African National Congress

The African National Congress is a South African political party and Black nationalist organization founded on January 8, 1912, as the South African Native National Congress, with the initial goal of defending Black and mixed race voting rights in Cape Province. Renamed the African National Congress in 1923, it became, from the 1940s, the leading organization in the struggle against apartheid, South Africa's official policy of racial segregation and discrimination. Banned by the white minority government from 1960 to 1990 following the Sharpeville massacre, it turned to sabotage and guerrilla warfare through its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, formed in 1961 under Nelson Mandela, whose leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment in the 1964 Rivonia Trial. The ban was lifted in 1990 and Mandela was elected the country's first Black president in 1994. It has governed South Africa continuously since 1994, though it has also faced numerous corruption scandals, including the state capture allegations of the Jacob Zuma era, and its electoral support fell to about 40 percent in 2024, after which it formed a government of national unity.