Origins of Apartheid
In the seventeenth century, South Africa was colonized by Dutch and British imperialists. In response to British domination, Dutch settlers made two colonies: The Republic of the Orange Free State and Transvaal. Dutch descendants became known as “Afrikaners” or “Boers.” In the early 1900s, Boers discovered diamonds on their land. This led to a Britain invasion and sparked the Second Boer War, which lasted three years. This was the first modern war to see concentration camps; they were used successfully to break the will of Afrikaner guerilla forces by detaining their families. British forces won the war, converting the two Boer states into colonies who were promised limited self-governance. Post-Boer War, the power balance became an uneasy one, until the Afrikaner National Party found a majority.
The party found their majority in 1948. One factor contributing to this majority was that in 1930, the government gave the right to vote to white women thus doubling their political power. In efforts to guarantee their social and economic control over South Africa, the National Party contrived a “Grand Apartheid” plan. The focus of this was to systematically institutionalize racial segregation, and reinforce it with police brutality. Among the first laws passed include The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949), Population Registration Act (1950) and Group Areas Act (1950). The Group Areas Act took information from the Population Registration and set up ethnic areas that only those ethnicities could live in (white, black and coloured areas); these areas were known as Bantustans. The demarcation lines of these areas were absurd, for example, one Bantustan, “KwaZulu, consists of no fewer than ten sep...
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... apartheid. In 1940, he became an assistant minister for the Dutch Reform Church (DRC). This church used religious rhetoric to perpetuate apartheid. For twenty years, Naudé supported the church’s ideology, but in time, his review of scripture and events such as the Sharpeville Massacre changed his mind. After twenty-two years of service in the DRC, Naudé had to choose between the DRC and his interracial Christian Institute. He chose the institute, thus ostracizing himself and his family from the Afrikaners, and as his Christian Institute picked up momentum, it was banned.
He was a white man who protested against apartheid before it became the popular thing to do. His community rejected him, but he found the courage to stand up for what he knew was right. As a religious leader, Naudé broke the stereotype that all white men are against the Blacks.
Around the 1970s, due to South Africa’s internal contradictions with its economy and people, the Apartheid began its slow demise. Soon the united nation began to take notice of South Africa and began to get involved. With South Africa now in the spot light, Prime Minister P.W Botha left office due to his belief that he had failed to keep order in the country. After the reassignment of P.W Botha, F.W Klerk had taken office. The final stage of the demise of the Apartheid began when Klerk lifted the ban off the ANC and other African political parties. The last blow was the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison. Now that South Africa’s hope was out of prison he continued to ...
The great W.E.B. DuBois (William Edward Burghardt DuBois) had an essential role that played with the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). DuBois traveled around the world to educate African-Americans and tell them, use this knowledge to fight back. He accomplished more than what people could do in that time period; he was a historian, sociologist, author, and an editor. W.E.B. DuBois was a proud African-American who disliked discrimination; loved his education, loved his family, and the changes he made for the NAACP.
Apartheid was a system of separation of the races both politically and socially in South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. This system was said to be one of the last examples of institutionalized racism, and has been almost universally criticized. These Apartheid rules and restrictions were put in place by the National Party which had power over South Africa during this time period. The purpose of Apartheid legislation was to bring the Afrikaner ethnic group to a higher power in South Africa, and accomplished just that. The Afrikaner group was made up of descendants from Dutch colonists who settled in South Africa in order to make a refreshment station, a sort of rest stop, for the Dutch East India Company. The longer people stayed in Africa, the more they started to associate with it as their home. With the enslavement of many Africans, it is easy to see how these Afrikaners would associate themselves as above them and would feel entitled to power over them. This entitlement it how Apartheid rules were born.
During Imperialistic times South Africa was a region of great resources that was greatly disputed over (Ellis). Europe’s main goal during these times was to compete against each other and played a “game” of which country can imperialize more African countries than the other. Imperialism was a curse to South Africa, because many wars, laws, and deaths were not necessary and would not have happened if South Africa were not imperialized.
