Handout/Activity for 10th Grade World History – Rancho High School

The Apartheid in South Africa and the Impact of Racial Segregation Around
the World
Short Written Responses (3 to 5 sentences each)
Instructions: Using information from this lesson, answer the following questions to
the best of your ability. Each numbered section that you answer should be no more
than to 5 sentences long.
1) How would you best describe the Apartheid in your own words? What were
some of the methods that the South African government used to separate whites
from people of other ethnicities?
2 a) Who was Nelson Mandela? Do you believe that he was a “freedom
fighter”, as he was viewed by most of the outside world or a “terrorist”, as he
was labeled by the South African government during the Apartheid? In your
own words, what is the difference between the two classifications?
2 b) Does the reporter sound biased or does it seem fair that he connects the
lack of education among native Africans with the right to vote? Do you agree
with Mandela when he says that the question of education has nothing to do
with the right to vote?
2 c) If peaceful protests are met with force from the government, do you feel it
is justified for protesters to respond with violence? Why do think Mandela
was hesitant to promote violent demonstrations against the South African
government?
3) What was the Soweto Uprising? Do you believe this event helped to bring about
an end to the Apartheid regime and if so, how?
4) Do you think that having an ally on the African continent to help fight against
communism prevented the US military from intervening in South Africa against
the Apartheid government?
5) Does the era of segregation in South Africa remind you of similar issues
concerning social injustice in the United States recently? Can a comparison be
drawn between the use of the South African police force during the Apartheid and
the power that some critics accuse police officers in the US of abusing?
 Notes for Apartheid Lecture
A Brief History of Early Colonial South Africa
Bulletin One (Slide 3)

Europeans first set foot in South Africa when Jan van Riebeek, a Dutch colonial

administrator working for the Dutch East India Company, established a resupply

station for the fleets sailing between Holland and Asia. Racial tensions between

Europeans and native tribes in the region began when the Dutch began settling the

area that would become known as Cape Town, seizing land and livestock from the

local inhabitants in order to replenish the Dutch vessels on their long voyages.

After 150 years of controlling the Cape colony, Dutch farmers known as Boers

(who spoke a dialect of Dutch called Afrikaans), grew tired of living under the

strict guidelines of the Dutch East India Company and began illegally moving

deeper into the interior of the land. In response, the company began restricting

Dutch immigration into the Cape Colony and began to implement slave labor to

secure the resources needed to stock their resupply stations.

Life for the native people of the region and the Boer population, became more

complicated after Great Britain seized control of the colony from the Dutch by the

end of the eighteenth century.

The British and the Boers coexisted rather peacefully at first, often at the expense

of local African inhabitants who continued to be mistreated by the expanding

European population. However, after slavery was abolished by the British Empire
in the early nineteenth century, the relationship between British settlers and the

Boers began to deteriorate as more “humane” colonial policies were introduced.

Feeling restricted by the foreign policies forced upon them, the Boers began

venturing further into the interior of the country, seeking independence from

British authority.

As a result of this expansion inland, the Boers established two republics – the

South African Republic and the Orange Free State. Most native Africans during

this time were still living in their own autonomous societies, mostly left alone by

both the British and the Boers who could not afford to wage costly military

campaigns against local tribes. The native tribes were also reluctant to engage in

conflicts with European settlers, unless required to in self defense or to protect

themselves from being abducted or assaulted, as they lacked the weaponry to

overpower them. The Industrial Revolution and the discovery of gold and

diamonds in South Africa toward the late nineteenth century, however, would

change everything.

Bulletin Two (Slide 4)

The discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa led to an explosion in wealth,

population and tension between all groups of people who occupied the country

during the late nineteenth century. British policies against indigenous populations

grew more radical as native lands were confiscated and black Africans were forced
to work by the terms set by their white employers. Heavy taxes and strict work

regulations were successful in bending black employees to the will of their white

superiors. Similar conditions were used against native populations later in the

twentieth century during the Apartheid.

Tensions between the descendants of Dutch settlers (Boers) and the British

increased, as the independent states founded by the Boers prior to the discovery of

precious metals in South Africa, failed to benefit from the wealth that the diamond

and gold mines produced. The Boer governments tried to impose tax regulations on

the mining companies in the region that were supported by banks located in

Britain, but this strategy only led to further animosity. These tensions eventually

led to the Boer War (also known as the South African War) fought between 1899

and 1902.

