How did South African Apartheid happen, and how did it finally end? - Thula Simpson
On June 16th 1976,
over 10,000 student protesters flooded
the streets of Soweto, South Africa.
For 28 years, South Africans
had been living under Apartheid,
a strict policy of segregation that
barred the country’s Black majority
from skilled, high-paying jobs,
quality education, and much more.
And in 1974, the government announced
schools would be forced to teach
many subjects in Afrikaans—
a language used primarily
by the nation’s white ruling elites.
But when protesters rose
up to fight this injustice,
the government's response was swift.
Armed police officers turned
their weapons onto the crowd,
and over the following days
they killed over 150 students,
including victims as young as 13.
Even before Apartheid, South Africa’s
long history of racial violence
had already cost countless Black Africans
their jobs, homes, and lives.
Beginning in the 1600s,
first Dutch and later British settlers
colonized the nation,
displacing local populations
from their ancestral lands.
Over the following centuries,
Black Africans were segregated
onto so-called native reserves;
and by the 20th century,
that meant 70% of the population
was living on roughly 13%
of the country’s land.
Deprived of their traditional livelihoods
and seeking to escape these
overpopulated regions,
Black Africans began migrating
to white-controlled areas.
There, they worked for low wages
on white-owned farms and mines,
alongside the descendants of enslaved
and indentured workers
from across Africa and Asia.
By 1948, this exploited labor force
was a primary driver
of South Africa’s booming economy.
But economists argued that continued
growth required a stable, educated,
and urbanized African labor force.
The ruling United Party
accepted this logic,
but the rival National Party argued
such a workforce
would threaten the white ruling class.
Naming their campaign Apartheid,
the Afrikaans word for “separateness,”
the National Party won the 1948 elections.
And once in power, they began
forcibly relocating millions of Africans
back to the reserves.
Under Apartheid, Black workers were
considered temporary visitors
in white areas.
They were restricted to specific zones,
and their trade unions received
no official recognition.
The government also abolished
mixed race universities,
outlawed mixed marriages,
segregated recreational spaces,
and purged the non-white population
from the voters’ roll.
Within parliament at this time,
Apartheid only had a small group
of outspoken opponents.
But outside the government,
three political groups were leading a
popular resistance against the regime:
the Communist Party,
which was then legally banned in 1950,
their allies
in the African National Congress,
and later, a splinter group called
the Pan-Africanist Congress.
Despite some ideological differences,
all three groups worked
to mobilize the masses
against Apartheid
by non-violent methods.
But the National Party
wasn’t as restrained.
On March 21st, 1960, policemen massacred
demonstrators at a PAC rally,
and within weeks,
the ANC and PAC were outlawed.
These events radicalized
anti-Apartheid leaders,
and in December of 1961,
Nelson Mandela and other ANC
and Communist Party activists
established the resistance’s armed wing.
While the conflict grew
increasingly violent,
the 1960s saw consistent economic
growth throughout South Africa.
The National Party attributed this
to the success of Apartheid,
but it was actually due
to further exploitation.
Employers were illegally
hiring Black laborers
for positions affluent white workers
didn’t want to fill.
And since this prosperity
was flowing disproportionately
to the ruling white minority,
the government happily turned a blind eye.
Meanwhile, the National Party leveraged
global anti-communist sentiment
to demonize its adversaries.
In 1963, they tried Mandela and ten others
for advancing communism
and training recruits
in guerrilla warfare.
Eight of the defendants were sentenced
to life in prison,
and many remaining anti-Apartheid leaders
were forced into exile.
Over the next decade,
a generation of student activists
rose up to continue the fight,
led in part by Steve Biko and the
South African Students Organization.
Following the Soweto Massacre,
student protesters spread nationwide.
But police violently smothered
these demonstrations,
killing over 600 protesters by early 1977.
That same year,
Biko was taken into police custody
and killed in a brutal assault.
In response to this violence,
the international community finally
called for an end to Apartheid,
with some countries enacting
trade embargoes against South Africa.
The state attempted to launch
a reform process,
creating separate parliaments
for the country's white,
non-white, and Indian populations.
But the exclusion of the African majority
led to more nationwide rioting.
So when F.W. de Klerk,
a long-time supporter of Apartheid,
came to power in 1989,
he concluded the only way to ensure
white survival was to end the policy.
On February 2nd, 1990,
de Klerk shocked the world
by unbanning the ANC,
releasing Mandela,
and calling for
constitutional negotiations.
Four years later, in the nation’s
inaugural all-inclusive elections,
Mandela became South Africa’s
first Black president.
But today, the national trauma
of Apartheid can still be keenly felt,
and many wounds from this period
have yet to fully heal.
