How to watch White’s Only: Ade’s Extremist Adventure – all about the C4 documentary
Apartheid, translating to "apartness" in Afrikaans, was a legislative system that enforced segregation against South Africa's non-white residents.
The controversial 1913 Land Act, enacted three years after South Africa gained its independence, initiated territorial segregation by forcing Black Africans to reside in reserves and outlawing their employment as sharecroppers.
Critics of the Land Act established the South African National Native Congress, which later became the African National Congress (ANC).
Following World War II and the National Party's rise to power in 1948, its exclusively white government swiftly implemented the pre-existing racial segregation policies.
The apartheid regime mandated that non-white South Africans, who constituted the majority, reside in separate areas from whites and use separate public amenities, severely restricting interactions between the two populations.
The Population Registration Act of 1950 paved the structure for apartheid, categorising all South Africans by race, including Bantu (Black Africans), Coloured (mixed race), and white groups.
Assuming office as prime minister in 1958, Hendrik Verwoerd fine-tuned the apartheid policy into what he termed “separate development.”
The 1959 Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act established ten Bantu homelands or Bantustans, which not only allowed the government to deny the existence of a Black majority but also diminished the likelihood of Black individuals uniting into a single nationalist movement.
The government then forced the relocation of Black South Africans from rural zones earmarked as “white” to the homelands, subsequently selling their lands to white farmers at reduced rates.
Between 1961 and 1994, over 3.5 million individuals were compelled to leave their homes and were relocated to the Bantustans, a shift that pushed them into deep poverty and despair.
Over the years, resistance to apartheid took many forms, from non-violent demonstrations, and strikes to political action and eventually to armed resistance.
In 1960, Sharpeville police shot unarmed Blacks protesting laws about passes with the Pan-African Congress (PAC), killing 67 and wounding over 180.
Nelson Mandela, co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"), the armed branch of the ANC, was imprisoned from 1963 to 1990.
His imprisonment garnered international attention and condemnation.
In 1976, Soweto's Black student protest against Afrikaans in schools met with police gunfire, escalating into a movement that, amid economic woes, spotlighted South Africa's apartheid globally.
By 1985, following UN condemnations and an arms embargo, the UK and US imposed economic sanctions on apartheid South Africa.
In 1989, under significant pressure, Pieter Botha made way for F.W. de Klerk, a fellow conservative who had consistently backed apartheid during his political tenure.
Adopting pragmatism, De Klerk dismantled apartheid laws, released Mandela in 1990, and by 1994, a new constitution and elections ended apartheid, establishing a majority non white government.
Since then, the ANC has been the dominant party in South African politics, leading the national legislature and governing eight of nine provinces, with the Western Cape under the Democratic Alliance.