 7,255 cases of the coronavirus and 102 deaths, avoiding the higher tolls seen elsewhere because of border closures and strict social distancing since March.

06:35 GMT - Senior Trump aide apologises for sharing racially-charged video

A senior aide to President Donald Trump apologised for promoting a racially-charged video on her Twitter feed.

Mercedes Schlapp, a senior Trump national spokeswoman, said she "deeply apologized" for retweeting a video of a chainsaw-wielding man in Texas shouting at anti-racist protesters, in which he used a racial slur.

"I retweeted without watching the full video. I deleted the tweet. I would never knowingly promote the use of that word," Schlapp said in an email to Reuters.

06:00 GMT - Mapping anti-racism solidarity protests around the world

Thousands of people around the world have rallied in solidarity with anti-racism protests in the United States following the police killing of George Floyd on May 25.

Outside the US, large protests have also erupted in many cities around the world.

05:40 GMT - Jamaicans protest in support of Floyd

Wearing black and braving a blistering sun, Jamaicans gathered on Saturday to support global protests against police abuses sparked by the death of George Floyd.

Several hundred people stood outside the US Embassy in Kingston with signs and t-shirts reading "Black Lives Matter" and "Enough is Enough", demanding justice for Floyd as well as Jamaicans who have died at the hands of security forces.

The Kingston protests were peaceful, and police mostly stood by watching as demonstrators voiced their concerns.

According to a government-backed study, over 3,000 Jamaicans have been killed by law enforcement officials since 2000.

00:30 GMT - Protesters pour into the streets of California

Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets in San Francisco, Sacramento, Simi Valley, San Diego, Los Angeles and elsewhere across California.

In Los Angeles, protesters organised by Refuse Fascism LA took over Hollywood Boulevard, chanting "Revolution, nothing less!"

In San Diego, more than 3,000 people marched downtown and faced off with officers guarding police headquarters, while a caravan of 300 cars moved past the state university there.

In Simi Valley, a protest drawing several thousand demonstrators spilled onto the street and stopped traffic on a major road through the suburban town northwest of Los Angeles. It was there that four white Los Angeles police officers were found not guilty of beating motorist Rodney King, sparking riots in 1992.

On Saturday, marchers there carried signs with messages including "We stand together" and "Change is now." Some of them thanked police officers as they passed by them.

In Huntington Beach, police officers reportedly separated protesters at a beachside rally from a few dozen counter-protesters who waved American flags and pro-Trump signs. A fight broke out amid the scrum, and one person was detained.

Demonstrations in recent days have generally been boisterous but non-violent, in contrast to last weekend when some protesters smashed windows, burned police cars and confronted cordons of riot-clad police who fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Gone, too, was most of the looting that ransacked dozens of stores and that authorities say appeared mainly to be the work of non-protesters.

Saturday, June 6

23:00 GMT - Tens of thousands march on US capital to demand change

Protesters chanting "Black Lives Matter" and "George Floyd" converged on the US capital on Saturday, thronging the streets from the Capitol building to a barricaded White House and the Lincoln Memorial, in the largest protest the city has yet seen.

Military vehicles and officers in fatigues had closed off much of downtown Washington, DC, to traffic, as protesters stirred by the death of George Floyd - who died on May 25 after a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes - flooded the streets chanting and carrying signs including "Get your knee off our necks."

The White House has been fortified with new fencing and extra security precautions. Most businesses around the downtown area have their windows boarded shut.

A man standing behind a table handed out water, snacks and paper towels to demonstrators. The few police and security officers in sight wore patrol uniforms rather than body armour and helmets, and had a more relaxed posture than in days prior.

The mood across the capital seemed jubilant. The White House said the president had no public events scheduled for Saturday. It was unclear if, behind the new fence, he could hear the crowds filling the city, at one point chanting: "This is what democracy looks like."

21:45 GMT - Large protest in Seattle after criticism over dispersing peaceful protesters

A large protest kicked off in Seattle for the ninth consecutive day of protests over the death of George Floyd.

Thousands of doctors, nurses and others, many in lab coats and scrubs, marched to City Hall in demonstrations that are among the largest Seattle has seen in years.

After police were severely criticised for using tear gas and pepper spray to disperse largely peaceful crowds, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best imposed a 30-day moratorium on the department's use of one kind of tear gas.

20:45 GMT - DC mayor tells protesters 'we pushed the army away from our city': Report

Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser joined protesters gathered in the US capital, telling them "we pushed the army away from our city", according to the Washington Post.

Bowser has been a vocal proponent of the protests, naming a plaza near the White House "Black Lives Matter Plaza".

Active members of the military had been stationed outside the city during previous days, while members of the National Guard had been deployed near the White House and other parts of the capital.

Bowser, in a June 4 letter, had called on Trump to withdraw the "extraordinary federal law enforcement and military presence". The Pentagon soon after ordered the troops to return home.

20:00 GMT - Massive 'Black Lives Matter!' painted on lawn in California state capital

"Black Lives Matter!" has been painted in massive letters stretching for two blocks on California's Capitol Mall, a main avenue that leads to the California State Capitol.

A local artist Demetris "BAMR" Washington urged volunteers on Friday to help paint the message, after saying he had received approval from the area's councilman.

On Saturday, the artist posted on Instagram that about 300 people had come out to help.

