Apartheid WHAP/Napp

“The setting for South Africa’s freedom struggle was very different from the situation in India. In the twentieth century, that struggle was not waged against an occupying European colonial power, for South Africa had in fact been independent of Great Britain since 1910. That independence, however, had been granted to a government wholly controlled by a white settler minority, which represented less than 20 percent of the total population; the country’s black African majority had no political rights whatever within the central state. Black South Africans’ struggle therefore was against this internal opponent rather than against a distant colonial authority, as in India. Economically, the most prominent whites were of British descent; they or their forebears had come to South Africa during the nineteenth century, when Great Britain was the ruling colonial power. But the politically dominant section of the white community, known as Boers or Afrikaners, was descended from the early Dutch settlers, who had arrived in the mid-seventeenth century. The term ‘Afrikaner’ reflected their image of themselves as ‘white Africans,’ permanent residents of the continent rather than colonial intruders. They had unsuccessfully sought independence from a British-ruled South Africa in a bitter struggle (the Boer War, 1899 – 1902), and a sense of difference and antagonism lingered. Despite a certain hostility between white South Africans of British and Afrikaner background, both felt that their way of life and standard of living were jeopardized by any move toward black African majority rule. The intransigence of this sizable and threatened settler community helps explain why African rule was delayed until 1994, while India, lacking any such community, had achieved independence almost a half century earlier…

[Another] unique feature of the South African situation was the overwhelming prominence of race, expressed most clearly in the policy of apartheid, which attempted to separate blacks from whites in every conceivable way while retaining their labor power in the white-controlled economy. An enormous apparatus of repression enforced that system. Rigid ‘pass laws’ monitored and tried to control the movement of Africans into the cities, where they were subjected to extreme forms of social segregation. In the rural areas, a series of impoverished and overcrowded ‘native reserves,’ or Bantustans, served as ethnic homelands that kept Africans divided along tribal lines. Even though racism was present in colonial India, nothing of this magnitude developed there.” ~Ways of the World

Main Points of Passage:

Notes:
  1. Background to Change
  1. The South African government that had declared freedom from Britain was controlled by a white minority, largely descended from Dutch Boers
  2. Afrikaners practiced a policy of apartheid, or extreme racial segregation
  3. South Africa is one of the world’s richest sources of gold and diamonds
  4. Opposition groups Zulu Confederation and the African National Congress
  5. ANC’s leader, Nelson Mandela, gained status of sympathetic dissident during long imprisonment (1964-1990) by white authorities
  6. Another moral figure in anti-apartheid movement was Bishop Desmond Tutu, black clergyman in Anglican Church and Nobel Peace Prize recipient
  7. 1994, free electionsANC’s victory and Mandela became president
  1. Origins
  1. In 1948, South Africa had a new government, the National Party
  2. Elected in a whites-only electionfear of black domination
  3. Among the first measures were statutes to separate the residential areas
  4. Then, racially mixed marriages were prohibited
  5. Apartheid, or racial separation, overshadowed South Africa for forty years
  6. Chief objective was to deny non-whites the fruits of supposedly white labors
  7. But African labor contributed to the rise of a modern industrial state
  8. Also an assumption of supremacy among South Africa's whites that stemmed back to first European settlers there in 1652
  9. For Afrikaners, descended from Dutch immigrants, the idea that different cultures should live apart was nothing less than God's will
  10. Most Afrikaners were Calvinists with a strong streak of determinism
  11. First serious effort to establish a settlement in South Africa came in 1652, with arrival of Jan van Riebeeck and Dutch East India Company
  12. Van Riebeeck purchased slaves to do domestic and agricultural work
  13. Free burghers (bourgeoisie) came to regard manual labor as slaves' work
  14. So for many of burghers there was no other available employment
  15. Response to unemployment was to move away from coast, into vast open expanses sparsely occupied by Khoikhoi and San tribes
  16. Then the Congress of Vienna gave the southern tip of Africa to the British
  17. The British and the Dutch achieved an uneasy peace
  18. Until discovery of gold/diamonds in Dutch Orange Free State and Transvaal
  19. After the Boer Wars, British gained complete control of the land
  20. But following independence from England, power-sharing between British and Afrikaners until Afrikaner National Party able to gain a strong majority
  21. Strategists in the National Party invented apartheid
  1. Apartheid
  1. Apartheid laws in 1948racial discrimination was institutionalized
  2. 1950 Population Registration Act required all South Africans to be racially classified: white, black (African), or colored (of mixed decent)
  3. All blacks were required to carry “pass books” containing fingerprints, photo and information on access to non-black areas
  4. 1951Bantu Authorities Act established a basis for ethnic government in African reserves, known as “homelands”
  5. Black South Africans were citizens of a homeland, losing citizenship in South Africa and any right of involvement with the South African Parliament
  6. From 1976 to 1981, four of these homelands were created, denationalizing nine million South Africans
  7. Thus, Africans living in homelands needed passports to enter South Africa
  8. In 1960, a large group of blacks in Sharpeville refused to carry passes; government declared a state of emergency
I.Emergency lasted for 156 days, leaving 69 people dead; 187 people wounded
IV. The Fight Against Apartheid
  1. Soweto riots of 1976 were most brutal and violent riots
  2. Apartheid government decided to start enforcing a long-forgotten law requiring secondary education be conducted only in Afrikaans
  3. Students resented being forced to learn language of their oppressors
  4. Government responseshut down schools and expel striking students
  5. Protest marchin Soweto township on June 16,1976
  6. Police showed no mercy attacked students of all ages, armed or unarmed
  7. Boycotts against South Africa, for withdrawal of U.S. firms from South Africa and for release of Mandela
  8. South Africa was ostracized from world community
  9. Boycotts, divestment, and protests
  10. In 1993, Nelson Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
  11. In 1994, Mandela was elected the first Black president of South Africa

