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Category: Race and Ethncity

Causes of Apartheid:
In 1879, the Anglo-Zulu War was fought between the native Zulus in Africa and the British who were attempting to colonize South Africa during the Scramble for Africa. When the British came to power, they issued legislation and created parliamentary membership restrictions against the Zulus, essentially becoming a ruling minority over the native majority. This created a British legacy of colonialism that carried on into the twentieth century, when apartheid was recognized most notably by the Afrikaaner-dominated government of 1948-1994.
In South Africa, apartheid was characterized by a significant number of the revolutionary acts of legislation known as the “apartheid laws.” In essence, the bills legalized the mentality of segregation apparent in the region. The first segregating acts of legislation came about in Cape Colony and Natal in the nineteenth century, known as pass laws, were but in place. Laws such as these aimed to legally segregate blacks who lived in tribal regions from the whites and coloreds who were ruled by the British. In addition to restricting the movement of blacks, the laws also prohibited their movement from one district to another without a signed pass. Most specifically, blacks were not allowed onto the streets of towns in the Cape Colony and Natal after dark and had to carry their passes at all times. These instances of prior racial segregation infused with British colonialism spurred the onset of apartheid in South Africa. In addition to discrimination against tribal blacks, colors who lived in the British colonized areas were also discriminated against through disenfranchisement, a well known case of which occurred with Prime Minister J.S. Strijdom in the Cape Province in 1951 when the validity of the Separate Representation of Voters Bill was challenged in court resulting in the repeal of the bill that previously granted coloreds the right to vote.

Rules of Apartheid
The idea of Apartheid was to give the ruling white majority an advantage over the native blacks and the Indians. In order to give the whites those intended advantages, first each group had to be separated. Blacks were classified as citizens of one of ten Bantustans that were located in the equivalent of the U.S. Native American reservations. A problem with sending people to the Bantustans was that many people that were assigned to live there were not even from the region. The Bantustans were designed to restrict the rights of the natives in other ways. Blacks could only vote within the Bantustans and not for national elections. Also, the medical care and educational opportunities that were available in the Bantustans were not as good as those available in “White South Africa.”
“White South Africa” was the privileged part of the country. Blacks could still live in this area of the nation, but public care services for blacks were inferior to those of whites. The South African government purposefully made services to blacks worse than the services to whites to motivate blacks to move to the Bantustans. It was very difficult for blacks to advance higher than a working class position while living in “White South Africa,” but at the same time, had very little privilege if they lived in the Bantustans. Blacks were not allowed to run businesses in “White South Africa” without permits that were difficult to obtain. The government’s idea behind this rule was that the possibility of becoming a “big fish in a small pond” financially would make moving to the Bantustans very appealing to the natives.
Blacks were not allowed all the freedoms that whites were allowed in other ways too. Taxation rates were unequal and public places like movie theatres were available to whites only. Overall, similar to the southern United States in the mid-twentieth century, whites had more privileges than everyone else and the freedom to do what they wanted; the only difference between America and South Africa is that in South Africa, a white minority imposed their will on the black majority.