19:15 GMT - Protesters gather outside Trump's Florida golf resort

As protesters gathered for a 12th day in cities across the US, including New York, Washington, DC, Chicago and Minneapolis, about 100 protesters gathered at President Donald Trump's golf resort in Florida.

The protest was organised by Latinos for Black Lives Matter. Many carried signs saying such things as "Vote Him Out" and "Don't Be A Bunker Boy," the latter a reference to reports that Trump went into the White House bunker when protests in Washington became more violent. Trump insists he only went briefly, for an inspection.

18:30 GMT - Thousands gather in US capital

Thousands of protesters marched in Washington, DC, as rallies across the US to protest the killing of George Floyd enter a 12th day and officials move to rein in law enforcement tactics.

Some activists have called on social media for a million people to attend Saturday's rally in the US capital. Local media has predicted tens of thousands will attend.

"This is by far the most protesters we've seen descend on the White House and make their voices heard since these protests began 12 days ago," Al Jazeera's Heidi Zhou-Castro reported from the protest.

18:10 GMT - UK protesters clash with mounted police

British anti-racism protesters briefly clashed with mounted police after thousands gathered in central London to voice their anger at police brutality after the killing of George Floyd.

After a largely peaceful day, small numbers of protesters near Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Downing Street residence threw bottles at police, and mounted officers charged at protesters to push them back.

Earlier, more than a thousand protesters marched past the US embassy on the south bank of the River Thames, blocking traffic and holding placards.

17:40 GMT - Hamburg police use pepper spray during protest

Police in the German city of Hamburg used pepper spray on protesters and were ready to deploy water cannon as some demonstrations in support of US anti-racist protests turned ugly.

Hamburg police tweeted that several hundred "hooded and aggressive people" had put pressure on police officers in the city centre, adding: "We have already had to use pepper spray. With all due respect for emotions: attacks on police officers are unacceptable!"

At another location nearby, they said some 350 people were standing in front of police water cannons. "We regard this as an unauthorised (forbidden) meeting and now we are calling via loudspeaker announcements for people to leave."

17:15 GMT - Mourners arrive at North Carolina memorial service for George Floyd

Hundreds of mourners have begun to gather at a church in North Carolina on Saturday for a memorial service for George Floyd in his home state.

Crowds about 100 deep lined both sides of the entrance as a hearse bearing Floyd's coffin arrived at a church in Raeford.

As the casket rolled in, chants of "Black power," and "George Floyd" and "no justice, no peace," echoed from beneath the covered entrance.

16:45 GMT - 'Burn down racism': World rallies against George Floyd's death

Taking a knee, banging drums and ignoring physical distancing measures, outraged protesters from Sydney to London kicked off global rallies against racism and police brutality on Saturday.

The death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of police in Minnesota, has brought tens of thousands out onto the streets during a pandemic that is ebbing in Asia and Europe but still spreading in other parts of the world.

Read more here.

16:00 GMT - Buffalo, NY, police officers charged with felony assault plead not guilty

Two Buffalo police officers were arraigned on felony assault charges on Saturday after a viral video viewed by more than 78 million people showed them pushing an elderly protester to the ground, injuring him.

Officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe, who have been suspended from the department, were part of a unit in tactical gear enforcing an 8pm curfew on Thursday when Martin Gugino, 75, was shoved, fell and struck his head on the sidewalk, the Buffalo News reported.

Both pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault during the virtual arraignment before Buffalo City Court Judge Craig D Hannah, the Buffalo News reported. Fifty-seven police officers have since resigned in solidarity with the two officers.

More:

15:00 GMT - Protesters gather in Paris despite ban

Demonstrators in Paris have tried to gather in front of the US embassy, defying restrictions on planned gatherings imposed by authorities in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

They were met by riot police. The embassy was sealed off behind an imposing ring of metal barriers and roadblocks, but many protesters gathered nearby.

"You can fine me 10,000 or 20,000 times, the revolt will happen anyway," Egountchi Behanzin, a founder of the Black African Defense League, told officers who stopped him to check his ID documents before he approached the building, according to The Associated Press news agency.

14:40 GMT - More protests planned in NYC

After another mostly peaceful night, more demonstrations were planned for Saturday in New York City amid lingering tension between protesters and police over the city's 8pm curfew.

On Friday night, demonstrators again remained on city streets hours after the curfew. With police generally allowing some leeway, crowds mostly dwindled on their own at various locations.

But there were some minor flare-ups: About an hour after a Brooklyn protest ended, images on social media showed officers surrounding a group of protesters and chasing down some with batons.

14:10 GMT - Washington, DC, readies for 'largest' protest ever

Protesters are expected to gather in Washington, DC, for a huge demonstration on Saturday, its police chief said.

Activists have called on social media for a million people to attend the protest in the US capital.

"We have a lot of public, open-source information to suggest that the event on this upcoming Saturday may be one of the largest we've ever had in the city," Washington, DC, Police Chief Peter Newsham told local media, adding that much of the city centre would be closed to traffic from early in the day.

Newsham did not give a crowd estimate. Local media has predicted tens of thousands of attendees.

As we make our voices heard, please continue to look out for one another. It's crowded and many children are now also peacefully demonstrating.

