Apartheid In Africa Essay Example For Students

Apartheid In Africa Essay Apartheid was a long shadow in the history of South Africa. Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: aninternational hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racialoppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency ofhis country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than aquarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the mostcompelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of theAfrican National Congress and head of South Africas anti-apartheid movement, hewas instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majorityrule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rightsand racial equality. The election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 marked the firsttime all race elections were held in South Africa and the end of all white rulein South Africa. Prior to 1994, only white people held political control withthe majority of people living in South Africa having little to no realrepresentation in government. One word described the racist system that keptnon-whites from political and social equality and became infamously known aroundthe world: Apartheid. Apartheid was not a case of just I am white and I dontlike blacks. It was a complex system of social separation calledsegregation under British rule. It was a system of cheap labor enforced by laws,social, and industrial practices. There was also an ideology that justified it;whatever one did to question it, there was the pre-existing attitude we arecivilized and they are not. In 1910 the British parliament passed the Act ofUnion that brought British and Afrikaans colonies together to create a unitedand independent South Africa. Unfortunately, the newly created country did notbreak from a tradition of discrimination and segregation. Instead thesepractices became even further entrenched as bills were passed to ensure whitedomination. However, it wasnt until 1948 and the election of Dr. D.F. MalansNationalist Party that the c oncepts of apartheid became officially governmentpolicy (Moodie, 1994, p12). Malan was victorious in the election, beating theUnited Party and its leader Jan Smuts by portraying Smuts and his party as tooliberal and not capable of dealing with the swart gevar (Afrikaans forblack peril). In a country controlled by a white minority, feartactics worked for the Nationalists, and they managed a slender parliamentarymajority. From 1948 on, official apartheid principles were put into practicaleffect, and Malans government passed bills designed to maintain political,economic, and social control by whites over non-whites (Robinson, 1968, p.87). Under apartheid, people were classified into one of four categories: White,Colored, Indian, and Black. As a non-white, one was required to carry a passbookthat detailed ones racial grouping, employer, place of dwelling, andpermission to be (on a temporary basis only) in a white area. In 1954 theResettlement of Natives Act meant that entire towns and villages in whichnon-whites lived were suddenly designated to bewhite-only areas. The entire population would then be forced toresettle into tribal reserves. As well, Blacks not needed for laborin white communities (referred to as superfluous Bantu by thenationalist government) were sent to live in these homelands. During the 1960s,nearly three million Africans were moved onto the Bantustans (Porter, 1991,p.32). Blacks would be removed from their homes, trucked to their new homeland,and dumped on land with little or no agricultural value and no infrastructure. The result was mass starvation and major epidemics. In an effort to givecredibility to the reserves, the 1953 Nationalist government passed the BantuAuthorities Act allowing Bantustans to become independent homelands. In reality, however, Bantustans proved to be nothing more than holding areas forcheap labor for the white economy (Report of the Select Committee on theImmorality Amendment Bill, 1968, p. 9). Meanwhile charges of racism were comingfrom both inside South Africa and around the world. Oliver Tambo, a leadingpolitical activist against apartheid and president of the African NationalCongress (ANC), outlines what it meant to be a non-white living in apartheidSouth Africa in his paper Human Right in South Africa: During the last twodecades human values in our country sank to primitive levels as elementary humanrights were trampled underfoot on a scale unparalleled in recent history. Thisoccurred in open and direct defiance of the United Nations and the entireinternational community. It is as well to remember that the men in power inSouth Africa today wholeheartedly supported Nazism and have never repented ofit. The African and other non-white people in Africa do not enjoy the right totake pa rt in government nor can they vote for representatives who govern. TheConstitution of the Republic of South Africa (passed in 1961) specificallyexcludes non-whites from any participation in the councils of the State. They donot have the right to assemble with others and join or refrain from joining any legitimate organization or group. They cannot enjoy a full cultural life inaccordance with their artistic, literary and scientific inclinations. On thecontrary, the majority of the people are excluded from places of culture orentertainment, from libraries, from scientific institutions. Our people do nothave the right to travel without hindrance within the country or leave thecountry. The notorious pass laws and the Departure from the Republic RegulationAct prevent this. Africans do not have the right to a job and in fact arelegally prevented from doing a large variety