Apartheid: The History of the National Party and Its Influence in South America

In 1948 the National Party took power of South Africa. The all-white minority government began enforcing already existing laws that encouraged segregation and separatism in the non-white majority country. Under these new sanctions apartheid, which literally means a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race, non-whites would be forced to not only go to separate public facilities but would later be force to live on separate lands similar to that of the Native Americans in the United States. Even though there was strong opposition to the new set of laws both from within and form outside the country these outrages and unethical policies remained in effect for almost 50 years

In the Seventeenth century the English and the Dutch colonized what is now South Africa. After the English dominated the Dutch posterities the Dutch chose to form two new colonies known as the Orange Free State and Transvaal. Sometime in the early 1900’s the discovery of vast amounts of diamonds spurred the English to invade the Dutch colonies spurring the Boer Wars (1880-81, 1899 – 02). After South Africa won its independence from English both the Dutch and English still held influence in the country.

Long before the National Party took power in South Africa discriminatory regulations were already taking effect. In 1913 the very divisive Land Act was passed. This act made is what started the formal segregation of black Africans. The Land Act of 1913 forced black Africans to live on reserves and also disallowed them from being sharecroppers, a chief form of income in South Africa.

In the 1940’s the Afrikaner National Party finally managed to gain majority control and officially initiate an apartheid government. The invention of th...

... middle of paper ...

...were killed. It was at this point that the United Nations Security Council agreed that an effort must be made to put a stop to the oppressive apartheid government and demanded that they cease any segregation immediately. Shortly after the ANC began a violent operations that would later be classified as 193 counts of terrorism raging from the murder of individual citizens to the bombing of government buildings. This had little effect except to strengthen the suppression by the South African government resulting in the banning of all anti-government organizations.

It was not until 1963 that the United Nations did made any moves of real consequence against the apartheid government. With the passing of Resolution 181 the United Nations placed a voluntary arms embargo on the South African government. However it was not until 1964 that the arms embargo became mandatory.