Apartheid: A Very Brief History
By Baba Galleh Jallow
Following the passing of Nelson Mandela, it is perhaps
useful to revisit the system he fought against, that put him in jail for 27
years, and that eventually crumbled in 1994 when he became South Africa’s first
Black president. Mandela himself would protest, rightly so, that the fight
against Apartheid was a collective activity and that praise for its demise was
therefore a collective honor to be shared by many. This notwithstanding,
Mandela was a foremost leader in the anti-Apartheid struggle, which is why more
than anyone else, he is credited for the victory against that obnoxious system
of racial oppression.
The word Apartheid was first used in the mid-1930s as a
means of asserting Afrikaner identity and independence from the British.[i] Following
the end of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 – 1902, Alfred Milner, the British
governor of South Africa alienated the Boers (Dutch) through his policy of
Dutch denationalization which banned the use of Dutch in the schools and
attempted to turn them into a minority by importing British immigrants into the
colony. Apartheid was initially a response to Milner’s policy. The term entered
the public lexicon during the 1947-1948 political campaign fought between Jan Smuts’
pro-British United Party and D. F. Malan’s hardline Afrikaner National Party.
It first appeared in a dictionary in 1950.
As a policy of the nationalist government, Apartheid
represented an insistence on the deepening and institutionalization of the
racial segregation and separation that had been a feature of South African
society since van Reibeck’s arrival at the Cape in 1652. Once in power after
the 1948 elections, Malan’s National Party government started promulgating
legislation designed “to make the African the different kind of person that theory
(apartheid) says he is” (Clark and Worger, p. 4).
In South Africa: The
Rise and Fall of Apartheid, Clark and Worger point out that long before
1948, racial segregation had been a prominent feature of South African society.
Van Reibeck’s arrival was soon followed by the introduction of slavery, and the
suppression of the Khoi and San peoples in the following decades. The discovery
of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886 hardened the racial divides and attracted
foreign capital and immigration of Europeans into the country. The white
populations around the mines expanded rapidly and a steady stream of
dispossessed Africans flowed into the urban and mining areas in search of work.
The British conquest of African kingdoms in the 1870s and 1880s and the imposition of cash taxation
on the conquered peoples forced Africans into seeking out wage labor and
thereby providing the much-needed cheap labor for the mining industry. It was
during South Africa’s industrial revolution that some of the most obnoxious
features of Apartheid like pass laws, urban ghettoes, poor rural homelands, and
cheap migrant labor emerged.
After the South African War of 1899-1902, a trend of visible
British complicity in the construction of apartheid could be seen. At the peace
of Vereeniging which ended the war (dubbed the white man’s peace), Britain
promised the Boers that the question of African enfranchisement would not be
decided until the introduction of self-government for the Boer republics.
Godfrey Lagden, Governor Alfred Milner’s commissioner of Native Affairs in the
Transvaal suggested that in order to guarantee a supply of cheap migrant labor,
Africans should be granted limited access to land in the industrial areas. In a comment much like Apartheid jargon, Lagden
argued that “as every rabbit must have a warren where he can live and burrow
and breed, so must every African have a warren too” (ibid. p.17). As chairman
of Milner’s Native Affairs Commission, Lagden was responsible for the
formulation of key segregationist policies that laid the foundation for Apartheid.
It was his recommendation that Africans be denied ownership of land, stripped
of the right to decide where they lived or worked, or the right to vote for
white candidates. Africans should be confined to separate locations and vote
for separate, pre-approved white candidates to represent them in parliament.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, Afrikaner
nationalism gathered steam as a widening rift grew between moderates and
radicals. In 1905 Louis Botha and Jan Smuts established an all-Afrikaner party
named Het Volk in the Transvaal. In 1906, J.B.M. Hertzog formed the Orangia
Unie in the Orange River Colony. In 1914, the Orangia Unie morphed into the
National Party. The ascension into power of Prime Minister Henry Bannerman’s
government in Britain in 1906 represented a significant victory for the Afrikaner
nationalists. Shortly after he assumed office, Bannerman set in motion a
process that would lead to full self-government for the Transvaal and the
Orange River Colony in 1907. A convention held by representatives from the four
colonies of Transvaal, the Cape, the Orange River Colony and Natal between
October 1908 and May 1909 led to the forging of the Union of South Africa on
May 31, 1910. Only whites were considered voting citizens of this Union. Louis
Botha took office as the first prime minister of the Union. The new union
maintained pre-union segregationist policies designed to protect white
interests and keep Africans in their role as a cheap source of labor.
