The Ending of White Minority Rule in South Africa

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The Ending of White Minority Rule in South Africa

Apartheid was a major historical event, and perhaps the biggest event

in South Africa’s history. Apartheid is a policy of racial

segregation, the word means ‘separateness’ in Afrikaans. It was

introduced in 1948 by the white minority and made sure that the whites

were superior in every possible way. However, the whites ruled over

the blacks before this, using them as slaves for agricultural work and

mining during the 1800s, and such racism was not new.

Apartheid did not last for fifty years, and it was officially

abolished in 1994. This was because the black people fought back, the

most memorable and famous black person to do so being a man called

Nelson Mandela. He went on to become the president of South Africa

with a strong feeling of the country being free at last. This essay

will discuss whether Mandela was the soul reason for Apartheid being

abolished, and what he did to aid it.

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18th 1918, in a remote village. He

studied law at the University of Witwatersrand, this led him to set up

the first black law firm in Johannesburg, where he fought court cases

for wrongly treated black people. In 1947, Mandela became the African

National Congress’ (ANC) Youth Secretary, and although the government

banned Mandela from the ANC three times, he carried on working for it.

He was also banned from attending the ‘Congress of the People’ which

drew up the ‘Freedom charter’, however he supported it fully. This

charter included such points as ‘Education shall be free, compulsory,

universal and equal for all children.’

On December 5th 1956, at a dawn raid, M...

... middle of paper ...

...la, F.W. de Klerk may

have played a vital role in this, but the ending of apartheid was

clearly not just down to him.

In conclusion to this essay, I disagree that the ending of Apartheid

could be purely attributed to Mandela. I believe that all the factors

discussed in this essay added together to end apartheid and if one was

removed then it might not have happened when it did. African

Nationalism helped the white governments to be replaced with black

governments, and helped black people to join major organisations such

as the UN. Also, I believe that African Nationalism strongly

influenced Mandela and many others. Therefore, this leads me to

conclude that African Nationalism may have been the most important

reason to ending apartheid, but without all of the other reasons, it

may not have been so effective.

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