Apartheid in South Africa and Its End (1948–1994)

Core Idea

Apartheid ("apartness" in Afrikaans) was the system of legalized racial separation and white minority rule imposed by South Africa's National Party after it won the 1948 election, in which nearly all voters were white. Laws classified every person by race, assigned groups to separate residential areas, banned interracial marriage, controlled the movement of Black Africans through pass laws, and created ethnic "homelands" meant to strip Black South Africans of citizenship. The African National Congress and other groups resisted through mass protest and, after the state banned them in 1960, armed struggle. Internal uprisings, economic decline and international sanctions led the government to release Nelson Mandela in 1990 and negotiate, and the first election open to all races in 1994 made Mandela president.

How It's Best Learned

List the main apartheid laws and ask how each controlled a different part of life: identity, home, marriage, movement, schooling and citizenship. Use photographs and testimony from Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto in 1976 as primary sources. Compare apartheid with Jim Crow segregation in the United States, looking at both similarities and the fact that apartheid was imposed by a minority on a large majority.

Common Misconceptions

• Racial segregation in South Africa began in 1948. (Segregation had deep colonial roots, including the Natives Land Act of 1913, which limited African land ownership to a small share of the country; apartheid made the system more total and systematic.)
• Apartheid ended because white leaders decided on their own to reform. (Decades of resistance, the uprisings of the 1980s, economic strain and international sanctions forced the government to negotiate.)
• Nelson Mandela was a pacifist throughout his life. (Mandela helped found the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, in 1961 after peaceful protest was banned, and he was jailed for sabotage; he later led the negotiated, peaceful transition.)

Explainer

When you studied the Scramble for Africa and decolonization, you saw European powers take over African lands and, after 1945, give way to independence movements. South Africa followed a different path. It became a self-governing state in 1910, but power stayed with a white minority of British and Afrikaner descent. Laws such as the Natives Land Act of 1913 already kept most land in white hands.

In 1948 the National Party, which drew its support mainly from Afrikaners, won an election in which nearly all voters were white. The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified everyone into racial groups, such as white, Black African, Coloured (mixed descent) and Indian. The Group Areas Act assigned each group separate places to live, and the state forcibly moved millions of people. Interracial marriage was banned. Pass laws forced Black Africans to carry documents showing where they were allowed to be. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 gave Black children schooling designed to prepare them for low-paid work. The government also created "homelands" for African ethnic groups and declared some of them independent, so that Black South Africans could be treated as foreigners in most of their own country.

The African National Congress, founded in 1912, led resistance. In the 1950s it organized peaceful campaigns and, with allies, adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955, which declared that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. In 1960 police at Sharpeville killed 69 people protesting the pass laws. The government banned the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress. Nelson Mandela and others formed an armed wing, and in 1964 Mandela was sentenced to life in prison. In 1976 students in Soweto protested being taught in Afrikaans, and police shootings set off months of unrest.

In the 1980s resistance grew inside the country, and the government declared states of emergency. Many countries imposed sanctions, and foreign banks withdrew loans. In 1990 President F. W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC and released Mandela after 27 years. After four years of tense negotiation and violence, South Africa held its first election open to all races in April 1994, and Mandela became president. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, later heard testimony about crimes committed under apartheid.