essay of apartheid in south africa

Apartheid in South Africa Essay

Introduction.

South Africa is one of the countries with rich and fascinating history in the world. It is regarded as the most developed state in Africa and among the last to have an elected black president towards the end of the 20 th century. Besides its rich history, the South African state has abundant natural resources, fertile farms and a wide range of minerals including gold.

The country is the world’s leading miner of diamonds and gold with several metal ores distributed around the country like platinum (Rosmarin & Rissik, 2004). South Africa experiences a mild climate that resembles that of San Francisco bay.

With its geographical location and development, South Africa is one of the most accessible African countries. All these factors contribute to South Africa’s global prominence, especially before and after the reign of its first black President, Nelson Mandela in 1994.

However, these alone do not add up to what the country’s history. In fact, South Africa’s history sounds incomplete without the mention of Apartheid, a system that significantly shaped and transformed the country in what it is today.

Without apartheid, many argue that South Africa would have probably been a different country with unique ideologies, politics and overall identity. In other words, apartheid greatly affected South Africa in all spheres of a country’s operation. From segregation to all forms of unfairness, apartheid system negatively affected South Africans and the entire country (Pfister, 2005).

On the other hand, some people argue that apartheid positively affected South Africa in countless ways. This essay gives a detailed coverage of the issue of apartheid in South Africa and its impact to the economy, politics and social life of South Africans.

To achieve this task, the analysis is divided into useful sections, which give concise and authentic information concerning the topic. Up to date sources were consulted in researching the topic to ensure that data and information used in describing the concept is up to date, from reputable and recommended authors.

Among important segments of the essay include but not limited to the literature review, history, background information and recommendations.

Research questions

In addressing the issue of Apartheid in South Africa, this essay intends to provide answers to the following questions:

• What was apartheid system?
• What are the factors that led to the apartheid system?
• What were the negative effects of the apartheid system?
• What were the positive effects of the apartheid system?
• Why was it necessary to end apartheid in South Africa?

Literature Review

Apartheid in South Africa is one of the topics which have received massive literature coverage even after the end of the regime. Most of the documented information describes life before 1994 and what transpired after Nelson Mandela took leadership as the first black African President of the state.

This segment, therefore, explores the concept concerning what authors, scholars and researchers have recorded in books, journals and on websites as expounded in the following analytical sections.

Apartheid in South Africa

Apartheid refers to a South African system that propagated racial discrimination imposed between 1948 and 1994 by National Party regimes. During this period of decades, the rights of the majority “blacks” were undermined as white minority settlers maintained their supremacy and rule through suppressive tactics.

Apartheid was primarily developed after the Second World War by the Broederbond and Afrikaner organizations and was extended to other parts of South West Africa, currently known as Namibia until it became an independent state four years before the end of apartheid.

According to Allen 2005, discrimination of black people in South Africa began long before apartheid was born during the colonial era. In his survey, Allen noted that apartheid was ratified after the general election which was held in 1948.

The new legislation that the governments adopted classified all South African inhabitants into four groups based on their racial identity (Allen, 2005). These groups were Asians, whites, natives and colored. This led to all manners of segregation that ensured complete distinction among these groups, achieved through forced displacement of the oppressed groups without necessarily thinking about their rights.

The practice continued throughout the period, reaching heightened moments when non-whites were deprived of political representation in 1970, the year when blacks were denied citizenship right causing them to become members of Bantustans who belonged to self-governing homes (Allen, 2005).

Besides residential removal and displacement, other forms of discrimination dominated in public institutions like education centers, hospitals and beaches among other places which were legally meant for everybody regardless of their skin color, gender or country of origin.

In rare cases where black accessed these services, they were provided with inferior options as compared to what whites received (Allen, 2005). As a result, there was significant violence witnessed across the country, accompanied by internal resistance from people who believed that they were being exploited and languishing in poverty at the expense of white minorities.

Consequently, the country suffered trade embargoes as other countries around the world distanced themselves from South African rule as a way of condemning it and raising their voices in support for those who were considered less human in their own country.

Overwhelmed by the desire for equality, South Africa witnessed countless uprisings and revolts, which were welcomed with imprisoning of political and human rights activists who were strongly opposed to the apartheid rule.

Banning of opposition politics was also adopted in order to suppress leaders who believed in justice for humanity (Edwards & Hecht, 2010). As violence escalated around the country, several state organizations responded by sponsoring violence and increasing the intensity of oppression.

The peak of apartheid opposition was in 1980s when attempts to amend apartheid legislation failed to calm black people forcing President Frederik Willem de Klerk to enter into negotiations with black leaders to end apartheid in 1990.

The culmination of the negotiations was in 1994 when a multi-racial and democratic election was held with Nelson Mandela of African National Congress emerging the winner and the first black president in South Africa (Edwards & Hecht, 2010). Although apartheid ended more than a decade ago, it is important to note its impact and ruins are still evident in South Africa.

Background Information

Segregation took shape in the Union of South Africa in order to suppress the black people’s participation in politics and economic life. White rulers believed that the only way of maintaining their rule was to ensure that black people do not have opportunities to organize themselves into groups that would augment their ability to systematize themselves and fight back for their rights.

However, despite these efforts, black people in South Africa became integrated into the economic and industrial society than any other group of people in Africa during the 20 th century (Edwards & Hecht, 2010).

Clerics, educations and other professionals grew up to be key players as the influence of blacks sprouted with Mission Christianity significantly influencing the political landscape of the union. Studying in abroad also played a major role as blacks gained the momentum to fight for their rights as the move received support from other parts of the world (Burger, 2011).

There were continuous attempts from the government to control and manipulate black people through skewed policies, which were aimed at benefiting whites at the expense of the majority. The year 1902 saw the formation of the first political organization by Dr Abdurrahman which was mainly based in Cape Province.

However, the formation of the African National Congress in 1912 was a milestone as it brought together traditional authorities, educationists and Christian leaders (Burger, 2011). Its initial concern was defined by constitutional protests as its leaders demanded recognition and representation of the blacks.

Efforts by union workers to form organizations for the purpose of voicing their concerns were short-lived as their efforts were short down by white authorities. This led to strikes and militancy, which was experienced throughout 1920s. The formation of the Communist Party proved to be a force to last as it united workers’ organizations and non-racialism individuals (Beinart & Dubow, 1995).

Segregation of blacks was also witnessed in job regulations as skilled job opportunities remained reserved for white people. The introduction of pass-laws further aimed at restricting African mobility thus limiting their chances of getting organized.

These laws were also designed to have all blacks participate in forced labor as they did not have a clear channel to air their views. According to historic findings, all these efforts were inclined towards laying the foundation for apartheid in later years.

Noteworthy, there were divisions among whites as they differed with regard to certain ideologies and stances. For instance, they could not agree on their involvement in First World War I as the National Party dislodged from the South African Party (Beinart & Dubow, 1995). Conversely, allocation of skilled jobs to whites targeted high productivity from people who had experience while pass-laws prevented aimless movement.

Labor issues continued to emerge through organized strikes though these efforts were constantly thwarted by the government using brutal and inhumane ways like seclusion of migrant residential houses using compounds.

Miners also protested against low payment and poor living standards, conditions which promoted hostility between black and white labor forces, culminating into a bloody rebellion in 1922 (Beinart & Dubow, 1995).

Intensified discrimination against blacks mounted to serve the interests of white rulers through reinforcement of the unfair government policies and employment bar in certain areas like the railway and postal service to address the infamous “poor-white problem”.

The world depression of early 1930s led to the union of major white parties which was closely followed by the breakaway by a new Afrikaner led by Dr. DF Malan. The entrenchment of the white domination led to the elimination of Africans from the voters’ role in 1936 (Burger, 2011).

These continued up to the end of the Second World War when the government intensified segregation rules in 1948 that led to the conception and birth of Apartheid in South Africa.

Desmond Tutu against Apartheid

As mentioned above, Mission Christianity played a major role in the fight against apartheid and restoration of justice in South Africa. This saw several leaders rise to the limelight as they emerged to be the voice of the voiceless in the South African State.

One of these Christian leaders was Archbishop Desmond Tutu who has remained in the history of South Africa, featuring prominently in the reign of apartheid (BBC, 2010). He is well known worldwide for his anti-apartheid role and for boldly speaking for the blacks.

He served a very important role, especially during the entire time when Nelson Mandela was serving his prison term making him nominated for the highly coveted and prestigious Nobel Peace Prize award in 1984 for his relentless anti-apartheid efforts.

This was a real implication that the world had not only observed Tutu’s efforts but also raised its voice against the discriminatory rule in South Africa.

After Nelson Mandela was elected democratically in 1984, he appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to steer the South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was mandated to investigate all forms of crimes committed by blacks and whites during the whole period of apartheid.

Although Tutu was a teacher by training, he dropped the career after the adoption of the Bantu Education Act in 1953 (BBC, 2010). The act was meant to extend apartheid to black schools around the country, causing several schools to close down due to lack of finances after the government discontinued subsidized programs for those that did not comply.

To confirm and affirm that apartheid was not the best regime option in South Africa, Desmond Tutu was highly influenced by white clergymen like Bishop Trevor Huddleston, who strongly opposed the idea of racial discrimination that was being propagated by the white government (BBC, 2010).

Although he was closely involved in active politics, he remained focused on religious motivation, arguing that racialism was not the will of God, and that it was not to live forever. His appointment as the head of the Anglican church in 1986 did not deter him from fighting apartheid as he risked being jailed after he called the public to boycott municipal elections that were held in 1988.

He welcomed President FW De Klerk’s reforms in 1989, which included the release of the one who was later to become the first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela and the reinstatement of the African National Congress (BBC, 2010).

Nelson Mandela against Apartheid

Nelson Mandela is regarded as a key player in the fight against apartheid in South Africa as he led black people together with other activists to publicly denounce and condemn the discriminatory regimes of the time. As a way of demonstrating his dissatisfaction and criticism of apartheid, Mandela publicly burnt his “pass”.

All blacks were required to carry their passes as the government prohibited the movement of people to other districts (Atlas College, 2011). While working with ANC, Mandela’s involvement in anti-apartheid efforts was increased as he realized the need to have active resistance in dealing with apartheid.

He was severally charged with treason and acquitted although in 1964, Mandela was life imprisoned a move that was considered to be ill-motivated to maintain the white rule supremacy. He continued his fight while in prison as his message penetrated every village and district in the country.

Although he acted together with like-minded people, Nelson Mandela’s name stands high as the leader of the anti-apartheid campaign which culminated in his election as the first black president of South Africa in 1994 (Atlas College, 2011).

Opposing opinion

Although apartheid was highly condemned and still receives high-charged criticism, some people view it from a different perspective. Did apartheid have any benefit to the people of South Africa and to the nation at large?

Apart from propagating injustices across the country, apartheid is one of the economic drivers of South Africa with some of the policies and strategies used during that time still under active implementation by the government.

For instance, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was orchestrated by ANC and served as the core platform during the elections that were held in 1994 (Lundahl & Petersson, 2009). The programme focused on improvement of infrastructure, improvement of housing facilities, free schooling, sharing of land to the landless, clean water and affordable health facilities among others.

This led to the improvement of social amenities in the country. RDP also continued financing the budget revenue. It therefore suffices to mention that those who support apartheid base their argument on the status of the country after 1994 when subsequent governments chose to adopt some strategies from apartheid to drive the reconstruction agenda (Lundahl & Petersson, 2009).

As one of the leading economies in Africa, some of the institutions, factories and companies which were established during apartheid significantly contribute to development in the country. Even though new plans have been adopted, majority have their foundations rocked on apartheid.

As a result of these development initiatives, a lot has changed in South Africa. There has been substantive economic growth augmented by several factors which relate to apartheid (Lundahl & Petersson, 2009). Improved living standards among South Africans cannot also be ignored in any discussion of apartheid.

Many jobs have been created for the skilled people who never found an opportunity to work when the regime was at its operational peak. South Africa also prides on some of the most prestigious learning institutions in the region which are highly ranked on the world list. It therefore suffices to mention that apartheid had several advantages which cannot be overshadowed by its disadvantages.

Against Apartheid

Despite the advantages of apartheid discussed above, there is no doubt that the system negatively impacted South Africans in a myriad of ways. From undermining of human rights to promotion of hostility and violence among residents, there is enough evidence to condemn the regime. It affected several social structures people were not allowed to freely intermarry and interact.

This was coupled with limited expression rights as they were believed not to have rights. Movement was highly restricted as black people were to walk with passes and restricted to move within one district. Additionally, forceful evacuation was a norm as black people never owned land and houses permanently (Burger, 2011). What about employment?

