Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: What was apartheid?
Apartheid (South African English: ; , segregation; lit. "separateness") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on "baasskap" (or white supremacy), which encouraged state repression of Black African, Coloured, and Asian South Africans for the benefit of the nation's minority white population. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day.
As a consequence of this change of status, South Africa needed to reapply for continued membership of the Commonwealth, with which it had privileged trade links. India had become a republic within the Commonwealth in 1950, but it became clear that African and Asian member states would oppose South Africa due to its apartheid policies. As a result, South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth on 31 May 1961, the day that the Republic came into existence.
However, the Commonwealth by 1960 included new Asian and African members, whose rulers saw the apartheid state's membership as an affront to the organisation's new democratic principles. Julius Nyerere, then Chief Minister of Tanganyika, indicated that his country, which was due to gain independence in 1961, would not join the Commonwealth were apartheid South Africa to remain a member. A Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference was convened in March 1961, a year ahead of schedule, to address the issue. In response, Verwoerd stirred up a confrontation, causing many members to threaten to withdraw if South Africa's renewal of membership application was accepted. As a result, South Africa's membership application was withdrawn, meaning that upon its becoming a republic, the country's Commonwealth membership simply lapsed.
The race was marked with some teams boycotting the event due to apartheid – the segregation of blacks and whites – and was the last South African Formula One race until apartheid ended in 1992. The race was won by Nigel Mansell in a Williams-Honda, who also took pole position.
African National Congress: The ANC was created in 1912, but became the leading political party after the end of apartheid in 1994. Its main platform rests on racial equality and eradicating the socioeconomic classes which are often based on race. The ANC has been considered a party for native South Africans, especially before 2009 when party leader President Zuma faced multiple accusations regarding corruption, particularly using public funds for his own purposes. The economic struggle of South Africa as well as the police brutality have both been blamed on the ANC. Currently the ANC holds 249 seats in parliament. Support for the ANC went down between the 2009 and the 2014 elections, with violent protests erupting all over the country in response to the allegations of corruption within the ANC.
In March 1961, Verwoerd visited the Imperial Conference in London to discuss South Africa becoming a republic within the Commonwealth, presenting the Republic of South Africa's application for a renewal of its membership to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth had earlier declined to predict how republican status would affect South Africa's membership, it did not want to be seen to be meddling in its members' domestic affairs. However, many of the Conference's affiliates (prominent among them the Afro-Asia group and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker) attacked South Africa's racial policies and rebuffed Verwoerd's application; they would go to any lengths to expel South Africa from the Commonwealth. In the UK, numerous anti-apartheid movements were also campaigning for South Africa's exclusion. Some member countries warned that, unless South Africa was expelled, they would themselves pull out of the organisation. Verwoerd discarded the censure, arguing that his Commonwealth cohorts had no right to question and criticise the domestic affairs of his country. On this issue, he even had the support of his parliamentary opposition.
In 1959 a group of disenchanted ANC members broke away from the ANC and formed the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), saying the ANC was too strongly influenced by white communists. First on the PAC's agenda was a series of nationwide demonstrations against the pass laws. The PAC called for blacks to demonstrate against pass books on 21 March 1960. One of the mass demonstrations organised by the PAC took place at Sharpeville, a township near Vereeniging. Estimates of the size of the crowd vary from 3,000 to 20,000. The crowd converged on the Sharpeville police station, singing and offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their pass books. A group of about 300 police panicked and opened fire on the demonstrators after the crowd trampled down the fence surrounding the police station. They killed 69 people and injured 186. All the victims were black, and most of them had been shot in the back. Many witnesses stated that the crowd was not violent, but Colonel J. Pienaar, the senior police officer in charge on the day, said, "Hordes of natives surrounded the police station. My car was struck with a stone. If they do these things they must learn their lesson the hard way". The event became known as the Sharpeville massacre. In its aftermath the government banned the African National Congress (ANC) and the PAC.
From the mid-1950s, the United Nations began to express concern over apartheid, and there was a growing general awareness in Britain of its effects. In 1960 the UK Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, criticised apartheid in his "Wind of Change" speech to the South African parliament. However, the British government was cautious; the large number of British passport holders and businesses based in South Africa made them reluctant to force the issue and provoke a confrontation. Additionally, there was support for the policy among some right-wing politicians. When the MCC team toured South Africa in 1956–57, the players observed and were shocked by what they considered to be injustices against the black population. As many players and officials had family and friends in the country, they were disinclined to take a stand, but several condemned the situation in print at the time or later.
