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The roots of apartheid in South Africa
The roots of apartheid in South Africa
The roots of apartheid in South Africa
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Apartheid is a word that means ‘separation’ in Afrikaans which is a spoken language in southern Africa. Apartheid was used in the twentieth century for racial segregation and political and economic discrimination in the late 1940’s . This is the separation between the blacks, coloured, and white South Africans. The apartheid in South Africa displays racial inequalities by having the twenty percent of whites rule over the majority of blacks and coloured. All whites wanted the blacks to have a whole other separate society. The African National Congress (ANC) which began as a nonviolent civil rights group tried to get rid of apartheid which was not successful until Nelson Mendela became the president and restored the South Africans natural rights.
Apartheid started in 1948 during the twentieth century. A few years before apartheid began the arrival of blacks began. Their arrival began the “Malan's Herenigde Nasionale Party (Reunited National Party) which was a political party in the 1940’s and was created by Daniel François Malan and J.B.M. Hertzog” (Herenigde Nasionale Party). This national party allowed the South African government to introduce new laws which gave the minority the power to rule over the majority. Even before apartheid was introduced the few black people that were in South Africa were not treated well. Another reason apartheid was started by the African National Congress (ANC) was because the white South Africans were unable to teach the black population new technology to be able to work in the white world according to the white population. So they enforced the law of apartheid so the whites would not have to associate with the blacks at all. This not only was happening in South Africa, it also happened in America ...
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...violated because even though apartheid was taken away blacks still did not have much opportunity for many things and most were still in poverty. The government described their hardness on the blacks as just “using force so rules aren’t broken, because nobody gets special treatment” (Human Rights in South Africa).
Apartheid in South Africa became a huge issue due to the loss of human rights. Apartheid segregated and created problems between the whites and blacks of South Africa. Many of the blacks of South Africa had their rights violated due to the National Party making the white minority more powerful. Which automatically made the white richer and the black poorer. This was all changed when Nelson Mandela and F.W. De Klerk joined the African National Congress (ANC) and stood up against the National Party which created a more equalized South Africa.
Throughout the twentieth century, Rhodesia from 1960’s to the late 1970’s have always been in a struggle to fight for their independence. They had to deal with the British colonist that settled into their land and had taken over control of the country for the past couple of years. Due to the decolonisation of African countries after the second world war it gave many influences and reasons for Rhodesia to search to become an independent country. That all changed when they fully receive their independence in 1980 and during that time they fought for the control of their country, Rhodesia. The name was later changed to Zimbabwe due to a revolutionary struggle they had in their country. The battle to govern Rhodesia and also by the agreement of the Internal Settlement between the fighting forces to find and create peace
When considering what the African diaspora is, there is one period of time that people commonly refer to. This period of time is the Atlantic Slave Trade. While not the only diaspora of the African people in history, the Atlantic Slave Trade is most commonly thought of due to the scale at which Africans were being emigrated, with around 10-15 million Africans being brought over to the Americas, as well as the effect it has on us today. When looking at the experiences of Africans, they greatly differed dependent on where they landed. These experiences affected later generations of Africans, forcing them to adopt their own culture based on their surroundings and what they were accustomed to from Africa.
In the world today, racism and discrimination is one of the major issues being faced with. Racism has existed throughout the world for centuries and has been the primary reasons for wars, conflicts, and other human calamities all over the planet. It has been a part of America since the European colonization of North America beginning in the 17th century. Many people are not aware of how much racism still exist in our schools, workforces, and anywhere else that social lives are occurring. It started from slavery in America to caste partiality in India, down to the Holocaust in Europe during World War II.
Apartheid was a system of segregation implemented in 1948 by the Afrikaner National Party in South Africa. It put into laws the dissociation of races that had been practiced in the area since the Cape Colony's founding in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company. This system served as the basis for white domination in South Africa for forty-six years until its abolition in 1994. Apartheid's abolition was brought on by resistance movements and an unstable economy and prompted the election of South America's first black president.
Jim Crow, a series of laws put into place after slavery by rich white Americans used in order to continue to subordinate African-Americans has existed for many years and continues to exist today in a different form, mass incarceration. Jim Crow laws when initially implemented were a series of anti-black laws that help segregate blacks from whites and kept blacks in a lower social, political, and economic status. In modern day, the term Jim Crow is used as a way to explain the mass incarcerations of blacks since Jim Crow laws were retracted. Through mass incarceration, blacks are continuously disenfranchised and subordinated by factors such as not being able to obtain housing, stoppage of income, and many other factors. Both generations of Jim Crow have been implemented through legal laws or ways that the government which helps to justify the implementation of this unjust treatment of blacks.
