A Brief History of Apartheid in South Africa

1. A Brief History of Apartheid in South Africa

2. How was Apartheid born? Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning “apartness” and it was a government policy designed to keep the races separate and unequal. The following slides tell South Africa’s story of brutality, exploitation, and eventually, liberation.

3. Early South African History • The earliest people in S. Africa were the San (Bushmen) and Khoi (Hottentots), dating back about 40,000 years; the San were nomadic hunters & gatherers; the Khoi were pastoralists and raised cattle • They intermarried and coexisted, thus they are often called Khoisan people • Much later, the Bantu people migrated south & dominated the Khoisan. The Bantu were physically larger with more advanced technology. (domestic animals, farmed crops, metal working and pottery) and lived in villages. • The Bantu tribes of Xhosa and Zulu pushed the Khoisan out of the best areas and into places like the Kalahari Desert.

5. European Arrival • The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in 1652 • The Dutch East India Company ran the Cape Colony and contributed to apartheid in several ways. One, they developed a distinct and separate culture and economy dependent on slave labor. Two, the outnumbered whites required natives to carry identification cards as a means of control. This was the precursor of the Pass Laws. • The British invaded Cape Town in 1795 in order to keep the territory from Holland’s ally, France. • They imposed their culture and law upon the Afrikaners; one of the most significant was Ordinance No. 50 (1828) which granted all Khoi and free non-whites equality with whites; this esp. angered the Dutch and was one of the issues that led to the Great Trek.

7. The Great Trek • In 1834, the Boers (Dutch for “farmer”), fled the Cape in search of land away from British control. This was known as the Great Trek. • They headed northeast to the interior of S. Africa and crossed mountains and deserts, faced opposition by the Zulu which had just recently conquered an empire (mfecane), and won a victory at Blood River which they thought could only be won by God • The Afrikaners’ struggle lead to their persecution complex • which evolved into their belief that they were a chosen people • which meant they were culturally superior to the English and the Africans, • hence the desire for apartness, or apartheid.

9. The Boer War • Diamonds in 1867 gold in 1886 • The British and many others came for the goodies and the Boers tried to keep them out • In 1899, the Boers rebelled against British rule • The Boers succeeded in guerilla warfare so the British put women and children into some of the world’s first concentration camps • The British won and Union of South Africa was created in 1902

11. The Union of South Africa • The various South African states (Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transkei, etc.) unified in 1910. At this time there were 4 million blacks, 1.25 whites, .5 million “coloreds,” and 150,000 Indians. Despite the numbers, blacks were not given voting rights. • Even though most thought the British were more racially enlightened, they created a number of laws to maintain racial segregation and inequality. In 1913, they passed the Natives Land Act which made it illegal for blacks to buy or lease land off the homelands (75% of the pop. restricted to 7.5% of the countryside); in 1923 they passed the Urban Areas Act which called for segregation in urban areas and illegal for blacks to live in cities unless needed by whites. • In response, black, Indian, and “colored” people formed resistance groups. Mohandas Gandhi was one of the early leaders, and in 1912, the African National Congress was born. • By 1961, South Africa left the British Commonwealth and became the Republic of South Africa (RSA)

13. Apartheid • In 1948 the National Party, a nationalist Afrikaner political party, beat the British political parties for control of South Africa • Their primary work and lasting legacy was the codification of apartheid, a racist system of separate and unequal. • They banned mixed marriages and interracial sex. The Group Areas Act physically separated everyone by race, which meant that non-white families were often separated for months at a time. The Separate Amenities Act segregated all public facilities, and the Pass Laws were more strictly enforced. This is in addition to the laws which denied blacks voting and land ownership rights. • The official church of South Africa, the Dutch Reformed Church provided the moral “justification” for apartheid by saying that separation of races was divinely ordained and that the “volk” had a holy mission to preserve the purity of the white race.

21. Resistance to Apartheid • All non-whites in South Africa created organizations to oppose apartheid. The most famous were the African National Congress (ANC), Pan African Congress (PAC), and the Black Consciousness movement. • At first they used only non-violent methods to oppose apartheid; as those methods were outlawed, they resorted to more violent means, believing they could either “submit or fight.” The ANC’s armed group, the Spear of the Nation, advocated specific types of violence. • In 1955 various anti-apartheid groups wrote the Freedom Charter, a document that envisioned a non-racial democratic South Africa that became the goal of anti-apartheid groups for the next 40 years. • In Soweto in 1976, Steve Biko led the Black Consciousness movement against the use of Afrikaans in black schools. In one year, over 1000 blacks died in the struggle to be able to speak their own language instead of the language of their oppressor. From then on, “liberation before education” was their credo.

23. The Sharpeville Massacre • In 1960 the Pan African Congress (PAC) called for a nationwide demonstration against the Pass Laws. • When demonstrators protested outside the Sharpeville police station, the police opened fire, killing 69 people and wounding 160. This massacre educated the world about the evils of apartheid and was the beginning of many more violent actions by the military and police of South Africa. • In response to the massacre, the ANC and PAC were banned, and the police could detain people indefinitely without trial. • By 1985,the government declared a state of emergency, imposed martial law, censored the media, and by 1988 had imprisoned 30,000 people without trial. It wasn’t until 1990 that most apartheid laws were repealed, and not until 1994 when blacks could vote for the first time in 300 years.