South African ApartheidSummary
Apartheid was a system for keeping white people and nonwhites separated in South Africa. It lasted from about 1950 to the early 1990s. The word apartheid means “apartness” in Afrikaans, a language spoken in South Africa.
The population of the country is mostly nonwhite. But for many years the white people of South Africa controlled the country’s government. They established laws that kept the races separate and discriminated against the nonwhite majority.
Apartheid divided South Africans into four groups: white, Bantu (black), Colored (of mixed descent), and Asian. The policy created separate areas in cities for each group. Members of a group were not allowed to live, operate businesses, or own land outside of their area. Under “pass” laws, nonwhites had to carry passes while in white areas. Other laws set up separate schools and restricted each race to different types of jobs. The government also created 10 territories called “homelands” and forced all blacks to move to them.
With the support of some whites, many blacks in South Africa protested against apartheid. The African National Congress (ANC) led the fight. The protests sometimes turned violent. A district called Soweto rioted in 1976 against a requirement that blacks learn Afrikaans. Other countries also condemned apartheid. In 1985 Great Britain and the United States restricted trade with South Africa.
In response to the protests, the South African government granted nonwhites some rights in the late 1980s. In 1990–91 the government led by President F.W. de Klerk ended most of the apartheid laws. In 1994 all races were allowed to vote in a national election. Nelson Mandela, leader of the ANC, was elected president. Apartheid was over, but its effects remained. Racial discrimination continued in South Africa.
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South African Apartheid
An Afrikaans word for “apartness,” apartheid is the name that South Africa’s white government applied to its policy of discrimination—racial, political, and economic—against the country’s nonwhite majority in the second half of the 20th century. From the 1960s the government often referred to apartheid as “separate development.”
Racial segregation, sanctioned by law, was widely practiced in South Africa before the National party won control of the government in 1948. Once in power, the Nationalists extended the scope of the policies and gave them the name apartheid. Under the Population Registration Act of 1950, all South Africans were to be classified as either white, “native” (black), or “Coloured” (those of mixed descent) and issued an identity card stating their racial designation. The “native” group was later renamed Bantu (though it included all black South Africans). In 1959 the government created a fourth category, “Asian,” which included mainly Indians.
Other laws, collectively known as “petty apartheid,” prohibited most interracial social contacts, authorized segregated public facilities, established separate educational standards, restricted each race to certain types of jobs, and denied nonwhite participation, even indirectly, in the national government. Racial inequality was built into the system along with racial separateness; the government established by law that the separate facilities did not need to be equivalent.
The policies known as “grand apartheid” geographically separated the racial groups. The Group Areas Act of 1950 created separate residential and business sections in urban areas for each race. Only the members of a section’s designated race could live in that area or own property there. The great majority of the country’s land was allocated for whites, who made up a minority of the population. Many thousands of nonwhites were forcibly removed from their homes in what became the white-only areas.
Apartheid treated the blacks of South Africa as “tribal” people. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 established tribal systems in the black areas that were run by chiefs chosen by the government. The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 created ten reserves called “homelands” (or Bantustans), each designated for a separate black ethnic community. The relocation of blacks to the “homelands” was especially brutal from the 1960s to the early ’80s, when more than 3.5 million people were taken from the white areas and dumped far from their homes into the overcrowded, desolate reserves, sometimes in the winter and without any facilities. The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 made every black African, regardless of actual residence, a citizen of one of the homelands, thus excluding blacks from the South African political system. The government made four of the homelands—Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei—“independent” and granted the remaining homelands some self-government. However, none of the homelands was developed enough to become truly economically independent from South Africa, and none was ever recognized internationally as an independent country.
