The newspaper also states that talks between the government and ANC will eventually take place. It also states that Mandela and the blacks will make no deal until apartheid has been completely abolished and equality throughout the country is present no matter the colour of the skin.
Apartheid is a system were different races were kept segregated. The system of Apartheid came to place in South Africa because of whites feeling superior to blacks and they wanted this to be apparent in every day life. Whites believed that segregation should be inforced even more strongly than it already was. They wanted this because they thought that different races could not live together peacefully, as they never have done in the past. They believed the only way forwards was to completely separate races from each other only then could everyone be peaceful. I find this odd that they wanted this as the rest of the world were moving forward, away from slavery and racism.
Segregation came about in 1902. It came about really because Britons felt guilty about the Boer war they wanted to min over the Boers so they created a new Union of South Africa which meant that only a handful of rich cape blacks could vote, this wouldn’t make much influence on an election. In the long run it was great for the whites but not so great for the blacks.
In 1913 Jan Smuts and Louis Botha passed the land act, which meant that blacks couldn’t own their own land or practise sharecropping. Basically the land act gave white farmers, cheap black labourers in the long term, however the short term meant harsh suffering for evicted blacks.
In 1932 segregation was justified along the lines: blacks were racially different to whites; they were rural people best in tribes lead by chiefs and not suited to city life. So for the welfare of the blacks the Native Economic Commission advised the government to put
blacks into reserves, which will be more productive under modern farming methods. This new law increased reserves to 13.5 per cent of South Africa. Other laws were also introduced to keep blacks and whites separated.
In 1948 elections were held. The Nationalists published a report saying what apartheid would involve. It was very simple this was obviously what voters wanted as it was a vote winner amongst white voters. Even though they only gained 39 per cent of the vote they had majority seats in Parliament and formed the new government with Malan as Prime Minister. After these elections apartheid really came into place.
In 1950, the Prime Minister appointed Professor Tomlinson to chair the commission of how apartheid should work in practice. In 1955, he advised separation of the different races. He said this would work if the government were willing to pay. The government would have to provide Homelands or ‘Bantustans’ for the blacks and pay £104 million to improve Homelands farms and provide factories around the borders of these Homelands. So black people could live work rest and play in these enclosed areas without ever having to come into contact with any other races.
Tomlinson had made a few miscalculations like only giving blacks 13.7% of the whole of South Africa. This was too little considering the fact that blacks made up 75% of the population. As a result of this many blacks ended up living in poverty in their own Homelands.
Tomlinson also did not account for a fast population increase, and the expansion of many white owned factories. The expansion of the white factories meant they needed more labourers and therefore blacks needed to move into white areas so to fill those vacancies.
Although the plans had problems apartheid still went ahead and apartheid laws were gradually put in place. For the next fifteen years Afrikaner, governments kept putting laws in place to strengthen apartheid.
The government put in six laws over the eight or nine years these laws included the prohibition of mixed marriages this was introduced in 1949, it meant basically that no mixed race marriages were allowed, if you were planning to get married you couldn’t and if you were married then you marriage was void. Group areas act introduced in 1950, this meant that there were separate housing areas for black and whites. Abolition of passes act, introduced in 1952, this meant that blacks had to carry special passes to say who they were and what they were doing, like why they had left their homeland. Separate amenities act, introduced in 1953, this basically meant that there were separate facilities for black and whites, if you were black you went to a black cinema or black toilet and vice versa. Also in 1953 the Bantu education act was introduced, this meant there were separate schools and education for blacks and whites. The final law to be introduced was the separate representation of voters act in 1956; this meant that there was separate voting in elections for cape colours.
As apartheid progressed it became known as white domination, not just segregation.