From 1910 onwards, a stream of racist legislation flowed
from the corridors of South African power wielders. Indeed, apartheid’s unholy
odyssey is dotted with an incredible number of laws designed to uphold white
supremacy and keep Africans down and out of the political process in their own
country. The 1911 Mines and Works Act and the Native’s Labor Regulation Act
decreed that Africans could be found guilty of a criminal offense if they broke
an employment contract, however unfavorable they found the terms of such a
contract. The Native’s Land Act of 1913 restricted African ownership of land to
a mere 7 percent of the country’s total land area. This percentage was increased
to 13 in 1936, but that did little to alleviate the Africans’ problems because
they were confined to the worst tracts of land conceivable. In 1918, one of the
key pillars of Apartheid, the Afrikaner Broederbond, was formed by a group of
Afrikaner extremists. In 1923, the Natives (Urban Areas) Act restricted
Africans to segregated townships or locations where they could rent
accommodation provided by the urban municipality. The Industrial Coalition Act
of 1924 and 1937 decreed that African unions would not be officially recognized
in labor negotiations. After Hertzog entered into a coalition government with
Smuts in 1924, the notorious “civilized labour” policy was introduced to give
white workers wages that could support their ‘civilized’ living standards. The
1927 Native Administration Act gave the Department of Native Affairs control
over all matters pertaining to Africans. Under this Act, the government ruled
by decree rather than law in the African rural areas. In 1929, the Broederbond
formed the FAK, the Federation of Afrikaner Cultural Organizations, which was
instrumental in constructing and propping the Apartheid infrastructure.
One of the most significant milestones in the history of
apartheid happened in 1934 when D.F. Malan broke away from the Smuts-Hertzog
administration and formed the Purified National Party whose manifesto was
squarely based on the separation of the races. In 1936, the Representation of
Natives Act removed all African political rights from the books in the Cape
Province. In 1938, the FAK organized a centenary celebration of the Great Trek
and the Voortrekkers’ defeat of the Zulu at the Battle of Blood River in
December 1838. At this gathering, the pro-Nazi Ossenwabrandwag was formed to
support the agitation for Afrikaner supremacy in South Africa and oppose South Africa’s entry into the war on the side of Britain. In 1942,
War Measure 145 made it illegal for African workers to engage in strike activity.
Six years later in 1948, Malan’s National Party was elected to power and from
then on, while the rest of the world was moving towards greater respect for
human rights, South Africa was moving in exactly the opposite direction at an
alarming rate.
Meanwhile, the road to 1948 had not been as smooth as the
white supremacists would have liked. The harsh policies of the Milner
administration led to the growth of a number of African resistance
organizations. Gandhi’s Natal Indian Congress sprung up in 1894. In 1898 the
African Native Congress was born; the Native Vigilance Association followed in
1901; and the African Political Organization and the Transvaal Native Vigilance
Association were established in 1902. All these were formed in direct response
to the oppressive policies of South Africa’s white regimes. At around the same
time, a crop of vibrant African, Colored and Indian press houses mushroomed
around the country. In 1906, Bambatha, a Zulu chief rebelled against the forced
labor, land confiscation, and taxation regime of the British authorities. In
1912, the ANC’s ancestor, the South African Native National Congress (SANNC)
was formed under the leadership of John L. Dube, a U.S.-trained teacher and
minister who derived inspiration from the ideas of Booker T. Washington. The SANNC
was renamed the ANC in 1923.
