Resistance politics in the 1950s was dominated by the Congress Alliance, which sought to mobilise people of all races against apartheid. However, attempts to foster racial co-ope ratio n – especially including whites – in an increasingly racist state came with costs. The internal politics of the resistance movement – including both the Congress movement and the South African Communist Party (SACP)(in its pre-1950 and post- 1953 incarnations) – was dominated by wide-ranging and bitter disputes over the form racial co-operation should take. The dispute centred on the multiracial nature of the Congress Alliance – that is, an alliance of separate congresses comprising members of a single race, co-ordinated at regional and national levels. This multiracialism stood in marked contrast to the non-racialism of organisations such as the disbanded Communist Party of South Africa, the reconstituted SACP and the Liberal Party.

It is important to recall what was said in the introduction: that sensitivity about the language of race was not evident in the 1950s – multiracial, non-racial, interracial and similar terms were, initially, used interchangeably. Over time, as the race-based structure of the Congress Alliance became a politicised issue – with liberals and Africanists seeing it as a vehicle for overweening white communist influence over the African National Congress (ANC) – people became more sensitive to the true meaning of the terms they used.

The issue of racial co-operation was being debated as the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) came to exert greater influence over Congress, bringing to the ANC a new militancy; a strident and at times exclusive African nationalism; and marked anti-communism. As senior ANC official Dan Tloome put it, the ANCYL's attitude: