Apartheid, an Afrikaans term that literally translates to “separateness,” was a system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination that existed in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s.
Sign segregating a beach in South Africa during apartheid.
The Roots of Apartheid
The roots of apartheid can be found in Dutch and British colonialism. Before colonization, the land now known as South Africa was inhabited by various African peoples, such as the Zulu, Swazi, and Khoi. Racial discrimination against Black people in South Africa dates to the beginning of large-scale European colonisation of South Africa with the Dutch East India Company's establishment of a trading post in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, which eventually expanded into the Dutch Cape Colony.
The Dutch established a slave colony there in 1652-an expansion of the Dutch East India Company. The majority of these early settlers were farmers. They seized land from indigenous Africans and established a system of slavery so they could grow crops and raise livestock on a bigger scale.
By 1852, the English had taken control of the colony and the company. Britain first took control of the region in 1795, later establishing the Cape of Good Hope Colony. With the imposition of British rule and laws, around 13,000 Afrikaners left the settlement in the 1830s - embarking on what would become known as ‘The Great Trek’.
Read also: South African Apartheid's Legacy
It wasn’t until 1934 that South Africa became a sovereign nation within the British commonwealth. The newly established country was controlled politically, socially, and economically by its minority white population-a direct result of Dutch and English colonialism.
While the Dutch and British were colonial rivals, the laws and customs they enacted were all based around the exploitation of the indigenous African population. This effectively lay the groundwork for apartheid in the mid-twentieth century.
The Rise of Apartheid
The system of apartheid began in May 1948, when the National Party (NP) came to power in a narrow election victory. The Afrikaner National Party (NP) government formally codified apartheid as government policy in South Africa in 1948. Responding to the racist fears of this white minority over increased levels of Black migration to South African cities, the new government wasted little time imposing laws that further regulated the lives and movements of the African, Coloured (a term used to refer to people who were ‘mixed race’) and Indian populations.
Translated from Afrikaans apartheid means “apart-hood” or “separateness”, and its name embodied the ways the ruling white minority sought to separate itself from, and rule over, non-white people socially and spatially. The National Party's election platform stressed that apartheid would preserve a market for white employment in which non-whites could not compete.
Modeled after 20th-century Jim Crow laws developed in the United States, apartheid created a system of vast inequity that ensured that Black South Africans would not receive full citizenship.
Read also: Resistance to Apartheid
Apartheid called for the separate development of the different racial groups in South Africa. On paper it appeared to call for equal development and freedom of cultural expression, but the way it was implemented made this impossible. Apartheid made laws forced the different racial groups to live separately and develop separately, and grossly unequally too. It tried to stop all inter-marriage and social integration between racial groups.
Another reason why apartheid was seen as much worse than segregation, was that apartheid was introduced in a period when other countries were moving away from racist policies. People often wonder why such a policy was introduced and why it had so much support. Various reasons can be given for apartheid, although they are all closely linked. The main reasons lie in ideas of racial superiority and fear.
South Africa had allowed social custom and law to govern the consideration of multiracial affairs and of the allocation, in racial terms, of access to economic, social, and political status. The rapid economic development of World War II attracted black migrant workers in large numbers to chief industrial centres, where they compensated for the wartime shortage of white labour.
Afrikaner nationalists proclaimed that they offered the voters a new policy to ensure continued white domination. This policy was initially expounded from a theory drafted by Hendrik Verwoerd and was presented to the National Party by the Sauer Commission. The party gave this policy a name - apartheid.
Key Apartheid Laws
Apartheid was enforced through a system of strict laws that kept everything in its place. Numerous laws were passed in the creation of the apartheid state.
Read also: The History of Apartheid
Here are a few of the pillars on which it rested:
- 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act: Instituted an internal passport system designed to segregate the population, manage urbanization, and allocate migrant labor. Also known as the natives’ law, this early passbook act severely limited the movements of not only Black Africans but also other nonwhite people.
- 1950 Population Registration Act: This Act demanded that people be registered according to their racial group. Codified a strict racial hierarchy that divided the population into categories of White, Indian (South Asian), Coloured (mixed race), and Black. This meant that the Department of Home affairs would have a record of people according to whether they were white, coloured, black, Indian or Asian. People would then be treated differently according to their population group, and so this law formed the basis of apartheid.
- 1950 Group Areas Act: This was the act that started physical separation between races, especially in urban areas. The act also called for the removal of some groups of people into areas set aside for their racial group. People were legally segregated based on race and allocated separate areas to live and work in. The law relegated nonwhite groups further away from developed urban cities.
- 1952 Natives Act: Made it mandatory for all “non-whites” to carry passes and determined what areas they could live and work in. The 1952 Pass Laws Act established the passbook, an internal passport system for Black people over the age of 16, which sought to limit their movement under the threat of arrest and possible brutality by police.
- 1953 Reservation of Separate Amenities Act: Under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be reserved for a particular race, creating, among other things, separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities.
- 1953 Bantu Education Act: Created a separate, inferior education system for Black students. Apartheid laws stipulated the segregation of schools, including setting a different standard of education for different races. White schools were the best resourced, Coloured and Indian schools in the middle, while Black Africans were intentionally given an inferior education, specifically meant to ready them for manual labour and more menial jobs.
- 1959 Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act: This Act said that different racial groups had to live in different areas. Only a small percentage of South Africa was left for black people (who comprised the vast majority) to form their 'homelands'.
- Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949: While intermarriages between white and Black people were already illegal under a 1927 law, a revised version criminalised marriage and intimate relationships between white people and all other groups. The penalty was up to five years imprisonment.