Many skilled jobs were strictly reserved for whites as black people survived on manual duties with little or no pay. This contributed to low living standards and inability to meet their needs, manifested through labor strikes which were continuously witnessed in several organizations.

Consequently, violence escalated with police brutality hitting high levels and several people losing their lives as others spent the rest of their lives in jail. It was a system that needed more condemnation than just protesting in order to allow justice to prevail (Pfister, 2005).

Apartheid in South Africa is one of the most outstanding in the history of the country with millions of people with painful and remarkable memories.

With its culmination in 1994 democratic elections which saw Nelson Mandela rise to power, the regime had severe negative effects, which necessitated the need to end it and pave the way for a fair nation that respects humanity regardless of skin color, ethnicity, country of origin and gender (Pfister, 2005).

Based on the above analysis, it is important for a number of lessons to be learnt from it. World leaders need to establish and implement leadership mechanisms that would prevent recurrence of apartheid in South Africa or in other parts of the world.

To the millions who suffered under rule, reconciliation efforts are essential in allowing them to accept themselves and move on with life as they mingle with thousands of white settlers who continue owning parcels of land in the country. It should however to be forgotten that apartheid was important in transforming South Africa into what it is today. From factories and infrastructure to a stable economy, it had lifetime merits that ought to be acknowledged throughout in history.

Allen, J. (2005). Apartheid South Africa: An Insider’s Overview of the Origin and Effects of Separate Development . Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse.

Atlas College. (2011). Nelson Mandela and Apartheid. Atlas College . Web.

BBC. (2010). Profile: Archbishop Desmond Tutu . BBC News . Web.

Beinart, W., & Dubow, S. (1995). Segregation and apartheid in twentieth-century South Africa . London: Routledge.

Burger, D. (2011). History. South African Government Information . Web.

Edwards, P., & Hecht, G. (2010). History and the Techno politics of Identity: The Case of Apartheid South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 36 (3), p. 619-639.

Lundahl, M., & Petersson, L. (2009). Post-Apartheid South Africa; an Economic Success Story? United Nations University . Web.

Pfister, R. (2005). Apartheid South Africa and African states: from pariah to middle power, 1961-1994 . London: I.B.Tauris.

Rosmarin, I., & Rissik, D. (2004). South Africa. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish.

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Apartheid South Africa 1940s to 1960s Essay for Grade 11

On this page, we guide grade 11 student on how to write “Apartheid South Africa 1940s to 1960s Essay”.

Apartheid in South Africa was a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination that existed from the late 1940s until the early 1990s. This period in South African history is marked by the enforcement of legal policies and practices aimed at separating the races and maintaining white dominance in all aspects of life. The years between the 1940s and the 1960s were critical in laying the foundations and entrenching the policies that would define this era. This essay will explore the implementation of apartheid laws , resistance movements , and international reactions to apartheid from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Implementation of Apartheid Laws

The formal introduction of apartheid can be traced back to the National Party’s victory in the 1948 elections . The party, which represented the Afrikaner nationalist interest, institutionalised apartheid as a means of securing white dominance. Key legislation enacted during this period included:

• The Population Registration Act (1950): This act classified all South Africans into racial groups – ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘coloured’, and ‘Indian’. This classification was a prerequisite for the implementation of other apartheid laws.
• The Group Areas Act (1950): This law geographically segregated South Africans by race , determining where different racial groups could live, work, and own property.
• The Suppression of Communism Act (1950): Though ostensibly aimed at combating communism , this act was frequently used to silence critics of apartheid, including non-communists.

Resistance Movements

Resistance against apartheid came from various quarters, including political parties, trade unions, and individual activists. The most prominent of these movements included:

• The African National Congress (ANC): Initially adopting a policy of peaceful protest, the ANC organised strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience campaigns. Following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the ANC shifted to a strategy of armed struggle .
• The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC): A breakaway from the ANC, the PAC also played a significant role in organising protests against apartheid, notably the anti-Pass Laws protest that led to the Sharpeville Massacre.
• Sharpeville Massacre (1960): A turning point in the resistance against apartheid, where a peaceful protest against pass laws in Sharpeville turned deadly, with police opening fire on demonstrators, resulting in 69 deaths.

International Reactions to Apartheid

The international community’s response to apartheid was initially muted, but as the realities of apartheid became more widely known, international condemnation grew. Significant aspects of the international reaction included:

• United Nations Condemnation: The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 1962 calling for sanctions against South Africa, urging member states to cease military and economic relations with the apartheid regime.
• Isolation in Sports: South Africa was banned from the Olympic Games and other international sporting events, highlighting the growing international isolation of the apartheid government.

Student Guide

When writing an essay on Apartheid in South Africa from the 1940s to the 1960s, focusing on clarity, depth, and evidence-based arguments is crucial. Here are some useful tips to enhance your essay writing:

• Start with a Strong Thesis Statement:
• Clearly state your essay’s main argument or analysis point at the end of your introduction. This sets the direction and tone of your essay. For example, “This essay argues that the apartheid laws enacted between the 1940s and 1960s not only institutionalised racial segregation but also laid the foundation for the resistance movements that eventually led to apartheid’s downfall.”
• Organise Your Essay Logically:
• Use subheadings to divide your essay into manageable sections, such as the implementation of apartheid laws, resistance movements, and international reactions. This helps readers follow your argument more easily.
• Use Evidence to Support Your Points:
• Incorporate specific examples and quotes from primary and secondary sources to back up your statements. For instance, reference the Population Registration Act when discussing racial classification or cite international condemnation from United Nations resolutions.
• Analyse, Don’t Just Describe:
• Go beyond simply describing events by analysing their impact and significance . For example, when discussing the Sharpeville Massacre, explore its effect on both the apartheid government’s policies and the tactics of resistance movements.
• Acknowledge Different Perspectives:
• While focusing on the factual history of apartheid, also acknowledge the various perspectives on apartheid policies and resistance efforts, including those of the government, opposition movements, and international bodies.
• Conclude Effectively:
• Summarise the main points of your essay and reiterate your thesis in the context of the information discussed. Offer a concluding thought that encourages further reflection, such as the legacy of apartheid in contemporary South Africa.
• Reference Accurately:
• Ensure all sources are accurately cited in your essay to avoid plagiarism and to lend credibility to your arguments. Follow the specific referencing style required by your teacher or educational institution.
• Proofread and Revise:
• Check your essay for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Also, ensure that your argument flows logically and that each section supports your thesis statement.
• Seek Feedback:
• Before final submission, consider getting feedback from teachers, peers, or tutors. Fresh eyes can offer valuable insights and identify areas for improvement.

By incorporating these tips, you can create a well-argued, informative, and engaging essay on Apartheid in South Africa that meets the expectations of a Grade 11 history assignment.

The period from the 1940s to the 1960s was pivotal in the establishment and consolidation of the apartheid system in South Africa. Through the enactment of draconian laws, the apartheid government institutionalised racial discrimination, which led to widespread resistance within the country and condemnation from the international community. This era laid the groundwork for the struggles and transformations that would eventually lead to the end of apartheid.

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Former South African president and civil rights advocate Nelson Mandela dedicated his life to fighting for equality—and ultimately helped topple South Africa's racist system of apartheid. His accomplishments are now celebrated each year on July 18, Nelson Mandela International Day.

• HISTORY & CULTURE

How Nelson Mandela fought apartheid—and why his work is not complete

This activist dedicated his life to dismantling racism—and went from being the world’s most famous political prisoner to South Africa’s first Black president.

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in what was then known as the Union of South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire. Though the majority of its inhabitants were Black, they were dominated by a white minority that controlled the land, the wealth, and the government—a discriminatory social structure that would later be codified in the country’s legal system and called apartheid.

Over the next 95 years, Mandela would help topple South Africa’s brutal social order. During a lifetime of resistance, imprisonment, and leadership, Nelson Mandela led South Africa out of apartheid and into an era of reconciliation and majority rule.  

( Read with your kids about Nelson Mandela’s life. )

Mandela began his life under another name: Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela. His father was a chief of the Thembu people, a subgroup of the Xhosa people, who make up South Africa’s second-largest cultural group. After defying a British magistrate, Mandela’s father had been stripped of his chieftainship, title, and land. On his first day in a segregated elementary school, Rolihlahla, too, was stripped of his identity when his schoolteacher gave every child an English name—a common practice in a society in which whites “were either unable or unwilling to pronounce an African name, and considered it uncivilized to have one,” he   wrote in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom .

While Mandela’s skin relegated him to the lowest social order in segregated South Africa, his royal blood—and connections—gave him access to the country’s only university for Black people, the University of Fort Hare. There, he became an activist, and was expelled for protesting the student government’s lack of power. He returned home to his small village on the eastern Cape only to find that his family wanted him to enter an arranged marriage to punish him for leaving school. So he fled north to Soweto, South Africa’s largest Black city, in 1941.

Apartheid and activism

In Soweto, Mandela became a part-time law student at Wits University and began to practice law, starting the nation’s first Black law firm. He joined the   African National Congress , a group that agitated for the civil rights of Black South Africans. In 1948, the segregation that was already rampant in South Africa became state law when its ruling party formally adopted apartheid , or apartness. This policy required Black South Africans to carry identification with them at all times, which they needed to enter areas designated for whites. They were forced to live in all-Black zones and forbidden from entering into interracial relationships. Black people were even removed from the voter rolls and eventually fully disenfranchised.

YEAR-LONG ADVENTURE for every explorer on your list

At first, Mandela and his fellow members of the ANC used nonviolent tactics like strikes and demonstrations to protest apartheid. In 1952, Mandela helped escalate the struggle as a leader of the Defiance Campaign, which encouraged Black participants to actively violate laws. More than 8,000 people —including Mandela—were jailed for violating curfews, refusing to carry identification passes, and other offenses.  

( See pictures from the life and times of Mandela. )

Protesters gather in front of a courthouse in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the 1956 treason trial of anti-apartheid activists, among them Nelson Mandela. The defendants were found not guilty, but some—including Mandela—were later convicted on a separate charge in 1964.

The Defiance Campaign catapulted the ANC’s agenda, and Mandela, into the public eye as they continued to agitate for Black rights. After serving his sentence, Mandela continued to lead protests against the government and, in 1956, he, along with 155 others, was tried for treason . He was acquitted in 1961 and lived in hiding for 17 months after the trial.

Over time, Mandela came to believe that armed resistance was the only way to end apartheid. In 1962, he briefly left the country to receive military training and gain support for the cause but was arrested and convicted soon after his return for leaving the country without a permit. Then, while he was in prison, police discovered documents related to Mandela’s plan for guerrilla warfare. They charged him and his allies with sabotage.

Mandela and the other defendants in the ensuing   Rivonia Trial knew they were sure to be convicted and executed. So they turned their show trial into a statement, publicizing their anti-apartheid struggle and challenging the legal system that oppressed Black South Africans. When it was Mandela’s turn to speak for the defense, he delivered a   four-hour-long speech .

“The lack of human dignity experienced by Africans is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy,” he said. “Our struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by our own suffering and our own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live.” Mandela was committed to the ideal of a free society, he said, and “if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

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Prison years.

Mandela wasn’t put to death—but, in 1964, he was sentenced to life in prison. He was   allowed only one 30-minute visit with a single person every year, and could send and receive two letters a year. Confined in austere conditions, he worked in a limestone quarry and over time, earned the   respect of his captors and fellow prisoners. He was given chances to leave prison in exchange for ensuring the ANC would give up violence but refused.

Over his 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela became the world’s best-known political prisoner. His words were banned in South Africa, but he was already the country’s most famous man. His supporters agitated for his release and news of his imprisonment galvanized anti-apartheid activists all over the world.

In the 1960s, some members of the United Nations began to call for sanctions against South Africa—calls that grew louder in the decades that followed. Eventually, South Africa became an international pariah. In 1990, in response to international pressure and the threat of civil war, South Africa’s new president, F.W. de Klerk, pledged to end apartheid and released Mandela from prison.

Nelson Mandela and wife, Winnie, raise their fists upon his release from Victor Verster prison in South Africa. Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for his fight against apartheid. Upon his release, he negotiated an end to the racist policy and was elected president of South Africa.

Apartheid did not immediately end with Mandela’s release. Now 71, Mandela negotiated with de Klerk for a new constitution that would allow majority rule. Apartheid was repealed in 1991, and in 1994, the ANC, now a political party, won more than 62 percent of the popular vote in a peaceful, democratic election. Mandela—who now shares   a Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk—became the president of a new nation, South Africa.  

