From 1963-66 inclusive, my closest friends outside school were South African teens of my own age. Their brave parents had made the decision to leave the country of their birth, a beautiful land filled with safari holidays, national parks, exotic animals and flowers, beaches and amazing cities. It must have been a tough decision since my friends’ parents had no siblings or friends in Australia, no promised jobs and they were not allowed to bring their savings with them. But as apartheid in South Africa became worse, a few anti-apartheid citizens felt they could not stay in their beloved homeland any longer.
Sharpeville and Johnnesburg, South Africa
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The Hertzog Government achieved a major goal in 1931 when the British Parliament passed the Westminster Statute, which removed the last remainders of British legal authority over South Africa. Racial segregation, sanctioned by law, was widely practised there before, but the National Party gained office in 1948 and extended the policy, giving it a formal name. Apartheid (i.e apartness in Afrikaans) was a policy that governed relations between the nation’s White minority and non-White majority; it sanctioned racial segregation, and political & economic discrimination, against non-Whites. The implementation of apartheid was made possible by the Population Registration Act of 1950, which classified all South Africans as Bantu (Blacks), Coloured (mixed race) or White. Later a fourth category was added: Asian (Indian and Pakistani).
The Group Areas Act of 1950 established urban residential and business sections for each race, and members of other races were barred from living, operating businesses or owning land there. In practice this Act completed a process that had begun with similar Land Acts adopted much earlier; the end result was to set aside 80+% of South Africa’s land for the White minority. To help enforce the segregation of the races and limit Blacks from going into White areas, the government strengthened the existing Pass Laws that required non-Whites to carry documents authorising their presence in restricted areas. Other laws forbade most social contacts between the races, authorised segregated public facilities, established separate educational standards, restricted jobs according to race, limited non-White labour unions, and denied non-White participation in government.
Under the Bantu Authorities Act 1951 the government re-created tribal organisations for Black Africans, and the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 created 10 Bantustans i.e Black homelands. Later on the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act made every Black South African, irrespective of actual residence, a citizen of one of the Bantustans, thereby excluding Blacks from the South African body politic. 4 of the Bantustans were granted independence as republics, and the remaining had varying degrees of self-government; but all remained politically and economically dependent on South Africa.
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The mass burials that followed the Sharpeville Massacre
Reports helped focus international criticism on the nation’s apartheid policy. South Africa was forced to withdraw from the British Commonwealth in 1961 when it became clear that other British countries found apartheid abhorrent. In response to the resulting international economic sanctions, South Africa's government abolished the Pass Laws in 1986, although Blacks were still prohibited from living in some White areas and the police won broad emergency powers.
A new constitution enfranchising Blacks and other racial groups was not adopted until 1993 and took effect in 1994. All-race national elections in 1994 produced a coalition government with a Black majority led by anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela, the country’s first Black president. Yet even after apartheid formally ended, racism continued.
How appropriate that following the dismantling of apartheid, President Nelson Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site for signing the country’s new constitution into law in 1996.
Conclusion 3.5+ million Black South Africans had forced to live on arbitrary reservations called Bantustans, depriving them of political power and proper incomes. Yet amongst the many oppressive conditions in the nation, it was the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 that horrified anti-apartheid supporters and caused them to go into exile.
Even at the end of apartheid in the early 1990s, White South Africans (10% of the 58 million citizens) owned c90% of South Africa's land as a result of all the Land Acts. By 2018 there were c190,000 South Africans ex-pats living in Australia, but that is a story for another time.
What was the mid C20th history of apartheid in South Africa? I recommend and thank Britannica, Human Rights Canada and The Conversation.
The Hertzog Government achieved a major goal in 1931 when the British Parliament passed the Westminster Statute, which removed the last remainders of British legal authority over South Africa. Racial segregation, sanctioned by law, was widely practised there before, but the National Party gained office in 1948 and extended the policy, giving it a formal name. Apartheid (i.e apartness in Afrikaans) was a policy that governed relations between the nation’s White minority and non-White majority; it sanctioned racial segregation, and political & economic discrimination, against non-Whites. The implementation of apartheid was made possible by the Population Registration Act of 1950, which classified all South Africans as Bantu (Blacks), Coloured (mixed race) or White. Later a fourth category was added: Asian (Indian and Pakistani).
The Group Areas Act of 1950 established urban residential and business sections for each race, and members of other races were barred from living, operating businesses or owning land there. In practice this Act completed a process that had begun with similar Land Acts adopted much earlier; the end result was to set aside 80+% of South Africa’s land for the White minority. To help enforce the segregation of the races and limit Blacks from going into White areas, the government strengthened the existing Pass Laws that required non-Whites to carry documents authorising their presence in restricted areas. Other laws forbade most social contacts between the races, authorised segregated public facilities, established separate educational standards, restricted jobs according to race, limited non-White labour unions, and denied non-White participation in government.
Under the Bantu Authorities Act 1951 the government re-created tribal organisations for Black Africans, and the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 created 10 Bantustans i.e Black homelands. Later on the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act made every Black South African, irrespective of actual residence, a citizen of one of the Bantustans, thereby excluding Blacks from the South African body politic. 4 of the Bantustans were granted independence as republics, and the remaining had varying degrees of self-government; but all remained politically and economically dependent on South Africa.
Bullets in the back and clubs on the head continued
at the Sharpeville anti-apartheid demonstration, 1960
Getty Images
The wounded lay on the ground after the dead bodies had been removed
in Sharpeville, 1960.
Britannica
The Pan-Africanist Congress/PAC created in 1959. In Mar 1960, the PAC organised a countrywide demonstration regarding the abolition of South Africa’s Pass Laws. Many thousands of Blacks gathered near a police station at Sharpeville, c50 km south of Johannesburg, instructed to surrender their Passes and to invite arrest. After the demonstrations began, the police violently opened fire with sub-machine guns and sten guns ; c69 Blacks were killed and 180+ wounded, including 50 women and children. A state of emergency was declared in South Africa, 11,000+ people were detained, and the PAC and ANC were outlawed.
msn news
Reports helped focus international criticism on the nation’s apartheid policy. South Africa was forced to withdraw from the British Commonwealth in 1961 when it became clear that other British countries found apartheid abhorrent. In response to the resulting international economic sanctions, South Africa's government abolished the Pass Laws in 1986, although Blacks were still prohibited from living in some White areas and the police won broad emergency powers.
A new constitution enfranchising Blacks and other racial groups was not adopted until 1993 and took effect in 1994. All-race national elections in 1994 produced a coalition government with a Black majority led by anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela, the country’s first Black president. Yet even after apartheid formally ended, racism continued.
How appropriate that following the dismantling of apartheid, President Nelson Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site for signing the country’s new constitution into law in 1996.
Conclusion 3.5+ million Black South Africans had forced to live on arbitrary reservations called Bantustans, depriving them of political power and proper incomes. Yet amongst the many oppressive conditions in the nation, it was the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 that horrified anti-apartheid supporters and caused them to go into exile.
Even at the end of apartheid in the early 1990s, White South Africans (10% of the 58 million citizens) owned c90% of South Africa's land as a result of all the Land Acts. By 2018 there were c190,000 South Africans ex-pats living in Australia, but that is a story for another time.