History of South Africa in the apartheid era: Encyclopedia II - History of South Africa in the apartheid era - The apartheid system

History of South Africa in the apartheid era - The apartheid system

History of South Africa in the apartheid era - Apartheid in South Africa from day to day

Apartheid was implemented by the law. The following restrictions were not only social but were strictly enforced by law:

• Non-whites were not allowed to run businesses or professional practices in those areas designated as 'white South Africa' without a permit. They were supposed to move to the black homelands and set up businesses and practices there.
• Transport and civil facilities were segregated.
• Blacks were excluded from living or working in white areas, unless they had a pass. Only blacks with "Section 10" rights (those who had migrated to the cities before World War II)were excluded from this provision. Whites required passes in black areas.
  • A pass was only issued to a black person with approved work. Spouses and children had to be left behind in non-white areas. Many white households employed blacks as domestic workers, who were allowed to live on the premises - often in small rooms external to the family home.
  • A pass was issued for one magisterial district confining the holder to that area only.
  • Being without a valid pass made a person subject to immediate arrest and summary trial, often followed by "deportation" to the person's "homeland". Police vans roamed the "white area" to round up the "illegal" blacks.

Black areas rarely had plumbing or electricity. Hospitals and ambulances were segregated: the white hospitals being the match of any in the western world while black hospitals were understaffed and underfunded.

In the 1970s each black child's education cost the state only a tenth of each white child's. Higher education was provided in separate universities and colleges after 1959.

Trains and buses were segregated. Black buses stopped at black bus stops and white buses at white ones.

Public beaches were racially segregated, with the best ones reserved for whites^[2]. Public swimming pools and libraries were racially segregated. There were few black pools or libraries.

Sex and marriage between the races was prohibited.

Cinemas in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks. Most restaurants and hotels in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks.

Although trade unions for black and "Coloured" (mixed race) workers had existed since the early 20th century, it was not until the 1980s reforms that trade unions for black workers were recognised by the government. The minimum yearly taxable income for blacks was 360 rand (30 rand a month), while the white threshold was much higher, at 750 rand (62.5 rand per month).

Apartheid pervaded South African culture, as well as the law. The perception of non-white South Africans as second-class citizens was reinforced in many media, and the lack of opportunities for the races to mix in a social setting entrenched social distance between people.

History of South Africa in the apartheid era - The homeland system

Apartheid ideologues argued that that once apartheid had been implemented, blacks would no longer be citizens of South Africa; rather, they would become citizens of the independent "homelands". In terms of this model, blacks became (foreign) "guest laborers" who merely worked in South Africa as the holders of temporary work permits.

The South African government attempted to divide South Africa into a number of separate states. Some eighty-seven percent of the land was reserved for whites and coloureds, and Indians. About thirteen percent of the land was divided into ten "homelands" for Blacks (60% of the population) which were given "independence". Once the homelands were granted "independence", those who were designated as belonging to such a homeland had their South African citizenship cancelled, and replaced with homeland citizenship. These people would now have passports instead of passbooks. Those remaining part of the "autonomous" homelands also had their South African citizenship circumscribed, and remained less than South African^[3]. The South African government attempted to draw an equivalence between their view of black "citizens" of the "homelands" and the European Union and the United States view of illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe and Latin America, respectively.

Where South Africa differed from other countries is that while other countries were dismantling discriminatory legislation and were becoming more open on issues of race, South Africa was constructing a labyrinth of racial legislation. That white South Africans considered the implementation of apartheid necessary was motivated by demographics; as a minority that was shrinking as a percentage of the total population, there was widespread unease at the thought of being swamped by the black majority, and of losing their identity through intermarriage if that were permitted.

History of South Africa in the apartheid era - Forced Removals

During the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the government implemented a policy of 'resettlement', to force people to move to their designated 'group areas'. Some argue that over three and a half million people were forced to resettle during this period. The victims of these removals included:

• Labour tenants on white-owned farms
• The inhabitants of the so-called 'black spots', areas of African-owned land surrounded by white farms
• The families of workers living in townships close to the homelands
• 'Surplus people' from urban areas, including thousands of people from the Western Cape (which was declared a 'Coloured Labour Preference Area') who were moved to the Transkei and Ciskei homelands.