Slavery has been a problem in many societies throughout all of history. It is not always out of prejudice or racism, often times people of the same ethnicity and nationality enslaved each other because of debt or some other reason. However in the instance of the African slave trade, it was without just cause and an extreme display of racism. Slavery in America was a horrible thing. Blacks were subject to overworking and humiliation by white men. Although this was not the case in every slave to master relationship, owning another person as property when they owe you no debt is still degrading, no matter how you treat the person. African Americans have suffered many hardships through slavery, were set free as a result of the Civil War, fought for their rights in the civil rights movement, and are on both sides of the coin when it comes to racism in America.
... other hand, Apartheid started through the election of the Afrikaner National Party. (A.N.P). The A.N.P wanted to should be split Africa into race separated from each other, so there were nations of white, black, and colored. This segregation of colored and white’s nations soon eventually led to blacks being stripped from everything they owned such as land and their citizenship. These two civil rights movements had differences but also were similar in that it was largely non-violent, they both had boycotts, they fought for oppression from white’s people, fight for inequality, and they faced problems of discriminations, and they used a lesser form of violence in their fight for racial segregation. Both civil right movements were non violent and forced Africans and African-Americans to move closer together and act as one so that they could gain equality as a whole.
In 1990, South Africa became a totalitarian state. Apartheid is still in full effect. There is extensive racial violence in the streets. The country is economically suffering from sanctions from many other countries in protest of Apartheid.
The difference is that this segregation was not just between whites and blacks; it was among whites, and all the other races. The races were broken up into four categories: whites, Africans, Asians, and coloreds. How the people lived in South Africa depended on the race the person was. Everything was affected from education, employment, medical care and even where that person lived depended on their race. The apartheid was established to keep up white dominance in this country.
Nelson Mandela’s commitment to politics and the ANC grew stronger after the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner dominated National Party, which formed a formal system of racial classification and segregation “apartheid” which restricted non whites basic rights and barred them from government.
How the Apartheid fell was a chain link of events. The early stages of the demise began around the early 1900s when new laws were placed out and riots broke out in the streets. When the Apartheid outlawed and banned the African National Congress (ANC) as well as sent many of its leaders to prison by convicting them of treason, including Nelson Mandela, the black community of South Africa were outraged. After the ban was placed out, the remaining anti-Apartheid fled to other surrounding independent African countries including Nambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. There, they continued to set up camps and fight the Apartheid. Back in South Africa, protesting increased during the middle years of the apartheid after Nelson Mandela is imprisoned again after being suspected to heave being involved in a bombing. This time he is imprisoned for life.
Apartheid was a system of separation of the races both politically and socially in South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. This system was said to be one of the last examples of institutionalized racism, and has been almost universally criticized. These Apartheid rules and restrictions were put in place by the National Party which had power over South Africa during this time period. The purpose of Apartheid legislation was to bring the Afrikaner ethnic group to a higher power in South Africa, and accomplished just that. The Afrikaner group was made up of descendants from Dutch colonists who settled in South Africa in order to make a refreshment station, a sort of rest stop, for the Dutch East India Company. The longer people stayed in Africa, the more they started to associate with it as their home. With the enslavement of many Africans, it is easy to see how these Afrikaners would associate themselves as above them and would feel entitled to power over them. This entitlement it how Apartheid rules were born.
Human history has been marked with long and painful struggles that fought for human rights and freedoms. Discrimination and racial oppression has always been one of the most controversial struggles for mankind. For South Africa, it was a country where black people were oppressed by the white minority. The colonization of South Africa began in the 18th century by the Dutch empire after Dutch trading companies started using its cape as a center for trading between Asia and Europe (sahistory.org.za). Soon after, the British took over the country and declared it part of the British Empire (sahistory.org.za). Decades after, Afrikaners, who descended from the original Dutch settlers that occupied South Africa, started working on creating a state that separates between black people and whites. Their plans were to create a separation between black people and whites that involved excluding blacks from all types of social, economic, and political activities within the country. All South African natives knew the bad conditions that their people were forced to live in but only a few of them took the responsibility of sacrificing their lives and freedom for the rights of their people. One South African citizen, Nelson Mandela, can be considered the main hero for the South African freedom revolution and the hero for millions of people fighting for their freedoms worldwide. Mandela’s long walk for freedom defined South African history and entered world history as one of the most influential fights for freedom and human rights in the world.
South Africa really began to suffer when apartheid was written into the law. Apartheid was first introduced in the 1948 election that the Afrikaner National Party won. The plan was to take the already existing segregation and expand it (Wright, 60). Apartheid was a system that segregated South Africa’s population racially and considered non-whites inferior (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”). Apartheid was designed to make it legal for Europeans to dominate economics and politics (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”).
The apartheid was a very traumatic time for blacks in South Africa. Apartheid is the act of literally separating the races, whites and non-whites, and in 1948 the apartheid was now legal, and government enforced. The South African police began forcing relocations for black South Africans into tribal lines, which decreased their political influence and created white supremacy. After relocating the black South Africans, this gave whites around eighty percent of the land within South Africa. Jonathan Jansen, and Nick Taylor state “The population is roughly 78 percent black, 10 percent white, 9 percent colored, and l...