Apartheid in South Africa

Origins of Apartheid

In the seventeenth century, South Africa was colonized by Dutch and British imperialists. In response to British domination, Dutch settlers made two colonies: The Republic of the Orange Free State and Transvaal. Dutch descendants became known as “Afrikaners” or “Boers.” In the early 1900s, Boers discovered diamonds on their land. This led to a Britain invasion and sparked the Second Boer War, which lasted three years. This was the first modern war to see concentration camps; they were used successfully to break the will of Afrikaner guerilla forces by detaining their families. British forces won the war, converting the two Boer states into colonies who were promised limited self-governance. Post-Boer War, the power balance became an uneasy one, until the Afrikaner National Party found a majority.

The party found their majority in 1948. One factor contributing to this majority was that in 1930, the government gave the right to vote to white women thus doubling their political power. In efforts to guarantee their social and economic control over South Africa, the National Party contrived a “Grand Apartheid” plan. The focus of this was to systematically institutionalize racial segregation, and reinforce it with police brutality. Among the first laws passed include The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949), Population Registration Act (1950) and Group Areas Act (1950). The Group Areas Act took information from the Population Registration and set up ethnic areas that only those ethnicities could live in (white, black and coloured areas); these areas were known as Bantustans. The demarcation lines of these areas were absurd, for example, one Bantustan, “KwaZulu, consists of no fewer than ten sep...

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... apartheid. In 1940, he became an assistant minister for the Dutch Reform Church (DRC). This church used religious rhetoric to perpetuate apartheid. For twenty years, Naudé supported the church’s ideology, but in time, his review of scripture and events such as the Sharpeville Massacre changed his mind. After twenty-two years of service in the DRC, Naudé had to choose between the DRC and his interracial Christian Institute. He chose the institute, thus ostracizing himself and his family from the Afrikaners, and as his Christian Institute picked up momentum, it was banned.

He was a white man who protested against apartheid before it became the popular thing to do. His community rejected him, but he found the courage to stand up for what he knew was right. As a religious leader, Naudé broke the stereotype that all white men are against the Blacks.