Forced removals

1948
Apartheid
Apartheid (/əˈpɑːrt(h)aɪt/ ə-PART-(h)yte, especially South African English: /əˈpɑːrt(h)eɪt/ ə-
PART-(h)ayt, Afrikaans: [aˈpartɦɛit] ⓘ; transl. "separateness", lit. 'aparthood') was a system of
institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West
Africa(now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an
authoritarian political culture based on baasskap (lit. 'boss-ship' or 'boss-hood'), which
ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the
nation's minority white population. In this minoritarian system, there was social stratification,
where white citizens had the highest status, followed by Indians and Coloureds, then Black
Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day,
particularly inequality.
Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the
segregation of public facilities and social events, and grand apartheid, which dictated
housing and employment opportunities by race. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of
Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed closely by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950,
which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships
across racial lines. The Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into
one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and
cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloured", and "Indian", the last two of which included
several sub-classifications. Places of residence were determined by racial
classification. Between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million black Africans were removed from their
homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, in some
of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were
intended to restrict the black population to ten designated "tribal homelands", also known
as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government
announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were
absorbed into the bantustans.
Apartheid sparked significant international and domestic opposition, resulting in some of the
most influential global social movements of the 20th century. It was the target of frequent
condemnation in the United Nations and brought about extensive international sanctions,
including arms embargoes and economic sanctions on South Africa. During the 1970s and
1980s, internal resistance to apartheid became increasingly militant, prompting brutal
crackdowns by the National Party ruling government and protracted sectarian violence that
left thousands dead or in detention. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that
there were 21,000 deaths from political violence, with 7,000 deaths between 1948 and 1989,
and 14,000 deaths and 22,000 injuries in the transition period between 1990 and 1994. Some
reforms of the apartheid system were undertaken, including allowing for Indian and Coloured
political representation in parliament, but these measures failed to appease most activist
groups.
Between 1987 and 1993, the National Party entered into bilateral negotiations with
the African National Congress (ANC), the leading anti-apartheid political movement, for
ending segregation and introducing majority rule. In 1990, prominent ANC figures such
as Nelson Mandela were released from prison. Apartheid legislation was repealed on 17 June
1991, leading to multiracial elections in April 1994.
Precursors
Main articles: History of South Africa (1815–1910) and History of South Africa (1910–1948)
Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", or "the state of being apart", literally
"apart -hood" (from the Afrikaans suffix -heid). Its first recorded use was in 1929.
Racial discrimination and inequality against black people in South Africa dates to the
beginning of large-scale European colonisation of South Africa with the Dutch East India
Company's establishment of a trading post in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, which
eventually expanded into the Dutch Cape Colony. The company began the Khoikhoi–Dutch
Wars in which it displaced the local Khoikhoi people, replaced them with farms worked
by white settlers, and imported Black slaves from across the Dutch Empire. In the days
of slavery, slaves required passes to travel away from their masters.
In 1797, the Landdrost and Heemraden, local officials, of Swellendam and Graaff-
Reinetextended pass laws beyond slaves and ordained that all Khoikhoi (designated
as Hottentots) moving about the country for any purpose should carry passes. This was
confirmed by the British Colonial government in 1809 by the Hottentot Proclamation, which
decreed that if a Khoikhoi were to move they would need a pass from their master or a local
official. Ordinance No. 49 of 1828 decreed that prospective black immigrants were to be
granted passes for the sole purpose of seeking work. These passes were to be issued for
Coloureds and Khoikhoi but not for other Africans, who were still forced to carry passes.
During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire captured and
annexed the Dutch Cape Colony. Under the 1806 Cape Articles of Capitulation the new
British colonial rulers were required to respect previous legislation enacted under Roman-
Dutch law, and this led to a separation of the law in South Africa from English Common
Law and a high degree of legislative autonomy. The governors and assemblies that governed
the legal process in the various colonies of South Africa were launched on a different and
independent legislative path from the rest of the British Empire.
The United Kingdom's Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British
Empire and overrode the Cape Articles of Capitulation. To comply with the act, the South
African legislation was expanded to include Ordinance 1 in 1835, which effectively changed
the status of slaves to indentured labourers. This was followed by Ordinance 3 in 1848, which
introduced an indenture system for Xhosa that was little different from slavery.
The various South African colonies passed legislation throughout the rest of the 19th century
to limit the freedom of unskilled workers, to increase the restrictions on indentured workers
and to regulate the relations between the races. The discoveries of diamonds and gold in
South Africa also raised racial inequality between white people and black people.
In the Cape Colony, which previously had a liberal and multi-racial constitution and a system
of Cape Qualified Franchise open to men of all races, the Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892
raised the property franchise qualification and added an educational element,
disenfranchising a disproportionate number of the Cape's non-white voters, and the Glen
Grey Act of 1894 instigated by the government of Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes limited the
amount of land Africans could hold. Similarly, in Natal, the Natal Legislative Assembly
Bill of 1894 deprived Indians of the right to vote. In 1896 the South African Republic
brought in two pass laws requiring Africans to carry a badge. Only those employed by a
master were permitted to remain on the Rand, and those entering a "labour district" needed a
special pass. During the Second Boer War the British Empire cited racial exploitation of
blacks as a cause for its war against the Boer republics. However, the peace negotiations for
the Treaty of Vereeniging demanded "the just predominance of the white race" in South
Africa as a precondition for the Boer republics unifying with the British Empire.
In 1905 the General Pass Regulations Act denied Black people the vote and limited them to
fixed areas, and in 1906 the Asiatic Registration Act of the Transvaal Colony required all
Indians to register and carry passes. Beginning in 1906 the South African Native Affairs
Commission under Godfrey Lagden began implementing a more openly segregationist policy
towards nonwhites. The latter was repealed by the British government but re-enacted in 1908.
In 1910, the Union of South Africa was created as a self-governing dominion, which
continued the legislative program: the South Africa Act (1910) enfranchised white people,
giving them complete political control over all other racial groups while removing the right of
Black people to sit in parliament; the Native Land Act(1913) prevented Black people, except
those in the Cape, from buying land outside "reserves"; the Natives in Urban Areas Bill
(1918) was designed to force Black people into "locations"; the Urban Areas Act (1923)
introduced residential segregation and provided cheap labour for industry led by white
people; the Colour Bar Act (1926) prevented black mine workers from practising skilled
trades; the Native Administration Act(1927) made the British Crown rather than paramount
chiefs the supreme head over all African affairs;[better source needed] the Native Land and Trust
Act (1936) complemented the 1913 Native Land Act and, in the same year,
the Representation of Natives Act removed previous black voters from the Cape voters'
roll and allowed them to elect three whites to Parliament.[better source needed]
The United Party government of Jan Smuts began to move away from the rigid enforcement
of segregationist laws during World War II, but faced growing opposition from Afrikaner
nationalists who wanted stricter segregation. Post-war, one of the first pieces of segregating
legislation enacted by Smuts' government was the Asiatic Land Tenure Bill (1946), which
banned land sales to Indians and Indian descendent South Africans. The same year, the
government established the Fagan Commission. Amid fears integration would eventually lead
to racial assimilation, the Opposition Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP) established the Sauer
Commission to investigate the effects of the United Party's policies. The commission
concluded that integration would bring about a "loss of personality" for all racial groups. The
HNP incorporated the commission's findings into its campaign platform for the 1948 South
African general election, which it won.[citation needed]
Institution
1948 election
Main article: South African general election, 1948

South Africa had allowed social custom and law to govern the consideration of multiracial
affairs and of the allocation, in racial terms, of access to economic, social, and political
status. Most white South Africans, regardless of their own differences, accepted the
prevailing pattern.[citation needed] Nevertheless, by 1948 it remained apparent that there were
gaps in the social structure, whether legislated or otherwise, concerning the rights and
opportunities of nonwhites. The rapid economic development of World War II attracted black
migrant workers in large numbers to chief industrial centres, where they compensated for the
wartime shortage of white labour. However, this escalated rate of black urbanisation went
unrecognised by the South African government, which failed to accommodate the influx with
parallel expansion in housing or social services.Overcrowding, increasing crime rates, and
disillusionment resulted; urban blacks came to support a new generation of leaders influenced
by the principles of self-determination and popular freedoms enshrined in such statements as
the Atlantic Charter. Black political organisations and leaders such as Alfred Xuma, James
Mpanza, the African National Congress, and the Council of Non-European Trade
Unions began demanding political rights, land reform, and the right to unionise.
Whites reacted negatively to the changes, allowing the Herenigde Nasionale Party (or simply
the National Party) to convince a large segment of the voting bloc that the impotence of the
United Party in curtailing the evolving position of nonwhites indicated that the organisation
had fallen under the influence of Western liberals. Many Afrikaners resented what they
perceived as disempowerment by an underpaid black workforce and the superior economic
power and prosperity of white English speakers. Smuts, as a strong advocate of the United
Nations, lost domestic support when South Africa was criticised for its colour bar and the
continued mandate of South West Africa by other UN member states.
Afrikaner nationalists proclaimed that they offered the voters a new policy to ensure
continued white domination. This policy was initially expounded from a theory drafted
by Hendrik Verwoerd and was presented to the National Party by the Sauer Commission. It
called for a systematic effort to organise the relations, rights, and privileges of the races as
officially defined through a series of parliamentary acts and administrative decrees.
Segregation had thus far been pursued only in major matters, such as separate schools, and
local society rather than law had been depended upon to enforce most separation; it should
now be extended to everything. The commission's goal was to completely remove blacks
from areas designated for whites, including cities, with the exception of temporary migrant
labour. Blacks would then be encouraged to create their own political units in land reserved
for them. The party gave this policy a name – apartheid. Apartheid was to be the basic
ideological and practical foundation of Afrikaner politics for the next quarter of a century.
The National Party's election platform stressed that apartheid would preserve a market for
white employment in which non-whites could not compete. On the issues of black
urbanisation, the regulation of non-white labour, influx control, social security, farm tariffs
and non-white taxation, the United Party's policy remained contradictory and confused. Its
traditional bases of support not only took mutually exclusive positions, but found themselves
increasingly at odds with each other. Smuts' reluctance to consider South African foreign
policy against the mounting tensions of the Cold War also stirred up discontent, while the
nationalists promised to purge the state and public service of communist sympathisers.
First to desert the United Party were Afrikaner farmers, who wished to see a change in influx
control due to problems with squatters, as well as higher prices for their maize and other
produce in the face of the mineowners' demand for cheap food policies. Always identified
with the affluent and capitalist, the party also failed to appeal to its working-class
constituents.
Populist rhetoric allowed the National Party to sweep eight constituencies in the mining and
industrial centres of the Witwatersrand and five more in Pretoria. Barring the predominantly
English-speaking landowner electorate of the Natal, the United Party was defeated in almost
every rural district. Its urban losses in the nation's most populous province, the Transvaal,
proved equally devastating. As the voting system was disproportionately weighted in favour
of rural constituencies and the Transvaal in particular, the 1948 election catapulted the
Herenigde Nasionale Party from a small minority party to a commanding position with an
eight-vote parliamentary lead.Daniel François Malan became the first nationalist prime
minister, with the aim of implementing the apartheid philosophy and silencing liberal
opposition.
When the National Party came to power in 1948, there were factional differences in the party
about the implementation of systemic racial segregation. The "baasskap" (white domination
or supremacist) faction, which was the dominant faction in the NP, and state institutions,
favoured systematic segregation, but also favoured the participation of black Africans in the
economy with black labour controlled to advance the economic gains of Afrikaners. A second
faction were the "purists", who believed in "vertical segregation", in which blacks and whites
would be entirely separated, with blacks living in native reserves, with separate political and
economic structures, which, they believed, would entail severe short-term pain, but would
also lead to independence of white South Africa from black labour in the long term. A third
faction, which included Hendrik Verwoerd, sympathised with the purists, but allowed for the
use of black labour, while implementing the purist goal of vertical separation. Verwoerd
would refer to this policy as a policy of "good neighbourliness" as a means of justifying such
segregation.