Complete the Review Quilt Below (Place Key Points in Each Box):

Boers: / Afrikaners: / Nelson Mandela: / ANC:
Apartheid: / Sharpeville Massacre: / Soweto Riots: / Pass books:
Jan van Riebeeck: / Divestment: / Boycott: / 1994:
Calvinists: / Boer Wars: / Congress of Vienna: / Bishop Desmond Tutu:

Questions:

  1. Apartheid ended in South Africa because
(A)The African National Congress became radicalized and more politically active after the Sharpeville Massacre.
(B)The international community imposed economic sanctions against South Africa.
(C)President de Klerk convinced his party to dismantle and the system and hold free elections.
(D)The African National Congress provided a vehicle for resistance.
(E)All of the above.
  1. In 1948 in South Africa, the white minority ensured their political control over the black majority by relying on a policy of racial separation called
(A)Caste.
(B)Apartheid.
(C)The estate system.
(D)The slavery system.
  1. A system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy is called.
(A)Stereotyping.
(B)Social mobility.
(C)Social stratification.
(D)Social inequality.
4. The Boers were
(A) East African coastal merchants.
(B) Indians who served as soldiers for the British.
(C) Malaysian tribal chieftains who allied with the Dutch.
(D) Australian aborigines.
(E) Dutch settlers in South Africa. / 5. From 1948, South African politics were dominated by
(A) The Nationalist Party.
(B) The Black leadership of the Zulu nation.
(C) A U.N. mandate-government dominated by the United States.
(D) Nelson Mandela.
6. The white South African leader that negotiated with Mandela the transition to black rule was
(A) De Klerk.
(B) Nkrumah.
(C) Mugabe.
(D) Kimgangu.
7. “Apartheid” is the term often used to describe the racial policies followed until 1991 by the government of
(A) Zambia.
(B) Namibia.
(C) The Republic of South Africa.
(D) Botswana.
8. The policy of separation of whites from blacks in South Africa was called
(A) Segregation.
(B) Laws.
(C) Separate but equal.
(D) Apartheid.
9. The first President of the African National Congress (ANC) was
(A) Nelson Mandela.
(B) John Dube.
(C) Walter Sisulu.
(D) Oliver Tambo.