Separateness and Inequality
 As
in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, but for much
longer, decolonization in South Africa was
tainted by the clash between white and
black citizens of the newly free country
 The government that had declared freedom
from Britain was controlled by the white
minority, largely descended from Dutch Boers
 These Afrikaners still practiced a policy of
apartheid, or extreme racial segregation
 South
Africa is one of the world’s richest
sources of gold and diamonds
 Therefore, from the 1960s through the
1990s, the white government of South Africa
turned its nation into the wealthiest, most
modern, and most industrialized nation on
the continent
 However, its system of apartheid or racial
separateness made South Africa one of
Africa’s most repressive nations as well
 By
the 1980s, internal unrest, economic
problems, and international revulsion were
placing extreme pressure on the South
African government to abandon the policy of
apartheid
 Groups like the Zulu Confederation and the
African National Congress opposed the white
government
 The
ANC’s leader, Nelson Mandela, gained the
status of sympathetic dissident during his
long imprisonment (1964-1990) by the white
authorities
 His
wife, Winnie Mandela, continued the
struggle on his behalf
 Another moral figure in the anti-apartheid
movement was Bishop Desmond Tutu, a black
clergyman in the Anglican Church and a
Nobel Peace Prize recipient
 In
1994, free elections
resulted in the ANC’s victory
and Mandela became the
country’s president
 But to fully appreciate the
profound change that South
Africa experienced with the
end of the apartheid era and
the beginning of an era of
greater equality, it is
important to delve more fully
into the history of the region
and the development of and
then resistance to the
apartheid system
 In
1948, South Africa had a new government,
the National Party
 Elected by a small majority in a whites-only
election, its victory followed a steady
increase in black migration to the country's
towns
 This migration had led to a fear of black
domination among the minority whites - the
Afrikaners, and the English-speaking
community, mainly of British descent
 Among
the first measures were statutes to
separate the residential areas, not only of
Africans and whites, but also of mixed race
people and Indians
 Then, racially mixed marriages were
prohibited, as well as what was called
“immorality” between the races (sexual
relations)
 Apartheid, or racial separation,
overshadowed South Africa for the next four
decades
 The
system's chief objective was to deny
non-whites the fruits of supposedly white
labors: commerce and industry
 Hendrick Verwoerd, South Africa's president
in the 1950s and 1960s, said: " ... the white
man, therefore, not only has an undoubted
stake in - and right to - the land which he
developed into a modern industrial state
from denuded grassland and empty valleys
and mountains. But - according to all the
principles of morality - it was his, is his, and
must remain his"
 Of course, many individuals saw it differently
 They believed that it was indeed African
labor that contributed to the rise of a
modern industrial state
 Indeed,
much of the apartheid
doctrine built upon an earlier history
of segregation
 And on an assumption of supremacy
among South Africa's whites that
stemmed back to the first European
settlers there in 1652
 But apartheid was more than just a
brutal power game
 In theory, it also had a consistent
ideological base
 For the Afrikaners, descended from
Dutch immigrants, the idea that
different cultures should live apart was
nothing less than God's will
“The way Afrikaners justified apartheid was
to say it was God-ordained," said Stanley
Uys, "Most Afrikaaners are Calvinists and
there is a strong streak of determinism in
their makeup”
 It is important to remember that the first
serious effort to establish a settlement in
South Africa came in 1652, with the arrival
of Jan van Riebeeck and several employees
of the Dutch East India Company
 The purpose was to establish a secure fort
 Eventually, van Riebeeck purchased slaves
to do domestic and agricultural work
 By the mid-18th century half the white
adult males in the Cape colony own at least
one slave

 Until
1707, the Dutch East India Company
made some effort to encourage
immigration to the Cape
 During the 18th century the colony's
territory expanded more dramatically
than its population, for a reason directly
connected to a reliance on slaves
 Free burghers (similar to French
bourgeoisie) came to regard manual labor
as slaves' work
 So for many of these burghers there was
no other available employment
 The response to this unemployment was
to move away from the coast, into vast
open expanses sparsely occupied by
Khoikhoi and San tribes
 The
pretext for Britain's seizing of the Cape, as
the most strategic point on the important sea
route to India, was the French conquest of the
Netherlands in 1795
 This brought the Dutch into the European war
on France's side and made their attractive
African colony legitimate prey
 While the land returned briefly to Dutch
control, the Congress of Vienna left the
southern tip of Africa in British hands
 The British and the Dutch achieved an uneasy
peace
 That was until the discovery of gold and
diamonds in the Dutch colonies of the Orange
Free State and Transvaal
 After
the Boer Wars, the British gained
complete control of the land
 Following independence from England, an
uneasy power-sharing between the British and
Afrikaners 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 cement their control
over the economic and social system
 Initially, the aim of the apartheid was to
maintain white domination while extending
racial separation
 But starting in the 1960's, a plan of “Grand
Apartheid” was executed, emphasizing
territorial separation and police repression
 With
the enactment of apartheid
laws in 1948, racial discrimination
was institutionalized
 In 1950, the Population Registration
Act required that all South Africans
be racially classified into one of
three categories: white, black
(African), or colored (of mixed
decent)
 The colored category included major
subgroups of Indians and Asians
 Classification into these categories
was based on appearance, social
acceptance, and descent
 For
example, a white person was
defined as “in appearance obviously a
white person or generally accepted as a