Let's continue to show the world our #DCvalues. pic.twitter.com/Rj1NkRwh7O
- Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) June 6, 2020

13:30 GMT - Thousands protest in central London

Thousands of demonstrators protested in rainy central London against police violence and racial injustice following the killing of George Floyd.

Gathering in Parliament Square, a traditional venue for protests, the demonstrators "took the knee" in silence and then chanted Floyd's name before applauding his memory.

The demonstrators have ignored advice from the government and police to avoid attending because of the coronavirus. In England, gatherings are limited to groups of six, provided people observe physical distancing guidelines.

Many held banners, including one that read "Racism is a Pandemic". Demonstrations supporting the Black Lives Matter movement took place in Manchester, Cardiff in Wales and other UK cities.

12:05 GMT - Tokyo protesters condemn killing of George Floyd

Protesters gathered in Tokyo on Saturday, as global demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd spread to Japan, a nation not usually associated with mass discontent or police violence.

In front of Shibuya train station, an iconic landmark in Tokyo, people held signs that said, "End racism," and "We stand with you".

Although the turnout was a fraction of the thousands in American and European cities, the effort was symbolically significant.

09:30 GMT - LA Galaxy drop Aleksandar Katai after wife's 'racist and violent' posts

Serbian footballer Aleksandar Katai has been released by LA Galaxy after his wife posted "racist and violent" messages on social media.

Galaxy announced they would "mutually part ways" with their new winger on Friday in a one-sentence news release.

Tea Katai made the posts on her Instagram story earlier this week. They included a photo with a caption written in Serbian urging police to "kill" protesters, another referring to protesters as "disgusting cattle," and a third sharing a racist meme.

The Galaxy met with Aleksandar Katai on Thursday. He disavowed his wife's posts late Wednesday night, saying the "views are not ones that I share and are not tolerated in my family".

Galaxy fans have been calling for his dismissal. On Thursday, a handful of fans gathered by the David Beckham statue outside the club's stadium holding a banner reading "No Racists in Our Club".

08:50 GMT - 'We were wrong': NFL's Goodell regrets stance on player protests

Roger Goodell, commissioner of the US National Football League (NFL), has said the league made mistakes in not listening to players, in a video denouncing racism in the country amid widespread protests over police brutality against Black people.

"We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest," Goodell said in the video published on Friday.

"We, the National Football League, believe Black lives matter."

Read more here.

10:20 GMT - Thousands attend Black Lives Matter protests in Australia

Thousands of demonstrators held mostly peaceful protests across Australia on Saturday to honour the memory of George Floyd and to protest the deaths of Indigenous Australians in custody.

Black Lives Matter protesters poured into downtown Melbourne amid a strong police presence, with aerial footage showing the true scale of the march.

In Adelaide, crowds filled the city's Victoria Square after police gave special permission on Friday for the event to proceed despite COVID-19 restrictions.

South Australia Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Harvey said he was "very pleased" with how the "exceptionally good behaviour by everyone who was here today".

08:00 GMT - 30,000 attend Brisbane rally

Organisers of Australia's Black Lives Matter rallies said about 30,000 people gathered in Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, forcing police to close down two major streets.

The rally appeared orderly as police handed out masks to protesters and other officials provided hand sanitisers.

A Maori group did a traditional haka, or war dance, during the Brisbane protest. The large crowd later marched to a local police precinct, some chanting: "They say justice, we say murder."

The news helicopter has gone up. Here's how the Brisbane Black Lives Matter rally looks from the air. Huge crowd. @abcnews @abcbrisbane pic.twitter.com/mSCkte5anO
- Jessica van Vonderen (@jessvanvonderen) June 6, 2020

07:20 GMT - Michael Jordan to donate $100m to fight for racial equality

Former superstar Michael Jordan and his Nike-backed Jordan Brand are pledging to donate $100m over the next 10 years to support racial equality and social justice.

The pledge comes five days after Jordan said "we have had enough" when it comes to the racism that people of colour have faced in the US.

"Black lives matter. This isn't a controversial statement," read the joint statement from Jordan and his company on Friday. "Until the ingrained racism that allows our country's institutions to fail is completely eradicated, we will remain committed to protecting and improving the lives of Black people."

Part of the initiative involves creating greater access to education.

"Through our Jordan Wings program, we have been focused on providing access to education, mentorship and opportunity for Black youth facing the obstacles of systemic racism," Jordan Brand president Craig Williams said in a statement.

05:33 GMT - Zuckerberg promises Facebook policy review

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, promised to review the social network's policies that led to its decision to not moderate controversial messages posted by the US president that appeared to encourage violence against those protesting against police racism.

In a letter to employees, Zuckerberg wrote: "We're going to review our policies allowing discussion and threats of state use of force to see if there are any amendments we should adopt."

This, he said, includes "excessive use of police or state force. Given the sensitive history in the US, this deserves special consideration."

04:55 GMT - Denver police ordered to stop using tear gas, plastic bullets

A US District Court Judge ordered Denver police to stop using tear gas, plastic bullets and other "less-than-lethal" force such as flash grenades against protesters in the city.

The temporary injunction is in response to a local lawsuit filed by protesters complaining about excessive force used by officers during public demonstrations following Floyd's death.

"The Denver Police Department has failed in its duty to police its own," Judge R Brooke Jackson wrote in the ruling.