Legislation
Hendrik Verwoerd, minister of native affairs (1950–1958) and prime minister (1958–1966),
earned the nickname 'Architect of Apartheid' from his large role in creating legislation.
NP leaders argued that South Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of
four distinct racial groups: white, black, Coloured and Indian. Such groups were split into 13
nations or racial federations. White people encompassed the English and Afrikaans language
groups; the black populace was divided into ten such groups.
The state passed laws that paved the way for "grand apartheid", which was centred on
separating races on a large scale, by compelling people to live in separate places defined by
race. This strategy was in part adopted from "left-over" British rule that separated different
racial groups after they took control of the Boer republics in the Anglo-Boer war. This
created the black-only "townships" or "locations", where blacks were relocated to their own
towns. As the NP government's minister of native affairs from 1950, Hendrik Verwoerd had a
significant role in crafting such laws, which led to him being regarded as the 'Architect of
Apartheid'. In addition, "petty apartheid" laws were passed. The principal apartheid laws
were as follows.
The first grand apartheid law was the Population Registration Act of 1950, which formalised
racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of 18,
specifying their racial group. Official teams or boards were established to come to a
conclusion on those people whose race was unclear. This caused difficulty, especially
for Coloured people, separating their families when members were allocated different races.
The second pillar of grand apartheid was the Group Areas Act of 1950. Until then, most
settlements had people of different races living side by side. This Act put an end to diverse
areas and determined where one lived according to race. Each race was allotted its own area,
which was used in later years as a basis of forced removal. The Prevention of Illegal
Squatting Act of 1951 allowed the government to demolish black shanty town slums and
forced white employers to pay for the construction of housing for those black workers who
were permitted to reside in cities otherwise reserved for whites. The Native Laws
Amendment Act, 1952 centralised and tightened pass laws so that blacks could not stay in
urban areas longer than 72 hours without a permit.
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of
different races, and the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations between whites and
other races a criminal offence.
Under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be
reserved for a particular race, creating, among other things, separate beaches, buses,
hospitals, schools and universities. Signboards such as "whites only" applied to public areas,
even including park benches. Black South Africans were provided with services greatly
inferior to those of whites, and, to a lesser extent, to those of Indian and Coloured people.
Further laws had the aim of suppressing resistance, especially armed resistance, to apartheid.
The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 banned the Communist Party of South
Africa and any party subscribing to Communism. The act defined Communism and its aims
so sweepingly that anyone who opposed government policy risked being labelled as a
Communist. Since the law specifically stated that Communism aimed to disrupt racial
harmony, it was frequently used to gag opposition to apartheid. Disorderly gatherings were
banned, as were certain organisations that were deemed threatening to the government. It also
empowered the Ministry of Justice to impose banning orders.
After the Defiance Campaign, the government used the act for the mass arrests and banning
of leaders of dissent groups such as the African National Congress (ANC), the South African
Indian Congress (SAIC), and the South African Congress of Trade Unions(SACTU). After
the release of the Freedom Charter, 156 leaders of these groups were charged in the 1956
Treason Trial. It established censorship of film, literature, and the media under the Customs
and Excise Act 1955 and the Official Secrets Act 1956. The same year, the Native
Administration Act 1956 allowed the government to banish blacks.
The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for blacks and
whites and was the first piece of legislation to support the government's plan of separate
development in the bantustans. The Bantu Education Act, 1953 established a separate
education system for blacks emphasising African culture and vocational training under the
Ministry of Native Affairs and defunded most mission schools. The Promotion of Black Self-
Government Act of 1959 entrenched the NP policy of nominally independent "homelands"
for blacks. So-called "self–governing Bantu units" were proposed, which would have
devolved administrative powers, with the promise later of autonomy and self-government. It
also abolished the seats of white representatives of black South Africans and removed from
the rolls the few blacks still qualified to vote. The Bantu Investment Corporation Act of 1959
set up a mechanism to transfer capital to the homelands to create employment there.
Legislation of 1967 allowed the government to stop industrial development in "white" cities
and redirect such development to the "homelands". The Black Homeland Citizenship Act of
1970 marked a new phase in the Bantustan strategy. It changed the status of blacks to citizens
of one of the ten autonomous territories. The aim was to ensure a demographic majority of
white people within South Africa by having all ten Bantustans achieve full independence.
Inter-racial contact in sport was frowned upon, but there were no segregatory sports laws.

The government tightened pass laws compelling blacks to carry identity documents, to
prevent the immigration of blacks from other countries. To reside in a city, blacks had to be
in employment there. Until 1956 women were for the most part excluded from these pass
requirements, as attempts to introduce pass laws for women were met with fierce resistance.

Disenfranchisement of Coloured voters

Main article: Coloured vote constitutional crisis

Annual per capita personal income by race group in South Africa] relative to white levels.
In 1950, D. F. Malan announced the NP's intention to create a Coloured Affairs
Department. J.G. Strijdom, Malan's successor as Prime Minister, moved to strip voting rights
from black and Coloured residents of the Cape Province. The previous government had
introduced the Separate Representation of Voters Bill into Parliament in 1951, turning it to be
an Act on 18 June 1951; however, four voters, G Harris, W D Franklin, W D Collins and
Edgar Deane, challenged its validity in court with support from the United Party. The Cape
Supreme Court upheld the act, but reversed by the Appeal Court, finding the act invalid
because a two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament was needed to
change the entrenched clauses of the Constitution. The government then introduced the High
Court of Parliament Bill (1952), which gave Parliament the power to overrule decisions of
the court. The Cape Supreme Court and the Appeal Court declared this invalid too.
In 1955 the Strijdom government increased the number of judges in the Appeal Court from
five to 11 and appointed pro-Nationalist judges to fill the new places. In the same year they
introduced the Senate Act, which increased the Senate from 49 seats to 89. Adjustments were
made such that the NP controlled 77 of these seats. The parliament met in a joint sitting and
passed the Separate Representation of Voters Act in 1956, which transferred Coloured voters
from the common voters' roll in the Cape to a new Coloured voters' roll. Immediately after
the vote, the Senate was restored to its original size. The Senate Act was contested in the
Supreme Court, but the recently enlarged Appeal Court, packed with government-supporting
judges, upheld the act, and also the Act to remove Coloured voters.
The 1956 law allowed Coloureds to elect four people to Parliament, but a 1969 law abolished
those seats and stripped Coloureds of their right to vote. Since Indians had never been
allowed to vote, this resulted in whites being the sole enfranchised group.

Separate representatives for coloured voters were first elected in the general election of 1958.
Even this limited representation did not last, being ended from 1970 by the Separate
Representation of Voters Amendment Act, 1968. Instead, all coloured adults were given the
right to vote for the Coloured Persons Representative Council, which had limited legislative
powers. The council was in turn dissolved in 1980. In 1984 a new constitution introduced
the Tricameral Parliament in which coloured voters elected the House of Representatives.
A 2016 study in The Journal of Politics suggests that disenfranchisement in South Africa had
a significant negative effect on basic service delivery to the disenfranchised.
Division among whites
Before South Africa became a republic in 1961, politics among white South Africans was
typified by the division between the mainly Afrikaner pro-republic conservative and the
largely English anti-republican liberal sentiments, with the legacy of the Boer War still a
factor for some people. Once South Africa became a republic, Prime Minister Hendrik
Verwoerd called for improved relations and greater accord between people of British descent
and the Afrikaners. He claimed that the only difference was between those in favour of
apartheid and those against it. The ethnic division would no longer be between Afrikaans and
English speakers, but between blacks and whites.[citation needed]
Most Afrikaners supported the notion of unanimity of white people to ensure their safety.
White voters of British descent were divided. Many had opposed a republic, leading to a
majority "no" vote in Natal. Later, some of them recognised the perceived need for white
unity, convinced by the growing trend of decolonisation elsewhere in Africa, which
concerned them. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's "Wind of Change" speech left
the British faction feeling that the United Kingdom had abandoned them. The more
conservative English speakers supported Verwoerd; others were troubled by the severing of
ties with the UK and remained loyal to the Crown. They were displeased by having to choose
between British and South African nationalities. Although Verwoerd tried to bond these
different blocs, the subsequent voting illustrated only a minor swell of support, indicating that
a great many English speakers remained apathetic and that Verwoerd had not succeeded in
uniting the white population.

Homeland system
Main article: Bantustan

Map of the 20 bantustans in South Africa and South West Africa.

Under the homeland system, the government attempted to divide South Africa and South
West Africa into a number of separate states, each of which was supposed to develop into a
separate nation-state for a different ethnic group.
Territorial separation was hardly a new institution. There were, for example, the "reserves"
created under the British government in the nineteenth century. Under apartheid, 13 percent
of the land was reserved for black homelands, a small amount relative to its total population,
and generally in economically unproductive areas of the country. The Tomlinson
Commission of 1954 justified apartheid and the homeland system but stated that additional
land ought to be given to the homelands, a recommendation that was not carried out.
When Verwoerd became Prime Minister in 1958, the policy of "separate development" came
into being, with the homeland structure as one of its cornerstones. Verwoerd came to believe
in the granting of independence to these homelands. The government justified its plans on the
ostensible basis that "(the) government's policy is, therefore, not a policy of discrimination on
the grounds of race or colour, but a policy of differentiation on the ground of nationhood, of
different nations, granting to each self-determination within the borders of their
homelands – hence this policy of separate development". Under the homelands system,
blacks would no longer be citizens of South Africa, becoming citizens of the independent
homelands who worked in South Africa as foreign migrant labourers on temporary work
permits. In 1958 the Promotion of Black Self-Government Act was passed, and border
industries and the Bantu Investment Corporation were established to promote economic
development and the provision of employment in or near the homelands. Many black South
Africans who had never resided in their identified homeland were forcibly removed from the
cities to the homelands.
The vision of a South Africa divided into multiple ethnostates appealed to the reform-minded
Afrikaner intelligentsia, and it provided a more coherent philosophical and moral framework
for the National Party's policies, while also providing a veneer of intellectual respectability to
the controversial policy of so-called baasskap.

Rural area in Ciskei, one of the four nominally independent homelands.

In total, 20 homelands were allocated to ethnic groups, ten in South Africa proper and ten in
South West Africa. Of these 20 homelands, 19 were classified as black, while
one, Basterland, was set aside for a sub-group of Coloureds known as Basters, who are
closely related to Afrikaners. Four of the homelands were declared independent by the South
African government: Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei
in 1981 (known as the TBVC states). Once a homeland was granted its nominal
independence, its designated citizens had their South African citizenship revoked and
replaced with citizenship in their homeland. These people were then issued passports instead
of passbooks. Citizens of the nominally autonomous homelands also had their South African
citizenship circumscribed, meaning they were no longer legally considered South
African. The South African government attempted to draw an equivalence between their view
of black citizens of the homelands and the problems which other countries faced through
entry of illegal immigrants.
International recognition of the Bantustans
Bantustans within the borders of South Africa and South West Africa were classified by
degree of nominal self-rule: 6 were "non-self-governing", 10 were "self-governing", and 4
were "independent". In theory, self-governing Bantustans had control over many aspects of
their internal functioning but were not yet sovereign nations. Independent Bantustans
(Transkei, Bophutatswana, Venda and Ciskei; also known as the TBVC states) were intended
to be fully sovereign. In reality, they had no significant economic infrastructure and with few
exceptions encompassed swaths of disconnected territory. This meant all the Bantustans were
little more than puppet states controlled by South Africa.

