May 5, 2020: South African Apartheid Part 1

On April 27, South Africans celebrate Freedom Day. The day celebrates freedom and commemorates the first democratic post-apartheid non-racial elections that were held on April 27th 1994, which saw Nelson Mandela elected as President. The fight for freedom was long in coming and brutal. Our final lessons for the next few days will be about this struggle.

A quick overview of what the system of South African Apartheid

"What was apartheid?

Translated from the Afrikaans meaning 'apartness', apartheid was the ideology supported by the National Party (NP) government and was introduced in South Africa in 1948. 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. During apartheid, to have a friendship with someone of a different race generally brought suspicion upon you, or worse. More than this, apartheid was a social system which severely disadvantaged the majority of the population, simply because they did not share the skin colour of the rulers. Many were kept just above destitution because they were 'non-white'.

In basic principles, apartheid did not differ that much from the policy of segregation of the South African governments existing before the Afrikaner Nationalist Party came to power in 1948. The main difference is that apartheid made segregation part of the law. Apartheid cruelly and forcibly separated people, and had a fearsome state apparatus to punish those who disagreed. 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. Before World War Two the Western world was not as critical of racial discrimination, and Africa was colonized in this period. The Second World War highlighted the problems of racism, making the world turn away from such policies and encouraging demands for decolonization. It was during this period that South Africa introduced the more rigid racial policy of apartheid."                      Taken from South Africa History Online 

Starting in the 1940’s the move to end apartheid went from moderate resistance to open non-violent resistance. South Africans used many of the same type of non-violent strategies that had been used in India and by Gandhi.

-bus boycotts

-squatter movements

-speaking out against discrimination

Following WWII both black and white South Africans experienced societal upheaval

-higher prices for goods

-lower wages from jobs

-shortages of food and housing

-increased movement of black workers into the urban areas from the country-sides.

1948 – National Party takes power

- Creates laws to increase segregation with government acts of Apartheid

1949  Prohibition of mixed marriage

-inter-racial marriage is forbidden by law

1950 Immorality Amendment Act

-Sexual relations between blacks and whites is forbidden by law.

1950 Population Registration Act

-All people had to be classified according to the racial group they belonged to.

1950 Group Areas Act

-Enforced residential segregation.

1953  Reservation of Separate Amenities Act

-Separate facilities such as parks, beaches, busses and public toilets.

1953 Bantu Education Act

-Mass education in order to take tsotsis off the streets and prepare blacks for unskilled labor

-the purpose of schools becomes to prepare black youth to only work as unskilled laborers

1953 Creation of Bantustans (homelands)

-Divides South Africa into separate places to live.

1953  Public Safety Act

-Government could declare a “state of emergency”. Government could suspend the rule of law and arrest anyone without due cause or process.

1953-1955 The destruction of Sophiatown
-Sophiatown, a thriving black community was systematically dismantled and bulldozed, people forcibly moved to a different location, and made into a "whites only" community

Echoes of Sophiatown

Today's prompt: Given these governmental actions, make a list of five ways that South Africans could be "civilly disobedient". What might the cost of these acts of disobedience be?