The war lasted far longer than the British had anticipated but the conflict

eventually ended when the Boer army, mostly made up of militias and guerilla

fighters, was defeated by the superior British military.

Bulletin Three (Slide 5)

The Beginning of Political Segregation and Discrimination

Although the British won the war, their main interest in the country continued to

be the successful operation of the diamond and gold mines and the financial

profits that they produced. As the Boers and Afrikaans speaking people made up
most of the white population of the country, Great Britain abandoned their anti-

Boer stance and negotiated a political alliance where local white communities

(mostly Afrikaans) would govern themselves. This led to the Union of South

Africa, a self-governing state within the British Empire established in 1910.

Legislative restrictions against native Africans within the Union of South Africa

were harsh, paving the way for policies adopted by the Apartheid government to

follow. Some of these restrictions included the Mines and Works Act, which only

permitted white employees to hold skilled and higher paying jobs within the

mining industry, and the Native Land Act that made it illegal for black people to

own any land in South Africa that was outside of the small area where they were

told they could live. Black people were also denied the right to vote, limiting their

ability to ever change the policies they were forced to live by.

The founding of two nationalist movements emerged in the country, following the

establishment of the Union of South Africa. The National Party (NP) was pro

Afrikaans, a term used increasingly more by the Boer population after the South

African war and the African National Congress (ANC), which appealed to the

native African population and addressed the many issues and grievances

experienced among black communities in South Africa at the time.

(Slide 6 – Same Bulletin)

The NP grew in popularity as the party appealed to the majority white, Afrikaner

population who had much of their land taken from them by the British during the

Boer war. Although their livelihoods faired far better than native black Africans,

Afrikaners were still a more impoverished white population compared to British

South Africans who continued to prosper through the diamond and gold mining

industry. The major grievance of the Afrikaners was that they wanted a greater

share of the economy but their lack of business skills or experience working in

cities and their limited ability to communicate in English, held them back.

Over the next few decades following the establishment of the Union of South

Africa until the end of World War Two, the National Party continued to spread their

message of a united Afrikaner front, gaining many supporters among the citizen

population and within the government as well. Their message was fueled on the

most part by the pain they had suffered following the Boer War and by the fear of

the black population taking their jobs and stealing their livelihoods from them. The

propaganda that the NP used to express the importance of separating the Afrikaans

speaking population from the rest of the country was successful and in 1948, the

National Party won the election and became South Africa’s dominant political

party.

The rise of the National Party to South Africa’s highest level of government,

spelled disaster for the African National Congress who struggled to expand their
party to include the grievances of all minority groups in the country. Since the

members of the ANC were predominantly black, they could not legally vote in the

national elections and so prior to the election of the NP to South Africa’s highest

government in 1948, they brought their issues and complaints to the British

leadership in the country. Their appeals and petitions were essentially ignored as

the British reminded them that the country was self governed and that their

grievances had to be addressed with the local white, Afrikaner leadership.

After 1948 and with the introduction of national policies and regulations

that banned minority groups from taking part in political operations, the

ANC had ultimately failed to establish any of the changes that they had

been desperately seeking. Although the party had only a few thousand

members by the time the NP gained control of the government, the ANC

refused to dismantle or disappear entirely from the political arena in

South Africa.

Bulletin Four (Slide 7)

Institutionalized Hate and the Era of Apartheid

The National Party introduced a system of policies that essentially segregated the

country based on race and ethnicity. Through this procedure of systemized

discrimination, the government had declared South Africa to be a “white man’s”

country and forced all nonwhite people to abide by laws that were created by

ideology based on racial supremacy.

Known as both the Father and as the Architect of Apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd

was responsible for creating policies that segregated living spaces, amenities and

public gatherings based on race and served as Prime Minister of South Africa

between 1958 and 1966. According to his rules, there were to be no mixing of the

European, African, Colored and Asian ethnic groups. Furthermore, Verwoerd was

extremely anti-communist and helped create the Suppression of Communism Act

in 1950, which was designed to protect against anyone one or any group who

intended to, “Bring about any political, industrial, social, or economic change

within the Union by the promotion of disturbance or disorder.”

To help enact these policies and to secure racial segregation during the Apartheid

regime, the SAPS (South African Police Services) were used more as an armed

enforcement agency than a regular police force. They were responsible for

horrendous incidences of inhuman acts and treatments toward anyone that the

government deemed to be a threat, including the torture and murder of political

rivals.

