Apartheid in South Africa - The reign of White over Black.

WRITTEN BY : SHARANYA RAMESH
ROLL NUMBER - 3760

"We speak out to put the world on guard against what is happening in South Africa. The brutal policy of apartheid is applied before the eyes of the nations of the world. The peoples of Africa are compelled to endure the fact that on the African continent the superiority of one race over another remains official policy, and that in the name of this racial superiority murder is committed with impunity. Can the United Nations do nothing to stop this?"
— Che Guevara, speech to the United Nations as Cuba's representative, December 11, 1964.

Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority non-white inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained. South Africa was colonized by the English and Dutch in the seventeenth century. English domination of the Dutch descendents (known as Boers or Afrikaners) resulted in the Dutch establishing the new colonies of Orange Free State and Transvaal. The discovery of diamonds in these lands around 1900 resulted in an English invasion which sparked the Boer War. Following independence from England, an uneasy power-sharing between the two groups held sway until the 1940's, when the Afrikaner National Party was able to gain a strong majority. Strategists in the National Party invented apartheid as a means to enforce and maintain their control over the economic and social system. Initially, the aim of the apartheid was to maintain white domination while extending racial separation. Starting in the 60's, a plan of “Grand Apartheid” was executed, which emphasized more on territorial distribution and divide and also police repression if these “laws” were not followed.
Race laws touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of marriage between non-whites and whites, and the sanctioning of “white-only” jobs. Non-white political representation was completely abolished in 1970, and starting in that year black people were deprived of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of one of ten tribally based self-governing homelands called bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states.
There were many laws that were enforced upon the citizens of South Africa during this period. The first apartheid law was the Population Registration Act of 1950, which formalised racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of eighteen, specifying their racial group. Official teams were established to come to an ultimate conclusion on those people whose race was unclear. This caused difficulty, especially for coloured people, separating their families as members were allocated different races.
The second pillar of grand apartheid was the Group Areas Act of 1950. Until then, most settlements had people of different races living side by side. This Act put an end to diverse areas and determined where one lived according to race. Each race was allotted its own area, which was used in later years as a basis of forced removal. Further legislation in 1951 allowed the government to demolish black slums and forced white employers to pay for the construction of housing for those black workers who were permitted to reside in cities otherwise reserved for white people.
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of different races, and the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a different race a criminal offence. These laws not only just differentiated between the Whites and the Blacks, it was violent, resulting in the death of many black Africans.
The rise and spread of apartheid was a long and difficult struggle for the blacks in South Africa. Apartheid sparked significant internal resistance and violence as well as a long trade embargo against South Africa. Since the 1950s, a series of popular uprisings and protests were met with the banning of opposition and imprisoning of anti-apartheid leaders. As unrest spread and became more violent, state organisations responded with increasing repression and state-sponsored violence.
Reforms to apartheid in the 1980s failed to stop the mounting opposition, and in 1990 President Frederik Willem began negotiations to end apartheid, culminating in multi-racial democratic elections in 1994, which were won by the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela.
Even though apartheid as a regime does not exist today, racial discrimination can still be considered the order of the day. The South African government, is working hard towards establishing unity amongst the people in its country. As Oliver Tambo said, “Apartheid cannot be reformed; it has to be eliminated.”