the inequities of apartheid
DESCRIPTION
The Inequities of Apartheid. The South African government that had declared freedom from Britain was controlled by a white minority, largely descended from Dutch Boers (the Afrikaners Afrikaners practiced a policy of apartheid, or extreme racial segregation . - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
The Inequities of Apartheid
• The South African government that had declared freedom from Britain was controlled by a white minority, largely descended from Dutch Boers (the Afrikaners
• Afrikaners practiced a policy of apartheid, or extreme racial segregation
• In 1948, South Africa had a new government, the National Party
• Elected in a whites-only election, this party feared black domination of the white minority population
• Among its first measures were statutes to separate the residential areas
• Racially mixed marriages were prohibited
• Black South Africans were required to carry passbooks
• Bantustans or homelands for black South Africans were created
• Black South Africans were not allowed to vote in elections
• The chief objective of the apartheid system was to deny non-whites the fruits of supposedly white labors
• Yet African labor contributed to the rise of a modern industrial state in South Africa
• There was also an assumption of supremacy among South Africa's whites which stemmed back to the first European settlers in 1652
• Many Afrikaners accepted the idea that different cultures should live apart; that this was God's will
• Most Afrikaners were Calvinists with a strong streak of determinism
• It is important to remember that the first serious effort to establish a European settlement in South Africa came in 1652, with arrival of Jan van Riebeeck and Dutch East India Company
• Van Riebeeck purchased slaves to do domestic and agricultural work
• Free burghers (bourgeoisie) came to regard manual labor as slaves’ work
• So for many of burghers there was no other available employment than land ownership
• Response to unemployment was to move away from the coast, into vast open expanses sparsely occupied by Khoikhoi and San tribes
• Then the Congress of Vienna gave the southern tip of Africa to the British
• The British and the Dutch achieved an uneasy peace
• Until the discovery of gold and diamonds in Dutch Orange Free State and Transvaal
• After the Boer Wars (the Boers resented Britain’s abolition of slavery), the British gained complete control of the land
• And following independence from Great Britain, the British settlers and Afrikaners shared power until the Afrikaner National Party was able to gain a strong majority
• Strategists in the National Party invented apartheid
• The Apartheid laws established in 1948 institutionalized racial discrimination
• In 1950, the Population Registration Act required all South Africans to be racially classified: white, black (African), or colored (of mixed decent)
• All blacks were required to carry “pass books” containing fingerprints, photo and information on access to non-black areas
• In 1951, Bantu Authorities Act established a basis for ethnic government in African reserves, known as “homelands”
• Black South Africans were citizens of a homeland, losing citizenship in South Africa and any right of involvement with the South African Parliament
• From 1976 to 1981, four of these homelands were created, denationalizing nine million South Africans
• Thus, Africans living in homelands needed passports to enter South Africa
• In 1960, a large group of blacks in Sharpeville refused to carry passes; the government declared a state of emergency
• The emergency lasted for 156 days, leaving 69 people dead; 187 people wounded
• The Soweto riots of 1976 were most brutal
• The Apartheid government decided to start enforcing a long-forgotten law requiring secondary education be conducted only in Afrikaans
• Students resented being forced to learn language of their oppressors
• The Government’s response was to shut down the schools and expel striking students
• In Soweto township on June 16,1976, students organized marches and protests
• Police showed no mercy attacked students of all ages, armed or unarmed
• International boycotts against South Africa developed
• There was pressure for the withdrawal of U.S. firms from South Africa and for release of Mandela
• South Africa was ostracized from world community
• In 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison
• In 1993, F.W. De Klerk (the white South African president who dismantled formally dismantled apartheid) and Nelson Mandela were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• In 1994, Mandela was elected the first Black president of South Africa