"The Court has reviewed video evidence of numerous incidents in which officers used pepper spray on individual demonstrators who appeared to be standing peacefully, some of whom were speaking to or yelling at the officers, none of whom appeared to be engaging in violence or destructive behavior," Jackson wrote.

04:20 GMT - Black Lives Matter rallies start in Australia amid court ban

The first of several Black Lives Matter protests across Australia got underway in Adelaide as a court in Sydney banned a planned rally in the city citing the risk of coronavirus transmissions.

Huge crowds were seen in the first gathering in the southern city of Adelaide, which was held to honour George Floyd and to protest against the deaths of Indigenous Australians in custody.

Huge turn out at Adelaide rally. @7NewsAdelaide pic.twitter.com/sKiGUFNLhQ
- Michael Smyth (@MichaelSmyth_) June 6, 2020

Thousands of people are rallying in Victoria Square for today's anti-racism protest in Adelaide.

The Police Commissioner gave a blanket exemption from COVID-19 crowd restrictions for the protest to go ahead.

⁦ @7NewsAdelaide⁩ pic.twitter.com/6oaCMqvaa0
- Andrea Nicolas (@AndreaLNicolas) June 6, 2020

That was the plan in Sydney, as well, where thousands of people were expected to rally. But New South Wales state Supreme Court Justice Des Fagan ruled on Friday that the rally was not an authorised public assembly. Fagan said he understood the rally was designed to coincide with similar events in other countries.

"I don't diminish the importance of the issues and no one would deny them in normal circumstances," he said. "No one denies them that but we're talking about a situation of a health crisis."

01:30 GMT - Minneapolis no longer under curfew

Residents of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota were no longer under a curfew on Friday night and the state is planning to start sending state troopers and US National Guard members back home.

Governor Tim Walz credited peaceful protests for helping achieve rapid change in Minneapolis Police Department policy. On Friday, the city agreed to ban chokeholds and neck restraints as a civil rights investigation of the department begins.

01:05 GMT - Seattle bans police use of tear gas on protesters

Seattle's mayor has banned the police use of tear gas as protests continue against the killing of George Floyd.

Mayor Jenny Durkan said at a news conference on Friday that the ban would last for 30 days.

The move came hours after three civilian police watchdog groups urged city leaders to ban the use of tear gas to control demonstrators. The groups said the move would build public trust and should remain in place until the department adopts policies and training for use of the chemical agent.

00:55 GMT - California governor orders state police to stop teaching carotid holds

California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered the state police training programme to stop teaching officers how to use a hold that can block the flow of blood to the brain.

Newsom, a Democrat, took the action after two weeks of protests across the country prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Floyd died on May 25 after a police officer put his knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Since then, some police departments have moved to end the use of carotid holds that stop or slow the flow of blood to the brain. Newsom said that hold has no place in the 21st century.

00:53 GMT - Health expert: Tear gassing protesters may increase risk of coronavirus spread

An Emory University infectious disease specialist says he has serious concerns that police could be spreading the coronavirus by spraying tear gas on demonstrators.

Mass arrests and confining people in small spaces dramatically increase the risk of infecting others with the coronavirus, Dr Jay Varkey said on Friday.

Tear gas and other chemical agents causes people to rub their eyes, putting demonstrators at risk of being infected, Varkey said.

"When I see the wide use of things like tear gas or pepper bombs that by its nature cause people to immediately rub their eyes, that causes me tremendous consternation in terms of the risk of what that could cause in terms of infection transmission during a pandemic," Varkey said.

"From a public health standpoint, I don't know whether law enforcement is actively looking at agents other than tear gas or pepper bombs," he said. "As a physician, do I think they should? Yes, absolutely."

00:50 GMT - Ramaphosa notes 'naked racism in the US'

South Africa's president is noting the "naked racism in the United States" and says he firmly believes "this is a moment we should regard as a turning point with regard to tackling racism around the world".

Cyril Ramaphosa spoke as the ruling African National Congress launched a Black Friday event in response to the "heinous murder" of George Floyd and "institutionalised racism" in the US, at home and "wherever it rears its ugly head".

Ramaphosa said human dignity is a universal aspiration and respect for it is "the only guarantee of any nation's prosperity". He pointed out that South Africa's enduring racial inequality a quarter-century after the end of the racist system of apartheid, and he expressed his "deepest regret" at the death of nearly a dozen South Africans allegedly at the hands of security forces during the country's COVID-19 lockdown.

While he said the deaths "do not have the obvious racial dimensions of the murder of George Floyd, they do rely on a similar contempt for the intrinsic human worth of the victim" and must be condemned "just as vehemently". The cases are under investigation.

00:25 GMT - Hundreds rally outside US embassy in Cyprus

About 250 people demonstrated peacefully outside the US embassy in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia. to denounce what they said were the "social and racial inequalities" at the root of protests triggered by the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

Demonstrators wore masks and kept several feet apart in line with social-distancing rules. They held placards reading, "We say no to racism, solidarity is our weapon," and chanted slogans including "Power to the people, united we breathe".

Police observed Friday's hour-long protest from a distance as demonstrators knelt and held out clenched fists in a show of solidarity with protesters in the US.

