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Apartheid: Race & Segregation

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Apartheid in South Africa - focus on race

Key Concept: Consequence

Essential Questions: 

  • What were the nature and characteristics of discrimination in the apartheid system?
  • How did the apartheid system impact the lives of South Africans?
  • pps. 24-26 of the Rights and Protest Course Companion book supports the resources on this topic
Petty apartheid - Describes the era of the 1950s when laws similar to “Jim Crow” laws in the United States prohibited inter-racial sex and marriage and strictly segregated residential areas, schools, trains, buses, beaches, toilets, parks, stadiums, ambulances, hospitals, and cemeteries. Brutally enforced by police (see “pass laws”).

Use this link to access video clips of South Africans talking about the system of racial classification.

South African: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy, Michigan State University archive

1960 South African Census data

1960 South African census data

Protest Poetry

Taken for a Ride

by Stanley Motjuwad

 

To Whom It May Concern

by Sipho Sepamla

Apartheid Race Identity Numbers

Apartheid explanation of identity number

Explanation of South African identity numbers in an identity document during apartheid in terms of official White, Coloured and Indian population subgroups

Attribution: HelenOnline, Government of South Africa [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/ApartheidPopulationGroups.jpg

Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, No 55, 1949

The 1st major law to be passed by the Nationalist Party, the act made it illegal for white South Africans to marry people of other races.  

Immorality Act, 1950

Banned all extra-marital sexual relations between Whites and non-Whites.

The Population Registration Act, No 30, 1950

This law classified every South African according to their particular racial group.  This would determine where they were allowed to live and what work they could do.  This law had a terrible effect on people whose racial identity was not clear.

For example, families could suddenly find themselves divided.  Parents who were classified as African might be told that their children had been classified as colored.  Their children had to go and live in a so-called colored area, while the parents had to live in an area reserved for Africans.

In an attempt to maintain racial purity, officials used a variety of strange tests to determine whether a person was white, colored, African or Indian.

The Pass Laws Act, 1952

A form of internal passport system designed to segregate the population, manage urbanisation, and allocate migrant labour. Also known as the Natives Law, pass laws severely limited the movements of not only black African citizens, but other people (of color) by requiring them to carry pass books when outside their homelands or designated areas.

The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, No 49,1953

The Act legalized the racial segregation of public premises, vehicles and services. Only public roads and streets were excluded from the Act. Section 3b stated that the facilities for different races did not need to be equal, while Section 3a made it legal not only to supply segregated facilities, but also to completely exclude people, based on their race, from public premises, vehicles or services.

Apartheid sign reserving use of public premises for White Persons

British Pathe, newsreel from 1955.

"Race Problem (1955)." YouTube, uploaded by British Pathe, 13 Apr. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPicrk9tukM. Accessed 17 Jan. 2019.

1979 had at least 150 'chameleons'

1979 had at least 150 'chameleons'

Understanding Apartheid. p. 46, Cape Town, Oxford UP Southern Africa, 2006.