Throughout the existence of the independent Bantustans, South Africa remained the only
country to recognise their independence. Nevertheless, internal organisations of many
countries, as well as the South African government, lobbied for their recognition. For
example, upon the foundation of Transkei, the Swiss-South African Association encouraged
the Swiss government to recognise the new state. In 1976, leading up to a United States
House of Representatives resolution urging the President to not recognise Transkei, the South
African government intensely lobbied lawmakers to oppose the bill. Each TBVC state
extended recognition to the other independent Bantustans while South Africa showed its
commitment to the notion of TBVC sovereignty by building embassies in the TBVC capitals.

Forced removals
Man, subject to forced removal in Mogopa, Western Transvaal, February 1984
See also: Group Areas Act and Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act, 1991
During the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the government implemented a policy of
"resettlement", to force people to move to their designated "group areas". Millions of people
were forced to relocate. These removals included people relocated due to slum
clearance programmes, labour tenants on white-owned farms, the inhabitants of the so-called
"black spots" (black-owned land surrounded by white farms), the families of workers living
in townships close to the homelands, and "surplus people" from urban areas, including
thousands of people from the Western Cape (which was declared a "Coloured Labour
Preference Area") who were moved to the Transkei and Ciskeihomelands. The best-
publicised forced removals of the 1950s occurred in Johannesburg, when 60,000 people were
moved to the new township of Soweto (an abbreviation for South Western Townships).
Until 1955, Sophiatown had been one of the few urban areas where black people were
allowed to own land, and was slowly developing into a multiracial slum. As industry in
Johannesburg grew, Sophiatown became the home of a rapidly expanding black workforce,
as it was convenient and close to town. It had the only swimming pool for black children in
Johannesburg. As one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg, it held an almost
symbolic importance for the 50,000 black people it contained. Despite a vigorous ANC
protest campaign and worldwide publicity, the removal of Sophiatown began on 9 February
1955 under the Western Areas Removal Scheme. In the early hours, heavily armed police
forced residents out of their homes and loaded their belongings onto government trucks. The
residents were taken to a large tract of land 19 kilometres (12 mi)from the city centre, known
as Meadowlands, which the government had purchased in 1953. Meadowlands became part
of a new planned black city called Soweto. Sophiatown was destroyed by bulldozers, and a
new white suburb named Triomf (Triumph) was built in its place. This pattern of forced
removal and destruction was to repeat itself over the next few years, and was not limited to
black South Africans alone. Forced removals from areas like Cato Manor (Mkhumbane)
in Durban, and District Six in Cape Town, where 55,000 Coloured and Indian people were
forced to move to new townships on the Cape Flats, were carried out under the Group Areas
Act of 1950. Nearly 600,000 Coloured, Indian and Chinese people were moved under the
Group Areas Act. Some 40,000 whites were also forced to move when land was transferred
from "white South Africa" into the black homelands. In South-West Africa, the apartheid
plan that instituted Bantustans was as a result of the so-called Odendaal Plan, a set of
proposals from the Odendaal Commission of 1962–1964.
Society during apartheid
Workers at a pineapple stall between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, December 1962
The NP passed a string of legislation that became known as petty apartheid. The first of these
was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act 55 of 1949, prohibiting marriage between whites
and people of other races. The Immorality Amendment Act 21 of 1950 (as amended in 1957
by Act 23) forbade "unlawful racial intercourse" and "any immoral or indecent act" between
a white and a black, Indian or Coloured person.
Black people were not allowed to run businesses or professional practices in areas designated
as "white South Africa" unless they had a permit – such being granted only exceptionally.
Without a permit, they were required to move to the black "homelands" and set up businesses
and practices there. Trains, hospitals and ambulances were segregated. Because of the smaller
numbers of white patients and the fact that white doctors preferred to work in white hospitals,
conditions in white hospitals were much better than those in often overcrowded and
understaffed, significantly underfunded black hospitals. Residential areas were segregated
and blacks were allowed to live in white areas only if employed as a servant and even then
only in servants' quarters. Black people were excluded from working in white areas, unless
they had a pass, nicknamed the dompas, also spelt dompass or dom pass. The most likely
origin of this name is from the Afrikaans "verdomde pas" (meaning accursed pass), although
some commentators ascribe it to the Afrikaans words meaning "dumb pass". Only black
people with "Section 10" rights (those who had migrated to the cities before World War II)
were excluded from this provision. A pass was issued only to a black person with approved
work. Spouses and children had to be left behind in black homelands. A pass was issued for
one magisterial district (usually one town) confining the holder to that area only. Being
without a valid pass made a person subject to arrest and trial for being an illegal migrant. This
was often followed by deportation to the person's homeland and prosecution of the employer
for employing an illegal migrant. Police vans patrolled white areas to round up blacks
without passes. Black people were not allowed to employ whites in white South Africa.
This legally enforced segregation was reinforced through deliberate town planning measures,
such as introducing natural, industrial and infrastructural buffer zones. The legacy of this
town planning element still hinders economic integration of urban economies today.
Although trade unions for black and Coloured workers had existed since the early 20th
century, it was not until the 1980s reforms that a mass black trade union movement
developed. Trade unions under apartheid were racially segregated, with 54 unions being
white only, 38 for Indian and Coloured and 19 for black people. The Industrial Conciliation
Act (1956) legislated against the creation of multi-racial trade unions and attempted to split
existing multi-racial unions into separate branches or organisations along racial lines.
Each black homeland controlled its own education, health and police systems. Blacks were
not allowed to buy hard liquor. They were able to buy only state-produced poor quality beer
(although this law was relaxed later). Public beaches, swimming pools, some pedestrian
bridges, drive-in cinema parking spaces, graveyards, parks, and public toilets were
segregated. Cinemas and theatres in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks. There
were practically no cinemas in black areas. Most restaurants and hotels in white areas were
not allowed to admit blacks except as staff. Blacks were prohibited from attending white
churches under the Churches Native Laws Amendment Act of 1957, but this was never
rigidly enforced, and churches were one of the few places races could mix without the
interference of the law. Blacks earning 360 rand a year or more had to pay taxes while the
white threshold was more than twice as high, at 750 rand a year. On the other hand, the
taxation rate for whites was considerably higher than that for blacks.[citation needed]
Blacks could not acquire land in white areas. In the homelands, much of the land belonged to
a "tribe", where the local chieftain would decide how the land had to be used. This resulted in
whites owning almost all the industrial and agricultural lands and much of the prized
residential land. Most blacks were stripped of their South African citizenship when the
"homelands" became "independent", and they were no longer able to apply for South African
passports. Eligibility requirements for a passport had been difficult for blacks to meet, the
government contending that a passport was a privilege, not a right, and the government did
not grant many passports to blacks. Apartheid pervaded culture as well as the law, and was
entrenched by most of the mainstream media.
Coloured classification
Main article: Coloureds
The population was classified into four groups: African, White, Indian, and Coloured
(capitalised to denote their legal definitions in South African law). The Coloured group
included people regarded as being of mixed descent, including
of Bantu, Khoisan, European and Malay ancestry. Many were descended from slaves, or
indentured workers, who had been brought to South Africa from India, Sri
Lanka, Madagascar, and China.
The Population Registration Act, (Act 30 of 1950), defined South Africans as belonging to
one of three races: White, Black or Coloured. People of Indian ancestry were considered
Coloured under this act. Appearance, social acceptance and descent were used to determine
the qualification of an individual into one of the three categories. A white person was
described by the act as one whose parents were both white and possessed the "habits, speech,
education, deportment and demeanour" of a white person. Blacks were defined by the act as
belonging to an African race or tribe. Lastly, Coloureds were those who could not be
classified as black or white.
The apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the
Population Registration Act was implemented to determine who was Coloured. Minor
officials would administer tests to determine if someone should be categorised either
Coloured or White, or if another person should be categorised either Coloured or Black. The
tests included the pencil test, in which a pencil was shoved into the subjects' curly hair and
the subjects made to shake their head. If the pencil stuck they were deemed to be Black; if
dislodged they were pronounced Coloured. Other tests involved examining the shapes of jaw
lines and buttocks and pinching people to see what language they would say "Ouch" in. As a
result of these tests, different members of the same family found themselves in different race
groups. Further tests determined membership of the various sub-racial groups of the
Coloureds.
Discriminated against by apartheid, Coloureds were as a matter of state policy forced to live
in separate townships, as defined in the Group Areas Act (1950), in some cases leaving
homes their families had occupied for generations, and received an inferior education, though
better than that provided to Africans. They played an important role in the anti-apartheid
movement: for example the African Political Organisation established in 1902 had an
exclusively Coloured membership.
Voting rights were denied to Coloureds in the same way that they were denied to Blacks from
1950 to 1983. However, in 1977 the NP caucus approved proposals to bring Coloureds and
Indians into central government. In 1982, final constitutional proposals produced a
referendum among Whites, and the Tricameral Parliament was approved. The Constitution
was reformed the following year to allow the Coloured and Indian minorities participation in
separate Houses in a Tricameral Parliament, and Botha became the first Executive State
President. The idea was that the Coloured minority could be granted voting rights, but the
Black majority were to become citizens of independent homelands. These separate
arrangements continued until the abolition of apartheid. The Tricameral reforms led to the
formation of the (anti-apartheid) United Democratic Front as a vehicle to try to prevent the
co-option of Coloureds and Indians into an alliance with Whites. The battles between the
UDF and the NP government from 1983 to 1989 were to become the most intense period of
struggle between left-wing and right-wing South Africans.

Education
Education was segregated by the 1953 Bantu Education Act, which crafted a separate system
of education for black South African students and was designed to prepare black people for
lives as a labouring class. In 1959 separate universities were created for black, Coloured and
Indian people. Existing universities were not permitted to enroll new black students. The
Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 required the use of Afrikaans and English on an equal
basis in high schools outside the homelands.
In the 1970s, the state spent ten times more per child on the education of white children than
on black children within the Bantu Education system (the education system in black schools
within white South Africa). Higher education was provided in separate universities and
colleges after 1959. Eight black universities were created in the homelands. Fort Hare
University in the Ciskei (now Eastern Cape) was to register only Xhosa-speaking
students. Sotho, Tswana, Pedi and Venda speakers were placed at the newly
founded University College of the North at Turfloop, while the University College of
Zululand was launched to serve Zulu students. Coloureds and Indians were to have their own
establishments in the Cape and Natal respectively.
Each black homeland controlled its own education, health and police systems.

By 1948, before formal Apartheid, 10 universities existed in South Africa: four were
Afrikaans, four for English, one for Blacks and a Correspondence University open to all
ethnic groups. By 1981, under apartheid government, 11 new universities were built: seven
for Blacks, one for Coloureds, one for Indians, one for Afrikaans and one dual-language
medium Afrikaans and English.

Women under apartheid

Black women demonstrate against pass laws, 1956
Colonialism and apartheid had a major effect on Black and Coloured women, since they
suffered both racial and gender discrimination. Judith Nolde argues that in general, South
African women were "deprive[d] [...] of their human rights as individuals" under the
apartheid system. Jobs were often hard to find. Many Black and Coloured women worked as
agricultural or domestic workers, but wages were extremely low, if existent. Children
developed diseases caused by malnutrition and sanitation problems, and mortality rates were
therefore high. The controlled movement of black and Coloured workers within the country
through the Natives Urban Areas Act of 1923 and the pass laws separated family members
from one another, because men could prove their employment in urban centres while most
women were merely dependents; consequently, they risked being deported to rural
areas. Even in rural areas there were legal hurdles for women to own land, and outside the
cities jobs were scarce.