( Here's how South Africa has changed since the end of apartheid. )

Post-apartheid leadership

Mandela served as president for five years. Among his accomplishments was South Africa’s   Truth and Reconciliation Commission , designed to document human rights violations and help victims and violators come to term with their past. Though its results are contested, the commission offered the beginnings of restorative justice—a process that focuses on repair rather than retribution— to a nation still smarting from centuries of scars.

Mandela’s legacy wasn’t unassailable: He was considered by some analysts a largely ineffective president and was criticized for his handling of violence and the economy while in office.

After leaving office in 1999, Mandela spent the remainder of his life working to end poverty and raise awareness of HIV/AIDS. He died in 2013 at age 95.

Every year on July 18, he is   remembered on Nelson Mandela International Day, a United Nations holiday that commemorates his service and sacrifice. It’s a reminder that Mandela’s work is not yet done—an opinion shared by Mandela himself.  

( Even in the U.S., Mandela is a symbol of hope. )

“To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others,” he   wrote in his autobiography. “The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.”

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South Africa's successful struggle for freedom and democracy is one of the most dramatic stories of our time. The racial tyranny of apartheid ended with a negotiated transition to a non-racial democracy, but not without considerable personal cost to thousands of men, women, and young people who were involved.

South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy presents first-hand accounts of this important political movement. Interviews with South African activists, raw video footage documenting mass resistance and police repression, historical documents, rare photographs, and original narratives tell this remarkable story.

Watch three-minute preview video. Explore South Africa's history through unique Interviews , chronological Units , in-depth Essays , or collections of Media on key events in the struggle against apartheid. Curricular materials are in the For Educators section.

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The Harsh Reality of Life Under Apartheid in South Africa

By: Erin Blakemore

Updated: August 1, 2023 | Original: April 26, 2019

From 1948 through the 1990s, a single word dominated life in South Africa. Apartheid —Afrikaans for “apartness”—kept the country’s majority Black population under the thumb of a small white minority. It would take decades of struggle to stop the policy, which affected every facet of life in a country locked in centuries-old patterns of discrimination and racism.

What Was Apartheid?

The segregation began in 1948 after the National Party came to power. The nationalist political party instituted policies of white supremacy, which empowered white South Africans who descended from both Dutch and British settlers in South Africa while further disenfranchising Black Africans.

The system was rooted in the country’s history of colonization and slavery. White settlers had historically viewed Black South Africans as a natural resource to be used to turn the country from a rural society to an industrialized one. Starting in the 17th century, Dutch settlers relied on slaves to build up South Africa. Around the time that slavery was abolished in the country in 1863, gold and diamonds were discovered in South Africa. 

That discovery represented a lucrative opportunity for white-owned mining companies that employed—and exploited—Black workers. Those companies all but enslaved Black miners while enjoying massive wealth from the diamonds and gold they mined. Like Dutch slaveholders, they relied on intimidation and discrimination to rule over their Black workers.

Apartheid Laws and Segregation

The mining companies borrowed a tactic that earlier slaveholders and British settlers had used to control Black workers: pass laws . As early as the 18th century, these laws had required members of the Black majority, and other people of color, to carry identification papers at all times and restricted their movement in certain areas. They were also used to control Black settlement, forcing Black people to reside in places where their labor would benefit white settlers.

Those laws persisted through the 20th century as South Africa became a self-governing dominion of the United Kingdom. Between 1899 and 1902, Britain and the Dutch-descended Afrikaners fought one another in the Boer War, a conflict that the Afrikaners eventually lost. Anti-British sentiment continued to foment among white South Africans, and Afrikaner nationalists developed an identity rooted in white supremacy. When they took control in 1948, they made the country’s already discriminatory laws even more draconian.

Racist fears and attitudes about “natives” colored white society. Though apartheid was supposedly designed to allow different races to develop on their own, it forced Black South Africans into poverty and hopelessness. “Grand” apartheid laws focused on keeping Black people in their own designated “homelands.” And “petty” apartheid laws focused on daily life and restricted almost every facet of Black life in South Africa. 

Pass laws and apartheid policies prohibited Black people from entering urban areas without immediately finding a job. It was illegal for a Black person not to carry a passbook. Black people could not marry white people. They could not set up businesses in white areas. Everywhere from hospitals to beaches was segregated. Education was restricted. And throughout the 1950s, the NP passed law after law regulating the movement and lives of Black people. 

Though they were disempowered, Black South Africans protested their treatment within apartheid. In the 1950s, the African National Congress, the country’s oldest Black political party, initiated a mass mobilization against the racist laws, called the Defiance Campaign . Black workers boycotted white businesses, went on strike, and staged non-violent protests.

These acts of defiance were met with police and state brutality. Protesters were beaten and tried en masse in unfair legal proceedings. But though the campaigns took a toll on Black protesters, they didn’t generate enough international pressure on the South African government to inspire reforms.

Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela and the Black Consciousness Movement

In 1960, South African police killed 69 peaceful protesters in Sharpeville, sparking nationwide dissent and a wave of strikes. A subgroup of protesters who were tired of what they saw as ineffective nonviolent protests began to embrace armed resistance instead. Among them was Nelson Mandela , who helped organize a paramilitary subgroup of the ANC in 1960. He was arrested for treason in 1961 and was sentenced to life in prison for charges of sabotage in 1964.

In response to the 1960 protests, the government declared a state of emergency. This tactic cleared the way for even more apartheid laws to be put in place. Despite the state of emergency, Black groups continued to organize and protest. But a crackdown on many movement leaders forced them into exile abroad.

Anti-apartheid protests continued as life for Black South Africans became more and more dire under apartheid. On June 16, 1976, up to 10,000 Black schoolchildren, inspired by new tenets of Black consciousness, marched to protest a new law that forced them to learn Afrikaans in schools. Steve Biko , anti-apartheid activist and co-founder of the South African Students' Organization, spearheaded the movement and was arrested multiple times for his activism before dying from injuries sustained while in police custody on September 12, 1977.

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Read excerpts from letters, speeches and memoirs reflecting on each stage of his life—from the innocence of a tribal village boy to the triumphs and pressures of being South Africa's first black president.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela’s Childhood and Education Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, into a royal family of the Xhosa‑speaking Thembu tribe in the South African village of Mvezo, where his father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (c. 1880‑1928), served as chief. His mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of Mphakanyiswa’s four wives, who together bore him […]

When Did Apartheid End?

During the 1980s, resistance became even more fierce. Peaceful and violent protests finally began to spark international attention. Nelson Mandela , the movement’s most powerful and well-known representative, had been imprisoned since 1964. But he inspired his followers to continue resisting and conducted secret negotiations to end apartheid.

By the end of the 1980s, discontentment was growing among white South Africans about what they saw as South Africa’s diminished international standing. By then, the country faced sanctions and economic ramifications as international businesses, celebrities, and other governments pressured the government to end discrimination. As the economy faltered, the government was locked in a stalemate with anti-apartheid activists.

But when South African president P.W. Botha resigned in 1989, the stalemate finally broke. Botha’s successor, F.W. de Klerk, decided it was time to negotiate to end apartheid in earnest. 

In February 1990, de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and other opposition groups and released Mandela, whose secret negotiations had thus far failed, from prison. Despite continued political violence, Mandela, de Klerk and their allies began intensive negotiations. 

In 1994, the NP was finally defeated and Mandela became president of South Africa. A constitutional assembly was convened and South Africa adopted a new constitution that allowed for a South Africa that was not ruled by racial discrimination. It took effect in 1997.

By then, South Africa had dismantled apartheid for good. Mandela and de Klerk won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their cooperation, and a truth and reconciliation commission began investigating human rights abuses and memorializing those abuses. The transition was not entirely non-violent. But by its end, South Africa had forged a new reality: one that owed its existence to the continued resistance of an oppressed racial majority.

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Article contents

Women and apartheid.

• Meghan Healy-Clancy Meghan Healy-Clancy Department of History, Bridgewater State University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.184
• Published online: 28 June 2017

Apartheid, the system of racial and ethnic separation introduced in South Africa in 1948, was a gendered project. The immediate goal of the white Afrikaner men who led the apartheid state was to control black men: to turn black men from perceived political and criminal threats into compliant workers. Under apartheid, African men would travel to work for whites in towns and on mines, but their homes would be in rural ethnic “reserves,” known as “homelands” or “Bantustans.” This vision depended on the labors of African women: while their men migrated to work, women were to maintain their families in the increasingly overcrowded and desolate countryside, reproducing the workforce cheaply while instilling a sense of ethnic difference in their children. “Coloured” (mixed-race) and Indian women were similarly charged with social reproduction on a shoestring, in segregated rural and urban areas. White women uniquely had the franchise and freedom of movement, but they were also constrained by sexually repressive laws.

Apartheid’s gendered vision of production and social reproduction faced continual resistance, and it ultimately failed. First, it failed because African women increasingly moved from rural areas to urban centers, despite laws limiting their mobility. Second, it failed because some women organized across ethnic and racial lines. They often organized as mothers, demanding a better world for a new generation. Both their nationally and internationally resonant campaigns—against pass laws, educational and health care inequities, police brutality, and military conscription—and the fact of their collective organization gradually undermined apartheid. Officials generally underestimated the power of women, and their contributions have continued to be under-appreciated since apartheid ended in 1994, because women’s political style emphasized personal and familial concerns. But because apartheid was premised on transforming how families lived, actions of women in fact undermined the system from its core.

• South Africa

State interventions into the formation and lives of families were central to apartheid: the legal regime of racial and ethnic division that ruled South Africa between the election of Daniel Malan in 1948 and the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 , with legacies enduring through the present. From the regime’s inception under the leadership of Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) minister Malan, ideas of racial purity, sexual restraint, and patriarchy were intertwined. Apartheid’s immediate goal was to control black men—turning them from political threats into compliant workers, to ensure South Africa’s development into an industrialized state in which whites would enjoy growing wealth and political hegemony. But apartheid could only work by also controlling women. Apartheid leaders were concerned with black women (a category that includes women classified as African, Indian, or “Coloured”), as well as with white women (both Afrikaners like apartheid leaders, and women from British and other European backgrounds). Officials saw women as central to creating properly ethnicized and racialized subjects, who would fill their prescribed niches in an economy and polity controlled by white men.

Black women undermined the visions of apartheid from its onset. First, many black women refused to be held in place. African women were supposed to remain confined to rural ethnic “reserves” (known as “homelands” or “Bantustans”), cheaply raising compliant workers and ethnic subjects there while their husbands labored for low wages for whites in towns and on the mines. But from apartheid’s start, women increasingly went to town. African women who stayed on the reserves did not all submit quietly to apartheid’s demands, either. Rural women’s organized resistance—in both political organizations and religious groups—was formidable, attracting both state oppression and gradual reforms. As key urban women activists were forced to the countryside in line with apartheid’s strategies of banning activists, the liveliness of rural resistance only grew.

Across South Africa, across lines of race and class, activist women came together to resist apartheid. While they also worked with men, women particularly organized as mothers—a fitting riposte to a regime rooted in restructuring families. Even as their campaigns attracted national and international support, apartheid officials underestimated their impact, generally seeing women as less threatening political actors than men. Since apartheid ended in 1994 , women’s contributions to the regime’s collapse have continued to attract less popular and scholarly attention than men’s contributions. Yet controlling personal lives and transforming families were core objectives of apartheid policies. Through both individual and collective action, the gendered life choices of many diverse women therefore undermined apartheid from within.

