Apartheid
Meaning & definition apartheid
Scheme of racial separation in South Africa
The term apartheid was officially used for the first time in the early forties of the 20th century. The actual apartheid began already after the arrival of Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century, when a distinction was made between white and black in terms of housing, property of land, marriages and the like. After the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the whites in power sought a complete separation of the four populations: blacks, black people, white people and Indians. The rulers justified this system by proposing it as a separate development for the benefit of the different populations, based on the premise that each race should have the opportunity to develop its qualities in its own environment.
Initially, the separation was limited to what was called small apartheid. This meant a separation of race in public life: separate buses, separate schools, separate entrances to buildings, separate parks, separate beaches and so on. Under Prime Minister Daniel François Malan (1948-54) apartheid was enshrined in laws. Officially, it was recorded to which race they belonged; marriages between whites and blacks were forbidden; blacks were not allowed to work wherever they wanted, while most of the population was not represented in parliament. Apartheid became a system of compulsion that oppressed non-whites and held powerless. Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd worked out apartheid policy as Minister for Bantu Affairs; under his responsibility pass laws were enacted and home country policy came off the ground. Home country policy was also called the great apartheid. As a result of the Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959, ten homelands or Bantu were established for the various black peoples. They were only allowed to leave their territories to work in the white part of South Africa. In the homelands, which accounted for only thirteen percent of the territory, lived more than 70% of the population, which had a great economic backlog on the whites.
