Apartheid

Significance: Apartheid refers to the rigid system of total racial segregation, or, literally, “apartness,” that evolved in South Africa between 1948 and the early 1990s. Its persistence until late in the twentieth century, in an otherwise “advanced” industrialized society, provoked world protest and elicited comparisons with racism in North America.

Apartheid can be defined briefly as the stringent policy of racial segregation and oppression that existed in the Republic of South Africa between the late 1940s and mid-1990s. Under apartheid, the government officially divided the country’s population into “whites,” “coloureds,” and “blacks.” The country was completely under the control of the White minority; other groups were restricted to certain areas of the country and had to obey an elaborate set of laws that mandated virtually every aspect of life, including where and how they could work.

The Development of Apartheid

The Dutch, who established Cape Town in 1652, were the first European settlers in what is now South Africa. Much of the area remained under Dutch control until the nineteenth century, when the British Empire became the dominant colonial power. In 1820, some five thousand British colonists settled Port Elizabeth, marking the start of a significant English-speaking White population in the region. A substantial Dutch-descended White population remained, however, known as Boers or Afrikaners, who largely spoke the Afrikaans language. After much conflict, the British and the Boers united to form the Union of South Africa in 1910 (it became the Republic of South Africa in 1961). The Afrikaner minority held much power in the new country, and sociopolitical tensions remained between the various ethnic groups. The first major Black African opposition movement, the African National Congress (ANC), was formed in 1912. An influential Afrikaner nationalist party, the National Party, was formed in 1914. South Africa gained full sovereignty from the United Kingdom in 1931.

Black people were subjected to a wide variety of oppressive measures after Europeans arrived. By the time the Union of South Africa was formed, Asians and people of mixed ancestry also frequently faced discrimination. In the 1930s and 1940s, growth in the cities drew tens of thousands of Black people looking for work. Black slums developed, and militant struggles erupted around the country. The National Party came to power in 1948. Its leaders believed that the increasing Black urban population presented a threat, so they institutionalized and extended White supremacy and Black oppression more than any previous regime had. It was this all-encompassing system of racial stratification would become known as apartheid.

Prime Minister Daniel François Malan, the leader of the National Party, delineated four initial components of the apartheid program. Black representation to the House of Assembly would end; Black people would have limited self-government in their reserved lands; coloured voters would be removed from the voter rolls in Cape Province; and all schools and universities would be racially segregated. Many “petty apartheid laws” (for example, a law that made it illegal for Black people to use first-class railroad cars) were passed. In 1949, marriage between persons of different races was outlawed, and a 1950 act made sexual relations between the races illegal and punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Additional Restrictions

The Group Areas Act of 1950 established separate geographical areas for use by White, coloured, and Black people. Provisions were included for the forcible removal of Black people from areas where they were not wanted by the government. The Population Registration Act required registration at birth as white, coloured, or African; an Asian category was added later. The Suppression of Communism Act made the expression of a number of ideas illegal, including anything that would promote hostility between people of European and African descent; in 1982, this was strengthened by the Internal Security Act. Pass laws and “influx control” laws mandated that all Black people sixteen years of age or older obtain a passbook (later called a “reference book”), which was to be carried at all times.

In 1951, the Bantu Authorities Act instituted a plan of “separate development” for the different groups in the country. Black “homelands” were established as the only areas where Black South Africans could reside. Only within certain isolated and poor rural areas could Black people exercise any political freedom. Many men were forced to migrate to work in White parts of the country. Workers signed one-year contracts and were required to return to their homelands before being re-employed. Women, mostly domestic servants, were employed in the cities, and contact with their families was restricted. Violators were fined or imprisoned.

Protests and Violence

After the National Party rose to power, groups such as the ANC, led by Albert John Lutuli and Nelson Mandela, began to organize their followers in strikes and acts of civil disobedience to protest and to attract international attention. Church groups condemned apartheid, but their protests had no effect on government policies. Membership in the ANC soon grew to more than 100,000. In the “defiance campaign” of 1952, ANC leaders wrote to Prime Minister Malan requesting the repeal of the Bantu Authorities Act; they were rebuffed and were told essentially that the government would use any means necessary to enforce its new policies.