Sport under apartheid

See also: Rugby union and apartheid
By the 1930s, association football mirrored the balkanised society of South Africa; football
was divided into numerous institutions based on race: the (White) South African Football
Association, the South African Indian Football Association (SAIFA), the South African
African Football Association (SAAFA) and its rival the South African Bantu Football
Association, and the South African Coloured Football Association (SACFA). Lack of funds
to provide proper equipment would be noticeable in regards to black amateur football
matches; this revealed the unequal lives black South Africans were subject to, in contrast to
Whites, who were much better off financially. Apartheid's social engineering made it more
difficult to compete across racial lines. Thus, in an effort to centralise finances, the
federations merged in 1951, creating the South African Soccer Federation (SASF), which
brought Black, Indian, and Coloured national associations into one body that opposed
apartheid. This was generally opposed more and more by the growing apartheid government,
and – with urban segregation being reinforced with ongoing racist policies – it was harder to
play football along these racial lines. In 1956, the Pretoria regime – the administrative capital
of South Africa – passed the first apartheid sports policy; by doing so, it emphasised the
White-led government's opposition to inter-racialism.
While football was plagued by racism, it also played a role in protesting apartheid and its
policies. With the international bans from FIFA and other major sporting events, South
Africa would be in the spotlight internationally. In a 1977 survey, white South Africans
ranked the lack of international sport as one of the three most damaging consequences of
apartheid. By the mid-1950s, Black South Africans would also use media to challenge the
"radicalisation" of sports in South Africa; anti-apartheid forces had begun to pinpoint sport as
the "weakness" of white national morale. Black journalists for the Johannesburg
Drum magazine were the first to give the issue public exposure, with an intrepid special issue
in 1955 that asked, "Why shouldn't our blacks be allowed in the SA team?" As time
progressed, international standing with South Africa would continue to be strained. In the
1980s, as the oppressive system was slowly collapsing the ANC and National Party started
negotiations on the end of apartheid, football associations also discussed the formation of a
single, non-racial controlling body. This unity process accelerated in the late 1980s and led to
the creation, in December 1991, of an incorporated South African Football Association. On 3
July 1992, FIFA finally welcomed South Africa back into international football.
Sport has long been an important part of life in South Africa, and the boycotting of games by
international teams had a profound effect on the white population, perhaps more so than the
trade embargoes did. After the re-acceptance of South Africa's sports teams by the
international community, sport played a major unifying role between the country's diverse
ethnic groups. Mandela's open support of the predominantly white rugby fraternity during
the 1995 Rugby World Cup was considered instrumental in bringing together South African
sports fans of all races.

Professional boxing
Activities in the sport of professional boxing were also affected, as there were 44 recorded
professional boxing fights for national titles as deemed "for Whites only" between 1955 and
1979, and 397 fights as deemed "for non-Whites" between 1901 and 1978.
The first fight for a national "White" title was held on 9 April 1955, between
Flyweights Jerry Jooste and Tiny Corbett at the City Hall in Johannesburg; it was won by
Jooste by a twelve rounds points decision. The last one was between national "White" Light-
Heavyweight champion Gerrie Bodenstein and challenger Mervin Smit on 5 February 1979,
at the Joekies Ice Rink in Welkom, Free State. it was won by the champion by a fifth-round
technical knockout.
The first "non-whites" South African national championship bout on record apparently (the
date appears as "uncertain" on the records) took place on 1 May 1901, between Andrew
Jephtha and Johnny Arendse for the vacant Lightweight belt, Jephtha winning by knockout in
round nineteen of a twenty rounds-scheduled match, in Cape Town.
The last "non-white" title bout took place on 18 December 1978, between Sipho
Mangeand Chris Kid Dlamini; Mange-Dlamini was the culminating fight of a boxing
program that included several other "non-white" championship contests. Mange won the
vacant non-White Super Bantamweight title by outpointing Dlamini over twelve rounds at
the Goodwood Showgrounds in Cape Town.
Asians during apartheid
Further information: Indian South Africans, Chinese South Africans, and Honorary whitesDefining its
Asian population, a minority that did not appear to belong to any of the initial three
designated non-white groups, was a constant dilemma for the apartheid government.
The classification of "honorary white" (a term which would be ambiguously used throughout
apartheid) was granted to immigrants from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – countries with
which South Africa maintained diplomatic and economic relations – and to their descendants.
Indian South Africans during apartheid were classified many ranges of categories from
"Asian" to "black" [clarification needed] to "Coloured" [clarification needed] and even the mono-
ethnic category of "Indian", but never as white, having been considered "nonwhite"
throughout South Africa's history. The group faced severe discrimination during the apartheid
regime and were subject to numerous racialist policies.
In 2005, a retrospect study was done by Josephine C. Naidoo and Devi Moodley Rajab,
where they interviewed a series of Indian South Africans about their experience living
through apartheid; their study highlighted education, the workplace, and general day to day
living. One participant who was a doctor said that it was considered the norm for Non-White
and White doctors to mingle while working at the hospital but when there was any down time
or breaks, they were to go back to their segregated quarters. Not only was there severe
segregation for doctors, non-white, more specifically Indians, were paid three to four times
less than their white counterparts. Many described being treated as a "third class citizen" due
to the humiliation of the standard of treatment for non-white employees across many
professions. Many Indians described a sense of justified superiority from whites due to the
apartheid laws that, in the minds of White South Africans, legitimised those feelings. Another
finding of this study was the psychological damage done to Indians living in South Africa
during apartheid. One of the biggest long-term effects on Indians was the distrust of white
South Africans. There was a strong degree of alienation that left a strong psychological
feeling of inferiority.
Chinese South Africans – who were descendants of migrant workers who came to work in
the gold mines around Johannesburg in the late 19th century – were initially either classified
as "Coloured" or "Other Asian" and were subject to numerous forms of discrimination and
restriction. It was not until 1984 that South African Chinese, increased to about 10,000, were
given the same official rights as the Japanese, to be treated as whites in terms of the Group
Areas Act, although they still faced discrimination and did not receive all the benefits/rights
of their newly obtained honorary white status such as voting.
Indonesians arrived at the Cape of Good Hope as slaves until the abolishment of slavery
during the 19th century. They were predominantly Muslim, were allowed religious freedom
and formed their own ethnic group/community known as Cape Malays. They were classified
as part of the Coloured racial group. This was the same for South Africans
of Malaysian descent who were also classified as part of the Coloured race and thus
considered "non white". South Africans of Filipino descent were classified as "black" due to
historical outlook on Filipinos by White South Africans, and many of them lived in
Bantustans.
The Lebanese population were somewhat of an anomaly during the apartheid era. Lebanese
immigration to South Africa was chiefly Christian, and the group was originally classified as
non-white; however, a court case in 1913 ruled that because Lebanese and Syrians originated
from the Canaan region (the birthplace of Christianity and Judaism), they could not be
discriminated against by race laws which targeted non-believers, and thus, were classified as
white. The Lebanese community maintained their white status after the Population
Registration Act came into effect; however, further immigration from the Middle East was
restricted.
Conservatism
Alongside apartheid, the National Party implemented a programme of social conservatism.
Pornography, and works from Marx, Lenin and other socialist thinkers were banned.
Cinemas, shops selling alcohol and most other businesses were forbidden from opening on
Sundays. Abortion, homosexuality and sex education were also restricted; abortion was legal
only in cases of rape or if the mother's life was threatened.
Television was not introduced until 1976 because the government viewed English
programming as a threat to the Afrikaans language. Television was run on apartheid
lines – TV1 broadcast in Afrikaans and English (geared to a White audience), TV2 in Zulu
and Xhosa, TV3 in Sotho, Tswana and Pedi (both geared to a Black audience), and TV4
mostly showed programmes for an urban Black audience.
Internal resistance
Main article: Internal resistance to apartheid

Apartheid sparked significant internal resistance. The government responded to a series of

popular uprisings and protests with police brutality, which in turn increased local support for
the armed resistance struggle. Internal resistance to the apartheid system in South Africa
came from several sectors of society and saw the creation of organisations dedicated
variously to peaceful protests, passive resistance and armed insurrection.
In 1949, the youth wing of the African National Congress (ANC) took control of the
organisation and started advocating a radical African nationalist programme. The new young
leaders proposed that white authority could only be overthrown through mass campaigns. In
1950 that philosophy saw the launch of the Programme of Action, a series of strikes, boycotts
and civil disobedience actions that led to occasional violent clashes with the authorities.
In 1959, a group of disenchanted ANC members formed the Pan Africanist Congress of
Azania (PAC), which organised a demonstration against pass books on 21 March 1960. One
of those protests was held in the township of Sharpeville, where 69 people were killed by
police in the Sharpeville massacre.
In the wake of Sharpeville, the government declared a state of emergency. More than 18,000
people were arrested, including leaders of the ANC and PAC, and both organisations were
banned. The resistance went underground, with some leaders in exile abroad and others
engaged in campaigns of domestic sabotage and terrorism.

In May 1961, before the declaration of South Africa as a Republic, an assembly representing
the banned ANC called for negotiations between the members of the different ethnic
groupings, threatening demonstrations and strikes during the inauguration of the Republic if
their calls were ignored.

When the government overlooked them, the strikers (among the main organisers was a 42-
year-old, Thembu-origin Nelson Mandela) carried out their threats. The government
countered swiftly by giving police the authority to arrest people for up to twelve days and
detaining many strike leaders amid numerous cases of police brutality. Defeated, the
protesters called off their strike. The ANC then chose to launch an armed struggle through a
newly formed military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which would perform acts of
sabotage on tactical state structures. Its first sabotage plans were carried out on 16 December
1961, the anniversary of the Battle of Blood River.
In the 1970s, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was created by tertiary students
influenced by the Black Power movement in the US. BCM endorsed black pride and African
customs and did much to alter the feelings of inadequacy instilled among black people by the
apartheid system. The leader of the movement was taken into custody on 18 August 1977 and
was beaten to death in detention.
In 1976, secondary students in Soweto took to the streets in the Soweto uprising to protest
against the imposition of Afrikaans as the only language of instruction. On 16 June, police
opened fire on students protesting peacefully. According to official reports 23 people were
killed, but the number of people who died is usually given as 176, with estimates of up to
700. In the following years several student organisations were formed to protest against
apartheid, and these organisations were central to urban school boycotts in 1980 and 1983
and rural boycotts in 1985 and 1986.

List of attacks attributed to MK and compiled by the Committee for South African War
Resistance (COSAWR) between 1980 and 1983.
In parallel with student protests, labour unions started protest action in 1973 and 1974. After
1976 unions and workers are considered to have played an important role in the struggle
against apartheid, filling the gap left by the banning of political parties. In 1979 black trade
unions were legalised and could engage in collective bargaining, although strikes were still
illegal. Economist Thomas Sowell wrote that basic supply and demand led to violations of
Apartheid "on a massive scale" throughout the nation, simply because there were not enough
white South African business owners to meet the demand for various goods and services.
Large portions of the garment industry and construction of new homes, for example, were
effectively owned and operated by blacks, who either worked surreptitiously or who
circumvented the law with a white person as a nominal, figurehead manager.
In 1983, anti-apartheid leaders determined to resist the tricameral parliament assembled to
form the United Democratic Front (UDF) in order to coordinate anti-apartheid activism inside
South Africa. The first presidents of the UDF were Archie Gumede, Oscar
Mpethaand Albertina Sisulu; patrons were Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr Allan
Boesak, Helen Joseph, and Nelson Mandela. Basing its platform on abolishing apartheid and
creating a nonracial democratic South Africa, the UDF provided a legal way for domestic
human rights groups and individuals of all races to organise demonstrations and campaign
against apartheid inside the country. Churches and church groups also emerged as pivotal
points of resistance. Church leaders were not immune to prosecution, and certain faith-based
organisations were banned, but the clergy generally had more freedom to criticise the
government than militant groups did. The UDF, coupled with the protection of the church,
accordingly permitted a major role for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who served both as a
prominent domestic voice and international spokesperson denouncing apartheid and urging
the creation of a shared nonracial state.
Although the majority of whites supported apartheid, some 20 percent did not. Parliamentary
opposition was galvanised by Helen Suzman, Colin Eglin and Harry Schwarz, who formed
the Progressive Federal Party. Extra-parliamentary resistance was largely centred in the South
African Communist Party and women's organisation the Black Sash. Women were also
notable in their involvement in trade union organisations and banned political parties. The
public intellectuals too, such as Nadine Gordimer the eminent author and winner of the Nobel
Prize in Literature (1991), vehemently opposed the Apartheid regime and accordingly
bolstered the movement against it.