A protestor holds a placard that reads in Greek, "We say no to Racism, Solidarity is our Weapon", outside the U.S. embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, Friday, June 5, 2020, during a demonstration against the recent killing of George Floyd by police officers USA. AP Photo/Petros Karadjias pic.twitter.com/TF0OWr0Wpy
- Petros Karadjias (@pkaradjias) June 5, 2020

The protest was organised by EDON, the youth wing of Cyprus's communist-rooted party, AKEL. EDON Central Committee member Christoforos Pittara decried what he called the endemic racial inequality that still plagues the US, and criticised US President Donald Trump for resorting to racist rhetoric.

Pittara said justice for George Floyd is not enough and must be served for a "chain of murders" whose victims were not only African Americans, but the poor and dispossessed irrespective of race, creed or colour.

00:15 GMT - Mayor in Washington State city calls for firing of officers involved in deadly shooting

The mayor of Tacoma, Washington has told the city manager to fire four police officers following the death of a Black man after police restrained him in March.

Mayor Victoria Woodards on Thursday night directed City Manager Elizabeth Pauli to fire the officers involved in the restraint of 33-year-old Manuel Ellis.

Her order comes as the country has been roiled by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Four Minneapolis officers have been criminally charged. Woodards said the Tacoma officers should also be prosecuted over the death of Ellis.

"The officers who committed this crime should be fired and prosecuted to the full extent of the law," Woodards said in a statement aired live on Tacoma television and Facebook. "I am demanding tonight that the Pierce County Sheriff review and confirm every action taken by each officer."

The News Tribune reports the Pierce County medical examiner's office ruled Ellis's March 3 death a homicide caused by a lack of oxygen due to physical restraint. The newspaper reports methamphetamine intoxication and heart disease were contributing factors.

Authorities have said Ellis appeared to be suffering from some sort of breakdown when they approached him. They said he attacked officers who were trying to calm him down.

Friday, June 5

23:30 GMT - National Football League: We were wrong about taking a knee

The National Football League (NFL) on Friday reversed its long-standing antagonism towards the practice of taking a knee to protest over police injustice against Black Americans, championed by ostracised player Colin Kaepernick, saying it was wrong not to listen to NFL players on the subject as it encouraged people to protest peacefully.

In a video statement tweeted by the US league, Commissioner Roger Goodell said, "We, the National Football League condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People ... We, the National Football League believe Black lives matter."

We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter. #InspireChange pic.twitter.com/ENWQP8A0sv
- NFL (@NFL) June 5, 2020

Politicians, team owners and fellow players previously criticised Kaepernick and fans burned his jersey for taking a knee during the national anthem to protest violence against Black Americans. Now, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, global opinion has shifted so much that more people are now vilifying those who attack Kaepernick or misrepresent his stance.

New Orleans Saints star quarterback Drew Brees issued a public apology on Thursday after he was excoriated by teammates, other athletes and fans for saying he "will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States".

Even US President Donald Trump echoed the earlier criticism on Friday, saying on Twitter that Brees should not have taken back his original stance.

I am a big fan of Drew Brees. I think he's truly one of the greatest quarterbacks, but he should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag. OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high...
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2020

Trump posted his tweet not long after several members of the Jacksonsville Jaguars marched from their stadium to the steps of the local sheriff's department in Florida to protest against the Floyd killing.

"Today we say no more," wide receiver Chris Conley said. "Today we see a nation that can't await change, a city that won't sit still or be quiet."

The march included Joshua Dobbs, Brandon Linder and Josh Lambo of the Jaguars along with family members. Coach Doug Marrone, general manager Dave Caldwell and assistant coach Terry Robiskie also walked in what the team called an attempt to "raise awareness for racial injustices against the Black community," with many wearing "Black Lives Matter" T-shirts.

22:28: Biden lashes out at Trump for invoking Floyd name while crowing about positive unemployment data

In a speech in Delaware on Friday, US presidential candidate Joe Biden sharply criticised US President Donald Trump for invoking George Floyd's name during a news conference about a positive jobs report released that morning.

At the news conference, Trump suggested that Floyd might have appreciated the recent protests and the debates they have sparked as being a "great day for him".

Biden called the comments "despicable".

"For the president to try to put any other words in the mouth of George Floyd, I frankly think it's despicable," he said. "And the fact that he did so on the day when black unemployment rose, Hispanic unemployment rose, black youth unemployment skyrocketed, tells you everything you need to know about this man and what he really cares about."

22:07 - Video documents attacks on journalists during Floyd protests

Hundreds of journalists from across the globe have gotten caught in the crossfire between protesters demonstrating against the death of George Floyd and law enforcement officials attempting to rein them in. Some have been deliberately targeted by those law enforcement officials, as a video compilation by the Committee to Protect Journalists demonstrates. Since the protests began on May 26, more than 250 abridgments of press freedom have been reported across the US by journalists covering the demonstrations, according to the CPJ.

Since the death of #GeorgeFloyd in police custody sparked #protests across the U.S., police have assaulted and arrested journalists covering them-in some cases causing serious injury. CPJ's @MustafaHameed compiled some of the shocking moments caught on video. #PressFreedom pic.twitter.com/LCgGurJ91r
- Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) June 5, 2020

21:52 GMT - 'Stand up to Trump' Canadians tell Trudeau

Canadian protesters chanted "Stand up to Trump!" to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he joined thousands at an anti-racism rally on Friday and took a knee alongside protesters.

