Apartheid In South Africa

Do you ever think about what happened years ago in South Africa? Do you ever imagine that people were treated unfairly? This really happened, that hard time in South Africa is called Apartheid. Apartheid is an official policy of a racial segregation. It strictly separated people by color. This system started in 1948 by the National Party Government in South Africa. However, they considered that it ended in 1994 because it was when Nelson Mandela became that first black president. Apartheid was built on earlier laws but made segregation more rigid. All Government action and the response were decided according to the policy of apartheid. Labour was in evidence during this period. Under Apartheid, Africans who were non-white would be forced to

However, racial discrimination and white dominance already happened in South Africa before Apartheid began. The Great Depression and World War 2 raised the economic trouble to South Africa. Because of this, the government was convince to force its policies of racial segregation. In 1948, the National Party won the general election with “apartheid,” that really means “separateness”. Their purpose was to separate not only white people from non-white one, however, also separate non-whites from each other, and to divide black South Africans along tribal groups so it could decrease their political power. Legislation was classified for citizens under four racial groups: "Black", "White", "Coloured", and Ïndian". Over several years, millions of non-white Africans had their houses removed, and were forced to go to isolated neighbourhoods. Non-whites political representatives was prohibited in 1970. During this time, black Africans were split from their citizenship. The government restricted education, medical care, beaches, and other public services, that before, it was available for everyone. They also gave services to black people that were inferior from white people. Apartheid started to be a problem for all non-white

By the 1980's resistance to Apartheid was one its peak. Many people feared Apartheid was leading to a Civil War in South Africa. With that, the National Party had to take a different route and make a drastic change. In 1990 intense negotiations began. In May 4, 1990 the African National Congress and the government agreed on political negotiations to end the violence. They started to remove some laws and calm things down. Later there was another meeting and the National Party insisted in on special smaller rights to the whites. Later an agreement was reached, to open elections. The National Party dropped the demands for the whites to have priority and agreed to share the power. On April 27 and 28, 1994 elections were held peacefully and millions of black South Africans were allowed to vote for the first time. The African National Congress won with most of the votes and that was when Apartheid ended and South Africa became a