In 1966, six years after he was shot multiple times in a failed assassination

attempt, Verwoerd was stabbed to death by a second individual who claimed that

the prime minister’s policies were too harsh and inhumane. The assassin, Dimitri
Tsafendas, was a known communist sympathizer and as it was with the first

attempt on his life, Verwoerd’s attacker was a white man.

(Slide 8 – Same Bulletin)

The regime did not die with its architect, Hendrik Verwoerd but anti Apartheid

protests and activists increased in size and in power throughout the years to follow.

During his time as one of the ANC’s top leaders, which had increased its influence

since the forming of the South African Union decades earlier, Nelson Mandela was

labeled a terrorist for his involvement in running the party that the regime had

labeled illegal and essentially banned from political practices. Although Mandela

preached peace, his party’s tactics had turned more violent as his pleas for peace

had been repeatedly ignored by the government.

Almost twenty years of Mandela’s life sentence was spent on Robben Island, a

small spec of land off the coast of Cape Town that was transformed into a prison

that held many political prisoners during the Apartheid. Although he was kept

under close watch and almost entirely cut off from the outside world, Mandela

remained a symbol for the oppressed people of South Africa and a threat to the

regime. He was kept in a small cell that was barely furnished, slept on a thin mat

on a hard concrete floor and spent most of his days breaking rocks in a limestone

quarry on the island. Nelson Mandela was eventually released in 1990 after South
Africa found itself on the brink of civil war and became the country’s first black

president four years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrBCgiFhmNA

Bulletin Five (Slide 13)

How the Cold War Influenced the Collapse of the Apartheid

Perhaps the most iconic and bloodiest demonstration to emerge during the

Apartheid era was the Soweto Uprising, a series of protests orchestrated by black

school students who were outraged by a policy that forced the Afrikaans language

into their school curriculum. The students viewed the policy as another insult from

a government that routinely restricted their ability to prosper in the education

system and in the economy of the country. Being forced to learn and communicate

in the language of their oppressors was enough to send thousands of students into

the streets to protest, which eventually turned violent as police officers resorted to

deadly force to end the illegal demonstrations. The initial recorded death toll was

less than 200 but estimates today of the massacre range from 500 to 700 killed,

most of who were students.

The Soweto Uprisings forced the world to take notice of the situation in South

Africa and added pressure to the Apartheid regime that was becoming increasingly

unstable, as neighboring countries became engulfed by conflict and civil war,

following the collapse of colonization on the African continent. Fears of being

attacked by pro African (non colonial ruled) coalitions on their borders and

mounting tensions from international outrage toward atrocities like what had

happened in Soweto, proved to be the beginning of the end for the oppressive

government.

In 1974, a revolutionary movement in Portugal overthrew the nation’s dictatorship

government and subsequential ended Portuguese colonial rule in Africa, leaving its

territories vulnerable to communist takeover. The Marxist governments that

replaced the former colonially run regions in Southern Africa and beyond, were

dedicated to the eradication of European dominance on the continent and opposed

oppressive regimes like the Apartheid government in South Africa. Bordering

countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique began offering refuge to ANC

leaders and other political opponents of the Apartheid government that were

expelled from the country, creating a even greater threat to the regime’s fragile

political system. In response to this growing threat, the South African Defense

Force engaged in military campaigns against their neighbors in a war that would go

down in history as the nation’s longest conflict, the 23 year long Border War.

(Slide 14 – Same Bulletin)

Within this time period that lasted almost three decades, South Africa defended its

borders from any successful foreign invasion, all the while committing thousands

of troops to the fight against Soviet backed Cuban military forces in the interior of
the continent further west. South Africa’s response to the spread of communism

during the Cold War era was similar to that of the United States in terms of

military action, especially in Angola where the likelihood of a complete

communist takeover was greatest, . The South African soldiers who fought against

the communist threat were comprised of racially segregated units, although most of

the military personnel were white men. The South African Defense Force filled its

ranks mostly with young men who were required by law, to serve at least two years

in the South African armed forces beginning at the age of 18. The primary

objective of the South African Defense Force was to keep the fighting inside of the

South West African region and to prevent the communist backed forces from

moving any closer to the border of South Africa, which was already being

protected from the threat of foreign invasion on numerous fronts.

