This Day in History: August 24, 1958
Additional Date: August 24, 1958
Former National Party leader and Prime Minister of South Africa, Advocate J. G. Strijdom dies. It was during his tenure in 1955 in Kliptown near Johannesburg, that the Freedom Charter, which embraced the ideological principles of the African National Congress and other liberation movements, was endorsed. A year later, Strijdom's government was faced with a march by twenty thousand women on August 9th, 1956 to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the proposed amendments to the Urban Areas Act of 1950.