Characteristics Of The South African Apartheid

During the period of Apartheid in South Africa between 1948 and 1994 the reactions of the South African citizens towards the legal separation of races varied depending on race, ideals and time period. After gold and diamonds were fud inSouthAfrica both the dutch and British wanted the land to themselves, leading to the Boer War from which the Dutch farmers emerged victorious. Following the Boer War and the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the Dutch Boers gained control over the majority of the land in the previously British Cape Colony along with the settlements they had already built, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Blacks in South Africa made up about eighty percent of the population but only lived on ten percent of

It has been known throughout the years the class conflicts between people around the world and how it affects many, but during today's times it is not as bad as the times when racial segregation took place between South Africa’s white minority and non-white majority. Nadine Gordimer, is a born and raised South African novelist whose writings focused on exile and alienation. She wrote many novels and short stories that related to South Africa's unjust political situation between the whites and non-whites in the 1900’s. One of the short stories that she wrote is “Country Lovers” which portrays the life in South Africa during those times and how apartheid, a policy that controlled any type of relation between white and black South African’s endorsing racial segregation and racial discrimination against the blacks, ruled over the country. Class played a big role in this short story because the way the whites and non-whites were treated was very different and their opportunities were not equally shared. I believe the ideology of racism was why the non-white South Africans were treated so poorly. This all makes me aware of where I stand in acceptance by other of my social, economic, or political practices. I come to realize that things like this still happen today.

This paper will be outlining the basic structure of the laws that segregated the black population of South Africa throughout the 1900’s. It will also be explaining important people involved in the dismantling of apartheid and the foreign nations that helped to influence South Africa’s government to change. However, the primary goal for this paper is to inform the reader about the reasoning behind apartheid, the events leading up to it, and how it was reformed.

We commence by examining South-African apartheid and its historical and theoretical context. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation used in the overtly racist regime in South Africa from 1948 to 1991. It was based on laws that banned “marriage and sexual relations between different “population groups” and requir[ed] separate residential areas for people of mixed race (“Coloreds”), as well as for Africans” (Fredrickson 3). These laws were based on the same obsession with “race purity” that characterized other racist regimes, most notably Jim Crow America and Nazi Germany. The system was justified in terms of “cultural essentialism” and “seperate development”. Cultural essentialism means that each culture has inherent features that differentiate the members of this cultural group from others. The concept of separate development

The avowal that the apartheid ‘vision for democracy’ necessitated state terror and repression is evident when examining the South African apartheid system between 1960 -1994. The system of apartheid spiked significant internal resistance, hence, the ideology for apartheid stems from the creation of a white state surrounded by economically interdependent and politically dependent black states, which required state terror and repression to ensure mounting resistance and international condemnation did not abolish the apartheid system. The government responded to a series of popular uprisings and protests with police brutality, which increased support for armed resistance. Detentions were set without trial, torture, censorship and the outlawing of political oppositional organizations such as The African National Congress, the Black Conscious Movement, the Azanian Peoples Organisation, The Pan Africanist Congress and the United Democratic Front, were all a result of the apartheid government due to political resistance.

In the article ”Learn about South Africa”, Hannah Lantos educates us on how Black and coloured people who lived in South Africa, had little rights until a man named Nelson Mandela came along and restored equality. The native people in South Africa lived peacefully until diamonds and gold were discovered and many people went there to work in the mines and to own them (Lantos par.3). The conflict still continued and the native people had a very difficult time.”The Natives’ Land Act of 1913 severely restricted the ownership or land by ‘Black’ to the small percentage of 7%” (Lantos par. 4). The National Party was elected and they intensified the racial segregation program (Lantos par. 4). A man named Nelson Mandela was against this unfair apartheid

South Africa has long been known for the racist policies that were implemented by the government during apartheid. In reality, many of these policies were introduced before apartheid, and thus South Africa today is affected by centuries rather than just a few decades of racism. The racial practice and policies of the nineteenth century that developed out of South Africa’s mineral revolution were then carried into the apartheid era, and are of particular importance for black South African families. The desires of the white population to have sufficient labour and to monitor it while reserving urban areas for whites occasioned the government to create restrictive laws starting in the late nineteenth century which were carried into apartheid. These laws and practices broke apart the South African black family and has resulted in enduring consequences for black families and South Africa.

