Abbreviations
ASM: African Students Movement (1968 – precursor to the SASM).
ANC: African National Congress (1912 to the present – became the ANC in 1923).
ANCYL: African National Congress Youth League (1944 to the present).
AZAPO: Azanian People’s Organization. Founded in 1978.
APLA: Azanian People’s Liberation Army – military wing of AZAPO.
BCM: Black Consciousness Movement. Not a formal organization.
BPC: Black People’s Convention (successor to the PAC – 1972 until banned in 1977).
COSATU: Congress of South African Trade Unions (1985 to the present).
CP: South African Communist Party (1921 to the present).
DA: Democratic Alliance (successor to the DP – 2000 to the present).
DP: Democratic Party (came from the merger of the PFP, NDM, and IP in1989).
GNP: Gesuiwerde Nasionale/Purified National Party (1934-1940).
HNP1: Herenigde Nasionale/Reunited National Party (1940-1951).
HNP2: Herstigte Nasionale/Reestablished National Party (1969 to the present).
ICU: Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (1919 – unraveled in the 1930s).
IDASA: Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa.
IFP: Inkatha Freedom Party (1975 to the present).
IP: Independent Party (1988-1989).
IWA: Industrial Workers of Africa (1917 – merged into the ICU in 1920).
KP: Konserwatiewe/Conservative Party (1982-2004).
LP: Labour Party, the original, mainly White social democratic party (1910-1958).
MDM: Mass Democratic Movement (the name used to refer to the UDF after 1988).
MK: uMkhonto we Sizwe.
NDM: National Democratic Movement (1987-1989).
NIC: Natal Indian Congress (1894 – until it merged into the ANC after 1994).
NIS: National Intelligence Service.
NNP: New National Party (the rebranded NP, 1997-2005).
NP: National Party (1914-1934; 1951-1997).
NRC: Natives’ Representative Council (1937-1946).
NRP: New Republic Party (1977-1989).
PAC: Pan Africanist Congress (1959 – banned in 1960).
PFP: Progressive Federal Party (1977-1989).
SADF: South African Defence Force.
SAIC South African Indian Congress (1921 – became dormant in the 1990s).
SANNC: South African Native National Congress (1912, became the ANC in 1923).
SAP: South African Party (1910-1934).
SASM: South African Students’ Movement (1972-1977, emerged from the ASM).
TRC: Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
UCT: University of Cape Town.
UDF: United Democratic Front (1983 – effectively banned in 1988).
UP: United Party (1934-1977). Renamed the New Republic Party in 1977.
Broederbond (Brotherhood): founded in 1918 as a secretive society for male Afrikaners to promote Afrikaner cultural, political, and economic interests. It became extremely influential.
Coloured: a word that people use to refer to a group who live mostly in the Western Cape. Some descended from South Africa’s original inhabitants, the Khoe-San. Some descended from slaves imported by the Dutch from the Dutch East Indies.
Homeland: the South African government called the areas it had set aside for Black South Africans “homelands.” This was a rhetorical device to imply that that’s where Blacks should live.
KwaNatal Indaba: “Indaba” is a Zulu word for council. The KwaNatal Indaba was a joint initiative by the province of Natal and the Black territory of KwaZulu to establish a united non-racial government. It proposed a one-person-one-vote constitution but with minority (basically race-based) protections.
New Republic Party: the NRP was the last remnant of the Hertzog-Smuts United Party. The UP had been formed during the Great Depression. It lost the 1948 election to the NP. It experienced defections during the 1960s and 70s because it was too conservative. The remnants renamed it the New Republic Party in 1977.
Tricameral parliament: Botha’s constitutional reforms led to a parliament with three chambers. Whites sat in what was called the House of Assembly. Coloureds and Indians sat in the Houses of Representatives and Delegates respectively.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission: established in 1995 with a mandate to make a testimonial record of gross abuses of human rights between 1960 and 1994. There were 17 commissioners led by Archbishop Tutu. It gave victims and perpetrators a chance to tell their stories and attempted to record abuses by all sides.
Verkramp, verlig: in a speech to an Afrikaner student group in 1966, Willem de Klerk – then an academic – described Afrikaners as “verkramp” (conservative) or “verlig” (enlightened). The words stuck as a way to distinguish between Afrikaners who stuck dogmatically to apartheid and Afrikaners who wanted change.