International relations during apartheid

Main article: Foreign relations of South Africa during apartheid
Commonwealth
South Africa's policies were subject to international scrutiny in 1960, when British Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan criticised them during his Wind of Change speech in Cape Town.
Weeks later, tensions came to a head in the Sharpeville massacre, resulting in more
international condemnation. Soon afterwards, Hendrik Verwoerd announced
a referendum on whether the country should become a republic. Verwoerd lowered the voting
age for Whites to eighteen years of age and included Whites in South West Africa on the roll.
The referendum on 5 October that year asked Whites; "Are you in favour of a Republic for
the Union?", and 52% voted "Yes".
As a consequence of this change of status, South Africa needed to reapply for continued
membership of the Commonwealth, with which it had privileged trade links. India had
become a republic within the Commonwealth in 1950, but it became clear that African and
South and Southeast Asian member states would oppose South Africa due to its apartheid
policies. As a result, South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth on 31 May 1961, the
day that the Republic came into existence.

United Nations
We stand here today to salute the United Nations Organisation and its Member
States, both singly and collectively, for joining forces with the masses of our
people in a common struggle that has brought about our emancipation and pushed
back the frontiers of racism.

— Nelson Mandela, address to the United Nations as South African President, 3

October 1994
The apartheid system as an issue was first formally brought to the United Nations attention,
in order to advocate for the Indians residing in South Africa. On 22 June 1946, the Indian
government requested that the discriminatory treatment of Indians living in South Africa be
included on the agenda of the first General Assembly session. In 1952, apartheid was again
discussed in the aftermath of the Defiance Campaign, and the UN set up a task team to keep
watch on the progress of apartheid and the racial state of affairs in South Africa. Although
South Africa's racial policies were a cause for concern, most countries in the UN concurred
that this was a domestic affair, which fell outside the UN's jurisdiction.
In April 1960, the UN's conservative stance on apartheid changed following the Sharpeville
massacre, and the Security Council for the first time agreed on concerted action against the
apartheid regime. Resolution 134 called upon the nation of South Africa to abandon its
policies implementing racial discrimination. The newly founded United Nations Special
Committee Against Apartheid, scripted and passed Resolution 181 on 7 August 1963, which
called upon all states to cease the sale and shipment of all ammunition and military vehicles
to South Africa. This clause was finally declared mandatory on 4 November 1977, depriving
South Africa of military aid. From 1964 onwards, the US and the UK discontinued their arms
trade with South Africa. The Security Council also condemned the Soweto massacre
in Resolution 392. In 1977, the voluntary UN arms embargo became mandatory with the
passing of Resolution 418. In addition to isolating South Africa militarily, the United Nations
General Assembly, encouraged the boycotting of oil sales to South Africa.Other actions taken
by the United Nations General Assembly include the request for all nations and organisations,
"to suspend cultural, educational, sporting and other exchanges with the racist regime and
with organisations or institutions in South Africa which practise apartheid". Illustrating that
over a long period of time, the United Nations was working towards isolating the state of
South Africa, by putting pressure on the Apartheid regime.
After much debate, by the late-1980s, the United States, the United Kingdom, and 23 other
nations had passed laws placing various trade sanctions on South Africa. A disinvestment
from South Africa movement in many countries was similarly widespread, with individual
cities and provinces around the world implementing various laws and local regulations
forbidding registered corporations under their jurisdiction from doing business with South
African firms, factories, or banks.

Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II was an outspoken opponent of apartheid. In 1985, while visiting
the Netherlands, he gave an impassioned speech at the Justice condemning apartheid,
proclaiming that "no system of apartheid or separate development will ever be acceptable as a
model for the relations between peoples or races." In September 1988, he made a pilgrimage
to countries bordering South Africa, while demonstratively avoiding South Africa itself.
During his visit to Zimbabwe, he called for economic sanctions against the South African
government.

Organisation for African Unity

See also: Lusaka Manifesto
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was created in 1963. Its primary objectives were
to eradicate colonialism and improve social, political and economic situations in Africa. It
censured apartheid and demanded sanctions against South Africa. African states agreed to aid
the liberation movements in their fight against apartheid. In 1969, fourteen nations from
Central and East Africa gathered in Lusaka, Zambia, and formulated the Lusaka Manifesto,
which was signed on 13 April by all of the countries in attendance except Malawi. This
manifesto was later taken on by both the OAU and the United Nations.
The Lusaka Manifesto summarised the political situations of self-governing African
countries, condemning racism and inequity, and calling for Black majority rule in all African
nations. It did not rebuff South Africa entirely, though, adopting an appeasing manner
towards the apartheid government, and even recognising its autonomy. Although African
leaders supported the emancipation of Black South Africans, they preferred this to be attained
through peaceful means.
South Africa's negative response to the Lusaka Manifesto and rejection of a change to its
policies brought about another OAU announcement in October 1971. The Mogadishu
Declaration stated that South Africa's rebuffing of negotiations meant that its Black people
could only be freed through military means, and that no African state should converse with
the apartheid government.
Outward-looking policy
In 1966, B. J. Vorster became Prime Minister. He was not prepared to dismantle apartheid,
but he did try to redress South Africa's isolation and to revitalise the country's global
reputation, even those with Black majority rule in Africa. This he called his "Outward-
Looking" policy.
Vorster's willingness to talk to African leaders stood in contrast to Verwoerd's refusal to
engage with leaders such as Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of Nigeria in 1962 and Kenneth
Kaunda of Zambia in 1964. In 1966, he met the heads of the neighbouring states
of Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. In 1967, he offered technological and financial aid to
any African state prepared to receive it, asserting that no political strings were attached,
aware that many African states needed financial aid despite their opposition to South Africa's
racial policies. Many were also tied to South Africa economically because of their migrant
labour population working down the South African mines. Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland
remained outspoken critics of apartheid, but were dependent on South African economic
assistance.
Malawi was the first non-neighbouring country to accept South African aid. In 1967, the two
states set out their political and economic relations. In 1969, Malawi was the only country at
the assembly which did not sign the Lusaka Manifesto condemning South Africa's apartheid
policy. In 1970, Malawian president Hastings Banda made his first and most successful
official stopover in South Africa.
Associations with Mozambique followed suit and were sustained after that country won its
sovereignty in 1975. Angola was also granted South African loans. Other countries which
formed relationships with South Africa were Liberia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritius,
Gabon, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and the Central African Republic.
Although these states condemned apartheid (more than ever after South Africa's denunciation
of the Lusaka Manifesto), South Africa's economic and military dominance meant that they
remained dependent on South Africa to varying degrees.

Sports and culture

Main articles: Sporting boycott of South Africa and Rugby union and apartheid
Beginning
South Africa's isolation in sport began in the mid-1950s and increased throughout the 1960s.
Apartheid forbade multiracial sport, which meant that overseas teams, by virtue of them
having players of different races, could not play in South Africa. In 1956, the International
Table Tennis Federation severed its ties with the all-White South African Table Tennis
Union, preferring the non-racial South African Table Tennis Board. The apartheid
government responded by confiscating the passports of the Board's players so that they were
unable to attend international games.

Isolation
Verwoerd years
In 1959, the non-racial South African Sports Association (SASA) was formed to secure the
rights of all players on the global field. After meeting with no success in its endeavours to
attain credit by collaborating with White establishments, SASA approached the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1962, calling for South Africa's expulsion from the Olympic
Games. The IOC sent South Africa a caution to the effect that, if there were no changes, they
would be barred from competing at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The changes were
initiated, and in January 1963, the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee
(SANROC) was set up. The Anti-Apartheid Movement persisted in its campaign for South
Africa's exclusion, and the IOC acceded in barring the country from the 1964 Olympic
Games. South Africa selected a multi-racial team for the next Olympic Games, and the IOC
opted for incorporation in the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. Because of protests from
AAMs and African nations, however, the IOC was forced to retract the invitation.

Foreign complaints about South Africa's bigoted sports brought more isolation. Racially
selected New Zealand sports teams toured South Africa, until the 1970 All Blacks rugby tour
allowed Maori to enter the country under the status of "honorary Whites". Huge and
widespread protests occurred in New Zealand in 1981 against the Springbok tour – the
government spent $8,000,000 protecting games using the army and police force. A planned
All Black tour to South Africa in 1985 remobilised the New Zealand protesters and it was
cancelled. A "rebel tour" – not government sanctioned – went ahead in 1986, but after that
sporting ties were cut, and New Zealand made a decision not to convey an authorised rugby
team to South Africa until the end of apartheid.

Vorster years
On 6 September 1966, Verwoerd was fatally stabbed at Parliament House by parliamentary
messenger Dimitri Tsafendas. John Vorster took office shortly after, and announced that
South Africa would no longer dictate to the international community what their teams should
look like. Although this reopened the gate for international sporting meets, it did not signal
the end of South Africa's racist sporting policies. In 1968, Vorster went against his policy by
refusing to permit Basil D'Oliveira, a Coloured South African-born cricketer, to join the
English cricket team on its tour to South Africa. Vorster said that the side had been chosen
only to prove a point, and not on merit. D'Oliveira was eventually included in the team as the
first substitute, but the tour was cancelled. Protests against certain tours brought about the
cancellation of a number of other visits, including that of an England rugby team touring
South Africa in 1969–70.
The first of the "White Bans" occurred in 1971 when the Chairman of the Australian
Cricketing Association – Sir Don Bradman – flew to South Africa to meet Vorster. Vorster
had expected Bradman to allow the tour of the Australian cricket team to go ahead, but things
became heated after Bradman asked why Black sportsmen were not allowed to play cricket.
Vorster stated that Blacks were intellectually inferior and had no finesse for the game.
Bradman, thinking this ignorant and repugnant, asked Vorster if he had heard of a man
named Garry Sobers. On his return to Australia, Bradman released a short statement: "We
will not play them until they choose a team on a non-racist basis." Bradman's views were in
stark contrast to those of Australian tennis great Margaret Court, who had won the grand
slam the previous year and commented about apartheid that "South Africans have this thing
better organised than any other country, particularly America" and that she would "go back
there any time."
In South Africa, Vorster vented his anger publicly against Bradman, while the African
National Congress rejoiced. This was the first time a predominantly White nation had taken
the side of multiracial sport, producing an unsettling resonance that more "White" boycotts
were coming. Almost twenty years later, on his release from prison, Nelson Mandela asked a
visiting Australian statesman if Donald Bradman, his childhood hero, was still alive
(Bradman lived until 2001).
In 1971, Vorster altered his policies even further by distinguishing multiracial from
multinational sport. Multiracial sport, between teams with players of different races,
remained outlawed; multinational sport, however, was now acceptable: international sides
would not be subject to South Africa's racial stipulations.

In 1978, Nigeria boycotted the Commonwealth Games because New Zealand's sporting
contacts with the South African government were not considered to be in accordance with the
1977 Gleneagles Agreement. Nigeria also led the 32-nation boycott of the 1986
Commonwealth Games because of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's ambivalent
attitude towards sporting links with South Africa, significantly affecting the quality and
profitability of the Games and thus thrusting apartheid into the international spotlight.
Cultural boycott
In the 1960s, the Anti-Apartheid Movements began to campaign for cultural boycotts of
apartheid South Africa. Artists were requested not to present or let their works be hosted in
South Africa. In 1963, 45 British writers put their signatures to an affirmation approving of
the boycott, and, in 1964, American actor Marlon Brando called for a similar affirmation for
films. In 1965, the Writers' Guild of Great Britain called for a proscription on the sending of
films to South Africa. Over sixty American artists signed a statement against apartheid and
against professional links with the state. The presentation of some South African plays in the
United Kingdom and the United States was also vetoed. After the arrival of television in
South Africa in 1975, the British Actors Union, Equity, boycotted the service, and no British
programme concerning its associates could be sold to South Africa. Similarly, when home
video grew popular in the 1980s, the Australian arm of CBS/Fox Video (now 20th Century
Fox Home Entertainment) placed stickers on their VHS and Betamax cassettes which labelled
exporting such cassettes to South Africa as "an infringement of copyright". Sporting and
cultural boycotts did not have the same effect as economic sanctions, but they did much to lift
consciousness amongst normal South Africans of the global condemnation of apartheid.

