The Apartheid Era

The Apartheid Era

The policy of consistent racial separation was introduced in 1910 through a group of laws that further curtailed the rights of the black majority. The "Mines and Works Act" of 1911, for example, limited black workers exclusively to menial work and so guaranteed the availability of cheap labour and secured the better positions for white workers. The "Native Land Act" of 1913 set aside 7.3 per cent of South African territory as reservations for black people and barred them from buying land outside these areas.

Deprived of the right to vote or to strike, the black population had no means of political influence, and so the ANC, African National Congress, and other resistance and liberation movements formed. They were all initially badly organized and minimally effective. The white governments pursued their politics virtually without obstruction. After the Second World War, the conflicts intensified and black workers went on a number of wild strikes. The whites became nervous and helped the right-wing National Party to an overwhelming election victory in the elections of 1948.


he NP was led by D.F. Malan, who stood for drastic measures against the "black menace," coined the concept of "apartheid" and consistently enforced this devious policy. From then on, it was not "only" about the separation of the races in the economic sector, but increasingly the private domain of all non-white people was regulated and controlled as well. Marriage or any love realationship between members of different racial groups were forbidden, and in all public institutions and offices, in public transport and on public toilets, racial segregation was introduced. More detrimental because of long-term consequences was the education system, the so-called Bantu education, which tried to keep the black children at a very low standard. Subjects were even dish washing and the weeding of flower beds

In 1954 J. G. Strijdom succeeded D. F. Malan in office. He drove apartheid legislation even further. His successor in 1958 was H. F. Verwoerd, a brilliant intellectual, who refined and theoretically substantiated the apartheid ideology. Limited self-administration was instituted in the black reservations and they were declared semi-autonomous homelands: the Transkei, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and KwaZulu. By this measure the South African government rid itself of responsibility for the economic and social problems in the reservations. The white government could call its elections free and general, because the majority of the blacks were no longer citizens of South Africa.


In the meantime, black resistance under the leadership of the ANC had consolidated. Mass protests resulted in the government banning all opposition groups and organizations. This interdict was to no avail. The resistance organizations became militant and kept on working underground.

After the Soweto uprising of 1976, when thousands of pupils, demonstrating against Afrikaans as a compulsory school subject, were brutally shot, the unrest spread over the whole country. The ANC struggle became militant and South Africa developed fully into a police state. This situation lasted a few years, until in 1989 the last president of the old South African government, F. W. de Klerk, openly admitted the failure of apartheid policies. An important reason for the collapse of the old regime was- after many years of economic and trade embargo - the desolate state of the economy. Eventually negotiations opened the door to the first general elections in South Africa.

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