The 1957 Alexandra bus boycott was a protest undertaken against the Public Utility Transport Corporation (PUTCO) by the people of Alexandra in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is generally recognised as being one of the few successful political campaigns of the Apartheid era, by noted writers and activists including Anthony Sampson and Chief Albert Luthuli Ruth First, former wife of South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, said of the Boycott, "not since the days of the Defiance Campaign had Africans held so strategic a position."