Western influence
See also: International sanctions during apartheid
London bus in 1989 carrying the "Boycott Apartheid" message.
While international opposition to apartheid grew, the Nordic countries – and Sweden in
particular – provided both moral and financial support for the ANC. On 21 February 1986 – a
week before he was assassinated – Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme made
the keynote address to the Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid held
in Stockholm. In addressing the hundreds of anti-apartheid sympathisers as well as leaders
and officials from the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement such as Oliver Tambo, Palme
declared: "Apartheid cannot be reformed; it has to be eliminated."
Other Western countries adopted a more ambivalent position. In Switzerland, the Swiss-
South African Association lobbied on behalf of the South African government. The Nixon
administration implemented a policy known as the Tar Baby Option, pursuant to which the
US maintained close relations with the Apartheid South African government. The Reagan
administration evaded international sanctions and provided diplomatic support in
international forums for the South African government. The United States also increased
trade with the Apartheid regime, while describing the ANC as "a terrorist organisation."Like
the Reagan administration, the government of Margaret Thatcher termed this policy
"constructive engagement" with the apartheid government, vetoing the imposition of UN
economic sanctions. U.S. government justification for supporting the Apartheid regime were
publicly given as a belief in "free trade" and the perception of the anti-communistSouth
African government as a bastion against Marxist forces in Southern Africa, for example, by
the military intervention of South Africa in the Angolan Civil War in support of right-wing
insurgents fighting to topple the government. The U.K. government also declared the ANC a
terrorist organisation, and in 1987 Thatcher's spokesman, Bernard Ingham, famously said that
anyone who believed that the ANC would ever form the government of South Africa was
"living in cloud cuckoo land". The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a
conservative lobbying organisation, actively campaigned against divesting from South Africa
throughout the 1980s.
By the late-1980s, with no sign of a political resolution in South Africa, Western patience
began to run out. By 1989, a bipartisan Republican/Democratic initiative in the US
favoured economic sanctions (realised as the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986), the
release of Nelson Mandela and a negotiated settlement involving the ANC. Thatcher too
began to take a similar line, but insisted on the suspension of the ANC's armed struggle.
The UK's significant economic involvement in South Africa may have provided
some leverage with the South African government, with both the UK and the US applying
pressure and pushing for negotiations. However, neither the UK nor the US was willing to
apply economic pressure upon their multinational interests in South Africa, such as the
mining company Anglo American. Although a high-profile compensation claim against these
companies was thrown out of court in 2004, the US Supreme Court in May 2008 upheld an
appeal court ruling allowing another lawsuit that seeks damages of more than US$400 billion
from major international companies which are accused of aiding South Africa's apartheid
system.

Effect of the Cold War

"Total Onslaught"
Apartheid-era propaganda leaflet issued to South African military personnel in the 1980s.
The pamphlet decries "Russian colonialism and oppression" in English, Afrikaans and
Portuguese.
During the 1950s, South African military strategy was decisively shaped by fears of
communist espionage and a conventional Soviet threat to the strategic Cape trade route
between the south Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The apartheid government supported the US-
led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well as its policy of
regional containment against Soviet-backed regimes and insurgencies worldwide. By the late-
1960s, the rise of Soviet client states on the African continent, as well as Soviet aid for
militant anti-apartheid movements, was considered one of the primary external threats to the
apartheid system. South African officials frequently accused domestic opposition groups of
being communist proxies. For its part, the Soviet Union viewed South Africa as a bastion
of neocolonialism and a regional Western ally, which helped fuel its support for various anti-
apartheid causes.
From 1973 onwards, much of South Africa's white population increasingly looked upon their
country as a bastion of the free world besieged militarily, politically, and culturally by
Communism and radical black nationalism. The apartheid government perceived itself as
being locked in a proxy struggle with the Warsaw Pact and by implication, armed wings of
black nationalist forces such as Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and the People's Liberation Army
of Namibia (PLAN), which often received arms and training in Warsaw Pact member
states. This was described as "Total Onslaught".
Israeli arms sales
Soviet support for militant anti-apartheid movements worked in the government's favour, as
its claim to be reacting in opposition to aggressive communist expansion gained greater
plausibility, and helped it justify its own domestic militarisation methods, known as "Total
Strategy". Total Strategy involved building up a formidable conventional military and
counter-intelligence capability. It was formulated on counter-revolutionary tactics as
espoused by noted French tactician André Beaufre. Considerable effort was devoted towards
circumventing international arms sanctions, and the government even went so far as to
develop nuclear weapons, allegedly with covert assistance from Israel. In 2010, The
Guardian released South African government documents that revealed an Israeli offer to sell
the apartheid regime nuclear weapons. Israel denied these allegations and claimed that the
documents were minutes from a meeting which did not indicate any concrete offer for a sale
of nuclear weapons. Shimon Peres said that The Guardian's article was based on "selective
interpretation ... and not on concrete facts."

As a result of "Total Strategy", South African society became increasingly militarised. Many
domestic civil organisations were modelled upon military structures, and military virtues such
as discipline, patriotism, and loyalty were highly regarded. In 1968, national service for
White South African men lasted nine months at minimum, and they could be called up for
reserve duty into their late-middle age if necessary. The length of national service was
gradually extended to 12 months in 1972 and 24 months in 1978. At state schools, white male
students were organised into paramilitary formations and drilled as cadets or as participants
in a civil defence or "Youth Preparedness" curriculum. Compulsory military education and in
some cases, paramilitary training was introduced for all older white male students at state
schools in three South African provinces. These programmes presided over the construction
of bomb shelters at schools and drills aimed at simulating mock insurgent raids.
From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, defence budgets in South Africa were raised
exponentially. In 1975, Israeli defence minister Shimon Peres signed a security pact with
South African defence minister P.W. Botha that led to $200 million in arms deals. In 1988,
Israeli arm sales to South Africa totalled over $1.4 billion. Covert operations focused on
espionage and domestic counter-subversion became common, the number of special
forces units swelled, and the South African Defence Force (SADF) had amassed enough
sophisticated conventional weaponry to pose a serious threat to the "front-line states", a
regional alliance of neighbouring countries opposed to apartheid.

Foreign military operations

Total Strategy was advanced in the context of MK, PLAN, and Azanian People's Liberation
Army (APLA) guerrilla raids into South Africa or against South African targets in South
West Africa; frequent South African reprisal attacks on these movements' external bases
in Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Botswana, often involving collateral
damage to foreign infrastructure and civilian populations; and periodic complaints brought
before the international community about South African violations of its neighbours'
sovereignty.
The apartheid government made judicious use of extraterritorial operations to eliminate its
military and political opponents, arguing that neighbouring states, including their civilian
populations, which hosted, tolerated on their soil, or otherwise sheltered anti-apartheid
insurgent groups could not evade responsibility for provoking retaliatory strikes. While it did
focus on militarising the borders and sealing up its domestic territory against insurgent raids,
it also relied heavily on an aggressive preemptive and counter-strike strategy which fulfilled a
preventive and deterrent purpose. The reprisals which occurred beyond South Africa's
borders involved not only hostile states, but neutral and sympathetic governments as well,
often forcing them to react against their will and interests.
External South African military operations were aimed at eliminating the training
facilities, safe-houses, infrastructure, equipment, and manpower of the insurgents. However,
their secondary objective was to dissuade neighbouring states from offering sanctuary to MK,
PLAN, APLA, and similar organisations. This was accomplished by deterring the supportive
foreign population from cooperating with infiltration and thus undermining the insurgents'
external sanctuary areas. It would also send a clear message to the host government that
collaborating with insurgent forces involved potentially high costs.
The scale and intensity of foreign operations varied, and ranged from small special forces
units carrying out raids on locations across the border which served as bases for insurgent
infiltration to major conventional offensives involving armour, artillery, and aircraft.Actions
such as Operation Protea in 1981 and Operation Askari in 1983 involved both full
scale conventional warfare and a counter-insurgency reprisal operation. The insurgent bases
were usually situated near military installations of the host government, so that SADF
retaliatory strikes hit those facilities as well and attracted international attention and
condemnation of what was perceived as aggression against the armed forces of another
sovereign state. This would inevitably result in major engagements, in which the
SADF's expeditionary units would have to contend with the firepower of the host
government's forces. Intensive conventional warfare of this nature carried the risk of severe
casualties among white soldiers, which had to be kept to a minimum for political
reasons. There were also high economic and diplomatic costs associated with openly
deploying large numbers of South African troops into another country. Furthermore, military
involvement on that scale had the potential to evolve into wider conflict situations, in which
South Africa became entangled. For example, South Africa's activities in Angola, initially
limited to containing PLAN, later escalated to direct involvement in the Angolan Civil War.
As it became clearer that full-scale conventional operations could not effectively fulfil the
requirements of a regional counter-insurgency effort, South Africa turned to a number of
alternative methods. Retributive artillery bombardments were the least sophisticated means of
reprisal against insurgent attacks. Between 1978 and 1979 the SADF directed artillery fire
against locations in Angola and Zambia from which insurgent rockets were suspected to have
been launched. This precipitated several artillery duels with the Zambian Army. Special
forces raids were launched to harass PLAN and MK by liquidating prominent members of
those movements, destroying their offices and safe-houses, and seizing valuable records
stored at these sites. One example was the Gaborone Raid, carried out in 1985, during which
a South African special forces team crossed the border into Botswana and demolished four
suspected MK safe houses, severely damaging another four. Other types of special forces
operations included the sabotage of economic infrastructure. The SADF sabotaged
infrastructure being used for the insurgents' war effort; for example, port facilities in southern
Angola's Moçâmedes District, where Soviet arms were frequently offloaded for PLAN, as
well as the railway line which facilitated their transport to PLAN headquarters in Lubango,
were common targets. Sabotage was also used as a pressure tactic when South Africa was
negotiating with a host government to cease providing sanctuary to insurgent forces, as in the
case of Operation Argon. Successful sabotage actions of high-profile economic targets
undermined a country's ability to negotiate from a position of strength, and made it likelier to
accede to South African demands rather than risk the expense of further destruction and war.
Also noteworthy were South African transnational espionage efforts, which included covert
assassinations, kidnappings, and attempts to disrupt the overseas influence of anti-apartheid
organisations. South African military intelligence agents were known to have abducted and
killed anti-apartheid activists and others suspected of having ties to MK
in London and Brussels.
State security
During the 1980s the government, led by P.W. Botha, became increasingly preoccupied with
security. It set up a powerful state security apparatus to "protect" the state against an
anticipated upsurge in political violence that the reforms were expected to trigger. The 1980s
became a period of considerable political unrest, with the government becoming increasingly
dominated by Botha's circle of generals and police chiefs (known as securocrats), who
managed the various States of Emergencies.
Botha's years in power were marked also by numerous military interventions in the states
bordering South Africa, as well as an extensive military and political campaign to
eliminate SWAPO in Namibia. Within South Africa, meanwhile, vigorous police action and
strict enforcement of security legislation resulted in hundreds of arrests and bans, and an
effective end to the African National Congress' sabotage campaign.
The government punished political offenders brutally. 40,000 people annually were subjected
to whipping as a form of punishment. The vast majority had committed political offences and
were lashed ten times for their crime. If convicted of treason, a person could be hanged, and
the government executed numerous political offenders in this way.
As the 1980s progressed, more and more anti-apartheid organisations were formed and
affiliated with the UDF. Led by the Reverend Allan Boesak and Albertina Sisulu, the UDF
called for the government to abandon its reforms and instead abolish the apartheid system and
eliminate the homelands completely.

