The formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in August 1983 introduced a new challenge to white minority rule after the banning of the South African black opposition – the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – in 1960 and the repression of the African trade unions. The revolutionary strategies of the banned ANC and the PAC, aiming at the radical transformation of South African society, and popular struggles in the form of strikes and community-based protest, were a combined assault on the system of domination and exploitation in South Africa. It was the UDF that provided a national “political form” to popular struggles and filled the institutional vacuum created by the banning and the destruction of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Disbanded in 1991, the period 1983-87 represents a period of heightened activity at local, regional and national levels for the UDF and is thus the focus period of this study.