As it is with most extensive military campaigns, the South African Border War and

the Angolan conflict were financially draining. The exuberant cost of war added

strain to an economy that was already buckling under the weight of Apartheid and

policies that continued to destabilize the country. The minority white population

that had historically held most of the wealth in the country and who had been the

bulk of the Apartheid government’s support base, had shrunk dramatically during

the 1980’s as foreign invest in South Africa’s economy began to decrease.

To make matters worse for the regime, the decision to desegregate many “blue

collar” level jobs to help balance the lack of foreign investment in the country,

strengthened the effectiveness of black work unions and gave power to minority

groups in a way that was unheard of only a decade earlier. The regime continued to

label these sorts of actions as insurrections and although the police force continued

its pattern of cruel and unusual punishment, the oppressed population began to

fight back with less fear of the government’s response. The Apartheid regime truly

was hanging on by a thread.

Bulletin Six (Slide 15)

The “New South Africa” and Old Institutionalized Struggles

In 1989, F.W. de Klerk (Frederick Willem) became the National Party’s final

president of South Africa and with his election, came much needed change to the

government’s oppressive tactics. Once an avid supporter of the policies introduced

by the regime, de Klerk realized that drastic political changes needed to be made if

South Africa was to be spared a civil war. With the decades long conflict on the

border and against communist forces in Angola, the government could not afford

to fight a war among the local population who opposed the Apartheid regime. De

Klerk moved fast to reform many of the laws and regulations that kept the country

under a tight grip, including an act of solidarity that surprised most of the world,

the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.

After his release, Mandela began advocating for the equal rights of all South

Africans at a rate that was almost impossible when he was first imprisoned decades

earlier. De Klerk realized that the only way his government would gain

international support at this point, was to hold the nation’s first free election. The

inclusion of voting rights for all South Africans regardless of race, would

ultimately end the Apartheid and effectively usher in a new era of politics that was

built of democracy and freedom.

In April of 1994 the results of the country’s first democratic election came in and

as most people expected, both domestically and abroad, the ANC won the election

by a significant margin, making Nelson Mandela the first black president of South

Africa. What did seem surprising at the time however, was that the NP won the

second largest amount of the votes, at over 20 percent. The ANC also failed to win

the two-thirds majority needed to create a new constitution but it did allow for

them to work with other parties in reshaping the existing law of the land. Part of

the reason for this election result was that many native groups, referred to as Tribes

in most of Southern Africa, failed to agree on many of the policies that pro African

platforms pushed for. Many South Africans, including non white voters, cast their

ballots for the old Apartheid party to remain in office, believing that new reforms

and political alliances with pro African parties could help experienced politicians
guide the nation into a democratic transfer in a more “economically friendly”

manner. Elaborate on the meaning of this for the students.

Slide 16 (Same Bulletin)

The election results were also kind to the last Apartheid president de Klerk, who

remained the leader of the National Party and became the deputy president under

Nelson Mandela. For their part in helping end the Apartheid regime, both Nelson

Mandela and F.W. de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace prize – the most

prestigious of five awards given once a year in recognition of exceptional

intellectual achievement.

Although the ANC won the election and the Apartheid had officially ended, the

democratic transfer of power had many bumps along the way. Among the major

demands that emerged within the general public following the 1994 election, were

immediate economic progress, the balance of wealth among the native population

and retribution against those responsible for crimes against humanity during the

Apartheid years.

Much of the native population unfortunately, were uneducated in the process of

politics and in how to successfully run an economy, as it was illegal for so many

years for non white people to participate in these areas of professional life. Many

South Africans became frustrated with the new government after they failed to

immediately distribute the wealth evenly among the population and disheartened
when the economy began to struggle under the leadership of the ANC.

Furthermore, those who were victimized by the Apartheid regime became

increasingly angry when their assailants, working under the command of the

regime, were dealt with far more leniently than expected following the Truth and

Reconciliation Committee hearings – a series of legal proceedings designed to

bring agents of the Apartheid regime to justice for their crimes.

By the end of a decade that had seen a nation go from being run by an oppressive

and segregated regime, to a free and democratically run republic, South Africa

began to sink into an economically depressed and violent state. The late 1990’s in

the country were marked by crime waves, political corruption and economic

turmoil that threatened to tip the balance of peace back in favor of turmoil and

despair.

Open Up the Class to a Discussion Regarding the Current State of the Nation