Apatheid.

The term apartheid was used in the South African Republic to indicate the separation within
the country between whites on the one hand and blacks, mestizos and Indians on the other.
Due to this policy, desired by the South African governments, all the non-white population
was forced to live in a state of inferiority and subject to humiliating prohibitions.
Apartheid laws classified citizens into three main racial groups: white, Bantu (black African)
and colored (people of mixed descent). A fourth category was later established for Asians
(Indians and Pakistanis). The laws prescribed where each group could live, what kind of
jobs they could have and what kind of school system they could access. The laws prohibited
almost all interracial relationships, established separate public places (for example,
reserving some beaches for whites), and excluded non-whites from any form of political
representation. Opponents of apartheid were prosecuted and the government tightened its
policy of repression until it turned South Africa into a police state.

The main laws that made up the system were :

● prohibition of interracial marriages;

● law according to which having sexual relations with a person of a different race
became a criminal offense;
● law that required citizens to be registered based on their racial characteristics
(Population Registration Act);
● a law that allowed any opposition that was labeled by the government as a
communist to be banned (used to outlaw the African National Congress (ANC), the
largest political organization that included blacks, socialist in style, in 1960);
● law that prohibited people of color (Bantu, coloureds and later Asians) from entering
certain urban areas;
 ● law that prohibited people of different colors from using the same public facilities
(fountains, waiting rooms, sidewalks, etc.);
● law that included a series of measures all aimed at making access to education
more difficult for blacks;
● law that sanctioned racial discrimination in the workplace;
● law establishing the Bantustans, ghetto states for the black population, nominally
independent but in reality under the control of the South African government;
● law that deprived the inhabitants of the Bantustans of South African citizenship and
the rights attached to it;
● law that forced the black population to be able to frequent white people's
neighborhoods only with special passports.

Reforms:
From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the government implemented a series of reforms that
allowed black trade union representatives to organize and carry out limited political activity.
The 1984 Constitution extended parliamentary representation to Asians and colored people,
but not to blacks, despite making up over 75% of the population. New riots broke out in the
cities and, as international pressure against South Africa grew, the government policies of
apartheid began to ease. In 1990, new president Frederick de Klerk officially lifted the
30-year ban of the ANC and freed its leader, Nelson Mandela. In 1993 an agreement was
reached and signed by Mandela and De Klerk on the modalities of South Africa's transition
to democracy. In the first free elections of 1994 Mandela became the first black president in
the history of South Africa to head a government coalition that also included the National
Party.
Cristian Talarico.
Josephine Silipo.