Male-Led Nationalist Movements and the Roots of Apartheid

In May 1948 , the National Party (NP) won the South African general election, inaugurating the era of apartheid: “apartness” in Afrikaans, the Dutch-derived language of the NP’s Afrikaner leaders. The National Party heightened the segregationist policies that had ruled the Union of South Africa since its 1910 formation as a British dominion, ruled by an alliance of British and Afrikaner men. Apartheid added an ideological emphasis on the development of Afrikaners and South Africa’s other ethnic groups, each as a separate volk (people) with distinct racial destinies. 1 Very few black men, and no black women, had the franchise in 1948 . Whites, who then made up about a quarter of South Africa’s population, therefore determined this election: they included both men and women, as white women had the franchise since 1930 , as part of a state strategy to diminish the influence of the small number of black men with the vote. 2

Women as well as men generated the ideas that animated Afrikaner nationalism. They highlighted the historical role of Afrikaners—mostly descendants of 17th-century Dutch settlers in the Cape—in bringing Christianity and European civilization to southern Africa. They mourned Afrikaners’ history of oppression on the frontiers of a growing British Empire, particularly Britain’s brutal treatment of women and children in the South African War a half century before. They called for the urgent uplift of poor Afrikaners, to advance their “race”—against the threat posed by the British-descended South Africans who had for the past century and a half exercised influence in politics and the economy on one hand, and against the increasing threats from politically assertive black South Africans on the other. 3

The black South Africans who so alarmed Afrikaner nationalists included men and women in the African National Congress (ANC) and similar organizations advocating rights for indigenous Africans, as well as other black people known as “Coloureds” (mixed-race) and Indians (descended from the indentured workers and immigrants who came to Natal from the 19th century ). Women played key ideological roles in these groups, stressing their history of protecting their families against the depravities of colonialism and calling for black people to end white domination. But women also struggled against dismissal of their voices by the activist men who led these groups. Women, both black and white, similarly asserted themselves in the male-led Communist Party (CP), which increasingly supported movements for racial equality in South Africa from the mid-1920s through its banning in 1950 . 4

It was important to the formation of apartheid policies that, despite the role of women at the grassroots of both Afrikaner and black movements, the leaders of the NP and its rivals in 1948 were all men. 5 The specter of black men unwilling to submit to white authority, and the inability of the ruling United Party (UP) to make them submit, loomed large in the NP’s 1948 campaign. While the NP achieved its narrow victory with strong support from rural whites, it appealed to white fears of black men in cities. In South Africa, as across the continent in the wake of the Second World War, urban black men were at the helm of organizations that launched boycotts and strikes demanding their rights against white male leaders. The NP particularly feared the potential of activists to spread communism, destroying what they saw as Afrikaner Christian civilization. 6 The NP’s solution was to develop a “white man’s country,” headed by Afrikaner patriarchs. 7

Legislating Sex and Family: The Foundations of Apartheid

Foundational pieces of apartheid legislation tellingly targeted love and sex—demonstrating how control over sex was critical to the production and maintenance of racial difference. 8 In 1949 , the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act barred marriage between “Europeans” (white South Africans, including Afrikaners, British, and other immigrants from Europe) and “non-Europeans” (African, Coloured, and Indian South Africans). 9 It was followed by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950 , which prohibited sex between whites and all blacks. This extended the 1927 Immorality Act, which had already restricted sex outside of marriage between whites and Africans: the word “native” in the original act was replaced by the more encompassing “non-European” here. 10 These broadening and hardening restrictions on intimacy revealed officials’ sense that “European civilization” in southern Africa was under siege, and the first place to shore it up was the family home. Interracial sex and marriage would remain illegal until 1985 . 11

Controlling intimacy entailed categorizing people. In the Immorality Amendment Act, the terms “European” and “non-European” were defined culturally: “‘European’ means a person who in appearance obviously is, or who by general acceptance and repute is a European,” and vice versa. 12 Soon after, the Population Registration Act of 1950 established a national register, to categorize each South African more bindingly by race and ethnicity. 13 The accompanying Group Areas Act established the country’s firm segregation along racial and ethnic lines, with specific “groups” restricted to specific regions and neighborhoods; black married women’s ethnicity followed that of their husbands. 14 This legislation displaced black families from their homes and communities, as mixed neighborhoods such as Johannesburg’s Sophiatown and Cape Town’s District Six were declared “white areas.” Ultimately, some 3.5 million black South Africans would be forced to move under apartheid. 15 Families could also be separated when the race of their children fell into doubt. 16

The apartheid state’s struggle for control over racial reproduction manifested in family-planning policies that urged white women to have children while encouraging black women to limit family size. Puritanical, DRC-influenced ideas of women’s chastity discouraged the pursuit of sexual pleasure and agency for all women. While abortion was illegal for all South African women, spectacular court cases concerned white rather than black women. Intrusive policies, supported by many employers and the state, required black women to have contraceptive injections to keep their jobs; doctors employed sterilization far more readily for black women than for whites throughout the apartheid years. Black women’s primary modes of employment—domestic service, farm labor, factory work, teaching, nursing, and clerical work—were not conductive to pregnancy, forcing many mothers to send their children to live with distant relatives. Due to black men’s low wages, black women were much more likely to need to work than white women, connecting reproductive rights to labor issues. 17

Gendered labor policies were at the heart of apartheid, in intersection with marriage and housing policies. To secure the labor of black men while limiting their presence in towns and cities declared to be predominantly white areas, an existing system of male migrant labor was further entrenched. This system had emerged with the development of diamond and gold mining over the latter half of the 19th century : labor recruiters, chiefs, and rural African families sent young men to work in distant towns, while African women were to support rural families, leading to growing domestic tensions. 18 From 1952 , African men aged sixteen or older legally had to carry identity documents called passes with them, to justify their presence outside of the rural ethnic “reserves” to which officials consigned Africans. 19 As the land in these reserves was insufficient in size and quality, men needed to work in urban areas to support themselves and their families, and to pay taxes. They could generally only reside in urban areas as long as their passes attested to employment by whites, staying in hostels intended for temporary sojourns in segregated areas called “townships.” Exceptions were those who had been born in the urban area where they lived, who had lived in that area legally for fifteen years, or who had worked for the same employer in that area for a decade: such men and their dependents had “Section Ten” rights to live in urban townships as a family, as long as they were not deemed “idle” or “undesirable.” 20 Most urban housing was deliberately unwelcoming to families, who were supposed to remain in the countryside, eking out a living by women’s farming, to supplement the low wages received by migrant men. 21

In rural areas filled increasingly with African women and children, the authority of male chiefs—both hereditary and appointed—reigned supreme. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 entrenched chiefly authority to administer “customary law,” a patriarchal system under which African women remained legal minors throughout their lives. Legal minor status meant that African women could not enter into contracts or own homes or other property in their own right; children legally belonged to their fathers or male kin. Customary law collapsed and distorted diverse precolonial African legal systems in which women had generally held more authority, especially as they aged. 22 The distorted power of “traditional” chiefs deepened in the 1960s. The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 provided the legal basis for the “gradual development of self-governing Bantu national units” out of the ethnic reserves to which Africans were consigned. 23 Ten rural ethnic reserves formed: officials called them “homelands” or “Bantustans,” and in 1970 , the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act declared Africans “citizens” of their homelands, not of South Africa. 24 Reforms in the 1980s allowed for African women’s growing emancipation from customary law: for instance, in 1981 the KwaZulu Bantustan introduced reforms so that adult women, married or unmarried, could legally own property and make other legal decisions, following popular pressure. 25 But African women continued to struggle against chiefly authority that privileged men.

As wives, women were generally subject to their husband’s authority. This was true not only for African women, but also for other black and white women; unless they secured a prenuptial contract, the default through most of apartheid was that even privileged white women lost power to make legal decisions upon marriage. 26 As mothers, however, women were charged with the critical responsibility of raising a new generation of workers and ethnic patriots. For Africans, this new generation was supposed to see their political futures not in “white South Africa” but in their rural ethnic reserves. African mothers were to send their children to new state schools, in an ethnically differentiated system called Bantu Education, while Indian, Coloured, and white women were to send their children to distinct schools. 27

At the crux of apartheid production and social reproduction therefore stood women, whom officials intended to be compliant wives and mothers in a segregated society. But increasing numbers of women refused to stand in their imposed places.

Black Women’s Urban Mobility Challenges Apartheid

Black women had lived in towns and cities long before apartheid, attracted to urban life both by a desire to escape rural familial tensions and by economic necessity. African access to land had been severely restricted since the Natives Land Act of 1913 , with clearly declining land productivity by the 1920s, and the rural reserves grew more stressed with apartheid’s forced relocations. Women’s options for formal urban employment were limited, with most consigned to domestic service. But women had long been developing a vibrant informal urban sector: they brewed and sold beer and other foods to male migrant workers and operated bars called “shebeens,” among other jobs. By the early 1950s, more than a fifth of African women were urban, and many of these women lived in ethnically mixed neighborhoods. 28

While black women’s urbanity concerned officials before apartheid—especially when they worked as prostitutes—officials had never been sure what to do about it. African men in major cities had been required to carry individual passes before apartheid, although laws varied by municipality. 29 But officials had rarely imposed individual passes on women. This was, first, because attempts to do so had engendered resistance, as seen in Bloemfontein in 1913 , when hundreds marched against pass laws for black women. 30 At a deeper level, officials expected African women to be governed through their men. When laws referred to “natives,” they usually meant African men; African women were seldom singled out as political subjects, as they were legal minors under customary law and thus not proper “persons” in their own rights. 31 The language of 1952 pass-law legislation was characteristically vague—first stating that pass laws would apply to “every native” aged sixteen or older, but then shifting to masculine pronouns. 32

Officials prevaricated about when and how pass laws would be extended to African women under the terms of the 1952 legislation, facing public outrage about this intrusion into family life. 33 Then, in 1955 , officials announced that individual passes would soon be issued to African women; women’s organized resistance, discussed in the next section, delayed full implementation of this requirement until 1963 .

Yet women kept moving to cities, whether or not they could claim Section Ten rights or passes testifying to their legal right to be there temporarily. Many lived covertly in “informal settlements” of shacks, or with men in migrant labor hostels. They faced frequent prosecution for breaking the law and forced deportations to Bantustans: this risk was especially pronounced for Africans in Cape Town, where most working-class jobs were reserved for “Coloured” men, and where African women had access to few formal jobs outside of low-paid domestic service. 34 But women often turned right around after their deportations to catch the next bus into town, despite feeling “like a hare being chased around, hunted.” 35 The everyday presence of black families—in urban spaces legally defined as white, where black people were only supposed to appear as necessary to meet white labor needs—powerfully challenged core tenets of apartheid. 36 Ultimately, the expense of combatting this unstoppable movement of black families to cities forced apartheid officials to end pass laws in 1986 . 37 African women’s migration then accelerated, with continually rising numbers of female-headed households. 38 Black women’s defiant mobility thus worked to renegotiate relationships between genders and generations.

Amidst this insistent mobility, growing numbers of women in rural reserves were also not fulfilling the roles that officials envisioned. Resistance to the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 surged quickly, and women played key roles in rejecting the cooption of chiefly authority and implementation of new agricultural policies, with organized protests in places including the Western Transvaal area of Zeerust ( 1957 ) and the Natal countryside ( 1959 ). The latter protests significantly linked urban and rural issues, as women protested both apartheid removals from the interracial urban community of Cato Manor in Durban and intrusive “betterment schemes” and taxes in the rural reserves surrounding the city. 39 While the ANC did not initiate these protests, its members were involved in them, and ANC membership increased in their aftermath. Rural women’s engagement in religious groups such as mothers’ prayer unions ( manyano ), which also boasted linked urban branches, provided another font for growing anti-apartheid organization. Cyclical migration—driven by forced removals and by women’s decisions to return to rural areas after periods of work in cities—kept urban and rural communities linked. 40

Anti-apartheid linkages between towns and countryside would only accelerate as apartheid officials increasingly “banned” political leaders to remote districts, to try to eliminate them as national leaders amidst surging protests from the 1950s. This strategy could backfire, as banned leaders connected with people in these rural districts whom they would not otherwise have met. Women often made these connections by engaging in social-welfare work, which seemed less objectionable to officials than overt political organizing. Most famously, during their bannings in the 1970s and 1980s, the Black Consciousness movement activist Mamphela Ramphele and the ANC activist Winnie Mandela organized health clinics, which became centers for spreading anti-apartheid ideas. 41 The politicizing role of health care speaks to women’s broader sociocultural style of anti-apartheid organization.

Women’s Collective Organization Challenges Apartheid

The pattern of male leadership of political movements, and women’s influence at movements’ grassroots, persisted through the apartheid years, with women tending to play influential roles in sociocultural wings of the anti-apartheid movement. In the 1950s, women first organized against apartheid as mothers, uniting across lines of race and class. Both the achievements and limits of their foundational strategies set a pattern, which would emerge vividly in the 1960s and 1970s. The pattern was that women would organize most effectively by using discourses of family. But when women raised sensitive issues pertaining to their own family lives that did not fit within activist campaigns, men often dismissed these issues as ancillary to immediate political struggles. Many women would come to share male leaders’ emphasis on family as a strategic political discourse more than an immediate site of political struggle. This was so especially in the 1960s and 1970s, when major liberation movements were forced into exile and key male and female leaders banned, heightening the stakes of eliminating anything deemed a “distraction.” Finally, in the 1980s and during the transition to democracy in the 1990s, women increasingly challenged activists’ sublimation of personal issues in political arenas, using indigenous and international forms of feminist critique.