A referendum on becoming a republic was held in South Africa on 5 October 1960. The Afrikaner-dominated right-wing National Party, which had come to power in 1948, was avowedly republican, and regarded the position of Queen Elizabeth II as head of state as a relic of British imperialism. The National Party government subsequently organised the referendum on whether the then Union of South Africa should become a republic. The vote, which was restricted to whites, was narrowly approved by 52.29% of the voters. The Republic of South Africa was constituted on 31 May 1961.
In 1960 a whites-only referendum was held to decide whether South Africa should become a republic. No changes were made to the franchise with the Republic's emergence in 1961. However, with the policy of establishing Bantustans the remaining black representation in the Senate was completely removed.
Portugal's overseas presence in Sub-Saharan Africa (most notably in Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe) lasted from the 16th century to 1975, after the Estado Novo regime was overthrown in a military coup in Lisbon. Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965, under the white minority government of Ian Smith, but was not internationally recognized as an independent state (as Zimbabwe) until 1980, when black nationalists gained power after a bitter guerrilla war. Although South Africa was one of the first African countries to gain independence, the state remained under the control of the country's white minority through a system of racial segregation known as apartheid until 1994.
This was ended in 1961 when South Africa left the British Commonwealth on becoming a Republic, and formally abandoned all of its connections, with Union nationals becoming citizens of the Republic of South Africa. By the time South Africa returned to the Commonwealth in 1994, the phrase "British Subject" had been replaced by "Commonwealth citizen". Australia was the last to phase out British Subject in the Citizenship law which was in 1986.
These developments were not without criticism or opposition. Indeed, the abolition of slavery and the promulgation of Ordinance 50, and the accompanying extension of rights to the black population, were deeply resented by the white Dutch farmers of the Cape as undermining their way of life. Starting in 1834, thousands of these Boers set out on one of the most defining events of white South African history – the Great Trek. The Dutch who moved away from the Cape did so in the hope of leaving British control and British ways of ordering society behind them. In the interior of southern Africa they would carve out independent states for themselves, the South African (or Transvaal) Republic and the Orange Free State, whose constitutions enshrined the principle of no equality between white and black in either church or state.
Basil D'Oliveira was a Cape Coloured who emigrated to England so he could play first-class cricket from which he was banned in South Africa. When he was not included in the MCC team for South Africa after his match-winning century there was a press storm in what was known as the D'Oliveira affair. It appeared that he was omitted as he was unacceptable to the South African government, then at the height of apartheid. Cowdrey and the selectors maintained that he had not been chosen for purely cricketing reasons, but when Cartwright was declared unfit they brought in D'Oliveira, who was the first reserve. To President Vorster of South Africa it looked like the MCC was caving in to anti-apartheid pressure and he cancelled the tour. Cowdrey offered to fly to South Africa to mediate, but it would be 26 years before England next played South Africa.
The African National Congress Women's League is the women's wing of the African National Congress (ANC). It was founded in 1931 as the Bantu Women's League, with Charlotte Maxeke as its first president. It was integrated into the ANC during the period from 1943, when women were first admitted as members of the ANC, to 1948, when the ANCWL was officially founded. It participated with the Federation of South African Women in protests against the apartheid-era government, such as the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the Women's March of 9 August 1956. In 1956, Lilian Ngoyi became the first elected female member of the ANC National Executive Committee. In 1960 the organization was banned along with the ANC forcing its central leaders underground; it was unbanned in 1990 when the ANC was likewise unbanned.
Following the defeat of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer or South African War (1899–1902), the Union of South Africa was created as a dominion of the British Empire in terms of the South Africa Act 1909, which amalgamated the four previously separate British colonies: Cape Colony, Natal Colony, Transvaal Colony, and Orange River Colony. The country became a self-governing nation state within the British Empire, in 1934 following enactment of the Status of the Union Act. The dominion came to an end on 31 May 1961 as the consequence of a 1960 referendum, which legitimised the country becoming a sovereign state named Republic of South Africa. A republican constitution was adopted.
South-West Africa was a German colony (German South-West Africa) from 1884, several small parts were annexed by Britain and added to the Cape Colony which itself was combined with Colony of Natal, Transvaal Colony and the Orange River Colony to become the Commonwealth realm of the Union of South Africa in 1910. After World War I South-West Africa was declared a League of Nations Mandate to be administered by South Africa and after World War II it was supposed to become a United Nations Trust Territory, but South Africa objected and refused to allow it to achieve independence. South Africa's position was supported by the International Court of Justice which required, however, that South Africa follow the previously applied League of Nations Mandate.
