Classroom Readings and Notes
Chapter 13 – Apartheid and South Africa
Section 2 – The Rise of Apartheid
What is Apartheid?
Apartheid, which literally means “separateness” in Afrikaans, describes a system of laws and policies
of total racial segregation in South Africa that began in 1948, when the National Party came to power,
and ended in 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected President in the first democratic elections.
Apartheid Laws and Legislation
1948 Elections
In 1948, the Reunited National Party, representing the white Afrikaners, won the national election on a
platform of racism and segregation under the slogan of "apartheid"- or "apartness" in the Afrikaans
language. Apartheid built upon earlier laws, but made segregation more rigid and enforced it more
aggressively. It significantly extended the reach of the racist state and led to a systematic and
fundamental deterioration of the position of black people in South Africa for the next four decades.
Although the majority of whites supported apartheid, some 20 percent did not.
Beginning of Apartheid
The 1950s can be described as the era of "petty apartheid," when the Nationalists passed many
new racist laws similar to Jim Crow in the United States in order to enforce a racially separate and
unequal social order.
Two pillars of apartheid became law in 1950: the Population Registration Act and the Group Areas
Act. The Population Registration Act classified all South Africans as members of the White, African,
Coloured, or Indian racial groups. Official teams or Boards were established to come to an ultimate
conclusion on those people whose race was unclear. This caused much difficulty, especially for
coloured people, separating their families as members were allocated different races.
The Group Areas Act imposed strict residential racial segregation. 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 Apartheid social laws damaged countless families and
communities, as the government forcibly removed blacks to African, Coloured, or Indian "townships"
(also known as "locations") on the outskirts of cities and towns. In the process of enforcing this plan,
government destroyed cultured and racially mixed neighborhoods, such as Sophiatown in
Johannesburg and District Six in Cape Town. Township residents tried to rebuild their lives despite
poor housing, material poverty, and, for Africans, the constant danger of arrest for not carrying a pass
book. Any coloured or black South African that has been registered was forced to carry a pass book,
similar to a passport, to travel within South Africa.
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.
The 1953 Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, for instance, imposed segregation and separation on
all public facilities, including post offices, beaches, stadiums, parks, toilets, and cemeteries, and buses
and trains as well. An act of 1956 formalized racial discrimination in employment. Television was not
introduced until 1975 because the government viewed it as dangerous
Apartheid and Education
The impact of apartheid on black education was devastating. Verwoerd’s 1953 Bantu Education Act
established an inferior education system for Africans. African school’s curriculum was designed to
develop manual laborers, not young men and women with careers. Similar discriminatory education
laws were also imposed on Coloureds, who had lost the right to vote in 1956, and Indians. In the higher
education sector, the Extension of University Education Act of 1959 prevented black students from
attending "white" universities (except with government permission) and created separate and unequal
institutions for Africans, Coloureds, and Indians. The apartheid government also destroyed intellectual
and cultural life through censorship of books, movies, and radio and television programs. The
Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 required the use of Afrikaans and English on an equal basis in high
schools outside the homelands.
Women under apartheid
Oppression against African women was different from discrimination against men. They had very few
or no legal rights, no access to education and no right to own property. Jobs were often hard to find but
many African women worked as agricultural or domestic workers though wages were extremely low,
if existent. Children suffered from diseases caused by malnutrition and sanitary problems, and
mortality rates were therefore high. Marriage law and births were also controlled by the government
and the pro-apartheid Dutch Reformed Church, who tried to restrict African birth rates.
Grand Apartheid and Bantustans
In the 1960s the pursuit of white domination led to a new policy of "Grand Apartheid." As a massive
social engineering project, grand apartheid created ethnically defined "Bantustans" (or "Homelands").
Between 1960 and 1985, approximately 3.5 million Africans were forcibly removed to alleged
"homelands." The apartheid regime also envisioned them as "independent" territories that would lead
the denial of South African citizenship to millions of Africans. Located in the most unproductive
regions of the country, Bantustans were inhabited largely by poverty-stricken women and children
since men migrated annually to work in South African cities and towns, and farms as well. Generally,
government-approved "tribal" leaders ruled over the Bantustans in violent and corrupt fashion with the
full support of the South African government, which was responsible for their entire budgets and
provided military assistance.
The "homeland" system
Under the homeland system, the South African government attempted to divide South Africa into a
number of separate states. In 1958 the Promotion of Black Self-Government Act was passed, and many
black South Africans who had never resided in their identified "homeland" were removed from the
cities to the homelands.
Ten homelands were ultimately allocated to different black ethnic groups: Lebowa (North Sotho, also
referred to as Pedi), QwaQwa (South Sotho), Bophuthatswana (Tswana), KwaZulu (Zulu), KaNgwane
(Swazi), Transkei and Ciskei (Xhosa), Gazankulu (Tsonga), Venda (Venda) and KwaNdebele
(Ndebele). Four of these accepted "independence" (Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda
in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981), although this was never recognized by any other country.
Once a homeland was granted its "independence," its designated citizens had their South African
citizenship revoked, replaced with citizenship in their homeland. These people were then issued
passports instead of passbooks. Citizens of the supposedly "autonomous" homelands also had their
South African
citizenship
circumscribed, meaning
they were no longer
legally considered South
African. The South
African government
attempted to treat black
South Africans like
illegal immigrants within
their own country.
Forced removals
During the 1960s, 1970s
and early 1980s, the
government
implemented a policy of
'resettlement', to force
people to move to their
designated "group
areas". Some argue that
over three and a half
million people were forced to resettle during this period. These removals included people re-located
due to slum clearance programs, white-owned farms, and “black areas”. The most famous forced
removals of the 1950s occurred in Johannesburg, when 60,000 people were moved to the new
township of Soweto.
In addition, each black homeland controlled its own separate education, health and police
system. Blacks were not allowed to buy hard liquor. They were able only to buy state-produced poor
quality beer (although this was relaxed later). Public beaches were racially segregated. Public
swimming pools, some pedestrian bridges, drive-in cinema parking spaces, graveyards, parks, and
public toilets were segregated. Cinemas and theatres in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks.
There were practically no cinemas in black areas. Most restaurants and hotels in white areas were not
allowed to admit blacks except as staff. Black Africans were prohibited from attending white churches
under the Churches Native Laws Amendment Act of 1957.
Blacks could never acquire land in white areas. In the homelands, much of the land belonged to
a 'tribe', where the local chief would decide how the land had to be utilized. This resulted in white
people owning almost all the industrial and agricultural lands and much of the prized residential land.
Most blacks were stripped of their South African citizenship when the "homelands" became
"independent". Thus, they were no longer able to apply for South African passports. Eligibility
requirements for a passport had been difficult for blacks to meet, the government contending that a
passport was a privilege, not a right.
In spite of the white minority’s enormous financial, political, and military power, it never
gained absolute control over South Africa. In reality, the daily suffering and humiliations brought
about by apartheid, and the systematic and brutal repression of human and civil rights, did not prevent
millions of black (and even some white) men, women, and youths from defiantly challenging apartheid
in South Africa. This popular resistance, and the apartheid state’s repressive response, is the focus of
the next section.