The Congress Alliance and Federation of South African Women in the 1950s: The Foundational Period

In the 1950s, opposition to apartheid centered in the Congress Alliance: a front of anti-apartheid movements in which the ANC played a predominant role, in partnership with the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People’s Congress, and the white leftist Congress of Democrats. The Congress Alliance was a “multiracial” organization because it comprised those racially distinct affiliate organizations. In the mid-1950s, two major nonracial member organizations—comprising both black and white members—joined the Congress Alliance: the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW). Women played important roles in the SACTU, as unions provided a distinctive forum in which women could unite as workers across racial lines. 42 And female trade unionists played central roles in the 1954 launching of FEDSAW—as did women from the ANC.

FEDSAW’s first president was Ida Mtwana, former president of the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL); her better-known successor as FEDSAW’s leader, Lilian Ngoyi, also served as president of the ANCWL. Both women worked in the garment industry, and their activism characteristically emphasized issues of work and family. On one hand, the women often spoke of women’s commitment to anti-apartheid struggle as necessitating that they move away from domestic responsibilities. For instance, Mtwana declared at FEDSAW’s founding meeting, “Gone are the days when the place of women was in the kitchen and looking after the children. Today, they are marching side by side with men in the road to freedom,” in political meetings and in trade unions. But Mtwana went on to stress that women’s public activism was rooted in their responsibilities as mothers: “We cannot sit down and fold our arms when attempts are being made to hold our progress and that of our children . . . If we do not fight now, it will be too late, and our children will curse us for our callousness.” 43

Such invocations of familial responsibilities should not be taken narrowly as statements about individual women’s lives, but broadly as skillful public discourse. Several key FEDSAW leaders—including Miss Ida Mtwana—were unmarried or childless themselves. Black women drew upon the public leadership they exercised as mothers in their communities to forge ties across racial lines, appealing to white women through appeals to a shared moral economy of motherhood. Discourses of motherhood therefore demonstrated black women’s rejection of apartheid ideas of white women as “empire builders” and black mothers as social problems, and reflected black women’s bold political imagination of a shared community of mothers with a responsibility for creating an anti-racist world. 44

Unifying maternal discourses were an achievement, because divisions between black and white women ran deep. After all, the major space of interracial encounter was domestic service, where black women tended intimately to the needs of white “madams” and their children for low pay, often living away from their own children to stay in the backyards of their employers. 45 Moreover, white women had won suffrage in 1930 at the expense of black men’s loss of their limited franchise, something that black activists did not forget. 46 Making connections across racial lines—including among African, Coloured, and Indian women, who increasingly lived in separate communities—was a great challenge.

Despite tensions, FEDSAW succeeded in uniting women as mothers against apartheid policies that divided black families and communities: centrally, against pass laws and Bantu Education. In June 1955 , FEDSAW participated in the Congress Alliance’s Congress of the People in Kliptown, Johannesburg, where FEDSAW issued a list of “What Women Demand,” beginning with claims to rights such as paid maternity leave, child care, and contraception “FOR ALL MOTHERS OF ALL RACES.” 47 Famously, FEDSAW then organized multiracial delegations of women to march on the seat of the apartheid government, the Union Buildings in Pretoria. FEDSAW and COD member Helen Joseph was inspired by a liberal white women’s organization, Black Sash, which had been “haunting” apartheid officials by surrounding them with groups of women wearing the eponymous black sashes, signs of mourning against apartheid policies. 48 With her comrades in FEDSAW, Joseph incited more powerful, multiracial activism.

On October 27, 1955 , two thousand women followed the symbolic quartet of Joseph, ANCWL president Lilian Ngoyi, Coloured People’s Congress activist Sophie Williams, and the heavily pregnant South African Indian Congress activist Rahima Moosa, bearing petitions to leave for cabinet ministers. On August 9, 1956 , a day now celebrated as Women’s Day, twenty thousand women marched with FEDSAW on the Union Buildings, coming from as far away as Cape Town, and leaving thick stacks of individual petitions protesting the extension of passes to women on the doorstep of the prime minister’s office. 49 The women, many with children, sang the ANC’s anthem and taunting anti-apartheid songs, then gathered for a half hour of stunning silence, richly documented by journalists and photographers. Such iconic activism delayed implementation of pass laws for women until 1963 , but it also led to deepening state repression against FEDSAW activists that made the organization effectively moribund by the early 1960s.

FEDSAW members struggled not only with divisions among anti-apartheid women but also with struggles between these women and officials. They also confronted tensions with anti-apartheid men—tensions amplified by the ANC’s dominance in the Congress Alliance. Men had consistently served as ANC presidents from its 1912 founding, even though women had been full members of the ANC and leaders of the ANCWL since 1943 . Significantly, as scholar Shireen Hassim has described, the early ANC “was a political family and it replicated the hierarchical form of a patriarchal institution.” 50 The ANCWL’s founding president, Madie Hall Xuma, was the wife of the ANC’s president, Dr. A. B. Xuma. The National Executive Committee (NEC) was all male prior to Lilian Ngoyi’s election to it in late 1956 , recognizing her impressive work in FEDSAW. The NEC mediated between the party’s membership and the state, while the ANCWL focused on the everyday social and economic needs of its membership; both oversaw the ANC Youth League, which pushed party elders leftward. Women in both the Youth League and Women’s League often chafed against the restrictions of male party leaders, who encouraged women to engage in educational campaigns rather than confronting authorities with further protests after 1956 . 51 Men’s attitudes reflected both a protective impulse, and patriarchal assumptions that women should remain marginal to politics. 52 Above all, Congress Alliance men often failed to see women’s discussions of family issues that did not fit into the central activist platform as matters of politics. For instance, they responded to FEDSAW women’s discussions of family planning with what scholar Cherryl Walker has characterized as “jocular dismissal.” 53

Anti-apartheid men’s dismissal of women’s discussions of family planning was profoundly ironic, for two reasons. First, intimate issues of family were actually central to issues of apartheid governance, which hinged on control of racialized bodies and homes. Second, activist men relied upon women’s deft public rhetoric of motherhood to bring more activists into the anti-apartheid movement; they acknowledged anti-pass issues as central to the movement. 54 Yet most activists were no more ready for open discussions about real tensions of sexuality and family than were puritanical apartheid officials. Other matters of oppression loomed too large. Reticence about public discussion of sexuality applied to both male and female activists. Most had been raised in religiously conservative homes and schools where intimate matters were treated delicately, were Communists who saw gender issues as subordinate to class issues, or were both Communists and Christians. Anti-apartheid activists’ reliance on rallying familial discourses, but discomfort talking about family tensions that did not fit within the central anti-apartheid platform, would deepen with state repression in the 1960s and 1970s, as the need for activist discipline (already significant in the 1950s) grew.

Navigating the Personal and the Political, at the Height of the Anti-apartheid Movement

In April 1960 , officials banned the ANC and a rival organization, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), after women and men’s rising anti-pass activism and escalating police violence against protestors. From this point until February 1990 , the major liberation movements went underground, with key leaders in exile, imprisoned, repeatedly detained, or personally banned. All of these assaults on leaders were profoundly disruptive to family life. 55 Women lost organizational autonomy in the interest of streamlining underground operations: in 1969 , the ANCWL was replaced by the ANC Women’s Section, which Hassim describes as turning into “the movement’s social worker.” 56

Iconography of women and families played an integral role in an increasingly global anti-apartheid movement. This movement was shaped both by new armed wings of the ANC and PAC launched in 1961 , and by a transnational civil-societal campaign encouraging boycotts and diplomatic pressure on the apartheid regime that grew stronger after South Africa left the British Commonwealth in 1961 . Within South Africa, women’s social and cultural work fueled a new movement called Black Consciousness, rooted among students and workers across the country from the late 1960s. Black Consciousness activism would explode in a wave of student protests against Bantu Education in 1976 , which began in the Johannesburg township of Soweto but turned into a national schools boycott after police massacred student protestors. After 1976 , new waves of activists—especially youth—fled South Africa, and the country’s international pariah status worsened.

Women were a minority of armed combatants plotting sabotage from across South Africa’s borders, but both the iconography and presence of women has attracted attention—particularly from scholars of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, or Spear of the Nation). Conspicuous in MK’s propaganda were images of what scholar Kim Miller has called “moms with guns”: women with babies on their backs, weapons in hand, and fury in their eyes. 57 Female MK members could experience a thrilling sense of equality with men, particularly in cases where women held rank, and women performed critical roles smuggling weapons into South Africa. But women were also confronted with sexism and harassment from their comrades, the product of the very male-dominated atmosphere of MK camps.

Most troubling for many MK women were the ANC’s policies on pregnancy and childrearing, which reflect the essential contradictions between discourses and realities of family in the anti-apartheid struggle. Pregnancy was supposed to be forbidden for MK women, with some forcibly fitted with IUDs. MK women did inevitably become pregnant, however, especially after new waves of young activists flocked into MK camps from 1976 , and as the camps faced prolonged periods of minimal activity, plotting and training for many military expeditions that never occurred. Pregnant women would be sent to the ANC’s Charlotte Maxeke Mother and Child Centre in Morogoro, Tanzania—which they understood as a punishment, as this remote exile-within-exile took them away from camps in the frontline states. By the late 1980s, the Women’s Section complained to the party officials of years of demanding day-care facilities near MK camps so that women could be mothers while preparing as soldiers, without result: “We seem to travel in a dead end street with marriage and babies being at the end of the street. There is not and can never be a contradiction between marriage and having babies on one hand and fighting on the other.” 58 Yet MK women could only be “moms with guns” in propaganda.

Women had more space in the cultural wings of the global anti-apartheid movement, as ANC president O. R. Tambo particularly supported the deployment of eloquent and engaging women in exile: women were central to the Mayibuye Cultural Ensemble in London, and Barbara Masekela led the ANC’s Arts and Culture wing in the 1980s, for instance. South Africa’s most prolific, globally influential anti-apartheid novelist was a middle-class white woman in suburban Johannesburg, Nadine Gordimer. Black woman artists in exile, like Miriam Makeba and Lauretta Ngcobo, generated support for the anti-apartheid movement in the United States and Europe.

Within South Africa, educational institutions became important sites for young women’s anti-apartheid thought and organizing. Inanda Seminary, a high school drawing some of the brightest African girls from around the country to its campus near Durban, was an especially lively site during the 1970s. There young women met visiting activists like Steve Biko, a radical medical student at the nearby University of Natal, and Fatima Meer, an Indian academic-activist based at that university. While black women remained severely underrepresented in higher education compared to black men or whites, black girls’ high school attendance was rising dramatically during the apartheid years, such that by the early 1980s more black girls than black boys would be in high school. This was an outcome of apartheid policies promoting the education of black female teachers and nurses to work in new Bantustan schools and clinics, as officials saw women as both cheaper to employ and more politically tractable. 59 As the cases of banned activists setting up politically vibrant rural clinics make clear, women’s work in social professions could give them an entrée to anti-apartheid organizing. Such work could be particularly politicizing as women were confronted directly with apartheid’s violence, especially in clinics and social work. 60

The Black Consciousness (BC) movement, while helmed by men like Steve Biko, was undergirded by the work of young women in clinics, schools, and journalism, working to unite black women and men—African, Indian, and Coloured—to end apartheid. 61 Yet women in BC, like women in the liberation movements in exile, ran up against frustrating gendered limitations. As Mamphela Ramphele notes of her time as a leader in the South African Students’ Organisation, the key BC group until its 1977 banning: “I became quite an aggressive debater and was known for not suffering fools gladly. Moreover, I intimidated men who did not expect aggression from women. Soon a group of similarly inclined women, Vuyelwa Mashalaba, Nomsisi Kraai, Deborah Matshoba and Thenjiwe Mthintso, became a force to be reckoned with at annual SASO meetings. Ours was not a feminist cause at that time—feminism was a later development in my political consciousness—but an insistence on being taken seriously as activists in our own right amongst our peers.” 62 Attempts at organizing BC women, such as Fatima Meer and Winnie Mandela’s Black Women’s Federation in 1975 , similarly attempted to develop women’s self-assertion while shying away from the label “feminism.” 63

Hassim’s Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa has most vividly shown how often anti-apartheid activists—particularly women of color—resisted calling themselves feminists, or discussing issues of gender inequity within their movements in public from the 1970s. It was not only that feminism was often rejected as an imported, “white” ideology without indigenous roots. That critique reflected the overrepresentation of white academics in South Africa’s second-wave feminist groups, the dramatic differences between the conditions of white and black women’s lives, and global moves of African American and “Third World” women toward less individualistic ideologies like “womanism.” As state oppression grew more pervasive in the 1980s—with prolonged “states of emergency” of military rule by mid-decade—feminism could seem a divisive distraction that activists should not indulge.

