In November 1952 the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Indian Congress (SAIC) intruded directly into white liberal/left politics, calling for ‘a parallel white organisation’ which could join the Congress Alliance. The Congress initiative cut across a lengthy process of debate and reassessment taking place among liberal and radical whites, triggered by the growth of African nationalism and reflected in the rise of the Congress movement. The Congress of Democrats (COD) was formed in Johannesburg in response to the call and, a year later, was launched nationally as the South African Congress of Democrats (SACOD).

SACOD emerged as a small, highly vocal and visible white partner of the Congress Alliance, with two main aims: to educate whites about their ‘real interests’ – a non-racial future with equal rights for all – and to ensure that political conflict took place between ‘the progressive forces and the forces of reaction’ and did not degenerate into ‘a clash on colour or racial lines’. It provided a political home for whites who supported the aims and methods of the ANC, and ensured that white concerns were aired within the Congress Alliance.

Its formation, however, highlighted and exacerbated differences within the white left over the relationship between national and class struggle, and triggered hostility among Africanist elements in the ANC. It is important to locate the launch of SACOD in the wider context of ideological and strategic debate which marked the early 1950s.

White opposition to apartheid 1951–1953: ‘Moving into the zone of perpetual crisis’

SACOD was only one of a number of new organisations formed in 1953 to oppose the Nationalist Party (NP) government and its policy of apartheid. Others were the Liberal Party (LP), the Union-Federal Party, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the South African Coloured People's Organisation (SACPO).

The legislative bedrock of apartheid was laid between 1950 and 1953, when a series of laws, among them the Group Areas Act, the Suppression of Communism Act and the Mixed Marriages Act, entered the statute book. The NP's attempt to disenfranchise coloured voters led to abrogation of the Constitution and an extended constitutional crisis. In response, blacks and whites were mobilised in unprecedented numbers.