To help enforce racial segregation, the government strengthened the existing “pass” laws, which required nonwhites to carry passes, or identification documents authorizing their presence in restricted areas. In addition, the government expanded the powers of the police to allow them to detain anyone suspected of opposing government policies. The Indemnity Act of 1961 made it legal for the police to torture and kill in the course of performing their duties. Later laws allowed the police to arrest and detain people without trial and to deny them access to lawyers and to their families.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement
One of the main groups to oppose apartheid was a black nationalist organization in South Africa called the African National Congress (ANC). Under the leadership of Albert Luthuli, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Nelson Mandela, the ANC and its Youth League sponsored nonviolent demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts in the 1940s and ’50s. In 1952 the ANC worked with the South African Indian Congress to mount the Defiance Campaign, in which protesters burned their pass books and peacefully defied apartheid laws. Some 8,500 were arrested. In 1955 the ANC and other groups held a mass meeting called the Congress of the People, which included blacks, Indians, and people of mixed race, as well as some sympathetic whites. The following year, the government charged more than 150 of the attendees with treason. After lengthy trial proceedings, they were acquitted in 1961.
A group of blacks led by Robert Sobukwe broke away from the ANC and formed the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959. The PAC believed that blacks could better achieve liberation without working with groups from other races. In 1960 the PAC mounted a new nonviolent campaign against the pass laws. At one such demonstration in the black township Sharpeville, the police opened fire on the crowd, killing more than 60 people and wounding more than 180. In response, massive nonviolent black protests erupted in several locations. The government outlawed both the PAC and the ANC and used the army to crush resistance.
The Sharpeville violence attracted international attention to South Africa’s system of discrimination. The United Nations condemned apartheid by a 96–1 vote as “reprehensible and repugnant to human dignity,” and South Africa was forced to withdraw from the Commonwealth in 1961. Many countries imposed economic sanctions against South Africa during the early 1960s.
After the Sharpeville shootings and their aftermath, many anti-apartheid leaders came to believe that the movement would never be successful without the use of violence. The ANC and the PAC each created a military unit to carry out acts of sabotage. By 1964, however, the government had captured and imprisoned most of the resistance leaders, including Mandela and Sobukwe. Oliver Tambo, Thabo Mbeki, and other ANC leaders fled the country and led the struggle in exile. Winnie Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s wife, continued to fight apartheid from within South Africa but was harassed and jailed.
A new wave of resistance within South Africa began in the 1970s. Stephen Biko led a black consciousness movement that encouraged blacks to embrace black culture and to recognize their own self-worth. In 1972 Biko and other black students formed the Black Peoples Convention (BPC), a nonviolent activist group. In addition, black labor unions demanded better working conditions and wages in a series of strikes.
Black high school students protested against having to be taught in the Afrikaans language on June 16, 1976, in the township of Soweto (now part of Johannesburg). After the police opened fire on the students, massive protests erupted and then rapidly spread from the township to other urban black areas. The government’s brutal suppression of the uprisings killed hundreds of people and wounded more than a thousand. The following year Biko was killed while in police custody, resulting in renewed riots. In the wake of the violence, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution imposing an arms embargo against South Africa.
The South African government faced mounting international pressure to reform its policies during the 1980s. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel peace prize in 1984 for his efforts to bring a peaceful end to apartheid. The movement to free Mandela gained wide international support. With the endorsement of the United Nations Security Council, the United States and the United Kingdom imposed selective economic sanctions on South Africa in 1985.
The economic sanctions, in conjunction with continued resistance from within the country, led the South African government to end pass laws, legalize interracial marriage, and end segregation in some public facilities. In an attempt to divide the resistance movement, the government also granted some political rights to Indians and people of mixed race. In response, hundreds of community groups formed the multiracial United Democratic Front. The uprisings continued, and the government declared a state of emergency and martial law in many parts of the country from 1985 to 1989.
