African Resistance Movement

[1] Immediately after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, the apartheid government imposed a state of emergency, which allowed it to apply a broad range of sanctions against its political opponents, such as detention without trial and banning meetings, and enabled the Special Branch to secretly detain and interrogate whomever it deemed a threat to the government, without due process.

From then, until July 1964, the NLC/ARM bombed power lines, railroad tracks and rolling stock, roads, bridges and other vulnerable infrastructure, without any civilian casualties.

It aimed to turn the white population against the government by creating a situation that would result in capital flight and collapse of confidence in the country and its economy.

This development generated internal debates whether its use of arms should strictly adhere to sabotage, or whether to adopt more aggressive guerrilla tactics, despite risk of causing casualties.

[5] This was when Lionel Schwartz, one of the few senior African National Congress (ANC) operatives not to have his cover blown following the raid joined NLC.

[11] On 24 July, one of the few ARM members still at large, John Harris, placed a phosphorus incendiary device in the whites-only waiting room of Johannesburg Park Station.