Opposition to Apartheid

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The South African Apartheid, instituted in 1948 by the country’s Afrikaner National Party, was legalized segregation on the basis of race, and is a system comparable to the segregation of African Americans in the United States. Non-whites - including blacks, Indians, and people of color in general- were prohibited from engaging in any activities specific to whites and prohibited from engaging in interracial marriages, receiving higher education, and obtaining certain jobs. The National Party’s classification of “race” was loosely based on physical appearance and lineage. White individuals were superficially defined as being “obviously white'' on the basis of their “habits, education and speech as well as deportment and demeanor”; an analogous sort of definition existed for all “races." The Apartheid system mimicked the Soviet Union in that all blacks and natives were to carry passbooks containing fingerprints, photos, and other forms of identification. In 1951 the country was broken up into “Bantu homelands” or districts to which certain races of individuals would be herded and allocated certain civil rights. Early on, resistance to the derogatory and racist Apartheid Nationals mounted. The African National Congress, the South African Communist Party, The Congress of South African Trade Unions, women, and select individuals such as Nelson Mandela, act as but a few examples of both active and passive resistance to the Apartheid which ultimately led to its downfall and the ushering in of a new era of cooperation amongst all South African peoples.
The African National Committee, first established in 1912, campaigned on a platform of unity for all Africans for the sake of civil rights and liberties. After the rise to power o...

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...ngst the people of South Africa regardless of ethnic background.

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