The Consequences Of The South African Apartheid In South Africa

Decent Essays
Living in South Africa in the years of 1948 to 1991 for Black South Africans was an abysmal setting. The intricate web of laws, rules, and regulations made it seemingly impossible for the black or coloured people of South Africa to live a life without discrimination. The hatred spread around by the people unable to coexist in peace and harmony became a social normality. The housing conditions that blacks and coloureds were forced into, made it very difficult to just survive and be able to maintain a job that wasn’t going to destroy their bodies. These people had very difficult trying times just doing their best to avoid being assaulted in the streets and trying to better their situation and rid South Africa of apartheid. Apartheid in South …show more content…
The way apartheid is made into a more distinct era rather than just generalizing it into racism and segregation that the world was already experiencing at the time was the way the Nationalist Party, created in 1948, formalised each law. There were precursors to apartheid being put into place starting around 1884 limiting the areas of land in which blacks could own, but the major legislation was created by the Nationalist Party once apartheid was created. The National Party wanted to create a complete segregation from whites and nonwhites, but between the categories of nonwhites. Apartheid went in steps of finalizing each law. With every new law came more rights revoked from the nonwhites in South …show more content…
Police brutality was a normal everyday occurrence where most people would just accept that fact and move on with their day. An account given by a man named Mabeka recalls at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa saying, “They assaulted me with fists; they kicked me, and I fell on the ground, They didn 't ask me anything; they didn 't tell me what do they -- what did they want." A man attacked without any reason spent two months in prison away from his family. He was only one of thousands of stories.When The Black South Africans started demanding their rights back. The police violence only became worse. The Social norm was just as strong as it ever was for the National Party, but now the Blacks wanted their rights back. They didn 't want to all be generalized into nonwhites and stipped of their historical roots. At a peaceful march in 1977 John Biyase recollects, “[Police trapping us marchers and] they just hit everybody, there was blood, cries. I remember we were shouting, 'Peace! Peace! Peace!” (Pearson and Cohen). Their movement had started to be heard from people around the world. Steven Mandela 's story of being imprisoned and impoverished was catching ground worldwide. In South Africa, however, being in poverty was still a

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    When it comes to racial crimes and segregation there is nothing more depressing than talking about how many times our world has been through it. It has happened throughout our entire lives and sadly it still happens today. The devastation and violence from these acts have shaped the way our society is and it’s not necessarily good. As a white male I can’t say I have ever been part of any minority group, but as a white female in South Africa during the 1960s you could say it was quite shocking to be on the opposite side. In the book The Unlikely Secret Agent by Ronnie Kasrils a woman, Eleanor was living amongst the South African Apartheid.…

    • 1372 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    “Sirens blared, voices, screamed and shouted, wood cracked and windows shattered, children bawled, dogs barked and footsteps pounded. (7).” This is just one of the many examples that happened in the everyday lives of South African families during the apartheid era. Apartheid is a policy of segregation and economic discrimination against non-whites. This system of apartheid affected every colored man and woman in South Africa at the time and forced them to become slaves in their own…

    • 1233 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Apartheid being of a world war 2 like system really proves its main intension and shows the real issues it contains. For a system to prevent blacks and white to get married or vote shows the inhumanity of apartheid. Not to mention blacks get taxable income at 360 rands while white get it at 750 rands. School should be a necessity for all and to exclude a whole generation from learning is yet again another inhumane action.…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    There was still prejudice and pride of the “whites” in South Africa. As mentioned earlier Gordimer wrote about her experiences and things she observed. Gordimer wrote this book with the probable expectation to get a different reaction than the reader first started. Some reactions the writer might want from the reader could be the realization of how bad or horrible things were post-Apartheid. Other reaction could be to break your heart as the parents had their heart broken.…

    • 1578 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The government was ruled by white men and treated South Africa’s men in a lower manner. Nelson Mandel, a Black South African aimed to led his country toward equality in a nonviolent way. He joined the Africa National Congress and many other organizations to fight the oppression. The white leaders then established polices called the ‘apartheid’, which separated the two races of the country. In 1969, the police killed 69 protestors and the Africa national Congress was banned.…