A year after the formation of the SANNC in 1913, there was a
massive women’s anti-pass protest in Bloemfontein. Because of this historic
protest, South African women were exempted from carrying passes for the next
forty years. In 1918, the Johannesburg Sanitation Workers and Rand Mineworkers
went on strike for better working conditions and against discriminatory
practices. In 1919 and 1920, a series of strikes organized by Clement Kadalie’s
Industrial and Commercial Workers Union rocked South Africa. In 1928, the
Non-European Trade Union Federation was formed; and in 1935, 400 hundred delegates from the majority of African political
organizations met at Bloemfontein and established the All-Africa Convention
(AAC). In 1941, the second year of the Second World War, the Africa Mineworkers
Union was formed. The wartime economy had led to a massive influx of blacks
into the urban areas and the government enacted influx control and other harsh
legislation to stem the flow of the blacks and protect the jobs of white
workers. African agitation and resistance correspondingly gathered
steam and in 1944 young members of the ANC decided to form the ANC Youth League
to inject energy into what they thought was becoming a rather moribund
organization. This event led to the emergence of young anti-apartheid leaders
like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, and Robert
Sobukwe. Thus, even as the party of Apartheid (the NP) was being born, its
nemesis, the party of freedom (ANC), was also being born.
It seems as if the 1950s and 1960s saw more repressive
legislation in South Africa than any other period in that country’s troubled
history. These two decades certainly saw the systematic construction of the
apartheid superstructure. Having campaigned and won the 1948 elections on an
apartheid platform, D. F. Malan now embarked on the perilous task of fulfilling
his promises to his racist constituency. While his National Party grew from strength to strength in the decades after 1948, the
opposition United Party grew weaker and all but openly endorsed the NP’s racist
policies. Rather than question the ethical legitimacy of the NP’s concept of
white supremacy, the UP continuously harped on its practicality. Indeed, there
weenly endorsed the NP’s racist
policies. Rather than question the ethical legitimacy of the NP’s concept of
white supremacy, the UP continuously harped on its practicality. Indeed, there
were very little differences between the policies of the two parties over the
racial question. Thus, from 1948, every aspect of life in South Africa was determined under race-based legislation. Race laws flew from
the chambers of South Africa’s lawmakers like meteors and stung the
increasingly dispossessed but defiant non-white races.
Determined to preserve the ‘purity’ of the white race, the
Malan administration started off with the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in
1949. This was followed by the Immorality Act of 1950, which extended the 1927
ban on sexual relations between whites and blacks to a ban on sexual
relationships between whites and all non-whites. The Group Areas Act of 1950
imposed control over property rights requiring permits based on race and gave
the government the power to forcibly remove existing occupants on any piece of land and give it to other occupants. 1950 also saw
the enactment of the notorious Suppression of Communism Act which outlawed the
Communist Party of South Africa (SACP) and defined communism as “any scheme
aimed at bringing about any political, industrial, social or economic change
within the Union by the promotion of disturbance or disorder or that encouraged
feelings of hostility between the European and non-European races of the Union”
(ibid. p. 54). The Act gave the Justice minister the power to “list” and “ban”
any individual or organization for up to four years. The Bantu Authorities Act
of 1951 institutionalized the claim that the tribal reserves were the true
homes of Africans and abolished the Natives Representation Council, the only
official avenue for African political expression in the country. 1951 also saw
the passing of the Separate Representation of Voters Act, which removed Colored
voters from the Cape roll. When the Supreme Court declared this Act invalid,
the government re-enacted it in 1956 as the Separate Representation of Voters
Amendment Act. From this point on, only whites enjoyed political rights in South Africa.
In 1952, the Bantu Laws Amendment Act established labor
bureaus to register African male workers aged 16 to 64. The Reservation of
Separate Amenities Act of 1953 allocated separate public amenities for the
separate races. Under this Act, signs were posted all over the country
designating parks, toilets, beaches and other public amenities to individual
races. During 1953, the Native Labour Act denied Africans the right to legal
union representation and the right to strike. In the same year, one of
apartheid’s worst pieces of legislation and one that was to play a crucial role
in its dismantling was promulgated: The Bantu Education Act decreed that blacks
should have separate educational facilities under the control of the Department
of Native Affairs rather than the Ministry of Education. The Act removed
subsidies from mission schools that formerly catered to the educational needs
of Africans with the result that most of them either sold their facilities to
the government or simply closed down. Bantu education was designed to mold Africans into compliant kaffirs and
productive workers. As Africans could and would never be absorbed into white
society, the only education they needed was one that would prepare them for
life within the African community and on the periphery of white society. The
Bantu education curricula and textbooks were deliberately designed to glorify
Afrikanerdom and demean the African kaffir as savages, thieves, thugs, clowns
and lecherous lazy bodies. The Public Safety Act of 1953 allowed the government
to declare a state of emergency whenever it wanted to and the Criminal Law
Amendment Act of the same year institutionalized the powers of the police to
presume African detainees guilty until proven innocent. In 1955, the Customs and Excise and Official
Secrets Acts established a Board of Censors to scrutinize and vet all films,
books, and other materials imported or produced in South Africa. In 1956, the
Riotous Assemblies Act outlawed any public gatherings which might ignite racial
tensions and prohibited banned persons from attending or addressing public
meetings. 1956 also saw the passing of the Native Administration Act, which
permitted the government to banish Africans to remote rural areas, away from
their homes and families for as long as it wished. In the same year (1956),
police arrested 156 people including Luthuli, Mandela, Tambo and Sisulu and put
them on trial on treason charges. The trial dragged on for five years. In 1957,
the Transkeian Territorial Authority was opened as the first of the homelands
to be groomed for independence.