Trudeau, wearing a black mask and surrounded by bodyguards, made a surprise appearance at the "No justice = No peace" rally in front of Parliament. His appearance came a day after police shot and killed an Indigenous woman during a wellness check in eastern Canada.

Trudeau three times took a knee alongside other protesters, a gesture used to protest against police brutality and the treatment of African Americans by police. Afterwards, several people thanked Trudeau for kneeling.

Trudeau did not speak at the rally on Friday and left as the protesters began a march to the US Embassy, near the Parliament building.

20:28 GMT - Facebook says no sign of foreign targeting of Floyd protests

Facebook Inc said on Friday that it had seen no evidence of coordinated foreign interference on its platforms targeting anti-racism protests in the US, despite assertions from the US attorney general that foreign groups were trying to exacerbate the situation.

"We have been actively looking and we haven't yet seen foreign interference or domestic coordinated inauthentic behaviour targeting these protests," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, in a call with reporters.

"We want to caution people against jumping to conclusions without clear evidence of foreign interference," Gleicher said.

US Attorney General William Barr said on Thursday that foreign groups were using disinformation campaigns like those mounted by Russia during the 2016 presidential election to widen divisions in US society.

"Some of the foreign hackers and groups that are associated with foreign governments are focusing in on this particular situation we have here and trying to exacerbate it in every way they can," Barr said.

19:05 GMT - US Park Police admit 'mistake' in saying tear gas wasn't used on peaceful protesters

US Park Police (USPP) spokesperson Sergeant Eduardo Delgado admitted on Friday that it was a "mistake" to deny that tear gas was used to disperse peaceful protesters ahead of a controversial photo opportunity for President Donald Trump in front of a Washington, DC church.

Media reports challenged a Tuesday statement from the Park Police that said tear gas was not used to "secure" the area in downtown DC where Trump took a photo in front of a church that was damaged during protests against police brutality.

The statement said smoke bombs and pepper spray projectiles were used, but did not consider these to be tear gas.

"I'm not saying it's not a tear gas, but I'm just saying we use a pepper ball that shoots a powder", Delgado said in an interview with Vox.

"The point is we admitted to using what we used," Delgado said. "I think the term 'tear gas' doesn't even matter anymore. It was a mistake on our part for using 'tear gas' because we just assumed people would think CS or CN".

CS and CN are two common types of tear gas, Vox reported.

Delgado said the USPP statement was correct in relation to the conduct of the park police.

17:57 GMT - Remaining National Guard troops in DC to return to home base: reports

The Pentagon will be sending back the remaining 900 active-duty troops who were sent to the Washington, DC area to potentially respond to civil unrest, and they are expected to start heading back to their home bases, a US official told Reuters news agency.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the order had been signed by US Defense Secretary Mark Esper and that the troops would be heading back to Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Drum in New York.

The report came after Utah Senator Mike Lee tweeted that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was 'kicking' National Guard troops out of hotels in the US capital.

Just heard that Mayor Bowser is kicking the Utah National Guard out of all DC hotels tomorrow. More than 1200 troops from 10 states are being evicted. This is unacceptable. 1/2
- Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) June 5, 2020

17:30 GMT - Minneapolis to ban chokeholds by police

Negotiators for the city of Minneapolis have agreed with the state to ban the use of chokeholds by police, and to require police to report and intervene any time they see an unauthorised use of force by another officer.

The moves are part of a stipulation between the city and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, which launched a civil rights investigation this week in response to the death of George Floyd in police custody. The City Council is expected to approve the agreement Friday.

The agreement, which will be enforceable in court, would require any officers, regardless of tenure or rank, to immediately report the use of any neck restraint or chokehold from the scene to their commander or their commander's superiors.

Similarly, any officer who sees another officer commit any unauthorised use of force, including any chokehold or neck restraint, must try to intervene verbally and even physically. If they do not, they will be subject to discipline as severe as if they themselves had used the prohibited force.

The agreement also requires authorisation from the police chief or a designated deputy chief to use crowd control weapons, including chemical agents, rubber bullets, flash-bangs, batons, and marking rounds. And it requires more timely decisions on disciplining officers.

17:00 GMT - Outrage in Canada after police killing of Indigenous woman

The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council in Canada has called for an independent investigation into the fatal police shooting of Chantel Moore.

Moore, 26, was reportedly killed as police carried out a wellness check in northwestern New Brunswick.

Police say Moore ran out of her home with a knife and threatened the officer who shot her.

These deaths happened within the past month, two in the past week. Who do we call when our family members are in need help? We obviously can't call the police, I'm not comfortable with calling the police.

Distress/mental health home services are needed, so we protect our famiy.
- IndigenousXca - @jjsylvester04 (@IndigenousXca) June 5, 2020

According to Canadian media, an ex-boyfriend of Moore called police to do a wellness check on the 26-year-old. He was reportedly concerned because she had been harassed, including by receiving "strange" messages on Facebook.

Quebec's independent police watchdog group has sent several investigators to the area to determine the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

"The family and community of Chantal need answers as to why she was shot on a health check by the police," the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council said. "Justice must not wait and every power must be exerted to ensure that justice is served in an appropriate immediate, and respectful way."

