Apartheid

Apartheid is a term that means separateness, and was a system of racial segregation in South Africa between the years of 1948-1994. The system started when the British ended its colonial relationship with South Africa and the Afrikaner party rose to power with the hopes of keeping white domination in the country. Many students read that and assume that things were better under the British before this, but that was not the case. The Afrikaners were just making the policy that had been in place for generations official and giving it a name. The Afrikaners actually had to increase the size of parliament and the Supreme Court in order to have enough votes to get this passed, giving even more power to the white majority in the process. Once they passed the law, they reset the sizes of the government back to normal.

This policy was similar to what Americans did during the Jim Crow era of US history, but it was much harsher than the laws here. They started by classifying all citizens into racial groups and making sure all non-white groups got inferior services. The worst of the services went to black South Africans, who were completely stripped off all citizenship, having no right to vote and relationships between them and any other race became illegal. The system also unified the white people of the country despite the years of fighting between the English and the Boers. These previous issues became secondary in the minds of many compared to the ideas of racial superiority. During this entire process, they tried to act as if they were doing black south Africans a favor in implementing all these policies. They would claim they were “giving” black South Africans an education, when in reality they only spent 10% of the money on these schools as would have been the norm in white schools. The curriculum in these schools were also extremely different. The schools for black South Africans focused on teaching people to be servants and laborers only, with no option to learn higher skills.

The policy would also create separate living arrangements in which black South Africans were forced to live far outside the cities in areas referred to as “homelands.” This was explained as a good thing because they were allowed to live together, but these lands were the least productive lands in the country on purpose and the people were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to these lands. The government didn’t take into consideration the different ethnic groups among the black South Africans either, which made this living situation pretty tough too. In order to leave the homelands and go to the cities, these people were forced to have passes that would allow them to leave. This way the government could dictate who was allowed to come in and work as servants, but keep all the rest of the community away from them. In doing this, people often had to leave their families behind to get the ‘good’ jobs.

The justification for these policies was modeled after the same justifications that were used for imperialism when it started. They claimed that they didn’t want racial groups to lose their ‘personality’ so the policy was made to help all races. They often referred to the system as similar to separate countries to try to make it seem more justified. In reality, they were afraid of what would happen if they created a true democracy in the country because the white community was a huge minority there.