Yet Hassim has also shown how individual women’s connections of their experiences with those of other women could lead them, like Mamphele, to feminist consciousness. This happened as women grew involved in a resurgent wave of grassroots organizations—called township “civics”—as part of the United Democratic Front (UDF), a new, aboveground coalition of anti-apartheid groups stressing non-racialism and democracy from 1983 . Three major regional women’s groups formed: the United Women’s Organisation in the Western Cape (UWO), the Federation of Transvaal Women (FEDTRAW), and the Natal Organisation of Women (NOW). These groups were inspired by FEDSAW, which ANC activists were then trying to reestablish within South Africa. An emerging challenge facing women in these movements was how to connect personal issues with the political system that shaped them and that they shaped—against many activist men and women’s tendencies to sublimate intimate issues. Activist Phumelele Ntombela-Nzimande recalled, “NOW comrades were asking, ‘Why write about rape all the time?’ These were seen as weird issues to focus on. They said people should speak about the state of emergency, not about wife battering . . . Even I don’t remember once challenging a NOW meeting to speak about these issues. I just felt overwhelmed by the fact that it wasn’t appropriate.” 64 In Natal in particular, the brewing civil war between UDF activists and the Zulu nationalist group Inkatha (sponsored by the apartheid government) put discussion of such issues on the backburner for many activists in the 1980s. But growing sexual violence was a significant part of Natal’s political violence, laying the groundwork for the province’s high rates of HIV/AIDS after the democratic transition.

Throughout the anti-apartheid struggle, women were routinely underestimated and ignored as political actors. Officials’ underestimation of women could open up valuable political space. Women running politically lively clinics and schools, for instance, were not seen as threatening, while male-led political groups attracted more censure. 65 Yet the neglect of core issues of gendered inequality as apolitical—by many male and female activists—left lingering contradictions after apartheid’s end. The democratic transition in 1994 was in some respects remarkably progressive on gender and sexuality, with a constitution enshrining equality and unprecedented rights for LGBTQ citizens; but ANC leaders’ compromises with chiefs meant that women living under customary law could not realize this equality. Moreover, everyday gendered inequities—in issues from employment, to pervasive sexual violence—plague post-apartheid society. While South African women undermined apartheid from its gendered core, they have yet to realize core rights of gendered citizenship.

Discussion of the Literature

Work in this field began to emerge in the 1980s. Scholars, many of whom were also activists, began to develop an anti-apartheid feminism that acknowledged the harm done by a national liberation movement that could not fully grapple with gendered oppression during its long struggle. Marxism was influential in this early work. Scholars working during the late apartheid years were therefore concerned with (1) how gendered oppression had been integral to the racial capitalism that anti-apartheid activists were fighting, and (2) how feminism and nationalism were linked. The second theme will be explored in detail here, as it has recently been attracting more attention from a new wave of scholars.

On the first point, Belinda Bozzoli’s 1983 essay, “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies,” examined the “patchwork quilt of patriarchies” through which the migrant labor system foundational to apartheid had developed. 66 Probing gendered histories of domestic service, factory work, nursing, and mining followed. 67

Walker’s Women and Resistance in South Africa , first published in 1982 with a second edition in 1991 , was the germinal study connecting the gendered foundations of apartheid rule with women’s development of strategies of collective resistance. The book emerged from Walker’s University of Cape Town thesis, drawing upon archives, activist memoirs, and interviews about the Federation of South African Women. But it also offers a deeper history of women’s urban migration, rural struggles, and links with male-led organizations, extending far beyond FEDSAW. Walker raised two central questions that shaped subsequent scholarship. First was the question of how apartheid-era South African women’s organizing was both emboldened and constrained by the movement for national liberation out of which it emerged. Second was the question of how, why, and to what consequences motherhood has united South African women.

In the first edition, Walker contended that both FEDSAW women’s lack of organizational autonomy and tendency to unite as mothers limited their feminism, seeing women as bound to both patriarchal politics and patriarchal homes. In the preface to the second edition, she backed away from seeing maternal appeals as primarily conservative, following pointed critiques of this approach as reductive and predicated on Western understandings of family life as a refuge from the public sphere. Hassim’s 2006 Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority pursued the question of women’s organizational autonomy more fully, extending her examination to the ANC in exile, women’s grassroots organizations in the 1980s, and the democratic transition. Like Walker, Hassim adjudged that the subordination of South African women’s organizations to the increasingly pressing needs of its national liberation movement ultimately constrained the gender-transformational potential of the democratic transition.

Nomboniso Gasa’s essay on 1950s women’s organizing in her 2007 edited volume, Women in South African History , challenged the theoretical premises of both of Walker’s central questions, as well as Julia Wells’s maintenance of the position that the “motherist” politics driving anti-pass protests were fundamentally conservative. 68 “At the heart of the earlier struggles is the fact that African women were homeless by state design,” Gasa argued. “Their struggle against the pass laws, which were a tangible way of infringing their rights, was, in fact a struggle to be in the public domain at the same time as a struggle for free movement.” 69 Building on Gasa’s intervention—and on the questions about motherhood Walker posited in her own auto-critique—scholars have begun to address the histories of motherhood in southern Africa that gave maternal politics very different meanings for black and white women, and to examine how family tensions played out politically during the liberation struggle. 70

The most important counterpoint to Walker’s and Hassim’s argument that female activists’ lack of autonomy from that national liberation movement limited their feminism remains Zine Magubane’s extensive 2010 essay, “Attitudes Towards Feminism among Women in the ANC, 1950–1990 : A Theoretical Re-interpretation,” in the Road to Democracy series. Revisiting Walker’s and Hassim’s sources and examining additional interviews, activist memoirs, and archives of FEDSAW and the ANC, Magubane argues that autonomy was not a viable option: groups like FEDSAW derived strength from their roots in political groups and trade unions. 71 Further, she contends that black women’s emphasis on motherhood did not entrench patriarchy, but rather asserted black women’s moral leadership over white women in a growing popular struggle. Drawing on women’s own conceptions of their activism, she shows how political motherhood in FEDSAW, and in subsequent movements influenced by FEDSAW, was an ideology rooted in black women’s experiences of not only caring for their own children, but also taking community leadership roles on the basis of their maternal authority. 72 New scholarship is only beginning to grapple with the challenges and opportunities that transformations in the political meanings and everyday experiences of family brought to women, and to men, during apartheid and in the transition to democracy. 73

Primary Sources

National and provincial archives, with a searchable online database , contain information on both foundational gendered legislation and protests against key policies such as pass laws. The most revealing archives document anti-apartheid resistance, however. Compared to anti-apartheid men, relatively few women have extensive personal archives. The University of the Witwatersrand’s Historical Papers do contain some (such as those of Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi, and Hilda Bernstein of FEDSAW) and FEDSAW’s organizational archives; key sources, including the FEDSAW papers, have been digitized . Other major collections include the ANCWL papers housed at the Mayibuye Archive , at the University of the Western Cape, and the central ANC Archives at the University of Fort Hare; both of these collections regrettably lack complete, searchable online databases at the time of writing. Campbell Collections at the University of KwaZulu-Natal contains archives for women’s organizations such as the Natal Organization of Women. Many women have published memoirs of their anti-apartheid activism and imprisonment, 74 and extensive oral histories have been collected on women’s experiences of exile. 75 Prominent women have also authored collections of essays and creative writing reflecting critically on the apartheid years. 76 Other published primary sources include Shula Marks’ collection of letters between a troubled schoolgirl and her benefactors in apartheid’s early years, and an anthology of regional writing. 77 Key feminist anti-apartheid periodicals may be found in JSTOR’s Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa collection.

Further Reading

• Berger, Iris . Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry, 1900–1980 . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
• Bernstein, Hilda . For Their Triumphs and Their Tears: Women in Apartheid South Africa . London: International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1978.
• Bozzoli, Belinda . “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies.” Journal of Southern African Studies 9.2 (April 1983): 139–171.
• Bozzoli, Belinda , and Mmantho Nkotsoe . Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migration in South Africa, 1900–1983 . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991.
• Cock, Jacklyn . Maids and Madams: A Study in the Politics of Exploitation . Johannesburg: Ravan, 1980.
• Gasa, Nomboniso , ed. Women in South African History: Basus’iimbokodo, bawel’imilambo/They Remove Boulders and Cross Rivers . Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2007.
• Hassim, Shireen . Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
• Hassim, Shireen . The ANC Women’s League: Sex, Gender and Politics . Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015.
• Healy-Clancy, Meghan . A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014.
• Hunter, Mark . Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa . Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2010.
• Joseph, Helen . Tomorrow’s Sun: A Smuggled Journal from South Africa . London: Hutchinson, 1966.
• Klausen, Susanne M. Abortion under Apartheid: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women’s Reproductive Rights in South Africa . New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Kuzwayo, Ellen . Call Me Woman . London: The Women’s Press, 1985.
• Lee, Rebekah . African Women and Apartheid: Migration and Settlement in Urban South Africa . New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009.
• Mager, Anne . Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945–1959 . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.
• Magubane, Zine . “Attitudes Towards Feminism among Women in the ANC, 1950–1990: A Theoretical Re-interpretation.” In The Road to Democracy in South Africa , vol. 4. Edited by South African Democracy Education Trust , 975–1036. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2010.
• Mandela, Winnie . 91 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 . Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013.
• Marks, Shula . Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
• Marks, Shula . Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class, and Gender in the South African Nursing Profession . Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994.
• Mashinini, Emma . Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life . New York: Routledge, 1991.
• Ngcobo, Lauretta , ed. Prodigal Daughters: Stories of South African Women in Exile . Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012.
• Ramphele, Mamphela . A Bed Called Home: Life in the Migrant Labour Hostels of Cape Town . Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993.
• Ramphele, Mamphela . Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader . New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1996.
• Walker, Cherryl . Women and Resistance in South Africa . Cape Town: David Philip, 1982.
• Wells, Julia C. We Now Demand! The History of Women’s Resistance to Pass Laws in South Africa . Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993.

1. Saul Dubow , Apartheid, 1948–1994 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 10–13.

2. Cherryl Walker , Women and Resistance in South Africa (Cape Town: David Philip, 1991), 23.

3. Marijke Du Toit , “The Domesticity of Afrikaner Nationalism: Volksmoeders and the ACVV, 1904–1929,” Journal of Southern African Studies 29.1 (2003): 155–176.

4. Meghan Healy-Clancy , “Women and the Problem of Family in Early African Nationalist History and Historiography,” South African Historical Journal 64.3 (2012): 450–471.

5. Natasha Erlank , “Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912–1950,” Feminist Studies 29.3 (2003): 653–671.

6. Dubow, Apartheid , 7–8.

7. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds , Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 354.

8. See also Ann Laura Stoler , Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; 2010).

9. Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act , Act No. 55 of 1949. An amendment in 1968 further prohibited marriages between South African men and foreign women of other races.

10. Immorality Amendment Act , Act No. 21 of 1950.

11. Immorality and Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Amendment Act , Act No. 72 of 1985.

12. Immorality Amendment Act , Act No. 21 of 1950, Section 3.

13. Population Registration Act , Act No. 30 of 1950.

14. Group Areas Act , Act No. 41 of 1950, Section 2 (b) (ii).

15. Laurine Platsky and Cherryl Walker , The Surplus People: Forced Removals in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985).

16. As in the famous case of Sandra Laing in the 1960s: Judith Stone , When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race (New York: Hyperion, 2007).

17. Barbara B. Brown , “Facing the ‘Black Peril’: The Politics of Population Control in South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 13.2 (1987): 256–273; Zine Magubane , “Attitudes Towards Feminism among Women in the ANC, 1950–1990: A Theoretical Re-interpretation,” in The Road to Democracy in South Africa , vol. 4, ed. South African Democracy Education Trust (Pretoria: UNISA Press, 2010), 975–1036, 1025–1026; and Susanne M. Klausen , Abortion under Apartheid: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women’s Reproductive Rights in South Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

18. Belinda Bozzoli , “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies,” Journal of Southern African Studies 9.2 (April 1983): 139–171.

19. Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act , Act of No. 67 of 1952.

20. These were known as “Section Ten” rights, because the Native Laws Amendment Act modified Section Ten of the Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act of 1945. See Native Laws Amendment Act , Act No. 54 of 1952, Section 27.