Another landmark development in the history of apartheid was
the coming to power of Hendrik Verwoerd in 1958. Commonly referred to as the
architect of apartheid, Verwoerd charged forward with the apartheid project
with unusual energy. Under Verwoerd, Justice minister and future prime minister
John Vorster and Security Police chief Hendrik van der Bergh, both former
members of the Ossenwabrandwag, headed the campaign to brutally crush all
internal resistance. The General Laws Amendment Act of 1963 empowered the
police to detain people without charges or access to lawyers for up to ninety
days. After ninety days, detainees could be re-arrested and re-detained; and
this process could continue for as long as the police desired.
When Verwoerd was assassinated by a Colored parliamentary messenger in 1966,
Vorster became the new Prime Minister.
The efforts to entrench apartheid from 1948 were
paralleled by a counter process of resistance by the ANC and other organizations.
In 1949, the ANC adopted a program of action under the new leadership of James
Moroka, with Sisulu, Tambo and Mandela on the executive committee. The ANC
outlined a plan of passive resistance along Gandhian lines, organizing strikes,
boycotts, civil disobedience marches, non-cooperation as well as a national day
of work stoppage. In 1950 the South African Communist Party (SACP) organized a
national strike and the ANC, in conjunction with the African People’s
Organization (APO) and the South African Indian Congress (SAIC) organized a
national day of protest against the growing list of unjust apartheid
legislation. In 1952, the ANC and SAIC staged a defiance campaign on April 6
and June 26. A significant milestone in the anti-apartheid struggle took place
on June 25 and 26, 1955, when 3000 delegates representing the ANC, the SAIC, the Congress of
Democrats, the Coloured People’s Congress, and the multi-racial South African
Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) met near Soweto and issued the Freedom Charter,
a document outlining a new vision for a multi-racial, democratic South Africa
characterized by respect for human rights and the rule of law, as well as equal
opportunities and responsibilities for all South Africans regardless of race.
The Freedom Charter effectively became the manifesto of the liberation struggle in South Africa.
In1959, a breakaway faction of the ANC led by Robert
Sobukwe formed the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). The birth of the PAC is
significant because it was the organization that initiated the anti-pass law
campaign of 1960 that led to the historic Sharpeville Massacre on March 21 of
that year when police opened fire on demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding
186. When 30,000 Africans marched on the House of Parliament in Cape Town to
protest the massacre, Verwoerd declared a state of emergency. Police arrested
18,000 demonstrators including ANC and PAC leaders and both organizations were
banned. At this point, the freedom fighters realized that the South African
government could never be persuaded to dismantle apartheid though passive
resistance. Accordingly, in 1961, the ANC formed its military wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK – Spear of the Nation) and the PAC
formed Poqo (Pure) as its armed wing. The era of guerilla warfare against
apartheid had begun. In the words of Mandela, the African people “had either to
accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the government” by violent
means (ibid. p.58). From then on, both the ANC and PAC, with bases in nearby
countries, launched violent attacks on government buildings and targeted
government agents and stooges for assassination.
