The National Party promised that all white people could keep all of their land, money and will stay wealthy. They also promised that the Afrikaners could have their homes and jobs back and their position in society would be protected by apartheid if whites voted for them.
There were two types of apartheid: practical and idealist. The Afrikaners support the idealist apartheid. This was that blacks and whites must be totally separated and live in total separate areas of the country. The blacks would live in their tribal homelands, ruling themselves to a limited extent. They would earn their living by farming and eat the crops they produce. Whereas, the whites will control mining and industry, and employ no black workers. All the jobs in industry will be done by white workers or by machines.
However, English speaking white South Africans support the practical apartheid. This is when blacks and whites must be separated as far as possible. The English speaking whites depend on their high standard of living, which depends on industry, which has always employed large numbers of black workers. They need black labour because it is cheap and so they could sell their goods around the world at competitive prices. They also prefer to employ black migrant workers because they then don’t have to pay them enough to support the workers families.
The Blacksash was a white movement that opposed the apartheid law, which mainly consisted of white middle class women that worked with black women in difficulties. Another white group that opposed apartheid was the communist party, they believed that all men were equal and this meant that black and white workers could join forces. The South African government was so threatened by this party that they banned it during the period of apartheid.
There were discussions within the black community about apartheid for example; wealthy middle class black people supported apartheid because the apartheid gave them business opportunities such as minibuses for black workers to go to and from the townships into central and white areas of Johannesburg. They were not affected as much as the poorer black working class. They didn’t go against the government, as they were dependant on it for subsidies. This was to keep fares down but they could only do this if they stayed on the right side of the authority.
The poorer black South Africans tended to just try to exist or to stay alive using apartheid because they were in fear of losing the little they already had. They also did not actively oppose it due to lack of time, as they were always too busy working. They also believed that they could not achieve anything.
Nelson Mandela was against apartheid and he opened the first all – black law firm in 1952. Mandela, Tambo and Lembede all discussed what black people had to do to win equal rights in their own country. Anton Lembede was an Africanist, which meant that he believed Africans should throw off feelings of inferiority towards whites. They wanted to win freedom for themselves, not in co-operation with Non-Africans such as whites and Indians.