The most well-publicised forced removals of the 1950s occurred in Johannesburg, where 60 000 people were moved to the new township of Soweto (an acronym for South Western Township).

Until 1955, Sophiatown had been one of the few urban areas where blacks were allowed to own land, and was slowly developing into an entirely multiracial settlement. As industry in Johannesburg grew, Sophiatown became the home of a rapidly expanding black workforce, as it was convenient and close to town. It could also boast the only swimming pool for African children in Johannesburg^[4]. It was, however, one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg, and held an almost symbolic importance for the fifty thousand blacks it contained, both in terms of its sheer vibrance and its unique culture. Despite a vigorous ANC protest campaign and worldwide publicity, the removal of Sophiatown begun on 9 February 1955 under the Western Areas Removal Scheme. In the early hours, heavily armed police entered Sophiatown to force residents out of their homes and load their belongings onto government trucks. The residents were taken to a large tract of land, thirteen miles from the city centre, known as Meadowlands (now part of Soweto), that the government had purchased in 1953. Sophiatown was destroyed by bulldozers, and a new white suburb named Triomf (Triumph) was built in its place. This pattern of forced removal and destruction was to repeat itself over the next few years, and was not limited to people of African descent. Forced removals from areas like Cato Manor (Mkhumbane) in Durban, and District Six in Cape Town, where 55 000 coloured and Indian people were forced to move to new townships on the Cape Flats, were carried out under the Group Areas Act of 1950. Ultimately, nearly 600 000 coloured, Indian and Chinese people, and a further 40 000 white people, were moved in terms of the Group Areas Act.

History of South Africa in the apartheid era - Black White Indian and coloured

The population was classified into four groups: black, white, Indian, and "coloured". (The terms were legally supposed to be capitalised.) The coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and European descent (with some Malay or Indian ancestry, especially in the Western Cape) together with some racially "pure" Khoisans. The Apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the Population Registration Act was implemented to determine who was coloured. Minor officials would administer tests to determine if someone should be categorised coloured or black, or coloured or white. Different members of the same family found themselves in different race groups. Further tests determined membership of the various sub-racial groups of the coloureds. Many coloureds do not like the term coloured, but it continues to be used in the post-apartheid era. The expressions 'so-called coloured' (Afrikaans sogenaamde Kleurlinge) and 'brown people' (bruin mense) have acquired a wide usage in recent years.

Discriminated against by apartheid, coloureds were as a matter of state policy forced to live in separate townships — in some cases leaving homes their families had occupied for generations — and received an inferior education, though better than that provided to black South Africans. They played an important role in the struggle against apartheid: for example the African Political Organisation established in 1902 had an exclusively coloured membership.

During most of the era of legally formalised apartheid, from about 1950 to 1983, voting rights were essentially denied to coloureds in the same way that they were denied to blacks (see Coloured). In 1983, the Constitution was reformed to allow the coloured and Asian minorities participation in separate Houses in a tricameral Parliament, a development which enjoyed limited support. The theory was that the coloured minority could be granted voting rights, but the black majority were to become citizens of independent homelands. These separate arrangements continued until the abolition of apartheid.

History of South Africa in the apartheid era - Apartheid in international law

South African apartheid was condemned internationally as unjust and racist. In 1973 the General Assembly of the United Nations agreed on the text of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. The immediate intention of the Convention was to provide a formal legal framework within which member states could apply sanctions to press the South African government to change its policies. However, the Convention was phrased in general terms, with the express intention of prohibiting any other state from adopting analogous policies. The Convention came into force in 1976.

Article II of the Convention defines apartheid as follows:

For the purpose of the present Convention, the term "the crime of apartheid", which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:

The crime was also defined in the formation of the International Criminal Court:

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The apartheid system", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki