Apartheid

APARTHEID MEANS “separateness” in Afrikaans, and was the social system enforced by the white minority in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected president in the first elections opened to all races. Under apartheid, the black majority was segregated and was constantly discriminated against. Black South Africans did not have the same political, legal, and economic rights as whites. The economic [Page 44]legacy of apartheid, which impoverished the vast mass of black South Africans as well as blacks in neighboring countries, is still palpable today. According to a 2004 survey, 61 percent of Africans and 38 percent of mixed-race “coloureds” live in poverty, compared with five percent of Indians and one percent of whites.

Apartheid was adopted after World War II as the National Party led by Daniel François Malan won the 1948 general election, together with the Afrikaner Party. The two-party coalition defeated the Union Party (UP) by a narrow margin in an electoral campaign where apartheid had figured prominently. Jan Smuts, the leader of the UP and prime minister, had branded the idea of apartheid as “nonsense.”

Yet as Malan replaced Smuts, stricter laws were passed to ensure the country's racial separation, thus giving rise to apartheid. While segregation might have been a reality of life before 1948, after Malan's victory it became institutionalized. Mixed marriages and sex were banned; segregated hospitals, buses, schools, and park benches were created; and restrictions on the possibility of blacks living in, or visiting, urban areas were passed.

“Colored” South Africans were compelled to carry identity documents at all times, and the Bantu Authorities Act (1951) established the legal basis for the creation of theoretically independent microstates called “homelands,” where blacks would be forced to live. During the premiership of J.G. Strijdom, the transition to apartheid was fully completed with the suppression of voting rights for blacks except for segregated bodies. Strijdom also brought the Senate and the Appeal Court, which had rejected several governmental acts, under the firm control of the National Party.

The clear relationship between the apartheid system and black poverty can be seen in the data on the ratio of black income to white income. From 1946 to 1960, despite a decrease in the white proportion of the population, a constant 70 percent of South Africa's national income went to whites. Between 1970 and 1980, when violent protests began to spread throughout the country, this fell to 60 percent, still a huge proportion considering the whites' minority status. When the homeland policy was finally enforced, 29 million black South Africans were squeezed into 13 percent of the national territory.

The “homelands” were remote, devoid of economic activities, and extremely overpopulated. Soon they were among the world's poorest and most degraded areas. Institutions obviously spent money on white areas while leaving black enclaves without the most basic of services. The system of apartheid was preserved also by impoverishing neighboring states. South Africa waged a full-scale war against Mozambique and Angola and imposed an economic blockade on Lesotho, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi.

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