1956 Treason Trial

Part of a series on
Apartheid
Events 1948 general election Coloured vote constitutional crisis 1956 Treason Trial Sharpeville massacre Rivonia Trial Soweto uprising Church Street, Pretoria bombing Vaal uprising Trojan Horse Incident Khotso House bombing Cape Town peace march CODESA Assassination of Chris Hani Saint James Church massacre 1994 Bophuthatswana crisis Shell House massacre
Organisations ANC APLA IFP AWB BBB Black Sash CCB Conservative Party DP ECC FOSATU PP RP PFP HNP MK PAC UDF Broederbond National Party COSATU Security Branch SACC SADF SAIC SAMA SAP SACP State Security Council
People Vernon Berrangé P. W. Botha Steve Biko Mangosuthu Buthelezi F. W. de Klerk Ruth First Bram Fischer Arthur Goldreich Chris Hani Bantu Holomisa Joel Joffe Ahmed Kathrada Albert Luthuli Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Mac Maharaj D. F. Malan Nelson Mandela Govan Mbeki Thabo Mbeki Raymond Mhlaba Benjamin Moloise Albertina Sisulu Walter Sisulu J. G. Strijdom Joe Slovo Robert Sobukwe Helen Suzman Adelaide Tambo Oliver Tambo Eugène Terre'Blanche Desmond Tutu H. F. Verwoerd B. J. Vorster Jacob Zuma
Places Bantustan District Six Robben Island Sophiatown South-West Africa Soweto Sun City Vlakplaas
Related topics Afrikaner nationalism Apartheid in popular culture Apartheid legislation Cape Qualified Franchise Disinvestment campaign Freedom Charter Internal resistance to apartheid Kairos Document Music in the movement against apartheid Nostalgia for apartheid Project Coast Sullivan Principles
Category
v t e

The Treason Trial was a trial in Johannesburg in which 156 people, including Nelson Mandela, were arrested in a raid and accused of treason in South Africa in 1956.

The main trial lasted until 1961, when all of the defendants were found not guilty. During the trials, Oliver Tambo left the country and was exiled. Whilst in other European and African countries, he started an organisation which helped bring publicity to the African National Congress's cause in South Africa. Some of the defendants were later convicted in the Rivonia Trial in 1964.

Chief Luthuli has said of the Treason Trial:

The treason trial must occupy a special place in South African history. That grim pre-dawn raid, deliberately calculated to strike terror into hesitant minds and impress upon the entire nation the determination of the governing clique to stifle all opposition, made one hundred and fifty-six of us, belonging to all the races of our land, into a group of accused facing one of the most serious charges in any legal system.^[1]