During the years immediately following the Anglo-Boer wars, Britain set about unifying the four colonies including the former Boer republics into a single self-governed country called the Union of South Africa. This was accomplished after several years of negotiations, when the South Africa Act 1909 consolidated the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State into one nation. Under the provisions of the act, the Union became an independent Dominion of the British Empire, governed under a form of constitutional monarchy, with the British monarch represented by a Governor-General. Prosecutions before the courts of the Union of South Africa were instituted in the name of the Crown and government officials served in the name of the Crown. The British High Commission territories of Basutoland (now Lesotho), and Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Swaziland continued under direct rule from Britain.
Freedom Square was located on the corner of Victoria and Morris Streets. It was famous in the 1950s for the political meetings held there. It was utilised by the African National Congress (ANC) and the Transvaal Congress Party. Many of the meetings were chaired by Trevor Huddleston. Freedom Square facilitated the cooperation between the aforementioned political parties. Here parties worked together against the apartheid regime. Freedom Square in Sophiatown should not be confused with Freedom Square in Kliptown, Soweto, where the Freedom Charter was adopted by the ANC in 1955. It was in this Freedom Square in Sophiatown that Nelson Mandela made his first public allusion to violence and armed resistance as a legitimate tool for change. This earned him a reprimand from Albert Luthuli who by then replaced Dr A.B. Xuma as president of the ANC. Current remnants of Freedom Square may be found beneath a school playing field alongside the Christ the King Church.
The area known as Lesotho is completely surrounded by South Africa. Lesotho (then Basutoland, a British protectorate) was annexed to the Cape Colony in 1871, but became separate again (as a crown colony) in 1884. When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, there were moves by the UK to include Lesotho. However, in October 1966, the Kingdom gained full independence. Despite formal independence, the white-controlled government in South Africa played a major role in its neighbour's economic and political affairs, including supporting the government of Lesotho Prime Minister Chief Leabua Jonathan. In 1986, South Africa supported the coup d'état in Lesotho which brought Justin Lekhanya to power. In turn, Lekhanya's government expelled African National Congress members as well as technicians from North Korea, which led to significantly better relations between the two countries.
On 3 August 1960, the National Party government announced a referendum would be held in October of that year so that voters might weigh in on the question of whether the Union of South Africa should become a republic. The vote was restricted to white South Africans. More than 90% of eligible voters participated in the referendum, and 52.3% of those who did voted in favour of "a Republic for the Union."
The state passed laws that paved the way for "grand apartheid", which was centred on separating races on a large scale, by compelling people to live in separate places defined by race. This strategy was in part adopted from "left-over" British rule that separated different racial groups after they took control of the Boer republics in the Anglo-Boer war. This created the black-only "townships" or "locations", where blacks were relocated to their own towns. In addition, "petty apartheid" laws were passed. The principal apartheid laws were as follows.
Apartheid developed from the racism of colonial factions and due to South Africa's "unique industrialization". The policies of industrialization led to segregation of and classing of people, which was "specifically developed to nurture early industry such as mining". Cheap labour was the basis of the economy and this was taken from what the state classed as peasant groups and the migrants. Furthermore, Philip Bonner highlights the "contradictory economic effects" as the economy did not have a manufacturing sector, therefore promoting short term profitability but limiting labour productivity and the size of local markets. This also led to its collapse as "Clarkes emphasises the economy could not provide and compete with foreign rivals as they failed to master cheap labour and complex chemistry".
In 1983, anti-apartheid leaders determined to resist the tricameral parliament assembled to form the United Democratic Front (UDF) in order to coordinate anti-apartheid activism inside South Africa. The first presidents of the UDF were Archie Gumede, Oscar Mpetha and Albertina Sisulu; patrons were Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr Allan Boesak, Helen Joseph, and Nelson Mandela. Basing its platform on abolishing apartheid and creating a nonracial democratic South Africa, the UDF provided a legal way for domestic human rights groups and individuals of all races to organise demonstrations and campaign against apartheid inside the country. Churches and church groups also emerged as pivotal points of resistance. Church leaders were not immune to prosecution, and certain faith-based organisations were banned, but the clergy generally had more freedom to criticise the government than militant groups did. The UDF, coupled with the protection of the church, accordingly permitted a major role for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who served both as a prominent domestic voice and international spokesperson denouncing apartheid and urging the creation of a shared nonracial state.
Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into "petty apartheid", which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and "grand apartheid", which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race. Prior to the 1940s, some aspects of apartheid had already emerged in the form of minority rule by White South Africans and the socially enforced separation of Black South Africans from other races, which later extended to pass laws and land apportionment. Apartheid was adopted as a formal policy by the South African government after the election of the National Party (NP) at the 1948 general election.