In 1806, Britain would take possession of the Dutch Cape colony during the Napoleonic wars with Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France. The Boers, descendants of the original Dutch settlers in Africa, would come to resent this British rule and Britain's anti-slavery policies that would be forced upon them. Much of the Boer way of life depended on the work from their slaves. In attempts to free themselves from British rule the Boers would make the “Great Trek” in 1833. They would press into tradition tribal territory and would found the twin republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Peace between the new republics and the British would hold until gold and diamonds were discovered, in 1867. In the spirit of greed, war was inevitable to break out between the Boer and the British, although peace did hold for several years after the discovery. In 1890 skirmishes would begin and in 1899 an all-out war prec...
The apartheid era in South Africa began shortly after the Boer War as the Afrikaner National Party overtook the government following the country’s independence from Great Britain. The Afrikaners, or Dutch descendants, won the majority in 1948 in the first election for the country’s government. Only a short time after were apartheid laws initiated by the minority white descendants. In the Afrikaans language, apartheid’s literal meaning is “separateness,” which is exactly what the laws were designed for. The Afrikaner National Party initiated the laws to ensure their dominance of economic and social powers, but more importantly to strengthen white people’s preeminence by segregating whites and colored peoples. In order to do this, the Afrikaners limited the freedom of colored people in various ways. First, t...
Source A gives a view on the South African governments control over its people and racial discrimination. It is a biased view and makes the South African government seem cruel and racist. It states that the governments "politics are determined by the colour a persons skin". As this is a statement it gives the impression that it is a fact and by giving this impression it also communicates the idea that the South African government IS racist, rather than the South African government COULD be racist. This comes as no real surprise as the advert has been paid for by the ANC (African National Congress), who are a very anti - South African government organization.
the ban on the ANC, the PAC and the SACP, he announced the release of
It can be easily stated that the apartheid movement bestowed cruel and unusual punishments upon the people of South Africa, in order to execute its purpose. However, apartheid could have not been carried out if they were not individuals who believed in its principles. In order to understand the National parties ideologies regarding the issue of apartheid, it is essential to acknowledge the history of Boer soc...
Attention Getter- Helped bring an end to apartheid and has been a global advocate for human rights. He was a leader of both peaceful protest and armed resistance against white minorities oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa. His actions landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the antiapartheid movement both within his country and internationally.
Apartheid consisted of a set of unequal laws that favored the whites (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”). The Race Classification Act, which divided everyone into four race groups, whites, blacks, coloreds, and Indians were the first of many major laws (Evans, 8). Hundreds of thousands of black South Africans were forced to leave their homes and move into special reservations called “homelands” or Bantustans that were set up for them (Evans, 8). There were twenty-three million blacks and they were divided into nine tribal groups, Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, North and South Sotho, Venda, Tsonga, Swansi, and South Ndebele, and each group were moved into a separate homeland (Evans, 8). Another major law was the Groups Area Act, which secluded the twenty-three million blacks to 14 percent of land, leaving 86 percent of the land for the 4.8 million (Evans, 9). Under apartheid laws a minority ...
on him or her. Unless it was stamped on their pass, they were not allowed to
Apartheid was considered a necessary arrangement in South Africa, as the Afrikaner National Party gained a strong majority political control of the country after the 1940’s and the economic dependence on their fertile natural resources, such as diamond and gold mines and other metals such as platinum. This required intense labor and the white dominant control over the repressed black majority allowed for an
Apartheid started in 1948 during the twentieth century. A few years before apartheid began the arrival of blacks began. Their arrival began the “Malan's Herenigde Nasionale Party (Reunited National Party) which was a political party in the 1940’s and was created by Daniel François Malan and J.B.M. Hertzog” (Herenigde Nasionale Party). This national party allowed the South African government to introduce new laws which gave the minority the power to rule over the majority. Even before apartheid was introduced the few black people that were in South Africa were not treated well. Another reason apartheid was started by the African National Congress (ANC) was because the white South Africans were unable to teach the black population new technology to be able to work in the white world according to the white population. So they enforced the law of apartheid so the whites would not have to associate with the blacks at all. This not only was happening in South Africa, it also happened in America ...
The apartheid was a very traumatic time for blacks in South Africa. Apartheid is the act of literally separating the races, whites and non-whites, and in 1948 the apartheid was now legal, and government enforced. The South African police began forcing relocations for black South Africans into tribal lines, which decreased their political influence and created white supremacy. After relocating the black South Africans, this gave whites around eighty percent of the land within South Africa. Jonathan Jansen, and Nick Taylor state “The population is roughly 78 percent black, 10 percent white, 9 percent colored, and l...