V. TETEKIN, Candidate of Historical Sciences UNKNOWN PAGES OF THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA The political struggle of the clash of major social forces is most often viewed through the prism of the personalities of the leaders or, if we take military terminology, the "generals" of the opposing sides. In South Africa, for example, such a symbolic figure is Nelson Mandela. Dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of public speeches are devoted to his life and work. As a symbol of the perseverance of the black population of South Africa in the struggle against the apartheid regime, it certainly deserves it. The problem, however, is that the attention of researchers rarely turns to the "infantry" of political struggle, which begins not with the creation of large "armies", but with the emergence of small resistance groups, which gradually merge into "battalions", "regiments" and" divisions " of the liberation movement. This is the gradual path taken by anti-apartheid forces in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. It should be noted that in 1960, the democratic organizations in this country were crushed. The African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) have gone underground, with their leaders imprisoned and in exile. Even earlier, in 1950, the Communist Party of South Africa was banned. Since the early 1960s, especially after the Rivonia trial, in which Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other leaders of the armed liberation struggle were sentenced to life in prison, there has been a sharp decline in anti-racist protests in South Africa. The field of political struggle, figuratively speaking, was covered with multi-ton rollers of police repression, filled with concrete prison walls, covered with propaganda earth of the white government of South Africa, and at the very top of this "flowerbed", masking the real state of affairs, were artificial flowers of tourist avenues that represented South Africa as a country of serene ... Read more