These laws were designed to maintain white power in South Africa. It affected almost every aspect of an individual’s life - determining where they could live and work, their access to education, who they could socialize with, and what they could buy. Under apartheid 87 per cent of South Africa was reserved for whites. Rural Africans were confined to the overcrowded Bantustans and urban Africans were treated as migrant workers. These efforts to restrict African movement meant millions of families were broken.
Further laws had the aim of suppressing resistance, especially armed resistance, to apartheid. The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 banned the Communist Party of South Africa and any party subscribing to Communism. The act defined Communism and its aims so sweepingly that anyone who opposed government policy risked being labelled as a Communist.
The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for blacks and whites and was the first piece of legislation to support the government's plan of separate development in the bantustans. The Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of 1959 entrenched the NP policy of nominally independent "homelands" for blacks.
Why Was The Sharpeville Massacre A Turning Point? - Moments That Changed Everything
Resistance to Apartheid
It is important to note that apartheid was challenged throughout the entirety of its existence. These laws were challenged by South Africans through various forms of protest and refusal.
In 1955, the African National Congress (ANC), South African Indian Congress (SAIC), South African communists, and a number of other groups formed the Congress Alliance against apartheid.
For example, the 1956 Women’s March in Pretoria featured a multiracial group of 20,000 women protesting the 1952 passbook law. The 1957 Alexandra bus boycott in Johannesburg, at its height, involved 70,000 people refusing to use the bus system.
Organized resistance to apartheid came from all circles, and not only, as is often presumed, from those who suffered the negative effects of discrimination. Criticism also came from other countries, and some of these gave support to the South African freedom movements.
Some of the most important organizations involved in the struggle for liberation were the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and the United Democratic Front (UDF). There were also Indian and Coloured organized resistance movements (e.g. the Natal Indian Congress (NIC), the Coloured People's Organisation), white organized groups (e.g. the radical Armed Resistance Movement (ARM), and Black Sash) and church based groups (the Christian Institute).
In 1949, just after apartheid was introduced, the ANC started on a more militant path, with the Youth League playing a more important role. The ANC introduced their Programme of Action in 1949, supporting strike action, protests and other forms of non-violent resistance. Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu started to play an important role in the ANC in this period. In 1952 the ANC started the Defiance Campaign. This campaign called on people to purposefully break apartheid laws and offer themselves for arrest.
After the Sharpeville Massacre on the 21st March 1960, which saw the murder of 69 protesters when police opened fire on thousands of anti-pass protestors, the political situation in South Africa looked particularly bleak. The National Party declared a state of emergency after the massacre, arresting more than 2,000 people. They also moved quickly to ban both the ANC and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), forcing many anti-apartheid activists underground and into exile overseas.
While state repression made resistance within South Africa difficult, activists continued to find ways to challenge apartheid - both domestically and internationally. The 1970s saw renewed waves of resistance in the country with the Black Consciousness Movement and the Soweto student uprisings symbolizing the militancy of a new generation of African activists.
At the same time, exiled South Africans and a politically diverse range of groups continued to work on boycott, sanctions and divestment campaigns designed to political and economically isolate the apartheid state.
Facing internal and external pressures, National Party was forced into some reluctant reforms, and in 1990, released Nelson Mandela from Robben Island - twenty seven years after he was first imprisoned.
The Dismantling of Apartheid
Apartheid came to an end out of the need for the white minority to sustain itself, not because of a change of heart. There was nothing benevolent or voluntary about the retreat of the white government. It was because there was an internal criticism of apartheid, and people were basically saying, ‘In order to maintain white supremacy, you must maintain white survival.
In the early 1990s, apartheid was dismantled through a series of political negotiations, culminating in the country’s 1994 general election, South Africa’s first that allowed for universal suffrage. Three decades ago, on April 27, 1994, after centuries of white rule, Black South Africans voted in general elections for the first time.
The election established democracy in the nation and resulted in Nelson Mandela becoming South Africa’s first Black president. This marked the official end of apartheid rule, cemented days later when Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the country’s first Black president.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established in 1995 and led by Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu. This court-like body was convened to uncover the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid in the hopes of promoting healing and reconciliation among South African citizens.
Although the TRC demonstrated a government effort to address crimes committed by the apartheid regime, it did not offer justice to the victims-or provide accountability for the perpetrators. Today, many South Africans look back at the TRC trials as a farce that did little to change systemic inequities.
The Legacy of Apartheid Today
Legally and politically, much has changed in South Africa, with people of all races now free and equal under the law. Anyone is technically able to live, work and study anywhere, and people are free to interact and marry across colour lines. Black South Africans have democratically governed through the ANC for the past 30 years, compared with during apartheid when it was illegal for a Black person to even vote.
However, despite the significant gains, the legacy of apartheid is still present economically and spatially, which has contributed to South Africa being one of the least equal countries in the world.
Although South Africa’s economy grew with the end of apartheid and international sanctions, Black South Africans households continue to receive only a small share. In 2022, the World Bank classified South Africa as the most unequal country in the world, and listed race, the legacy of apartheid, a missing middle class and highly unequal land ownership, as the major drivers. About 10 percent of the population controls 80 percent of the wealth, its report said.
Besides, there is a national backlog of some 2.3 million households and individuals still waiting for a home since 1994. Meanwhile, rural homelands, where Black people were once forced to reside, continue to be at a disadvantage.
Here's a table summarizing the key aspects of Apartheid in South Africa:
| Aspect | Description |
|---|---|
| Definition | System of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination. |
| Timeline | 1948 to early 1990s. |
| Key Laws | Population Registration Act, Group Areas Act, Bantu Education Act, etc. |
| Resistance | Mass protests, armed struggle, strikes, boycotts, and international pressure. |
| Dismantling | Political negotiations, 1994 elections, and release of Nelson Mandela. |
| Legacy | Economic and spatial inequalities persist, affecting Black communities disproportionately. |
Nelson Mandela casting his vote in the 1994 election.
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