The Black Conscious Movement In South Africa

1388 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Apartheid in South Africa -- Historical Context

The word apartheid was first used in the 1930s, with some nationalists claiming that different races in South Africa should live apart and develop their lives separately. Segregation had already been a part of life in South Africa, but resistance to apartheid was to be far more widespread during the period of 1960 to 1977. Movements and organisations were used to fight against the prejudices of the apartheid system however some of these were more successful than others.

For a period of time before 1960 the African National Congress was a peaceful opposition, against the South African government. They held an ideology to create a non-racial democracy. Encouraging incidents such as the National Day of Protest, urging people to stay home from work. However the ANC ultimately failed to sway the government in any way, and in fact had the opposite effect, making crackdowns more frequent and forceful. The prime minister at the time D.F Malan firmly believed that “Africans are not our …show more content…

Quarish Patel, editor of Kwasala the official media works newsletter holds a subjective perspective on the BCM and their relation to the apartheid. Patel sees the BCM as a positive assertion of stopping the conflict between whites and Africans by creating an ideology, which helped to establish its society. Patel holds strong views between the relationship of race and class with whites and Africans, suggesting that it affected the BCM and it’s significance to the apartheid. He also outlines how the BCM dominated and challenged this ruling of the white peoples over Africans to have a redistribution of power and their actions was a way to eliminate alienation from the oppressed Africans and how this had a significant impact towards the apartheid as they moved away from the racial based apartheid that segregated Africans as a way to define themselves as one to their

Show More
Related

  • The Importance of the Opposition of Other Countries in Ending Apartheid in South Africa

    762 Words  | 2 Pages

    This may have led to little international opposition from some countries, which is why I do not think it was one of the major causes in the ending of apartheid. Another long-term cause was black resistance. In the 1970's the black South Africans fought back against the government in a far more powerful, bold way than they ever had done before. Extremist groups began to form in all the townships, and riots broke out. There was also the introduction of black consciousness, which was about blacks standing up for themselves without the help of whites.

    Read More

  • Apartheid DBQ Essay

    1633 Words  | 4 Pages

    There are people in the world who see the actions of Apartheid, the results within the actions of the people while apartheid’s control, and overall their existence as a rare point in history. This idea is not only false but there are also several other governments and actions of the people that have had respectively similar actions. By having a social class system in South Africa where whites are on top and Blacks on the bottom shouldn’t sound unfamiliar; America had a similar racial discrimination from the 50’s all the way to the 80’s, with some arguing that the situation in Africa was worse off for their people than in America. In south Africa the African people that were deemed “lower class citizens” just as Germany’s treatment of Jews during

    Read More

  • Black Consciousness Movement

    1333 Words  | 3 Pages

    From what I observed, the theological assumptions was that despite her abusive situation, she was required to stay in an abusive environment because she had always been taught of the sins of divorce. What do you say? How do you encourage a woman to pray to a God who has “allowed” her to live at the hands of an abusive man. How do you tell her that everything will be okay? Then I remembered the comments made by one of my classmates who stated “the woman has to reach a point of being tired and realize her strength.” With this statement now plaguing my thoughts, I realized that her reaching out for help signified her “strength”. It displayed that she was ready to reclaim her life; but the question still lingered, how do you interject “God”. She believed God expected her to survive and cope with her situation in order to remain “obedient”. My theological assumption was she potentially suffered from poor image of self. I don’t believe she understood her dignity of being a virtuous woman, who has value for the simple fact that she was made in the image of God. Being abused by her husband probably provided her with a distorted view of marriage, submission, and God’s intention of hierarchy and authority. I naturally empathized with her, viewing her as a victim who has been victimized on many different facets.

    Read More

  • Black Lives Matter: A Movement Born from Injustice

    892 Words  | 2 Pages

    "This is not a moment, but a movement," (blacklivesmatter.com). Black Lives Matter is a multinational activist movement that began in the African-American communities of the United States of America. The Black Lives Matter Movement protests against the planned violence and racism that oppresses black communities across the United States of America and in other countries. Black Lives Matter started in 2012 after the state of chaos caused by the Trayvon Martin case.

    Read More

  • Apartheid In South Africa

    1362 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • An Outline for a Speech on The Life of Nelson Mandela

    697 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Black Power Movement

    2020 Words  | 5 Pages

    The fight for equality has been fought for many years throughout American History and fought by multiple ethnicities. For African Americans this fight was not only fought to gain equal civil rights but also to allow a change at achieving the American dream. While the United States was faced with the Civil Rights Movements a silent storm brewed and from this storm emerged a social movement that shook the ground of the Civil Right Movement, giving way to a new movement that brought with it new powers and new fears. The phrase “Black power” coined during the Civil Right Movement for some was a slogan of empowerment, while other looked at it as a threat and attempted to quell this Black Power Movement.

    Read More

  • The Establishment of Apartheid

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Nelson Mandela's Racist Report

    766 Words  | 2 Pages

    Source A gives a view on the South African governments control over its people and racial discrimination. It is a biased view and makes the South African government seem cruel and racist. It states that the governments "politics are determined by the colour a persons skin". As this is a statement it gives the impression that it is a fact and by giving this impression it also communicates the idea that the South African government IS racist, rather than the South African government COULD be racist. This comes as no real surprise as the advert has been paid for by the ANC (African National Congress), who are a very anti - South African government organization.

    Read More

  • The End of Apartheid in South Africa

    375 Words  | 1 Pages

    the ban on the ANC, the PAC and the SACP, he announced the release of

    Read More

  • The Black Power Movement

    560 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the book review at Barnes and Nobel.com, “Black Power was one of the clearest manifestations of the movement's change of direction in the late 1960s.” Black Power was a change set out by one man to give rights back to black people and put an end to prejudice and imperialism. One of the goals set out by Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton, the authors of Black Power was to make black people stronger and overcome the subjection of a white society. Suppression by whites was the central problem trying to be solved. Attempting to achieve a new consciousness of the problem, by responding in their own way to a white society, was the overall goal of the movement.

    Read More

  • South African Apartheid

    1513 Words  | 4 Pages

    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”).

    Read More

  • The Legacy of Apartheid in South Africa

    1631 Words  | 4 Pages

    It can be easily stated that the apartheid movement bestowed cruel and unusual punishments upon the people of South Africa, in order to execute its purpose. However, apartheid could have not been carried out if they were not individuals who believed in its principles. In order to understand the National parties ideologies regarding the issue of apartheid, it is essential to acknowledge the history of Boer soc...

    Read More

  • Apartheid Essay

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The South African Educational System

    1900 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

More about The Black Conscious Movement In South Africa

Open Document