What was apartheid?
Apartheid ('separateness' in Afrikaans) was a system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. It classified all South Africans by race, restricted where non-white people could live, work, and travel, denied them political rights, and maintained white minority rule through law, police violence, and imprisonment of dissidents.
Apartheid was one of the most comprehensive systems of racial oppression in modern history — a legally codified framework that subordinated the lives of millions of Black, Coloured, and Indian South Africans to the interests of a white minority that never constituted more than 20% of the population.
When the National Party won the 1948 election on an explicitly white-supremacist platform, South Africa already had extensive racial segregation. But apartheid transformed informal discrimination into a total system. The Population Registration Act (1950) classified every South African by race. The Group Areas Act (1950) designated where each racial group could live, forcibly relocating millions of people. The Bantu Education Act (1953) created a deliberately inferior education system for Black children. Pass laws required Black South Africans to carry identity documents at all times and restricted their movement. The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act segregated public facilities — from park benches to hospitals to beaches.
Resistance was constant and took many forms. The African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, organized protests, boycotts, and civil disobedience. The 1960 Sharpeville Massacre — when police killed 69 peaceful protesters — led the ANC to adopt armed resistance under Nelson Mandela's leadership. The Black Consciousness Movement of the 1970s, led by Steve Biko, emphasized psychological liberation and Black pride. The Soweto Uprising of 1976, when students protested against being taught in Afrikaans, resulted in hundreds of deaths and galvanized international opposition.
The international community increasingly isolated South Africa through economic sanctions, cultural boycotts, and diplomatic pressure. Athletes and musicians refused to perform. Multinational corporations divested. The anti-apartheid movement became one of the most successful international solidarity campaigns in history.
Apartheid ended through a combination of internal resistance, international pressure, and economic unsustainability. President F.W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC and released Nelson Mandela in February 1990 after 27 years of imprisonment. Negotiations led to South Africa's first fully democratic election on April 27, 1994, which Mandela won in a landslide. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, attempted to reckon with apartheid's crimes through testimony and conditional amnesty rather than retributive justice — a model that, however imperfect, influenced transitional justice processes worldwide.