State of emergency
Serious political violence was a prominent feature from 1985 to 1989, as Black townships
became the focus of the struggle between anti-apartheid organisations and the Botha
government. Throughout the 1980s, township people resisted apartheid by acting against the
local issues that faced their particular communities. The focus of much of this resistance was
against the local authorities and their leaders, who were seen to be supporting the
government. By 1985, it had become the ANC's aim to make Black townships
"ungovernable" (a term later replaced by "people's power") by means of rent boycotts and
other militant action. Numerous township councils were overthrown or collapsed, to be
replaced by unofficial popular organisations, often led by militant youth. People's courts were
set up, and residents accused of being government agents were dealt extreme and
occasionally lethal punishments. Black town councillors and policemen, and sometimes their
families, were attacked with petrol bombs, beaten, and murdered by necklacing, where a
burning tyre was placed around the victim's neck, after they were restrained by wrapping
their wrists with barbed wire.
On 20 July 1985, Botha declared a State of Emergency in 36 magisterial districts. Areas
affected were the Eastern Cape, and the PWV region: Pretoria, Witwatersrand,
Vereeniging.

Three months later, the Western Cape was included. An increasing number of organisations
were banned or listed (restricted in some way); many individuals had restrictions such as
house arrest imposed on them. During this state of emergency, about 2,436 people were
detained under the Internal Security Act. This act gave police and the military sweeping
powers. The government could implement curfews controlling the movement of people. The
president could decree without referring to the constitution or to parliament. It became a
criminal offence to threaten someone verbally or possess documents that the government
perceived to be threatening, to advise anyone to stay away from work or to oppose the
government, and to disclose the name of anyone arrested under the State of Emergency until
the government released that name, with up to ten years' imprisonment for these
offences. Detention without trial became a common feature of the government's reaction to
growing civil unrest and by 1988, 30,000 people had been detained. The media was censored,
thousands were arrested and many were interrogated and tortured.
On 12 June 1986, four days before the tenth anniversary of the Soweto uprising, the state of
emergency was extended to cover the whole country. The government amended the Public
Security Act, including the right to declare "unrest" areas, allowing extraordinary measures to
crush protests in these areas. Severe censorship of the press became a dominant tactic in the
government's strategy and television cameras were banned from entering such areas.
The state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation(SABC), provided
propaganda in support of the government. Media opposition to the system increased,
supported by the growth of a pro-ANC underground press within South Africa.
In 1987, the State of Emergency was extended for another two years. Meanwhile, about
200,000 members of the National Union of Mineworkers commenced the longest strike (three
weeks) in South African history. The year 1988 saw the banning of the activities of the UDF
and other anti-apartheid organisations.
Much of the violence in the late-1980s and early-1990s was directed at the government, but a
substantial amount was between the residents themselves. Many died in violence between
members of Inkatha and the UDF-ANC faction. It was later proven that the government
manipulated the situation by supporting one side or the other whenever it suited them.
Government agents assassinated opponents within South Africa and abroad; they undertook
cross-border army and air-force attacks on suspected ANC and PAC bases. The ANC and the
PAC in return detonated bombs at restaurants, shopping centres and government buildings
such as magistrates courts. Between 1960 and 1994, according to statistics from the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, the Inkatha Freedom Party was responsible for 4,500 deaths,
South African security forces were responsible for 2,700 deaths and the ANC was responsible
for 1,300 deaths.
The state of emergency continued until 1990 when it was lifted by State President F. W. de
Klerk.

Final years of apartheid

Factors
Institutional racism
Apartheid developed from the racism of colonial factions and due to South Africa's "unique
industrialisation". The policies of industrialisation led to the segregation and classing of
people, which was "specifically developed to nurture early industry such as mining". Cheap
labour was the basis of the economy, and this was taken from what the state classed as
peasant groups and the migrants. Furthermore, highlights the "contradictory economic
effects" as the economy did not have a manufacturing sector, therefore promoting short term
profitability but limiting labour productivity and the size of local markets. This also led to its
collapse as "Clarkes emphasises the economy could not provide and compete with foreign
rivals as they failed to master cheap labour and complex chemistry".
Economic contradictions
The contradiction in the traditionally capitalist economy of the apartheid state led to
considerable debate about racial policy, and division and conflicts in the central state. To a
large extent, the political ideology of apartheid had emerged from the colonisation of Africa
by European powers which institutionalised racial discrimination and exercised a paternal
philosophy of "civilising inferior natives." Some scholars have argued that this can be
reflected in Afrikaner Calvinism, with its parallel traditions of racialism; for example, as
early as 1933; the executive council of the Broederbond formulated a recommendation for
mass segregation.
Western influence

External Western influence, arising from European experiences in colonisation, may be seen
as a factor which greatly influenced political attitudes and ideology. Late twentieth-century
South Africa was cited as an "unreconstructed example of western civilisation twisted by
racism".
In the 1960s, South Africa experienced economic growth second only to that of Japan.Trade
with Western countries grew, and investment from the United States, France, and the United
Kingdom poured in.
In 1974, resistance to apartheid was encouraged by Portuguese
withdrawal from Mozambique and Angola, after the 1974 Carnation Revolution. South
African troops withdrew from Angola early in 1976, failing to prevent the MPLA from
gaining power there, and Black students in South Africa celebrated.
The Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith, signed by Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Harry Schwarzin
1974, enshrined the principles of peaceful transition of power and equality for all. Its purpose
was to provide a blueprint for South Africa by consent and racial peace in a multi-racial
society, stressing opportunity for all, consultation, the federal concept, and a Bill of Rights. It
caused a split in the United Party that ultimately realigned oppositional politics in South
Africa with the formation of the Progressive Federal Party in 1977. The Declaration was the
first of several such joint agreements by acknowledged Black and White political leaders in
South Africa.
In 1978, the National Party Defence Minister, became Prime Minister. His white minority
regime worried about Soviet aid to revolutionaries in South Africa at the same time that
South African economic growth had slowed. The South African Government noted that it
was spending too much money to maintain segregated homelands created for Blacks, and the
homelands were proving to be uneconomical.
Nor was maintaining Blacks as third-class citizens working well. Black labour remained vital
to the economy, and illegal Black labour unions were flourishing. Many Blacks remained too
poor to contribute significantly to the economy through their purchasing power – although
they composed more than 70% of the population. Botha's regime feared that an antidote was
needed to prevent the Blacks being attracted to communism.
In July 1979, the Nigerian Government alleged that the Shell-BP Petroleum Development
Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) was selling Nigerian oil to South Africa, though there
was little evidence or commercial logic for such sales. The alleged sanctions-breaking was
used to justify the seizure of some of BP's assets in Nigeria including their stake in SPDC,
although it appears the real reasons were economic nationalism and domestic politics ahead
of the Nigerian elections. Many South Africans attended schools in Nigeria, and Nelson
Mandela acknowledged the role of Nigeria in the struggle against apartheid on several
occasions.

Tricameral parliament
Main article: Tricameral Parliament
In the early-1980s, Botha's National Party government started to recognise the inevitability of
the need to reform the apartheid system. Early reforms were driven by a combination of
internal violence, international condemnation, changes within the National Party's
constituency, and changing demographics – whites constituted only 16% of the total
population, in comparison to 20% fifty years earlier.
In 1983, a new constitution was passed implementing what was called the Tricameral
Parliament, giving Coloureds and Indians voting rights and parliamentary representation in
separate houses – the House of Assembly (178 members) for Whites, the House of
Representatives (85 members) for Coloureds and the House of Delegates (45 members) for
Indians. Each House handled laws pertaining to its racial group's "own affairs", including
health, education and other community issues. All laws relating to "general affairs" (matters
such as defence, industry, taxation and Black affairs) were handled by a Cabinet made up of
representatives from all three houses. However, the White chamber had a large majority on
this Cabinet, ensuring that effective control of the country remained in the hands of the White
minority. Blacks, although making up the majority of the population, were excluded from
representation; they remained nominal citizens of their homelands. The first Tricameral
elections were largely boycotted by Coloured and Indian voters, amid widespread rioting.
Reforms and contact with the ANC under Botha
Concerned over the popularity of Mandela, Botha denounced him as an arch-Marxist-
committed to violent revolution, but to appease Black opinion and nurture Mandela as a
benevolent leader of Blacks, the government transferred him from the maximum
security Robben Island to the lower security Pollsmoor Prison just outside Cape Town; where
prison life was more comfortable for him. The government allowed Mandela more visitors,
including visits and interviews by foreigners, to let the world know that he was being treated
well.

Black homelands were declared nation-states and pass laws were abolished. Black labour
unions were legitimised, the government recognised the right of Blacks to live in urban areas
permanently and gave Blacks property rights there. Interest was expressed in rescinding the
law against interracial marriage and also rescinding the law against sexual relations between
different races, which was under ridicule abroad. The spending for Black schools increased,
to one-seventh of what was spent per white child, up from on one-sixteenth in 1968. At the
same time, attention was given to strengthening the effectiveness of the police apparatus.

In January 1985, Botha addressed the government's House of Assembly and stated that the
government was willing to release Mandela on condition that Mandela pledge opposition to
acts of violence to further political objectives. Mandela's reply was read in public by his
daughter Zinzi – his first words distributed publicly since his sentence to prison 21 years
earlier. Mandela described violence as the responsibility of the apartheid regime and said that
with democracy there would be no need for violence. The crowd listening to the reading of
his speech erupted in cheers and chants. This response helped to further elevate Mandela's
status in the eyes of those, both internationally and domestically, who opposed apartheid.
Between 1986 and 1988, some petty apartheid laws were repealed, along with the pass
laws. Botha told White South Africans to "adapt or die" and twice he wavered on the eve of
what were billed as "rubicon" announcements of substantial reforms, although on both
occasions he backed away from substantial changes. Ironically, these reforms served only to
trigger intensified political violence through the remainder of the 1980s as more communities
and political groups across the country joined the resistance movement. Botha's government
stopped short of substantial reforms, such as lifting the ban on the ANC, PAC and SACP and
other liberation organisations, releasing political prisoners, or repealing the foundation laws
of grand apartheid. The government's stance was that they would not contemplate negotiating
until those organisations "renounced violence".

By 1987, South Africa's economy was growing at one of the lowest rates in the world, and
the ban on South African participation in international sporting events was frustrating many
whites in South Africa. Examples of African states with Black leaders and White minorities
existed in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Whispers of South Africa one day having a Black President
sent more hardline whites into supporting right-wing political parties. Mandela was moved to
a four-bedroom house of his own, with a swimming pool and shaded by fir trees, on a prison
farm just outside of Cape Town. He had an unpublicised meeting with Botha. Botha
impressed Mandela by walking forward, extending his hand and pouring Mandela's tea. The
two had a friendly discussion, with Mandela comparing the African National Congress'
rebellion with that of the Afrikaner rebellion and talking about everyone being brothers.
A number of clandestine meetings were held between the ANC-in-exile and various sectors
of the internal struggle, such as women and educationalists. More overtly, a group of White
intellectuals met the ANC in Senegal for talks known as the Dakar Conference.
Presidency of F. W. de Klerk
Early in 1989, Botha had a stroke; he was prevailed upon to resign in February 1989.He was
succeeded as president later that year by F. W. de Klerk. Despite his initial reputation as a
conservative, de Klerk moved decisively towards negotiations to end the political stalemate
in the country. Prior to his term in office, F. W. de Klerk had already experienced political
success as a result of the power base he had built in the Transvaal. During this time, F. W. de
Klerk served as chairman to the provincial National Party, which was in favour of the
Apartheid regime. The transition of de Klerk's ideology regarding apartheid is seen clearly in
his opening address to parliament on 2 February 1990. F. W. de Klerk announced that he
would repeal discriminatory laws and lift the 30-year ban on leading anti-apartheid groups
such as the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African
Communist Party (SACP) and the United Democratic Front. The Land Act was brought to an
end. F. W. de Klerk also made his first public commitment to release Nelson Mandela, to
return to press freedom and to suspend the death penalty. Media restrictions were lifted and
political prisoners not guilty of common law crimes were released.
On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison after more
than 27 years behind bars.
Having been instructed by the UN Security Council to end its long-standing involvement in
South West Africa/Namibia, and in the face of military stalemate in Southern Angola, and an
escalation in the size and cost of the combat with the Cubans, the Angolans, and SWAPO
forces and the growing cost of the border war, South Africa negotiated a change of
control; Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990.