21. Harold Wolpe , “Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid,” Economy and Society 1.4 (1972): 425–456; and T. Dunbar Moodie and Vivienne Ndatshe , Going for Gold: Men, Mines, and Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

22. Bantu Authorities Act , Act No. 68 of 1951; Harold Jack Simons , African Women: Their Legal Status in South Africa (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968); and Hilda Bernstein , For Their Triumphs and Their Tears: Women in Apartheid South Africa (London: International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1985), 28–30.

23. Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act , Act No. 46 of 1959.

24. Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act , Act No. 26 of 1970.

25. KwaZulu Act on the Code of Zulu Law , 1981, Section 16.

26. Matrimonial Property Act , Act No. 88 of 1984.

27. Bantu Education Act , Act No. 47 of 1953.

28. Walker, Women and Resistance , 128.

29. Thus the Orwellian name for the 1952 Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act: it sought to extend uniform laws about identity documents across the country.

30. Julia C. Wells , We Now Demand! The History of Women’s Resistance to Pass Laws in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993); and Nomboniso Gasa , ‘‘Let Them Build More Gaols,’’ in Women in South African History , ed. Gasa (Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2007), 129–152.

31. Linzi Manicom , “Ruling Relations: Rethinking State and Gender in South African History,” Journal of African History 33.3 (1992): 441–465.

32. Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act , Section 2.

33. Walker, Women and Resistance , 126–130.

34. Rebekah Lee , African Women and Apartheid: Migration and Settlement in Urban South Africa (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009).

35. Zodwa from Cape Town, quoted in Mamphela Ramphele , A Bed Called Home: Life in the Migrant Labour Hostels of Cape Town (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993), 18.

36. Anne-Maria Makhulu , Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).

37. Abolition of Influx Control Act , Act No. 68 of 1986.

38. Mark Hunter , Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2010), 84–102.

39. Walker, Women and Resistance , 230–235.

40. Belinda Bozzoli and Mmantho Nkotsoe , Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migration in South Africa, 1900–1983 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991); and Luli Callinicos , “Testimonies and Transitions: Women Negotiating the Rural and Urban in the Mid-20th Century,” in Women in South African History , ed. Gasa , 153–184.

41. Saleem Badat , The Forgotten People: Political Banishment under Apartheid (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013), 204–215.

42. Iris Berger , Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry, 1900–1980 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 153–169.

43. “ Report of the First National Congress of Women, Held in the Trades Hall, Johannesburg, South Africa, April 17th 1954 ,” Federation of South African Women Papers, Historical Papers, Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand, File AD1137-Ac1.6.2.

44. Magubane, “Attitudes Towards Feminism among Women in the ANC, 1950–1990,” 1020.

45. Jacklyn Cock , Maids and Madams: A Study in the Politics of Exploitation (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1980).

46. Magubane, “Attitudes Towards Feminism among Women in the ANC, 1950–1990,” 984–985.

47. “ What Women Demand ,” Federation of South African Women Papers, Historical Papers, Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand, File AD1137-Ea2-001.

48. Mary Ingouville Burton , The Black Sash: Women for Justice and Peace (Auckland Park: Jacana, 2015). White women would later organize influentially as mothers fighting their sons’ forced conscription into the apartheid military: Jacklyn Cock , “‘Another Mother for Peace’: Women and Peace Building in South Africa, 1983–2003,” in Women in South African History , ed. Gasa , 257–280.

49. Helen Joseph , Tomorrow’s Sun: A Smuggled Journal from South Africa (London: Hutchinson, 1966), 63–85. The multiracial delegation was captured in an iconic photograph by Jurgen Schadeberg.

50. Shireen Hassim , The ANC Women’s League: Sex, Gender and Politics (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2015), 29.

51. Shireen Hassim , Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 26–27; and Wells, We Now Demand! 117.

52. Nomboniso Gasa , “Feminisms, Motherisms, Patriarchies and Women’s Voices in the 1950s,” in Women in South African History , ed. Gasa , 207–229.

53. Walker, Women and Resistance , 260.

54. Magubane, “Attitudes Towards Feminism among Women in the ANC, 1950–1990,” 999–1000.

55. Hilda Bernstein , ed., The Rift: The Exile Experience of South Africans (London: Jonathan Cape, 1994); and Lauretta Ngcobo , ed., Prodigal Daughters: Stories of South African Women in Exile (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012).

56. Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa , 87.

57. Kim Miller , “Moms with Guns: Political Agency in Anti-apartheid Visual Culture,” African Arts (Summer 2009): 68–75.

58. Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy , 90; Raymond Suttner , “Women in the ANC-Led Underground,” in Women in South African History , ed. Gasa , 233–255; and Rachel Sandwell , “‘Love I Cannot Begin to Explain’: The Politics of Reproduction in the ANC in Exile, 1976–1990,” Journal of Southern African Studies 41.1 (2015): 63–81.

59. Anne Mager , Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945–1959 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999); and Meghan Healy-Clancy , A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 120–190.

60. Shula Marks , Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class, and Gender in the South African Nursing Profession (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994); Simonne Horwitz , Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto: A History of Medical Care, 1941–1990 (Wits University Press, 2013); and Ellen Kuzwayo , Call Me Woman (Johannesburg: Picador, 1985).

61. Leslie Hadfield , Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2016).

62. Mamphela Ramphele , Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader (New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1996).

63. Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa , 61.

64. Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa , 58.

65. Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own .

66. Bozzoli, “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies.” This was developed further in Women of Phokeng .

67. Cock, Maids and Madams ; Berger, Threads of Solidarity ; Marks, Divided Sisterhood ; and Moodie and Ndatshe, Going for Gold .

68. Wells, We Now Demand!

69. Gasa, “Feminism, Motherisms, Patriarchies,” 214.

70. Cherryl Walker , “Conceptualising Motherhood in Twentieth Century South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 21.3 (September 1995): 417–437; Judith Stevenson , “‘The Mamas Were Ripe’: Ideologies of Motherhood and Resistance in a South African Township,” Feminist Formations 23.2 (2011): 132–163; Healy-Clancy, “Women and the Problem of Family”; Arianna Lissoni and Maria Suriano , “Married to the ANC: Tanzanian Women’s Entanglement in South Africa’s Liberation Struggle,” Journal of Southern African Studies 40.1 (2014): 129–150; and Sandwell, “‘Love I Cannot Begin to Explain.’”

71. Magubane, “Attitudes Towards Feminism among Women in the ANC, 1950–1990,” 979–1004.

72. Magubane, “Attitudes Towards Feminism among Women in the ANC, 1950–1990,” 1009–1036.

73. Mark Hunter, Love in the Time of AIDS .

74. Including Joseph, Tomorrow’s Sun ; Kuzwayo, Call Me Woman ; Ramphele, Across Boundaries ; Emma Mashinini , Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life (New York: Routledge, 1991); and Winnie Mandela , 91 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013).

75. Bernstein, ed., The Rift ; Ngcobo, ed., Prodigal Daughters .

76. See, for instance, Nadine Gordimer , Living in Hope and History (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999).

77. Shula Marks , Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).

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Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36

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South Africa: Apartheid and Post-Apartheid

Demography of Race and Ethnicity in South Africa

Racialized Identity Under Apartheid in South Africa

• bibliography

Table of contents (8 chapters)

Front matter, introduction, the elaboration of segregationist ideology, c. 1900–36, segregation and cheap labour, structure and conflict in the native affairs department, the ideology of native administration, the passage of hertzog’s native bills, part one, the passage of hertzog’s native bills, part two, back matter, bibliographic information.

Book Title : Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36

Authors : Saul Dubow

Series Title : St Antony's Series

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20041-2

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan London

eBook Packages : Palgrave History Collection , History (R0)

Copyright Information : Saul Dubow 1989

Hardcover ISBN : 978-0-333-46461-8 Published: 03 July 1989

Softcover ISBN : 978-1-349-20043-6 Published: 01 January 1989

eBook ISBN : 978-1-349-20041-2 Published: 03 July 1989

Series ISSN : 2633-5964

Series E-ISSN : 2633-5972

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XI, 250

Topics : Asian History , African History , Political Science , Human Rights , Modern History

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From Segregation to Apartheid

The gains achieved by the White minority in the first four decades of the 20th century were, by the 1940s, increasingly under threat however, as African resistance to the racially based system rapidly escalated. This crisis was brought to a head by the continuing decline of the reserve economies. Full proletarianisation in South Africa, would threaten the migrant labour system upon which White profitability depended. This crisis coincided with rapid secondary industrialisation and a substantial growth of urban African populations, as well as growing trade union activity and rising African working class militancy. These developments were threatening not only the conditions for accumulation but White political hegemony itself.

The nationalist regime that came into power in 1948 offered a hard solution to this crisis. Instead of pursuing what appeared to be the inevitable liberalisation and deracialisation of South African society, the nationalists proceeded to freeze the existing segregationist framework into the institution of apartheid. Thus, apartheid was very much about maintaining migrant labour, and extending the economic and political benefits of cheap and controlled workers not only for the mines and farms but also for the now rapidly growing manufacturing sector.

In addition, the process of modernisation in White agriculture that had started in the 1920s and 1930s continued after World War II and into the 1950s and 1960s. What was seen as backward and uneconomic methods of farming were increasingly being pushed aside by a more aggressive and profit-oriented approach. There were growing numbers of tractors, harvesters and combines on farms, and the area of land under cultivation was expanding. With this process of modernisation however, the labour requirements of farmers began to change. The labour shortages of the 1930's and 1940s were now turning into labour surpluses. The large numbers of Africans that had been successfully tied to rural areas were now becoming increasingly superfluous.

The nationalists, having come to power on a strong rural vote, embarked on a process of systematically eliminating the few African tenants that remained in White farming districts and of transforming labour tenancy into wage labour. Farmers, who in the 1930s and early 1940s were desperate for unlimited supplies of labour, now began to view labour tenancy itself as economically backward. The consensus was that if agriculture was to modernise, labour tenancy had to be abolished. These calls by White agriculture were not ignored. The 1964 Bantu Laws Amendment Act, which repealed the 1932 Native Service Contract Act, and amended the tenancy provisions in the 1936 Land Act dealt the final blow to labour tenancy. Over the decades that followed labour tenancy was progressively eliminated. Evictions were carried out by farmers themselves or by officials of the Bantu Administration.

"We then heard that the six-month system had been abolished and we had to wok for the farmer all year round in order to continue living on our land. We were quite agreeable to this but said that our children would starve if we had to live in the low wages that we were getting on the farm for the whole 12 months. If the farmer would pay us more, we would gladly stay on the farm where we were happy. The farmer refused. The Bantu Administration Department told us if we were unwilling to work for the whole 12 months we would have to go to the location." - Dombi Khumalo, labour tenant.

Once a blanket ban on labour tenancy had been achieved, the government targeted the remaining African tenants on absentee landowner farms. These pools of labour were no longer needed by the agricultural sector, and the 1964 legislation resulted in the growing removal of these tenants from White farming areas. It is estimated that between 1960 and 1983 approximately 1.1 million people were removed from White rural areas to the reserves that were then re-constituted as ethnic 'homelands' by the apartheid regime.

The process of re-engineering the role and function of the reserves and the traditional African leadership was a central feature of apartheid. The Bantu Authorities Act (1951) ushered in a system that formalised the territorial separation of the Black majority from Whites in the countryside. The creation of separate 'Homelands' or 'Bantustans' for different 'ethnic' groups to be administered by a system of traditional authority based on a formal hierarchy of chiefs and headmen, left a legacy that the country is still struggling to overcome today. The concept of political control, that was located in pre-colonial African society, was now finally transformed into a key pillar of the government's apartheid apparatus. Chiefs and headmen had finally become "salaried officers in a White state" (Ross, R. (1993). Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, p.228.)

The Bantustan Self-Government Act (1959) took the country further along the apartheid regime's Bantustan schema and introduced the first stages of self-rule. Local administrative authorities were elevated to the level of semi-autonomous governments. This Act also transferred the burden of certain social welfare costs and unemployment responsibilities, as well as the task of political administration, to the Bantustans.

In response to the 1954 Tomlinson Commission report, which highlighted the state of decay in the reserves where poverty and landlessness was rife and agriculture had all but collapsed, Betterment or Closer Settlement Schemes were introduced in an attempt to arrest the situation, which was beginning to threaten the very basis of the system of cheap labour. The intention was to increase crop production and introduce land-use planning and animal husbandry. The Betterment Schemes did not however improve the situation in the Bantustans; instead it caused untold suffering and misery. Under the guise of 'betterment' stock ownership rights and land sizes were further reduced and people were once again forcibly removed.