The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council is calling for an immediate independent investigation into the death of Chantel Moore.

"The family and community of Chantel needs answers as to why she was shot on a health check by police. Justice must not wait..." pic.twitter.com/HeFlwvEy8u
- Silas Brown (@silasjvbrown) June 5, 2020

16:30 GMT - Officers suspended after man, 75, is shoved to ground; man remains in serious condition

Two police officers in Buffalo, New York have been suspended after pushing a 75-year-old man who then fell down and cracked his head.

The video from WFBO of Thursday night's encounter, which happened near the conclusion of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, quickly sparked outrage.

It showed an officer pushing a man who approached a line of officers clearing demonstrators from Niagara Square around the time of an 8pm curfew. The man falls backward and hits his head on the pavement. Blood leaks out as officers walk past.

The mayor, Byron Brown, said in a statement that the man, who hasn't been publicly identified, was in serious condition. A hospital official said he was "alert and oriented", Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz tweeted Friday morning.

The district attorney's office "continues to investigate the incident", officials said in a news release.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo endorsed the suspensions, tweeting that what was seen on video was "wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful".

16:25 GMT - Witness: Floyd didn't resist arrest, tried to defuse things

A man who was with George Floyd on the night he died said his friend did not resist arrest and instead tried to defuse the situation before he ended up handcuffed on the ground and pleading for air as an officer pressed a knee against his neck.

Maurice Lester Hall, a longtime friend of Floyd, was a passenger in Floyd's car when police approached him May 25 as they responded to a call about someone using a forged bill at a shop. Hall told The New York Times that Floyd was trying to show he was not resisting.

"I could hear him pleading, 'Please, officer, what's all this for?'" Hall told the newspaper.

Hall is a key witness in the state's investigation into the four officers who apprehended Floyd. Derek Chauvin, the white officer who continued pressing his knee into Floyd's neck even after Floyd became motionless, is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter. The three other officers are charged with aiding and abetting. All four officers were fired.

15:50 GMT - DC mayor renames street near White House 'Black Lives Matter Plaza'

Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, DC, has renamed a section of a street near the White House "Black Lives Matter Plaza".

The move comes just days after peaceful protesters were forcefully cleared to make space for a Trump photo op. Rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, have sued Trump and several officials with his administration over the incident.

The section of 16th street in front of the White House is now officially "Black Lives Matter Plaza". pic.twitter.com/bbJgAYE35b
- Mayor Muriel Bowser #StayHomeDC (@MayorBowser) June 5, 2020

15:45 GMT - Trump slammed for 'this is great day' for George Floyd remarks

President Donald Trump is facing further criticism after making remarks about George Floyd during his news conference on job gains in the US.

"Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that's happening for our country. This is a great day for him. It's a great day for everybody", Trump said.

The remarks drew immediate ire from observers and journalists present, who questioned how Floyd would enjoy unemployment numbers after being killed.

"How is this a great day for George Floyd?" I shouted to President Trump, before he turned and exited the Rose Garden without taking a single question. https://t.co/ks60ONgeUn
- Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) June 5, 2020

Trump finished his news conference without taking questions, a move that observers have also criticised.

US unemployment figures dropped to slightly over 13 percent, new figures from May show.

Trump attributed these figures to his administration's response to the coronavirus, including pushing states to reopen their economies.

The US has nearly 1.9 million confirmed coronavirus cases. There have been over 108,000 US deaths since the pandemic began spreading in March.

14:50 GMT - Minnesota eyes changes for how police killings are handled

Minnesota's county attorneys want to give the state attorney general the authority to handle all cases of police-involved deaths.

The Minnesota County Attorneys Association voted Thursday in transferring that power during an emergency meeting, which included Attorney General Keith Ellison. The attorney general is leading the state's case against the four police officers involved in George Floyd's death instead of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.

State lawmakers would need to pass legislation during this month's special session to give the attorney general the ongoing authority.

The county attorneys are also calling on the legislature to provide additional funding to the state attorney general's office and create a unit within Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to investigate police killings of civilians.

"If this is the path the legislature and governor choose to take, my office will accept the responsibility," Ellison said. "But it must come with resources sufficient to do the job thoroughly and to do justice in the way Minnesotans have a right to expect."

Ellison is one of 18 Democratic attorneys general who are asking Congress to grant their offices "clear statutory authority under federal law" to investigate "unconstitutional policing by local police departments" in their respective states, the Star Tribune reported.

14:48 GMT - Large letters spelling out 'Black Lives Matter' painted on busy DC street

Parts of a major Washington, DC street were blocked off so that large, yellow letters that spell out "Black Lives Matter" could be painted on the road.

On the road that leads to the White House, the #WashingtonDC government is painting "Black Lives Matter" with local muralists. They expect to be done by 11am. pic.twitter.com/sLDJWkqfUT
- Daniella Cheslow (@Dacheslow) June 5, 2020

14:40 - Minneapolis City Council prepares to vote on changes to police department

The Minneapolis City Council is preparing to vote on changes to the city's police department in response to the death of George Floyd.

City leaders and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights are working out an agreement for a temporary restraining order to force some immediate changes and set a timeline for the state's civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department.

The council meets Friday afternoon. If the council approves the agreement, the order would require court approval.

