Is Being Born Black A Mistake?

Is being born black a mistake? Well, South Africa’s struggles for freedom and reconciliation of a divided nation are one of the dramatic stories of all time. The racial discrimination had set foot through the absolute power of the apartheid government. It was in the year of 1948, when the apartheid government came into place and introduced laws that divided the South Africans into many divisions. The tyrannies of the apartheid government had thrown out the non-whites out of the cities and were forced to live in horrible living conditions as the government enforced the laws. The national party brought this political and social system to existence (overcomingapartheid.msu.edu). The political system of apartheid enforced a racial hierarchy privileging

msu.edu). The white people had run the government even though blacks made up the majority of the population. The whites’ unlawful ideas under the name of apartheid were horrific for the black people to bear. To be treated as foreigners in their own land is a misery. There are so many issues from racism to discrimination to prejudicial laws; these were all the hardships they had to abide to. Racism has being roaming around the world for centuries; however, it was in South Africa where it was much stronger and sadly systematically executed (overcomingapartheid. msu.edu). Under the apartheid, people had been split up by their race and were forced to live apart from each other. As they were forced into these conditions in different lands, the difference in groups created tension through racial segregation. Racial segregation and white supremacy became the main aspects of dividing the South African nation (history.com). In addition to that, the pressures from World War II and the Great Depression also stirred the distress formed by racial segregation because it created an increase in economical woes (history.com). The apartheid system deployed a series of laws to keep the non-white people poor, uneducated, unprivileged and disenfranchised under the government’s control. (McMahon, Mary, and Bronwyn

They left families behind and had to live in shantytowns called townships. A typical township home was a shack without running water or electricity (Wikipedia.org). For others who were not forced to work in mines or factories, they had to undertake employment to support their family, for which they needed Passes. The Pass laws had been entrenched and these laws made it compulsory for blacks to carry Pass books (identity cards) at all times. This served as a charter to be in a white area for a limited amount of time. This law was one of the first racial discriminations laws passed under the apartheid government. The Passes or Pass books must contain information about the person, where the person could work, live and if he or she was allowed to be traveling in the area they were stopped at. If caught without the proper permit or pass, they would be imprisoned or would have to pay a huge fine (Brays). According to Kaffir Boy, written by Mark Mathabane, some people hid and got away from the police raids in the morning (Glencoe Literature). This almost gives a painting of an animal trying to camouflage into the environment, when someone or something was