white person”
 A person could not be considered white
if one of his or her parents were nonwhite
 The determination that a person was
“obviously white” would take into
account “his habits, education, and
speech and deportment and demeanor‘”
 A black person would be of or accepted
as a member of an African tribe or race,
and a colored person was one that was
not black or white
 The Department of Home Affairs (a
government bureau) was responsible for
the classification of the citizenry
 Non-compliance
with the race laws were
dealt with harshly
 All blacks were required to carry “pass
books” containing fingerprints, photo and
information on access to non-black areas
 In
1951, the Bantu Authorities Act established
a basis for ethnic government in African
reserves, known as “homelands”
 These homelands were independent states to
which each African was assigned by the
government according to the record of origin
(which was frequently inaccurate)
 All political rights, including voting, held by
an African were restricted to the designated
homeland
 The idea was that black South Africans would
be citizens of the homeland, losing their
citizenship in South Africa and any right of
involvement with the South African
Parliament which held complete hegemony
over the homelands
 From
1976 to 1981, four of these homelands
were created, denationalizing nine million
South Africans
 Thus, Africans living in the homelands
needed passports to enter South Africa:
aliens in their own country
 In
1953, the Public Safety Act and the
Criminal Law Amendment Act were passed,
which empowered the government to declare
stringent states of emergency and increased
penalties for protesting against or supporting
the repeal of a law
 The penalties included fines, imprisonment
and whippings
 In 1960, a large group of blacks in Sharpeville
refused to carry their passes; the
government declared a state of emergency
 The emergency lasted for 156 days, leaving
69 people dead and 187 people wounded
 During
the states of emergency which
continued intermittently until 1989, anyone
could be detained without a hearing by a
low-level police official for up to six months
 Thousands of individuals died in custody,
frequently after gruesome acts of torture
 Those who were tried were sentenced to
death, banished, or imprisoned for life, like
Nelson Mandela
 The
Sharpeville Massacre was a
watershed, drawing attention to
South Africa
 By the 1970s, the world was
waking up to the reality of
apartheid
 Mass protests and economic
sanctions followed
 And what stung the white South
Africans most of all was their
virtual exclusion from world
sporting competitions
 The
Soweto riots of 1976 were the
most brutal and violent riots that
had taken place against the South
African apartheid administration
 It was also amazing in how far
and how fast the riot spread
 Its significance would go beyond
the violence on the streets
 The police actions during the riots
would be part of what instigated
a world-wide boycott of South
African products and signaled the
increased militancy of the black
population of South Africa
 During
a reorganization of the Bantu
Education Department of the government,
the South African apartheid government
decided to start enforcing a long-forgotten
law requiring that secondary education be
conducted only in Afrikaans, rather than in
English or any of the native African languages
 This was bitterly resented by both teachers
and students
 Many teachers themselves did not speak
Afrikaans (an extremely difficult language to
learn) and so could not teach the student
 The students resented being forced to learn
the language of their oppressors and saw it
as a direct attempt to cut them off from
their original culture
 By
1976, several teachers were
ignoring the directive and were
fired, prompting staff
resignations
 Tensions grew
 Students refused to write papers
in Afrikaans and were expelled
 The students of one school after
another went on strike
 The government response was to
simply shut the down schools
and expel the striking students
 A protest march was organized
in the black Soweto township
just outside Johannesburg on
June 16,1976
 Over
20,000 students turned up to the march,
followed closely by the police
 The regular day-to-day tension between blacks
and the apartheid regime’s police force was
coupled now with the anger directed at the
recent education act
 Conflict began almost immediately, as police
fired round after round of tear-gas and then guns
into the crowds
 The police showed no mercy attacked students of
all ages, armed or unarmed
 In the book, Kaffir Boy, a young boy called David
described the police’s actions on the first day of
the riot: "They opened fire. They didn’t give any
warning. They simply opened fire...And small
children, small defenseless children, dropped
down like swatted flies. This is murder, coldblooded murder"
 Two
whites died and at least 150 blacks, mostly
school children
 The liberation movement among blacks spread
to teachers, churchmen, and others
 The injustice of the apartheid system increased
anti-apartheid movements in the United States
and Europe
 These anti-apartheid movements were gaining
support for boycotts against South Africa, for
the withdrawal of U.S. firms from South Africa
and for the release of Mandela
 South Africa was becoming an outlaw in the
world community of nations
 Investing in South Africa by Americans and
others was coming to an end
 Nelson
Mandela had been one of the ANC's
(African National Congress) deputy presidents
 The ANC was an organization dedicated to
the end of apartheid and greater equality for
Black South Africans
 By the late 1950s, faced with increasing
government discrimination, Mandela moved
the ANC in a more radical direction
 Mandela was tried for treason in 1956, but
acquitted after a five-year trial
 In
1963, Mandela and other ANC leaders
were tried for plotting to overthrow the
government by violence
 The following year Mandela was sentenced
to life imprisonment
 He was held in Robben Island prison, off
the coast of Cape Town, and later in
Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland
 During his years in prison he became an
international symbol of resistance to
apartheid
 Mandela spent 27 years in prison
 In 1993, he was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize
 In 1994, Mandela was elected the first
Black president of South Africa