The Atlantic article by Kenichi Serino, entitled “How Apartheid Haunts a New Generation of South Africans”, discusses the lasting effect of the segregation system in South Africa, specifically focusing on young adults and the way in which they face limits due to lasting racial sentiments in areas such as education, as well as job opportunity. Serino succeeds in provoking an emotional response in the audience through the avenue of powerful and strategically placed quotes, incorporated with the grim reality of the situation. Additionally, the author of the piece sets out to familiarize the audience with the concept of apartheid through his informative style and also, inform the reader of the long term injustice suffered by Africans in the country long after the initial period of official discrimination.

Thousands of people were poor they had to move to places called homelands. They were all black areas with the least fertile land and there blacks lived in poverty. In the 1950’s blacks and some whites started peaceful protests. Thousands of men and women were killed in the protests. All protests even the peaceful ones were banned. In the 1970’s other countries around the world joined in the fight against aparthied. They did this by not lending them money and not sending over recources. Also they even furthure went in not letting South Africa compete in the Olympic games. In 1990 F. W. de Klerk a afrinkanor who was the presedent led in abolishing the aparthied laws. In 1994 a new presedent was in office, Nelson Mandela. He was the first black presedent in South Africa. A equality movement was started by Mandela. A new presedent was elected and Mandela retired. Mbeki has kept encouraging equal rights and has been working on other large issues as well. They are now a democratic goverment and a new constitution has been writtin. For the most part there are now equal rights and black and whites have the same

The government and the white population forced the black people to stay in separate places, be separate from other people of the opposite race and, mistreated them and made almost all of their rights non – existent. In South Africa, the ways of the apartheid law were almost linked to the same tactic the Nazi government used against the Jews during the Second World War. Apart from the killings of millions of Jews in Germany, Hitler’s rules of separating the Jews from the Germans, not supplying the Jews with jobs and other very dictatorial rules were almost linked to the way the South African Apartheid government used against the black people. Thus the white people lived a more privileged life then the black

Twenty years after the end apartheid in South Africa, there still stands the same Squatter town with tin sheets as roughs and the same living poor living conditions that were established in the early 19 hundrends. These Squatter towns are present throughout South Africa, all known for their different colorful characteristics, and lack of racial diversity. With “63% of black children living in households earning less than 800 rands, compared to only 4% of white children” racial inequality is enormously existent. In “South Africa 58.5% of whites and 51% of Indians enter some form of higher education, compared to only 12% of blacks.” [21 The overall lack of economic and educational opportunities for blacks in South Africa is appalling. In a nation were 80% of the population is black, one can truly see a sobering example of how powerful and lasting systematic and historical racism is, even when there is overwhelming majority in the population; that majority population can still suffer from oppression.

Throughout history, Racial segregation has been used as a means to power and control, often for a minority, and South Africa was no different in any manner, almost a perfect, textbook case of oppression. Source 1 explains how the Apartheid first began in the 1940’s, developed and used due to economic and political instability. The English and the Dutch controlled South Africa, vying for its fertile lands, people, and its profusion of precious and strategic minerals, leading to Boer War. When South Africa gained its independence from England, there was an internal power struggle for decades until the Afrikaner National Party devised the apartheid, enacting it in 1948 as a means to control the economic and social landscapes that they had lost their grasp on. The Apartheid, however, did not instantly create the

South Africa really began to suffer when apartheid was written into the law. Apartheid was first introduced in the 1948 election that the Afrikaner National Party won. The plan was to take the already existing segregation and expand it (Wright, 60). Apartheid was a system that segregated South Africa’s population racially and considered non-whites inferior (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”). Apartheid was designed to make it

Many of the contemporary issues in South Africa can easily be associated with the apartheid laws which devastated the country. The people of South Africa struggle day by day to reverse “the most cruel, yet well-crafted,” horrific tactic “of social engineering.” The concept behind apartheid emerged in 1948 when the nationalist party took over government, and the all-white government enforced “racial segregation under a system of legislation” . The central issues stem from 50 years of apartheid include poverty, income inequality, land ownership rates and many other long term affects that still plague the brunt of the South African population while the small white minority still enjoy much of the wealth, most of the land and opportunities

The population of South Africa were segregated into categouries of Coloured, Black, White and Indian. Black South African lives were affected in many different ways and it still is today. Apartheid meant great hardship, it meant that Black people were unable to live a reasonable life. All natural civil rights were taken away from them. Public beaches, drive-in cinema parking spaces, graveyards, parks and public toilets are just a few things that were racially segregated. You can say that the church was on of few places races could mix without breaking the law. (Wikipedia, 2013)