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Apartheid in South Africa IB revision notes
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Notes on Apartheid in South Africa- This was the topic that came up in my first higher history paper and I received a 7 for it.
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Case Study 2: Apartheid SouthAfrica (1948-1964)
The segregation era 1910-48
● Both Afrikaners and English speakers agreed on their perception that
Africans were racially inferior. Various laws were passed both to impose
segregation and to reduce Africans as far as possible to the role of
cheap labour, unable to compete with whites, for whom the better jobs
were reserved.
The africans had:
- Very little land
- Were labourers for white farmers
- Allowed in cities to be servants or workers.
- Were extremely restricted of what they can and can not do.
Pass laws:
- Only done for black workers
- The pass laws were developed to control movement of Africans and
manage migrant labour.
- Operated internal passport system to control where Africans could live,
work and visit.
White justification for segregation
- Racist white views that Africans were lazy, untrustworthy and dangerous.
- They considered black people most content in rural areas tending to
their farms and cattle.
- Ignorance and fear of the consequences for their own position, and
indeed safety, if Africans were given political or economic rights.
- A need to feel reassured that segregation was in the Africa's best
interest- that they were most contended in a simple pastoral
environment.
Africans
- Largest group
- Dispossessed of much of their land
- Could not vote except in Cape
- Were a subject to wide spread of discrimination
- Divide and rule
- 0ber 80% lived in rural areas
- Whites wanted men for cheap labour, particularly in the mines so drew
up their own laws to force Africans of their land and exploit them for
labour.
A note on ‘coloured’
- From 1950 to 1990, under apartheid, ‘ coloured’ was legally defined as ‘a
person of mixed European (“white”) and African (“black”) or Asian
ancestry,
The formation of African National Congress
- Sol Plaatje was its first secretary. It became the African National
Congress in 1923.
, - The ANC was pretty ineffective from many years. Its members, mainly
middle- class or educated black people or chiefs, thought the best way
of achieving their aims was to keep on good terms with the whites, and
win their respect byu reasonable behaviour.
How did the the Second World War change South Africa?
- The ar had a big impact on the country.
- South Africa was part of the British Empire and the Prime Minister, Jan
Smuts, declared his support for Britain as soon as war broke out in 1939.
Three hundred thousand South Africans fought in the war. The black
Africans who joined up where not allowed to carry weapons, but worked
as labourers, orderliness, stretch- bearers etc.
- The war helped South African industry. With so many whites away at
war, factories took on black workers or installed more machines. By the
end of the war South Africa had a modern, mechanised manufacturing
industry, which had become more important than mining.
Changes in government policy
- Pass laws were relaxed
- Money was out into black education (because employers want educated
workers).
- A health programme for all races was discussed (because employers
wanted healthy workers)
- Food prices were kept low (because employers did not want to pay high
wages)
- A report looked into: ‘Ways, other than increasing wages, of improving
the economic, social and health conditions of natives in urban areas’.
Black reactions
- There were bus boycotts when bus companies tried to increase fares
from black townships some distance from city centres.
- The south African Indian Congress organised effective, mass, non -
violent resistance to the ‘Ghetto Act’ of 1945. This was an attempt by the
government to restrict the rights of Indians to live and own property
wherever they liked.
- There were strikes in several industries. Most alarming for the
government was the mineworkers’ strike of August 1946.
The segregation of the population
- The apartheid laws aimed to enforce the total separation of blacks and
whites- politically, socially and culturally. The Group Areas Act (1950)
demarcated separate residential areas for each race group. This meant
that if an area was set aside for one race group, all other living there
would have to move out. Sometimes whole communities were destroyed
when they were forced to move from places where they have lived for
generations. Black and coloured families were forced to move when the
suburbs became ‘ white group’ areas.
- The Abolition of Passes Act (1952) strengthened the pass system by
consolidating all existing forms of passes and permits into a single pass
or reference book. All African men had to have a ‘pass’ that recorded
their name, address and the name of their employer. These passess
, needed to be carried with them at all times, and they could be arrested
and imprisoned if were caught without a pass by the police.
- The law courts and prisons were congested as a result, and the pass
laws made criminals of large numbers of people, whose sole offence was
not being able to produce a pass book on request.
- They took fingerprints and hit the prisoners in the face when they made
mistakes.
- In the showers they were not given towels or soap and were told to skip
to dry off.
Population Registration Act
- After winning the election, the new government put the policy of
apartheid into practice. Its supporters believed that each race had its
own, distinct identity, which would be destroyed in an integral society,
and therefore believed, the population should be strictly divided along
racial lines.
- Supporters of apartheid believed that social and, more especially,
sexual contact between the races should be prevented. Two of the first
apartheid laws were the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and
the Immorality Act(1950), which made marriages and sexual relations
between whites and people of other races illegal. The police went to
extraordinary lengths to convict people under the Immorality Act , using
binoculars, tape recorders and cameras to obtain evidence, and even
bursting into bedrooms to do so. By the time the Act was repealed in the
1985, more than 11,000 people had been convicted of offences under the
Immorality Act.
-
- The Population restriction Act (1950) classified South Africans into race
groups- white, coloured, indian and African. Some groups were further
subdivided into- ‘Zulu’ or ‘Xhosa’, etc. Everyone had to have their
identity cards that stated their racial classification. A Race Classification
Board was set up to review cases where the race classification was
unclear or where it was challenged.
- The racial classification determined what opportunities people had in
life. It determined where they could live and what sort of work they could
do as well as what schools or hospitals they could attend. This
classification into racial categories affected many aspects of people’s
private lives and caused misery for families and relationships, especially
in the Cape, where mixed marriages were more common than in other
parts of the country. Some mixed families were torn apart when
members of the same family were classified in different race groups.
- Later amendments to the Act in 1964 and 1967 placed greater stress on
appearance and genealogy to prevent light- skinned members of other
groups passing themselves off as white. Children that appeared darker
or whiter than their parents were classified differently and, in many
cases, families were torn apart.
The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act
- The reservation of Separate Amenities Act, passed in 1953, is often seen
as the epitome of the petty apartheid system. It provided for the strict
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