The state human rights department opened a civil rights investigation into allegations of racial discrimination by the police department on Tuesday. The investigation into policies, procedures and practices seeks to determine if the force has engaged in systematic discriminatory practices toward people of colour and to ensure that any such practices are stopped.

14:30 - Slave action block removed in Virginia city's downtown

A 176-year-old slave auction block has been removed from a Virginia city's downtown and will be displayed in a museum.

The 800-pound stone was pulled from the ground at a Fredericksburg street corner early Friday after its removal was delayed for months by lawsuits and the coronavirus pandemic, The Free Lance-Star reported.

The weathered stone was sprayed with graffiti twice and chants of "move the block" erupted this week during local demonstrations over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, city officials said in a statement announcing the removal.

The slave auction block in Fredericksburg, Virginia has been removed. pic.twitter.com/NBYNlzRNNA
- Kevin M. Levin (@KevinLevin) June 5, 2020

A local chapter of the NAACP called for the stone's removal in 2017, saying it was a relic of "a time of hatred and degradation".

In 2019, the City Council voted for the block's removal and relocation to the Fredericksburg Area Museum. A judge upheld that decision in February after two businesses near the auction block sued to stop the relocation.

The museum plans to display the knee-high stone in an exhibit chronicling the "movement from slavery to accomplishments by the local African American community."

14:25 GMT - EU express concerns about policing in US

European Union lawmakers are expressing concern about US police action linked to the death of George Floyd.

The incidents were debated by the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights as the protest movement since Floyd's death gathered pace in Europe and around the world.

Finnish Greens lawmaker Heidi Hautala says "the police should not be there to shoot when some loot. The police should be there to protect, and it is clear that widespread reforms in the law enforcement in the United States are needed."

Irish EU lawmaker Sean Kelly says some of the problem is due to a failure of leadership. He says what happened in the US is "chilling in the extreme. I think it indicates what can happen when you have poor leadership."

"Leaders can either divide or unite," said Kelly. "Good unite. Bad divide. That's what we see unfortunately in America at the moment."

Swedish liberal parliamentarian Karin Karlsbro said, "America has a long and tragic history on police brutality. At the heart of this lies racism and segregation based on history. This is a systematic problem that needs to be addressed at all levels in the US."

14:20 GMT - Another Confederate statue comes down

The city of Mobile, Alabama, removed a Confederate statue early Friday.

The bronze figure of Admiral Raphael Semmes had become a flashpoint for protests. It was removed from its pedestal after being vandalised this week and before demonstrations announced for Sunday calling for it to be taken down.

The removal of the 120-year-old figure follows days of protests in Alabama and across the nation over killings by police of African-Americans.

Mobile removes Confederate statue without warning overnight after days of George Floyd protests.

It's not yet clear why the statue was taken down. The Alabama city is expected to release more details today. Follow reporter @Charress for the latest info. https://t.co/Z3XWBSZeJ7 pic.twitter.com/9CZqqwHpmA
- AL.com (@aldotcom) June 5, 2020

Semmes was a Confederate commerce raider, sinking Union-allied ships during the Civil War. He later became a "Lost Cause" hero to Southerners who lamented the end of the Confederacy.

The city of Semmes, Alabama, outside Mobile, was incorporated in 2010 and named for him.

14:00 GMT - Alabama police investigating cross burning

Police are investigating a cross burning on a bridge in Macon County, Alabama.

Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson says the burning cross was seen on top of a bridge over highway Interstate 85 on Thursday night. Brunson says deputies arrived and helped extinguish the fire.

John Bolton, a motorist who called 911, told WRBL-TV there was a cross, burning tyre and fuel canister.

The sheriff says there are no suspects so far.

13:55 GMT - Twitter blocks Trump campaign video tribute to Floyd

Twitter has blocked a Trump campaign video tribute to George Floyd over a copyright claim, in a move that adds to tensions between the social media platform and the US president, one of its most widely followed users.

The company put a label on a video posted by the @TeamTrump account that said, "This media has been disabled in response to a claim by the copyright owner." The video was still up on President Donald Trump's YouTube channel and includes pictures of Floyd, whose death sparked widespread protests, at the start.

"Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives," Twitter said in a statement.

The 03:45-minute clip is a montage of photos and videos of peaceful marches and police officers hugging protesters interspersed with some scenes of burning buildings and vandalism, set to gentle piano music and Trump speaking.

It is the latest action that Twitter has taken against Trump, who has threatened to retaliate against social media companies.

____________________________________________________________________

Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera's continuing coverage of the protests in the US over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Here are a few things to catch up on:

George Floyd, an unarmed 46-year-old Black man, died on May 25 after a white officer used his knee to pin Floyd's neck to the ground for nearly nine minutes. Floyd can be heard on a bystander video repeatedly pleading with officers, saying: "I can't breathe." He eventually lies motionless with the officer's knee still on his neck. You can read about the deadly incident here.

The four officers involved in the incident were fired, and all have been charged.

Protests - some violent - have since erupted nationwide as demonstrators rally for justice for Floyd and all unarmed Black people killed by police.

See the updates from Thursday's protests here.

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George Floyd: Thousands turn out for protests in US, UK: Live

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Protests and demonstrations are held across the United States and the world on Saturday, calling for an end to racism and police brutality in one of the largest mobilisations since the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25.