of jobs which are reserved forwhites. They have no rights of collective bargaining, and cannot form or join alabor un ion, even one recognized by the State. Africans cannot agitate andcannot go on strike in order to better their working conditions and pay (Tambo,1968, p.29). In reaction to being excluded from political power by the 1910 Actof Union, due to the color of their skin, a group of chiefs, Christianministers, and intellectuals came together to form the South African NativeNational Congress. In 1923 this organization changed its name to become theAfrican National Congress (ANC). The ANC believed that Africans should worktogether as a united force to bring about political change and racial equality(Mandela, 1995, pp. 12-15). Initially, the ANC stuck to a strict policy ofpacifist resistance. However, frustration with a lack of results led the ANCsmilitant Youth League, formed in 1944 under the leadership of NelsonMandela, Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu, to advocate becoming more aggressivein the struggle. At an ANC conference in 1949, Mandela and his colleagues passedthe Program of Resistan ce that was to change the nature of the ANC. The Programof Resistance called for boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience to bring anend to racial discrimination (Thompson, 1996, p. 65). The fundamental principlesof the Program of Action of the African National Congress were inspired by thedesire to achieve national freedom. By national freedom, they meant freedom fromwhite domination and the attainment of political independence. That implied therejection of the conception of segregation, apartheid, trusteeship, or whiteleadership, which were all, in one way or another, motivated by the idea ofwhite domination or domination of the whites over the Blacks (Thompson, 1996,pp. 13-21). In 1955, opponents of apartheid, including The South AfricanIndian Congress, The Colored Peoples organization, the whitesCongress of Democrats, and the ANC, met at the Congress of thePeople where they drafted the Freedom Charter. The Freedom Charter became thedeclaration for all of these organizations fig hting for democracy and humanrights. It declared that We, the People of South Africa, declare for all ourcountry and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it,black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it isbased on the will of all the people (Porter, 1991, p.31). In 1949 theNational Party led government set up the Eislen Commission, aspecially appointed commission given the task of restructuring the educationsystem according to the apartheid philosophy. The commission recommended thatdifferent races should receive different forms of education. For example, Blackchildren were to be taught in such a way that the Bantu child will be able tofind his way in European communities, to follow oral or written instructions,and to carry on a simple conversation with Europeans about his work and othersubjects of common interest. These recommendations became law in the 1955 BantuEducation Act. In short, Blacks were to be trained to do manua l labor and tofollow the instructions of whites (Porter, 1991, pp.25-45). In response to theBantu Education Act, the ANC held a boycott of government schools, and set uptheir own schools. Nelson Mandela spoke out against the introduction of BantuEducation, calling for community activists to make every home, every shackor rickety structure a center of learning (Mandela, 1995, p. 45). Howevergovernment, forces cracked down on these private schools, declaring unlicensedschools illegal and forcing the students to return to the public schools. Personal Story - Afraid of Forgetting Essay140-152). The end of Apratheid led to a Government of National Unity far widerand more explicit than the attempts to heal political breaches made by previousSouth African presidents South Africa then reached a turning point in itshistory after the first democratic elections in 1994 and the rise to politicalpower of Nelson Mandela. Still, one cannot begin to understand the history ofSouth Africa without considering the effects of four and a half decades ofApartheid. Most black people working today are engaged in dealing with thelegacy of the past as retold to them weekly in the South African press reportageon the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. For many, the new era in South Africahas brought little appreciable change in the standard of living partiallybecause foreign industries that divested their interests there during the 1980shave been slow to return despite the dramatic political changes that have takenplace (Elder, 1993, pp.152-16 3). The time of post-revolutionary euphoria iscoming to a close in South Africa. Continued poverty, inadequate housing, anoverburdened education system, and many other leftovers from the Apartheid erastill hamper the forging of a new nation and the remaking of ideas aboutsociety. South African history has shown how effectively a distorted, butlegalized distribution of power can bring about a warped social system whenbacked by strong-willed security forces, how the moral authority of a determinedopposition, even outside the legalized structures, can challenge that power ifit can operate from a secure base and receive support from outside. Letstherefore unite our forces, fight, and challenge each one of us for a betterfuture of South African children and let apartheid be no more. BibliographyElder, G.S. (1993). The controls and regulations in apartheid South Africa. London: Mapping Co. Jackson, P. (1987). Race and Racism in South Africa,London: Allen Unwin. Porter, K., and Weeks, J. (1991). 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