BackgroundInformation


 * Apartheid in South Africa**

Apartheid (the Africaans word for 'separateness') was a legalized system of discrimination and prejudice established in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.The system cemented the Europeans, or white Africans, as the superior race and gave them all the political and economic power, whereas all Africans of a different race were considered inferior. Under the Population Registration Act (1950), all non-white South Africans were classified as black (many of whom were members of traditional [|African tribes]) or coloured (mixed race, including Indians and Asians), and, under the Group Areas Act (1950), were separated into areas known as “homelands” (although many non-white south Africans never lived in their designated homelands because they were too far away). These homelands were very similar to internment or concentration camps, and the American equivalent to Indian reservations. Thirteen percent of south Africa was designated for these homelands, areas supposed to hold eighty percent of the population. The Bantu Authorities Act (1951) determined that each reservation would have a separate government, so that the blacks and coloured citizens only had basic rights within their designated homelands and no rights or influence in the South African government. //**A South African Homeland**//



Outside of the reservations, non-white people were given no rights. All public facilities were segregated, as well as sources of education and medical care, and those designated to blacks were usually inferior. In the early 1950s many laws were passed to legalize discrimination, scarily similar to the Nuremberg laws the Nazis imposed on Jews before World War Two. Mixed race marriages were forbidden (Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949) as well as any mixed-race sexual relationships (Immorality Act, 1950). The government was given the right to destroy “slums” (Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act, 1951), which were home to many poverty stricken black Africans. The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953 segregated all public facilities (much like the segregation laws in USandApartheidAmerica) and the Mines and Work Act legalized discrimination in employment (1956). The Bantu Education Act, 1953, put the government in charge of all black schooling, which meant the white Europeans could decide the quality of education for blacks. This was followed by the Extension of University Education Act, 1959, which segregated all universities. In 1970, all non-white South Africans were stripped of their citizenship in order to ensure demographic majority within white South Africa (Black Homeland Citizenship Act). Now, non-white South Africans were only citizens of their cramped reservations, even though many had never lived there. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the government met serious resistance from the oppressed racial groups, including a violent youth group known as the MK. The white South African government admitted the need to change due to internal and international pressure as well a decreasing white majority (only 16% of the population). Many Apartheid acts were repealed and when, in 1989, F.W. de Klerk was elected as president, many bans on communist and other black political groups were lifted. When black rights leader, Nelson Mandela, was released from prison in 1990, he and F.W. de Klerk worked together to bring more rights to blacks and restore their citizenship. 1991 to 1993 were years of negotiations and South Africa held its first democratic election in 1994, electing Mandela as president. **//` Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk//**

The book My Children! My Africa!, by Athol Fugard, takes place in 1984, at the beginning of the resistance to apartheid, which is evident from the school boycott and ensuing violence against government education. At the end of the book, Thami may have gone to join the MK or other youth resistance groups who pillaged and ransacked white neighborhoods as acts of protest. For more complete information on Apartheid in South Africa, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid http://www.africanaencyclopedia.com/apartheid/apartheid.html http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9007978/apartheid http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blsalaws.htm

Other Links on Apartheid: Contained in the next link is a scholarly article tracking the public opinion of white South Africans during the apartheid. [|"Between Acknowledgment and Ignorance"]

This link is an excellent //Time Magazine// article on "black-on-black" violence in South Africa from 1984 to the present: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,145854,00.html

This link is article on women rights in an Apartheid society: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/misc/fatima.html

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