The Rise and Fall of Apartheid - Essay Example

This is a phenomenon that had its roots in the early 1650s, a time when white settlers entered the country and started to dominate in the various sectors of the economy and governance. However, it is not until 1948 that the apartheid policy became the subject and slogan for the National Party, which vowed to protect the whites from being dominated by the non-whites in all aspects of life. It is important to note that 1948 was an election year whereby two major parties were competing; i.e. the National Party and the United Party (Worger, 2004).

The United Party on one hand had a soft stand on apartheid as it tended to lean towards integration of all communities and races, which was believed to be unavoidable. To the majority of whites, this meant that all South Africans would therefore enjoy equal rights under the leadership of the party and there were fears among the whites that the nonwhites would increase competition in the job market especially if they were allowed to migrate to the urban centers, which would have also meant that the cost of labor in the industries would have gone up as the whites utilized cheap labor from the nonwhites. The National party on the other hand utilized this fear and came up with a pro-apartheid policy which it vowed to establish once it was elected into power and which saw it winning the elections and therefore producing the first prime minister under the apartheid regime (Thompson, 2001).

The events that followed can only be termed the worst historical injustices in the history of South Africa. To begin with, the population registration act of 1950 laid the foundation for racial discrimination as it categorized citizens into 3 major races i.e. whites, blacks, and colored (Worger, 2004). In this context, settlements were set for each race to prevent interaction between the various races. Thereafter, it became a crime for a person for example a black to visit social places in areas designated for whites and vice versa. This extended to all other sectors of the economy such as education whereby every race had its schools, with the whites being accorded high-quality education as opposed to other races, which were considered inferior.

The education system set for the blacks, for example, was geared towards them gaining skills sufficient enough only to enable them to provide labor to the industries. The whites settled on approximately 80% of the land thereby limiting the indigenous blacks to 20% of the land even though these people were denied the right to participate in national politics, where they would have defended their basic rights (Worger, 2004). Any African leader who dared criticize the system was arrested and detained without trial, with Nelson Mandela being an example having been put into detention for 27 years. Dissenting voices were also met with brutal violence notable in the infamous Soweto uprisings of 1976 whereby black students protested the introduction of English and Afrikaans as languages of instruction, a protest that left approximately 176 people dead (Thompson, 2001).

For example, PAC members went on the streets to protest against the carrying of passbooks but they encountered brute force from the police resulting in the death of approximately 69 people in what was termed the Sharpeville massacre. It was not until the period between 1990 and 1993 that the apartheid policy lost to democracy culminating in a democratic election in 1994 which saw Nelson Mandela rise to the presidency (Worger, 2004). Read More