The End of Apartheid
The South African government began to hold secret discussions with Mandela, who was still serving a life sentence in prison. After F.W. de Klerk of the National party became the country’s president in 1989, he accelerated the reform process and oversaw the dismantling of the apartheid laws. In February 1990 he released Mandela and many other political prisoners and lifted the ban on the ANC and the PAC. Limited school integration began in early 1991, and by mid-year the Population Registration Act of 1950 was repealed. White voters approved a referendum supporting reform in 1992. Later that year, the ANC and the National party agreed to a landmark Record of Understanding that allowed for a peaceful transition to a democratic republic. For these achievements Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel peace prize in 1993.
An interim constitution of 1993 enfranchised all adult citizens of South Africa. In April 1994, the country’s first all-race national elections produced a coalition government with a black majority. Mandela became president, and de Klerk deputy president. On May 8, 1996, South Africa adopted a majority-rule constitution that featured a broad bill of rights, barring discrimination based on race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or marital status.
Apartheid Level 3
policy that governed relations between South Africa’s white minority and nonwhite majority and sanctioned racial segregation and political and economic discrimination against nonwhites. The implementation of apartheid, often called “separate development” since the 1960s, was made possible through the Population Registration Act of 1950, which classified all South Africans as either Bantu (all black Africans), Coloured (those of mixed race), or white. A fourth category—Asian (Indian and Pakistani)—was later added.
Racial segregation, sanctioned by law, was widely practiced in South Africa before 1948, but the National Party, which gained office that year, extended the policy and gave it the name apartheid. The Group Areas Act of 1950 established residential and business sections in urban areas for each race, and members of other races were barred from living, operating businesses, or owning land in them. In practice this act and two others (1954, 1955), which became known collectively as the Land Acts, completed a process that had begun with similar Land Acts adopted in 1913 and 1936; the end result was to set aside more than 80 percent of South Africa’s land for the white minority. To help enforce the segregation of the races and prevent blacks from encroaching on white areas, the government strengthened the existing “pass” laws, which required nonwhites to carry documents authorizing their presence in restricted areas. Other laws forbade most social contacts between the races, authorized segregated public facilities, established separate educational standards, restricted each race to certain types of jobs, curtailed nonwhite labour unions, and denied nonwhite participation (through white representatives) in the national government.
Under the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 the government reestablished tribal organizations for black Africans, and the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 created 10 African homelands, or Bantustans. The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 made every black South African, irrespective of actual residence, a citizen of one of the Bantustans, thereby excluding blacks from the South African body politic. Four of the Bantustans were granted independence as republics, and the remaining had varying degrees of self-government; but all remained dependent, both politically and economically, on South Africa. The dependence of the South African economy on nonwhite labour, though, made it difficult for the government to carry out this policy of separate development.
Although the government had the power to suppress virtually all criticism of its policies, there was always some opposition to apartheid within South Africa. Black African groups, with the support of some whites, held demonstrations and strikes, and there were many instances of violent protest and of sabotage. An attempt to enforce Afrikaans language requirements for black African students led to the Soweto riots in 1976. Some white politicians called for the relaxation of minor restrictions, referred to as “petty apartheid,” or for the establishment of racial equality.
Apartheid also received international censure. South Africa was forced to withdraw from the Commonwealth in 1961 when it became apparent that other member countries would not accept its racial policies. In 1985 both the United Kingdom and the United States imposed selective economic sanctions on South Africa. In response to these and other pressures, the South African government abolished the “pass” laws in 1986, although blacks were still prohibited from living in designated white areas and the police were granted broad emergency powers.
In a more fundamental shift of policy, however, the government of South African president F.W. de Klerk in 1990–91 repealed most of the social legislation that provided the legal basis for apartheid, including the Population Registration Act. Systematic racial segregation remained deeply entrenched in South African society, though, and continued on a de facto basis. A new constitution that enfranchised blacks and other racial groups was adopted in 1993 and took effect in 1994. All-race national elections, also in 1994, produced a coalition government with a black majority. These developments marked the end of legislated apartheid, though not of its entrenched social and economic effects.
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While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
"apartheid." Britannica School.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2014. Web. 5 Feb. 2014.
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