Negotiations
Apartheid was dismantled in a series of negotiations from 1990 to 1991, culminating in a
transitional period which resulted in the country's 1994 general election, the first in South
Africa held with universal suffrage.
In 1990, negotiations were earnestly begun, with two meetings between the government and
the ANC. The purpose of the negotiations was to pave the way for talks towards a peaceful
transition towards majority rule. These meetings were successful in laying down the
preconditions for negotiations, despite the considerable tensions still abounding within the
country. Apartheid legislation was abolished in 1991.
At the first meeting, the NP and ANC discussed the conditions for negotiations to begin. The
meeting was held at Groote Schuur, the President's official residence. They released the
Groote Schuur Minute, which said that before negotiations commenced political prisoners
would be freed and all exiles allowed to return.
There were fears that the change of power would be violent. To avoid this, it was essential
that a peaceful resolution between all parties be reached. In December 1991, the Convention
for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) began negotiations on the formation of a
multiracial transitional government and a new constitution extending political rights to all
groups. CODESA adopted a Declaration of Intent and committed itself to an "undivided
South Africa".
Reforms and negotiations to end apartheid led to a backlash among the right-wing White
opposition, leading to the Conservative Party winning a number of by-elections against NP
candidates. De Klerk responded by calling a Whites-only referendum in March 1992 to
decide whether negotiations should continue. 68% voted in favour, and the victory instilled in
de Klerk and the government a lot more confidence, giving the NP a stronger position in
negotiations.
When negotiations resumed in May 1992, under the tag of CODESA II, stronger demands
were made. The ANC and the government could not reach a compromise on how power
should be shared during the transition to democracy. The NP wanted to retain a strong
position in a transitional government, and the power to change decisions made by parliament.

Persistent violence added to the tension during the negotiations. This was due mostly to the
intense rivalry between the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the ANC and the eruption of
some traditional tribal and local rivalries between the Zulu and Xhosa historical tribal
affinities, especially in the Southern Natal provinces. Although Mandela and Buthelezi met to
settle their differences, they could not stem the violence. One of the worst cases of ANC-IFP
violence was the Boipatong massacre of 17 June 1992, when 200 IFP militants attacked
the Gauteng township of Boipatong, killing 45. Witnesses said that the men had arrived in
police vehicles, supporting claims that elements within the police and army contributed to the
ongoing violence. Subsequent judicial inquiries found the evidence of the witnesses to be
unreliable or discredited, and that there was no evidence of National Party or police
involvement in the massacre. When de Klerk visited the scene of the incident he was initially
warmly welcomed, but he was suddenly confronted by a crowd of protesters brandishing
stones and placards. The motorcade sped from the scene as police tried to hold back the
crowd. Shots were fired by the police, and the PAC stated that three of its supporters had
been gunned down. Nonetheless, the Boipatong massacre offered the ANC a pretext to
engage in brinkmanship. Mandela argued that de Klerk, as head of state, was responsible for
bringing an end to the bloodshed. He also accused the South African police of inciting the
ANC-IFP violence. This formed the basis for ANC's withdrawal from the negotiations, and
the CODESA forum broke down completely at this stage.
The Bisho massacre on 7 September 1992 brought matters to a head. The Ciskei Defence
Force killed 29 people and injured 200 when they opened fire on ANC marchers demanding
the reincorporation of the Ciskei homeland into South Africa. In the aftermath, Mandela and
de Klerk agreed to meet to find ways to end the spiralling violence. This led to a resumption
of negotiations.
Right-wing violence also added to the hostilities of this period. The assassination of Chris
Hani on 10 April 1993 threatened to plunge the country into chaos. Hani, the popular General
Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was assassinated in 1993 in Dawn
Park in Johannesburg by Janusz Waluś, an anti-Communist Polish refugee who had close
links to the White nationalist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). Hani enjoyed
widespread support beyond his constituency in the SACP and ANC and had been recognised
as a potential successor to Mandela; his death brought forth protests throughout the country
and across the international community, but ultimately proved a turning point, after which the
main parties pushed for a settlement with increased determination. On 25 June 1993, the
AWB used an armoured vehicle to crash through the doors of the Kempton Park World Trade
Centre where talks were still going ahead under the Negotiating Council, though this did not
derail the process.
In addition to the continuing "black-on-black" violence, there were a number of attacks on
white civilians by the PAC's military wing, the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA).
The PAC was hoping to strengthen their standing by attracting the support of the angry,
impatient youth. In the St James Church massacre on 25 July 1993, members of the APLA
opened fire in a church in Cape Town, killing 11 members of the congregation and wounding
58.
In 1993, de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work
for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new
democratic South Africa".
Violence persisted right up to the 1994 general election. Lucas Mangope, leader of the
Bophuthatswana homeland, declared that it would not take part in the elections. It had been
decided that, once the temporary constitution had come into effect, the homelands would be
incorporated into South Africa, but Mangope did not want this to happen. There were strong
protests against his decision, leading to a coup d'état in Bophuthatswana carried out by the
SDF on 10 March that deposed Mangope. AWB militants attempted to intervene in hopes of
maintaining Mangope in power. Fighting alongside black paramilitaries loyal to Mangope
they were unsuccessful, with 3 AWB militants being killed during this intervention, and
harrowing images of the bloodshed shown on national television and in newspapers across
the world.
Two days before the election, a car bomb exploded in Johannesburg, killing nine people. The
day before the elections, another one went off, injuring 13. At midnight on 26–27 April 1994
the previous "orange white blue" flag adopted in 1928 was lowered, and the old (now co-
official) national anthem Die Stem ("The Call") was sung, followed by the raising of the
new Y shaped flag and singing of the other co-official anthem, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika ("God
Bless Africa").
Since 2019, publicly displaying the 1928–1994 flag in South Africa is banned and it is
classified as hate speech.

1994 election
The election was held on 27 April 1994 and went off peacefully throughout the country as 20
million South Africans cast their votes. There was some difficulty in organising the voting in
rural areas, but people waited patiently for many hours to vote amidst a palpable feeling of
goodwill. An extra day was added to give everyone the chance. International observers
agreed that the elections were free and fair. The European Union's report on the election
compiled at the end of May 1994, published two years after the election, criticised
the Independent Electoral Commission's lack of preparedness for the polls, the shortages of
voting materials at many voting stations, and the absence of effective safeguards
against fraud in the counting process. In particular, it expressed disquiet that "no international
observers had been allowed to be present at the crucial stage of the count when party
representatives negotiated over disputed ballots." This meant that both the electorate and the
world were "simply left to guess at the way the final result was achieved."
The ANC won 62.65% of the vote, less than the 66.7 percent that would have allowed it to
rewrite the constitution. 252 of the 400 seats went to members of the African National
Congress. The NP captured most of the White and Coloured votes and became the
official opposition party. As well as deciding the national government, the election decided
the provincial governments, and the ANC won in seven of the nine provinces, with the NP
winning in the Western Cape and the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal. On 10 May 1994, Mandela was
sworn in as the new President of South Africa. The Government of National Unity was
established, its cabinet made up of 12 ANC representatives, six from the NP, and three from
the IFP. Thabo Mbeki and de Klerk were made deputy presidents.
The anniversary of the elections, 27 April, is celebrated as a public holiday known
as Freedom Day.

Contrition
The following individuals, who had previously supported apartheid, made public apologies:

 F. W. de Klerk: "I apologise in my capacity as leader of the NP to the millions who

suffered wrenching disruption of forced removals; who suffered the shame of being
arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades suffered the indignities and
humiliation of racial discrimination." In a video released after his death in 2021, he
apologised one last time for apartheid, both on a personal level and in his capacity as
former president.
 Marthinus van Schalkwyk: "The National Party brought development to a section of
South Africa, but also brought suffering through a system grounded on injustice", in a
statement shortly after the Party voted to disband.
 Adriaan Vlok washed the feet of apartheid victim Frank Chikane in an act of apology
for the wrongs of the Apartheid regime.
 Leon Wessels: "I am now more convinced than ever that apartheid was a terrible
mistake that blighted our land. South Africans did not listen to the laughing and the
crying of each other. I am sorry that I had been so hard of hearing for so long".

International legal, political, and social uses of

the term
The South African experience has given rise to the term "apartheid" being used in a number
of contexts other than the South African system of racial segregation. For example: The
"crime of apartheid" is defined in international law, including in the 2007 law that created
the International Criminal Court (ICC), which names it as a crime against humanity. Even
before the creation of the ICC, the UN International Convention on the Suppression and
Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which came into force in 1976, enshrined into law the
"crime of apartheid."
The term apartheid has been adopted by Palestinian rights advocates and by leading Israeli
and other human rights organisations, referring to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank,
legal treatment of illegal settlements and the West Bank barrier.Within the pre-1967 Israeli
borders, Palestinian rights advocates have raised concern over discriminatory housing
planning against Palestinian citizens of Israel, likening it to racial segregation. Others argue
that the Israeli treatment of Palestinians does not fit the definition of apartheid as it is
motivated by security considerations and has nothing to do with race. Social apartheid is
segregation on the basis of class or economic status. For example, refers to the various
aspects of economic inequality in Brazil. Social apartheid may fall into various categories.
Economic and social discrimination because of gender is sometimes referred to as gender
apartheid. Separation of people according to their religion, whether pursuant to official laws
or pursuant to social expectations, is sometimes referred to as religious apartheid.
Communities in Northern Ireland for example, are often housed based on religion in a
situation which has been described as "self-imposed apartheid".

The concept in occupational therapy that individuals, groups and communities can be
deprived of meaningful and purposeful activity through segregation due to social, political,
economic factors and for social status reasons, such as race, disability, age, gender, sexuality,
religious preference, political preference, or creed, or due to war conditions, is sometimes
known as occupational apartheid.
A 2007 book by Harriet A. Washington on the history of medical experimentation on African
Americans is entitled Medical Apartheid.
The disproportionate management and control of the world's economy and resources by
countries and companies of the Global North has been referred to as global apartheid. A
related phenomenon is technological apartheid, a term used to describe the denial of modern
technologies to Third World or developing nations. The last two examples use the term
"apartheid" less literally since they are centred on relations between countries, not on
disparate treatment of social populations within a country or political jurisdiction.

See also
 Afrophobia
 Allegations of apartheid by country
 Apartheid in international law
 Apartheid in art and literature
 Black Codes (United States)
 Civil rights movement
 Discrimination based on skin colour
 Divide and rule
 History of South Africa
 Index of racism-related articles
 Jim Crow Laws
 Legacies of apartheid
 Music in the movement against apartheid
 Negrophobia
 Nuremberg Laws
 Racial discrimination
 Racial hierarchy
 Racial segregation
 Racism against African Americans
 Racism against Asians
 Racism against Native Americans in the United States
 Racism by country