In addition, the National Party tried to promote the economic development of the Bantustans. Each 'homeland' would have to become self-sufficient and build its own economy - this, despite the fact that the reserves had no access to natural resources, industries or basic infrastructure. In this way, White South Africa pushed all responsibility for millions of its citizens into a system that had no means to build or sustain itself.

From the outset, the essence of political power in the Bantustans was in the words of Govan Mbeki (1964) "a toy-telephone system", advisory boards that were given to Africans and in return for their co-option, chiefs were placed on the pay-role of the apartheid regime. In so doing, the apartheid regime legitimised the complete disenfranchisement of all oppressed people.

Resistance Intensifies

The rise of aggressive Afrikaner nationalism and the attempts to reshape and re-engineer rural villages and to co-opt the traditional leaders were fiercely resisted. There were massive explosions of violence against chiefs who collaborated with the apartheid state, and spontaneous revolts against further intrusion into rural African life.

The period also saw a convergence of rural resistance and the rising tide of struggle in urban cities and towns. The role that migrant workers played in the rural areas is illustrated in a number of rural struggles. The Pondoland uprising was dominated by migrants retrenched from the sugar plantations in Natal (1959-1960), and the Tembuland resistance was led by migrants relocated from the Western Cape. Similarly, the Witzie and Sekhukuneland resistance highlighted the levels of co-ordination between the migrant associations in the compounds and structures in the reserves. Migrant workers collected funds, appointed lawyers and provided input into these struggles.

Despite this urban-rural connection, however, these struggles did not cross the boundaries of the localities in which they were waged. They remained isolated from each other and while they indicated the depth of reaction to the repressive conditions in the countryside and increased the general tide of militancy, they were ultimately unsustainable. National campaigns increasingly focused on urban issues and a co-ordinated national rural movement that could galvanise the struggles of rural people and place the issue of land and agrarian reform on the centre-stage of the liberation struggle did not emerge.

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Protest Divestment and the End of Apartheid

On May 9, 1994, Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid activist, released from prison only four years prior, was democratically elected the president of South Africa. Mandela's historic presidency would never have been possible during the time of apartheid—the end of which was, in part, achieved through protest divestment.

Protest divestment is a form of dissent in which stockholders intentionally sell their assets from a corporation to enact social change. By selling off stocks, protesters hope to influence corporations against performing some aspect of their business.

In this case, those opposed to apartheid wanted to keep companies from doing business in South Africa. In this article, we will explore protest divestment in South Africa to show how the simple act of selling a stock can affect real social change.

Understanding Divestment

Anti-apartheid protests took hold in the 1960s, particularly on the campuses of American colleges and universities. Initially, protesters wanted to end apartheid, but there were not many ways to influence the South African government using the traditional forms of protest such as picketing or demonstrations.

Eventually, members of the college-based anti-apartheid movement thought of a more practical way to enact change by pressuring their universities to divest stocks of companies doing business in the country. Many students brought attention to their cause by building shanties on their own campuses to represent the living conditions many oppressed South Africans faced daily.

Schools use a certain percentage of their endowment funds as an investment tool, and many schools have quite a large endowment fund . For example, by 2021, more than 107 US schools had endowments of more than $1 billion, giving them an incredible amount of purchasing power.

Perhaps the most famous example of the university's importance in investing is David Swensen, the chief investment officer at Yale University, whose success in managing that school's money has brought him acclaim as one of the most successful money managers of his era.

It's easy to see the influence colleges and universities had on businesses operating in South Africa. While universities selling stocks of companies with business in South Africa may not have had a large impact on a firm's share price or market capitalization, they certainly were able to raise attention to corporate interests in South Africa, and no CEO in the world wants to suffer from bad public relations.

If enough corporations had stopped doing business in South Africa, its economy would have taken a turn for the worse, and that would have put the South African government in a major bind. Its choices became reforming its politics or risking complete and total economic isolation.

Complications and Concerns

Despite the myriad of political, racism, and economic problems in South Africa, the nation was still home to between 30 and 40 million people and had a plethora of natural resources (including producing most of the world's gold during the 1980s) making it an attractive marketplace.

At one point in the '80s, between one-half and one-third of the S&P 500 did business in South Africa, placing these companies among the best investments at the time. These were blue-chip stocks, steady earners that were key to the success of endowment funds.

When selling assets, universities have to pay the same fees and charges that any other investor faces. With huge amounts of money at stake—money used to continue and promote the operations of a school—it was understandably tough for college financial officers to sell those assets.

A valid argument was made that by putting pressure on companies to stop doing business in South Africa, the people protesters were trying to help would only be punished further. After all, corporations provide jobs and income, and in a country with high unemployment and low wages, any jobs help.

Further, many American-owned companies had policies in place, ensuring that South Africans of all races would work under fair employment conditions and receive equal pay. If these companies pulled out of the country, how could the poor and oppressed hope to improve their lives? 

Additionally, many decision-makers at colleges and universities felt that the purpose of a school was to educate students and not to take a stand on corporate responsibility or engage in political issues, even one as well-meaning as the abolishment of apartheid.

The Success of the Movement

While there were strong arguments against divestment , many students continued their protests. Eventually, college administrators saw it the students' way. The first school to agree to divest its portfolio of companies doing business in South Africa was Hampshire College. By 1988, a total of 155 colleges had at least partially divested.

While the roots of the divestment movement took hold in America's college campuses, other large entities also soon sold their stocks. By the end of the decade, 90 cities, 22 counties, and 26 states had taken some form of economic stance against the South African government. As a result, many public pension funds were required to sell South African-related assets. Divestment movements were gaining ground in other countries as well.

The college-based divestment efforts may or may not have played a role in immediately affecting the South African economy, but they did raise awareness about the problem of apartheid. After the divestment movement gained worldwide notoriety, U.S. Congress was moved to pass a series of economic sanctions against the South African government.

From 1985 to 1990, over 200 U.S. companies cut all ties with South Africa, resulting in a loss of $1 billion in direct American investment. South Africa was ravaged by capital flight as businesses, investors, and money left the country. The rand , South Africa's currency, was significantly devalued and inflation reached double digits. The economic situation, as well as the resistance efforts of those suffering under apartheid, meant South Africa's system had to come to an end.

First, the various apartheid codes that segregated the races were dropped. Then, Black people and other people of color gained the right to vote. In 1994, the country elected Nelson Mandela as its new president. The divestment movement was not the only reason why apartheid ended, but it was a major contributing factor.

Divestment Beyond South Africa

Since its success in ending South African apartheid, divestment has been used and suggested as a tool to effect change in other areas. A huge campaign was launched to have universities, investment groups, pension funds and various bodies of government divest any stocks that did business with Sudan, whose government is connected with brutal human rights violations in Darfur. Other groups like Harvard University and other colleges have waged divestment campaigns against the tobacco industry in the 1990s and most recently, have targeted Israel for divestment.

Currently, the socially responsible investing movement is calling on money managers to review their selection criteria and divest in companies that violate the ESG rules or other causes that their investors care about.

While these campaigns have had varying levels of success, it is certain that protest divestment has gained a foothold as a way for protesters to influence financial and economic situations to achieve their political goals.

Nelson Mandela Foundation. " Parliament Elected Mandela 20 Years Ago ."

Harvard University, Epicenter. " Student Protests and Lessons from the Anti-Apartheid Movement ."

National Center for Education Statistics. " Table 333.90. Endowment Funds of the 120 Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions with the Largest Endowments, by Rank Order: Fiscal Year 2021 ."

Yale Investments Office. "Investment Professionals: In Memoriam: David F. Swensen ."

The World Bank. " Population, Total - South Africa (1980 to 1991) ."

Barchart. " Gold Production by Country Over Time ."

Global Nonviolent Action Database. " Hampshire College Students Win Divestment from Apartheid South Africa, U.S., 1977 ." Select "Case Study Details."

American Committee on Africa. " Divestment Action on South Africa by US and Canadian Colleges and Universities ." Page 1.

Richard Knight. " Sanctions, Disinvestment, and U.S. Corporations in South Africa ."

The New York Times. " Sanctions Were Crucial to the Defeat of Apartheid ."

Ding, Ning and et al. " When Does a Stock Boycott Work? Evidence from a Clinical Study of the Sudan Divestment Campaign ." Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 163, September 2018, pp. 507–527.

The New York Times. " Harvard and CUNY Shedding Stocks in Tobacco ."

Vox. " What Does Divesting From Israel Really Mean? "

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Former chief negotiator on the end of 46 years of apartheid in South Africa

While speaking at a Stanford Law School (SLS) event, the South African government’s lead negotiator on the settlement to end the country’s 46 years of apartheid emphasized the importance of establishing trust and employing inclusive negotiation tactics to resolve conflicts peacefully.

Roelf Meyer, who also served as the country’s former Minister of Defense, revealed the applicability of insights from the South African peace process to other intractable conflicts in a Monday discussion moderated by Allen Weiner J.D. ’89, senior law lecturer and director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN).

From 1948 to 1994, South Africa was controlled by a white supremacist regime that enforced a system of institutionalized racial segregation known as “apartheid,” Afrikaans for “separateness.” 

Prior to South Africa’s transition to majority democratic rule, Meyer served as Minister of Constitutional Affairs in the cabinet of former President F.W. de Klerk. After negotiating an end to apartheid with Cyril Ramaphosa, former Chief Negotiator for the African National Congress (ANC) and current president of South Africa, Meyer continued in his role as Minister of Constitutional Affairs in the cabinet of former President Nelson Mandela. 

Now a retired politician, Meyer has served as an advisor in peace processes for conflicts in other regions across the globe, including Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Rwanda, Kosovo, Sudan, South Sudan and Myanmar. “[Conflict resolution] starts with talks about talks, then talks, then dialogue, and then negotiations,” he said, referencing common patterns in peace negotiations across borders. 

“At SCIC, we often ask [conflicting] parties the question, are you able to envision a mutually bearable future?” Weiner said. “It doesn’t always involve a shared vision, but the idea is, if ‘you get what you want’ and ‘I get what I want,’ that would be tolerable.” 

By the late 1980s, Meyer had aligned with Mandela and other ANC leaders, despite maintaining his affiliation with the National Party — the party responsible for imposing apartheid rule. The negotiations to dismantle apartheid evolved from disagreement between the ANC, which initially sought an immediate transfer of power and the implementation of a new constitution, and the National Party. 

Meyer said that establishing a fundamental level of respect and mutual understanding with Ramaphosa played an integral role in South Africa’s transformation from apartheid to democracy. “We developed, first of all, a kind of curiosity about each other. I wanted to know more about him, and I guess he wanted to know more about me,” he said. “That level of trust that existed between us as individuals was extremely powerful.” 

In addition, Meyer revealed that relying on internal negotiations, rather than bringing in external institutions like the United Nations, was crucial in the South African peace process. Meyer added that inclusivity was a defining feature of the peace negotiations that brought together over twenty political parties. “You negotiate with your enemies, and not with your friends,” Meyer said , in reference to one of Mandela’s famous statements. 

The discussion later turned toward the role of history in conflict resolution and the tension between accountability and reconciliation in post-conflict societies.

Meyer underscored the importance of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a government-led initiative to redress human rights violations committed during the apartheid era, in developing new amnesty provisions and an interim constitution. The constitution provided a “historic bridge” between South Africa’s legacy of inequality and democratic aspirations during the country’s first non-racial general election. 

“When I focus on conflict resolution, my view is that it is hard enough to resolve the future, so let’s not have the additional challenge of trying to resolve the past, because that’s contentious,” Weiner said. “Yet South Africa is extremely prominent for having established the TRC process as part of the transition.” 

Meyer attributed the inequality to ongoing discrimination in the implementation of Black Economic Development, a policy prescribed in the country’s constitution to broaden economic opportunity for Black citizens.

“Perhaps we should have asked the question, ‘How are we going to implement all these good intentions in the constitution?’” Meyer said, emphasizing the need to focus on profit-sharing rather than equity to establish enduring equality. 

Ultimately, Meyer said, fostering trust and reconciliation across social and racial divisions is vital in effective conflict resolution. Meyer commended Mandela’s leadership in building such trust.

Mandela’s pioneering example of committed leadership is “absent” from many insurmountable conflicts across the world today, Meyer said. “We succeeded in involving a level of understanding and tradition of trust between a wide group of persuasions, Black and White across the nation, as a result of the leadership of President Mandela… [his precedent demonstrates] the process is equally important to the [resolution of] conflict.” 

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