    • 994 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Race and racial inequality have powerfully shaped American history from the very beginning. Americans think of the founding of the American colonies and, later, the United States, as driven by the quest for freedom when initially, religious liberty and later political and economic liberty. Still, from the beginning, American society was equally founded on brutal forms of domination, inequality, and oppression which lead to the foundation of two models of minority exclusion known as Apartheid and Economic/political disempowerment. Apartheid meaning “state of being apart” is “An official policy of racial segregation, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites” (Wk:3, Lecture 1). Originated in South Africa apartheid…

    • 1290 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    South Africa has a complex political history. It is filled with intricacies and subtleties which are difficult to understand from an outside perspective. The power and volatility of South Africa’s political climate was enough to drive hordes of South African’s to find refuge in other countries while still longing for their homeland. This review is about Rian Malan’s 1991 book “My Traitor’s Heart, Blood and Bad Dreams: A South African Explores the Madness in His Country, His Tribe and Himself” published by Vintage Press in London.…

    • 1621 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Apartheid originated from the Dutch word that means separation. Separation here means separation of the Dutch people (white) with a native African (black). Apartheid later grown into a political policy and become an official South African Government which consists of programs and regulations that aim to preserve racial segregation. Structurally, Apartheid was a policy to maintain the dominance of the white minority over the majority of non-white through community arrangements in the field of social and cultural, political, military and economic. This policy applies in 1948.…

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It’s segregation period lasted from 1843 to 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed, cancelling the Jim Crow Law. Opposed the America however, South Africa was segregated much later when the Afrikaners were in a conflict with the British in 1948. Both South Africa and America upheld the white race as the superior above all others along with each nation receiving its own racial slurs to further belittle blacks. Although segregation was similar in both nations, they do have a major difference where are the segregation ended in America well before the apartheid in South Africa. The world decided to let the apartheid last longer in South Africa because as the superiors were getting guaranteed labor, the inferiors were getting guaranteed jobs.…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In 1948 the South African government took a turn for the worst. The National Party gained power in South Africa and its all-white government began immediately enforcing policies of racial segregation. They called it apartheid which was a policy that discriminated on grounds of race, violating human rights. Under the apartheid the black population of South Africa were unjustly persecuted. They were segregated to the extent that they were stripped of their citizenship.…

    • 1891 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Apartheid was brutal system to live by and it was much like a caste system with the lightest skinned, white people, at the top of the system and the darkest skinned, black people, miserably suffering at the bottom. Anyone else was directly in between these two groups. The harsh realities of apartheid in South Africa are highlighted in the novel Kaffir Boy,…

    • 1134 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    South African Apartheid

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages

    QUESTION 2 “We believe that the world, too, can destroy apartheid, firstly by striking at the economy of South Africa”-Oliver Tambo . Apartheid can be defined as the racial-social ideology developed in South Africa during the 20th century, its name means “separation” in Afrikaans, the mother tongue of the colonisers. Apartheid was practically based on racial segregation, as well as race domination or superiority. It was about political and economic discrimination, which excluded black; coloured; Indian and white people. Who referred to themselves as Europeans and those who were not white were classified as either ‘non-Europeans’; Bantus or natives, these labels were the focus points on ruling out non-whites from using and enjoying the same…

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the past hundreds years, the British colonized over 100 countries including South Africa. Did this leave any positive impact on the colonized country? The colonization of South Africa began long time ago in the sixteenth century. With around one hundred and seventy years of colonization, the British changed South Africa so much that it brought a bad impact to the South African people ("British Takes Control of the Cape”). These negative impacts could cost the South African people’s social life, their political government and their economy.…

    • 1213 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gone are all the old Apartheid laws, the prohibitions and banning’s, the power to arrest anyone without giving them trial- no more inequality or suppression. There were no “whites only” signs in the communal parks, or at the beaches or any other public venues. The “legal” residential segregation has been terminated. Elections were free, schools have been enhanced and were no longer racially separated. Today we find far more blacks with university level education and professional careers than that of the Apartheid era (Saniei, 2015).…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In an article writing about Apartheid, HISTORY says, “Under apartheid, nonwhite South Africans (a majority of the population) would be forced to live in separate areas from whites and use separate public facilities, and contact between the two groups would be limited. ”(HISTORY). The black South Africans, along with other minorities, were discriminated against. They received substandard hospitals, schools, etc. They were treated poorly because white South Africans felt that they were entitled to better accommodations.…

    • 1347 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics