Race Relations In South Africa

One of the most prominent events in history has been how race relations have ruled over the country and the world in general. The Western civilizations have always been more advanced and this statement proves to be true with the concept of people themselves were treated as property and seen merely as a number. Many countries have had to deal with segregation and discrimination but America and South Africa have had the largest accounts of segregation that has advanced their cultures and beliefs as individual countries. In both of these events we can see a trend of property rights and using people as property to own and handle at one’s disposer. Because of the advancements in the West we can prove that throughout history, and in the mid 1900s

In 1948, the leader of the Afrikaner National Party, Francois Malan, became president of South Africa and picks up apartheid. The government policy forces racial segregation across the country as Black African, Coloured, and Indians are discriminated against as minority and non-white citizens. The height of the Apartheid was between 1950 and 1960 where there was violence and riots across the countries as the coloured protestors tried to fight for their freedom. One protestor stood out from the rest. Nelson Mandela moved with his fellow minorities to fight for freedom and was one of the main causes for South Africa being broken from racial segregation. Although the legal side of the Apartheid was only abolished in 1991, Mandela worked for over 40 years trying to make South Africa an open country serving time in prison, being banned from his country, and making influential speeches encouraging the country to go against the segregated rule of the government. Nelson Mandela, in his No Easy Walk To Freedom speech in September of 1953 stated that the government’s attitude towards the racial segregation was extremely violent and forceful. “Let’s beat them down with guns and batons and trample them under our feet. We must be ready to drown this whole country in blood if only there is the slightest chance of preserving white supremacy.” (Mandela,

As slavery was abolished in America, the hatred over coloured minorities was definitely not going anywhere. In 1950, America was only around 10% Black which made the race relations in the country a system of majority oppressing minority. During this time the US was the host of many violent riots, within bigger cities, of minorities fighting against bad schools, bad housing, high pricing within the country, and mistreatment by the police. Martin Luther King Jr. was the one influential individual that really helped out the country and left an eternal impression across the world. He too, like Mandela, made many speeches informing citizens that they should be rightfully treated. “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we 've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.” (Luther King Jr, 1963). Although there was a lot of violence and horrible things going on, in 1964 the minority sought out change and created the Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public