Vorster, however, was not about to back down. In 1967, the
Terrorism Act expanded the types of activities that could be considered
dangerous to include any action that could encourage resistance or further any
political aim. In 1969, the notorious Bureau for State Security was established
to supplement the activities of the secret police. In 1972, the State Security
Council (SSC) was added to the long list of repressive state agencies to advise the prime minister on security policy formulation and
strategy. The killing of school children during anti-Bantu education riots in
Soweto on June 26, 1976 and the death in detention of Steve Biko in September
1977 intensified the struggle and condemnation of apartheid both inside South
Africa and in the international community. Still determined to impose eternal
apartheid, the South African government launched its Total Strategy in 1977 to
overcome what it called ‘this Total Onslaught.’ The new prime minister P. W. Botha established the National Security
Management Systems (NSMS) and embarked on a campaign of sabotage and
assassinations of opponents. To facilitate his covert operations, Botha
secretly established the Koevert (Crowbar) in 1979. Other covert units set up
by the Botha regime included the Vlakplaas and a notorious unit made up of
unemployed, illiterate black men, often with criminal convictions called the kitskonstables
(instant police). Alongside these brutal covert operations, Botha presented a
benign face to the public, recognizing African labor unions for the first time,
and allowing the growth of an African political opposition, among other
half-hearted reforms. By the time of his death in 1989, South Africa had become
a pariah state in the community of nations. The country’s economy was
collapsing at an alarming rate and international financial institutions
operating in the country were curbing their investment, cutting back on loans
to the government, and loudly clamoring for an end to apartheid. In October
1986, the U.S. Congress overrode a veto by President Reagan and passed legislation
imposing mandatory sanctions against South Africa that included a ban on all
new investments, the ending of air travel between the U.S. and South Africa,
and the banning of any imports from South Africa. Inside the country itself,
apartheid had been made unworkable and the country ungovernable in response to
the ANC leadership’s call of April 1985.
Therefore F. W. de Klerk, the last leader of apartheid,
inherited a government that had no choice but to compromise. At least, de Klerk
reasoned, there was still a small window of opportunity to negotiate from a
position of power. On February 2, 1990, he announced the lifting of the ban on
the ANC, the SACP, the PAC and 31 other anti-apartheid organizations. About a
week later on February 11, 1990, he had Nelson Mandela released from prison
after serving 27 years and refusing to accept an earlier offer by Botha to gain
his freedom by renouncing violence. A period of intense negotiations between
the government and the ANC ensued in the face of stiff opposition from
Afrikaner extremists like Eugene Terre Blanche and his murderous AWB, the
Afrikaner Committee of Generals, the Freedom Alliance, the Freedom Front, and
black organizations like Chief Buthelezi’s Inkhata Freedom Party. For a brief,
tense moment, it seemed as if the negotiation process would collapse as right
wing Afrikaner elements and the de Klerk regime itself employed underhand
tactics to derail it. Against all odds, however, and with the growing
realization that the time was up for apartheid, de Klerk reached an agreement
with the ANC in September 1992. According to this new agreement, national
elections were to be held by April 1994 in which all South Africans would
participate. The interim constitution agreed upon guaranteed the safety of
minorities and included arrangements for the possible formation of a government
of national unity. In the April 1994 elections, the ANC won with over 62
percent of the vote. Nelson Mandela became the first president of a democratic,
majority-ruled South Africa, with Thabo Mbeki as the First Deputy President and de Klerk as Second Deputy President.
Under Mandela’s guidance, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in
1995 to avoid the kind of bloodbath and vendetta that white South Africans
rightly feared.
In conclusion, it is clear that the construction and
dismantling of apartheid were two processes that ran concurrently over the
years. From the very beginning, it was clear that a small minority of white
people could not keep a great majority of black people under virtual servitude
indefinitely. Black South Africans had suffered centuries of racial segregation
before 1948, but formal apartheid itself lasted only about fifty years. Not
that this is a short period of time for the oppressed people of South Africa.
But the collapse of apartheid before the end of the twentieth century was
certainly not what the architects of that hideous system anticipated. Malan,
Verwoerd, Vorster, Botha, and to some extent de Klerk, believed that they could
manage to indefinitely keep black South Africans in the tribal homelands, strip
them of their South African citizenship, and carve a small Europe on African
land. They were gravely mistaken. In the end, their very tactics spelled their
doom.
Note: Nancy Clark
and William Worger’s South Africa: The
Rise and Fall of
Apartheid (Edinburgh:
Pearson Education Ltd., 2004) was consulted in
putting together this piece.
i] Afrikaner,
Boer and Dutch are the same people. The initial Dutch settlers became known as
Boers (farmers). In the face of British hostility, they changed their name to
Afrikaner and later developed their own language, Afrikaans.