The Inequities of Apartheid

• The South African government that had declared freedom from Britain was controlled by a white minority, largely descended from Dutch Boers (the Afrikaners

• Afrikaners practiced a policy of apartheid, or extreme racial segregation

• In 1948, South Africa had a new government, the National Party

• Elected in a whites-only election, this party feared black domination of the white minority population

• Among its first measures were statutes to separate the residential areas

• Racially mixed marriages were prohibited

• Black South Africans were required to carry passbooks

• Bantustans or homelands for black South Africans were created

• Black South Africans were not allowed to vote in elections

• The chief objective of the apartheid system was to deny non-whites the fruits of supposedly white labors

• Yet African labor contributed to the rise of a modern industrial state in South Africa

• There was also an assumption of supremacy among South Africa's whites which stemmed back to the first European settlers in 1652

• Many Afrikaners accepted the idea that different cultures should live apart; that this was God's will

• Most Afrikaners were Calvinists with a strong streak of determinism

• It is important to remember that the first serious effort to establish a European settlement in South Africa came in 1652, with arrival of Jan van Riebeeck and Dutch East India Company

• Van Riebeeck purchased slaves to do domestic and agricultural work

• Free burghers (bourgeoisie) came to regard manual labor as slaves’ work

• So for many of burghers there was no other available employment than land ownership

• Response to unemployment was to move away from the coast, into vast open expanses sparsely occupied by Khoikhoi and San tribes

• Then the Congress of Vienna gave the southern tip of Africa to the British

• The British and the Dutch achieved an uneasy peace

• Until the discovery of gold and diamonds in Dutch Orange Free State and Transvaal

• After the Boer Wars (the Boers resented Britain’s abolition of slavery), the British gained complete control of the land

• And following independence from Great Britain, the British settlers and Afrikaners shared power until the Afrikaner National Party was able to gain a strong majority

• Strategists in the National Party invented apartheid

• The Apartheid laws established in 1948 institutionalized racial discrimination

• In 1950, the Population Registration Act required all South Africans to be racially classified: white, black (African), or colored (of mixed decent)

• All blacks were required to carry “pass books” containing fingerprints, photo and information on access to non-black areas

• In 1951, Bantu Authorities Act established a basis for ethnic government in African reserves, known as “homelands”

• Black South Africans were citizens of a homeland, losing citizenship in South Africa and any right of involvement with the South African Parliament

• From 1976 to 1981, four of these homelands were created, denationalizing nine million South Africans

• Thus, Africans living in homelands needed passports to enter South Africa

• In 1960, a large group of blacks in Sharpeville refused to carry passes; the government declared a state of emergency

• The emergency lasted for 156 days, leaving 69 people dead; 187 people wounded

• The Soweto riots of 1976 were most brutal

• The Apartheid government decided to start enforcing a long-forgotten law requiring secondary education be conducted only in Afrikaans

• Students resented being forced to learn language of their oppressors

• The Government’s response was to shut down the schools and expel striking students

• In Soweto township on June 16,1976, students organized marches and protests

• Police showed no mercy attacked students of all ages, armed or unarmed

• International boycotts against South Africa developed

• There was pressure for the withdrawal of U.S. firms from South Africa and for release of Mandela

• South Africa was ostracized from world community

• In 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison

• In 1993, F.W. De Klerk (the white South African president who dismantled formally dismantled apartheid) and Nelson Mandela were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• In 1994, Mandela was elected the first Black president of South Africa