During the 1950s, the National Party began putting in place a barrage of laws that would eventually constitute the structure of apartheid. Some early onslaughts on black civil rights included: the Coloured Voters Act , which stripped coloureds of the vote; the Bantu Authorities Act , which set up puppet authorities to govern Africans in the reserves; the Population Registration Act , which classified every South African at birth as "white, native or coloured"; the Group Areas Act , which divided South Africa into ethnically distinct areas; and the Suppression of Communism Act , which made any anti-apartheid opposition (Communist or not) a criminal offence.

 

The ANC responded in 1952 with the Defiance Campaign , which kicked off with a letter to the government demanding the same civil rights for blacks that whites enjoyed. During the campaign, eight thousand volunteers deliberately broke the apartheid laws listed above and were jailed. The campaign rolled on through 1952 until the police provoked violence in October by firing on a prayer meeting in East London. A riot followed in which two white people were killed, thus appearing to discredit claims that the campaign was non-violent. The government used this as an excuse to swoop on the homes of the ANC leadership, resulting in the detention and then banning of over one hundred ANC organizers. Bannings were designed to restrict a person's movement and political activities. A banned person was prohibited from seeing more than one person at a time or talking to another banned person; prohibited from entering certain buildings; kept under surveillance; was required to report regularly to the police, and could not be quoted or published.

The most far-reaching event of the decade was the Congress of the People , held near Johannesburg in 1955. At a mass meeting of nearly three thousand delegates, four organizations, representing Africans, coloureds, whites and Indians, formed a strategic partnership called the Congress Alliance . Explaining the historic significance of the meeting, ANC leader Chief Albert Luthuli commented that "for the first time in the history of our multiracial nation its people will meet as equals, irrespective of race, colour and creed to formulate a freedom charter for all the people of our country". The Freedom Charter , which was adopted at the Congress of the People, became the principal document defining ANC policy.

The government found the breadth of the movement and its principles of freedom and equality too much to stomach and they sent in the police to round up 156 opposition leaders who were charged with treason. Evidence at the Treason Trial was based on the Freedom Charter, which was described as a "blueprint for violent Communist revolution". Although all the defendants were acquitted, the four-year trial disrupted the ANC and splits began to emerge. From within the organization, a group of Africanists criticized the Freedom Charter because it promoted co-operation with white activists. At the 1958 ANC national conference they attempted to hijack the leadership, but when they failed they walked out and formed the Pan Africanist Congress under the leadership of the charismatic Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe . Upstaging the ANC, the PAC launched an anti-pass campaign ten days before a similar one planned by the ANC.