In what ways were the lives of Africans changed by the policy of Apartheid in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's?

Joanne Vale

In what ways were the lives of Africans changed by the policy of Apartheid in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s?

Between 1948 and 1954, D. Malan had established apartheid policies leading to a white run government and the segregation of blacks from whites. This changed the lives of black South Africans during the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s and in this assignment, I will be looking at how apartheid played a major role in new laws and white people’s views towards the blacks, how this helped them to control the lives of black Africans, and that blacks could not influence the government, leading to them having no control over the way the country and their lives were run. The question itself already tells us that the blacks had no say over the ever changing political and economic laws, and that whites were dominating their way of life.

By the 1950’s, both the Population Registration Act and the Immorality Amendment Act were in existence, and it were a time in which the blacks had started to believe that their lives were going to begin improving, or so they thought. The Population Registration Act insured that whites and other races were put into racial registers so that the white government could define what group which race belonged to – white, native or coloureds. This law brought anger to the blacks as the whites were a minority in their country, but they were ruling what group they were in, and how society would treat them, depending on their race. It also caused families to split up and thirteen years after this act, over 20,000 individuals still had not been classified. To make things worse, the Immorality Amendment Act banned sexual intercourse between whites and non-whites. This would insure that the white race would stay “pure,” that families, who were mixed before the laws, would be forced to split and would insure that blacks and whites were permanently separate. Partners that had been together before the law were forced apart, and the blacks realised that the whites were starting to not only dominate their everyday tasks, but their feelings and emotions, too.

Among these laws, were the means to have separate areas for each race to live on and to restrict and maintain the Population Registration Act and the Immorality Amendment Act. Towards the end of the 1950’s, the Group Areas Act helped white supremacy by giving whites and other races different locations to live on. Non-whites were not allowed into cities or towns, and this caused misery, suffering and humiliation for those forced to move. Although this law was not successful, it still maintained the effect of white dominance, and the blacks realised that whilst apartheid was playing a big ...

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Petty apartheid granted that whites could control everyday tasks for the blacks, and gave the different races total segregation from each other. It ensured that blacks and whites had different bus stops and buses, cinema’s, parks, hospitals etc, and gave blacks an insight to what the future would bring for them: more heartache and depression caused by apartheid. This made the blacks feel like their futures were going to be continually ruled, and that their children would be brought up in a country where whites made blacks feel inadequate and un-important. This would have been a horrible time for the black population, and they felt angry that even though the whites were the minority, their lives were becoming useless to them, and that their every movement was being controlled.

In 1953, Hedrick Verwoerd, the National Party’s government minister of Native affairs/Bantu affairs, continued to introduce the long and complex series of apartheid laws. He introduced a bill that stopped black education from missionary control to that of the Native Affairs Department. He said that “blacks should be aware that they will never have equality with the whites”. This links in with the Bantu Self-government Act. This was a map that showed how whites had a huge area of South Africa, based in the middle of Africa, with small clusters of black states around its border, and showed that the whites had separated the black and native population into smaller groups as the white feared that because they were a minority, the blacks would try to over power them, so this made them feel they had more supremacy and control of the coloureds. While this had made whites feel more powerful and stronger, the black peoples’ lives were in turmoil. Some lost the will to live, and others gave up on hope that there would ever be an equal country, where everyone was treated the same.

The Bantu Education Act was I feel the worse of the apartheid laws. Young black or native South Africans were bought up to think that they were not as important or as special as white people and that they would always come second best to where the whites were concerned. They were taught in schools that were only for blacks, (as the apartheid law had insured that whites had different schools to coloureds), and that they were to follow white rules and apartheid laws without exemption.

In conclusion, the South African lives in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s were terrible hard times, when blacks and native people could not see a clear and happy future. Whites were so worried about how supreme and dominative they were, that they didn’t stop to think about how much pain and heartache they were causing the black and native folk. I feel that apartheid was a cruel way in which for whites to rule the black people’ lives, and that, in the end, they wanted to rule everything about them. The white population were a minority to blacks, so I feel that this shows how scared and worried the blacks were of white folk, and the laws. The whites needn’t have worried about the blacks over-powering them as the blacks could have easily gone against the rules, but they didn’t through fear of the government, police and the laws. Again, apartheid had crushed the black people’s hopes of a better life.

In what ways were the lives of Africans changed by the policy of Apartheid in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's?

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