Indeed, through the years, protests and their violent, deadly suppression became a regular part of life for Black South Africans. The infiltration of police informers led to arrests and the banning of the ANC’s leadership. ANC leaders and other Black leaders were thrown in jail for years; one, Steven Biko, died in jail under questionable circumstances. Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. In 1969, sixty-nine people who were protesting the pass laws died in the Sharpeville massacre; most were shot in the back. In its wake, the ANC and the Pan-African Congress, another antiapartheid protest group, were outlawed. The ANC went underground and into exile, eventually emerging with full force in the 1980s. In 1976, the Soweto riot saw many more Black South Africans killed in the putdown of a protest begun by students over being required to use the Afrikaans language as their means of expression in school. In August 1983 the United Democratic Front was formed as an umbrella organization of more than six hundred groups across racial and functional lines; it pressured the government to dismantle apartheid.

Apartheid Ends

In August 1989 Frederik Willem De Klerk became president of South Africa. As a result of mounting internal, international, and global opposition to apartheid, he slowly began to dismantle the apartheid laws. In 1990, the government released Mandela from prison and lifted the ban on the ANC. These actions and others started South Africa on a course that would change its history forever.

After Mandela’s release from prison, he and De Klerk began a series of talks, the first of which took place in May 1990, to move toward a democratic system of inclusion. In June, 1991, De Klerk ordered that the major apartheid laws be repealed, and formal negotiations to end apartheid began in December 1991. Throughout the process, violent confrontations between South Africa’s Black and White populations continued, with Black leaders accusing the White government of continuing brutality. Negotiations were plagued by numerous roadblocks, but early in 1993, Mandela, De Klerk, and twenty-six other parties began the negotiating forum that set April 27, 1994, as the date for South Africa’s first multiracial national democratic election based on adult suffrage and the “one person, one vote” principle.

Numerous world governments had had economic sanctions in place against South Africa for many years, and many investment companies and corporations had divested themselves of their interests in South African ventures or pulled out of South Africa. Sanctions and divestment were intended to pressure the government into repealing apartheid. By late 1993, because of the progress toward ending apartheid, Mandela and the ANC called for the removal of sanctions and called for new planning regarding investment in South Africa.

On November 17, 1993, South African negotiating parties ratified the new constitution which would bring an end to White domination by renouncing the country’s racist past. Fundamental rights included such democratic basics as free speech, fair trials, prohibition against torture, a promise that people can live where they choose, an assurance that citizens cannot be stripped of their citizenship, and limitation on the president’s power to declare a state of emergency. Discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, physical disability, or age was also prohibited. The ten self-governing homelands that were established as reservations for Black people were abolished. In December 1993, the last White-dominated South African Parliament voted overwhelmingly to approve the new constitution.

Legacy

South Africa has continued to grapple with the legacy of apartheid. Mandela's election as the nation's president in 1994 was seen as a landmark global event marking the end of formal apartheid, but it could not instantly change the deep-rooted racial inequality in society. Mandela's administration oversaw the development of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body that sought to manage restorative justice efforts at the national scale. Though scholars continue to debate the commission's ultimate effectiveness, it was widely considered to play an important role in beginning the healing process. (It was succeeded by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in 2000.) Nevertheless, over the following decades South Africa continued to struggle with persistent racial disparities, as reflected in many economic and educational statistics. Efforts such as the ANC's Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) under President Mandela attempted to directly address such lingering inequality, but were often criticized for limited success. Many researchers noted ongoing socioeconomic stratification along racial lines in South Africa into the 2020s.

The term "apartheid" has also come to be used in some situations outside of South Africa, in reference to similar instances of systematic racial or ethnic segregation. Notably, some activists took up the term in reference to Israeli discrimination against Palestinians, especially in the West Bank. More generally, scholars and human rights advocates have used terminology such as "religious apartheid," "gender apartheid," and "social apartheid" to discuss institutionalized segregation that does not necessarily fall along racial categories. Many observers have also compared South African apartheid with segregation in the United States, including in the ways in which both have had long-lasting societal repercussions well after being legally prohibited.

Bibliography

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