Apartheid in South Africa

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Apartheid in South Africa

• Tracing the history of South Africa
• What events stick out as the most important?
• What comparisons can you make to other
  events/people in history?

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• As you view the stations, consider the following
• Which station would make the best movie?
• Which station would make the best news headline?
• What is the most powerful image?
• What conclusions might you draw about how South
  Africa has changed?

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Station1
A black South African shows his passbook issued
by the government. Blacks were required to carry
passes that determined where they could live and
work.
Adolescents in Transkei. Their faces are painted
white and they are swathed in blankets as part of
puberty rights. Transkei was one of the ten
so-called black "homelands" created around the
country since 1913. The United Nations condemned
the creation of such areas as a means of
promoting the inhumane policies of apartheid.
Houses in Soweto, a black township.
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Station 2
Statement by the National Party of South Africa,
March 29, 1948 There are two sections of thought
in South Africa in regard to the policy affecting
the non-European community. On the one hand there
is the policy of equality, which advocates equal
rights. On the other hand there is the policy
of separation (apartheid) which has grown from
the experience of established European population
of the country, and which is based on the
Christian principles of Justice and
reasonableness. Its aim is the maintenance and
protection of the European population of the
country as a pure White race. Either we must
follow the course of equality, which must
eventually mean national suicide for the White
race, or we must take the course of separation
(apartheid) through which the character and the
future of every race will be protected and
safeguarded with full opportunities for
development and self-maintenance in their own
ideas.
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Station 3

• Statement by the National Party of South Africa,
  March 29, 1948 Continued
• The party believes in a definite policy of
  separation (apartheid) between the White races
  and the non-White racial groups.
• All marriages between Europeans and non-Europeans
  will be prohibited.
• The State will exercise complete supervision over
  the molding of the youth.
• The Coloured community takes a middle position
  between the European and the Natives. A policy of
  separation (apartheid) between the Europeans and
  Coloureds and between Natives and Coloureds will
  be applied in the social, residential, industrial
  and political spheres.
• The Coloured community will be represented in the
  Senate by a European representative to be
  appointed by the Government

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Station 4
Children of Soweto, a Black township some ten
miles away from Johannesburg, in 1982. The Zulu
world "Amandla" scrawled on the wall means
"Power". This has been adopted as a rallying call
in the struggle for Black rights.
Segregated public facilities in Johannesburg,
1985.
Station 4

• UN Resolution 1598 On Race Conflict in South
  Africa, 1961
• The General Assembly,
• The Government of South Africa has failed to
  revise its racial policies. Therefore, the UN
• Requests all States to consider taking action to
  bring about the abandonment of these policies
• Affirms that the racial policies being pursued by
  the Government of South Africa are a flagrant
  violation of the Charter of the United Nations
  and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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Station 5
Mourners at a funeral ceremony for those who were
killed by the South African police in the 1985
International Day for the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination. The day commemorates the
anniversary of the March 21, 1960 Sharpeville
massacre.
Sharpeville Massacre 69 people killed (8 women,
10 children)
"the Native mentality does not allow them to
gather for a peaceful demonstration. For them to
gather means violence."
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Station 6
"Nothing, not even the most sophisticated weapon,
not even the most brutally efficient policy, no,
nothing will stop people once they are determined
to achieve their freedom and their right to
humanness. " -Desmond Tutu
Bishop Desmond Tutu (1931-) was the first Black
Archbishop of Capetown, the head of the Anglican
Church in South Africa. Tutu used this position
to speak out against Apartheid. In 1984 he was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Shortly afterwards
he gave following speech, attacking South
Africa's racial policies, to the United Nations
Security Council. there is little freedom in
this land of plenty. So the unrest is
continuing, in a kind of war of attrition. And
the root cause is apartheid -- a vicious, immoral
and totally evil, and unchristian system. White
South Africans are not demons they are ordinary
human beings, scared human beings, many of them
who would not be, if they were outnumbered five
to one? I wish to appeal to my white fellow
South Africans to share in building a new
society, for blacks are not intent on driving
whites into the sea but on claiming only their
rightful place in the sun in the land of their
birth. We deplore all forms of violence, the
violence of an oppressive and unjust society and
the violence of those seeking to overthrow that
society, for we believe that violence is not the
answer to the crisis of our land.
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Station 7

• Umkhonto We Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") was
  founded partly in response to the notorious
  Sharpeville Massacre of March 1960. Its leader,
  Nelson Mandela, was to be arrested shortly after
  this manifesto was published, eventually being
  sentenced to life in prison, though he was
  released in 1990, with the end of apartheid.
• On 16th December, 1961, Umkhonto We Sizwe, the
  military wing of the ANC, made it known that we,
  the oppressed people of South Africa, would fight
  for our rights. We made this known not only with
  words. Dynamite blasts announced it.
• The truth is very different from what the
  newspapers have reported. Our men are armed and
  trained freedom-fighters, not "terrorists." The
  fighting will go on in Rhodesia and South Africa.
  
• Why we fight
• The white oppressors have stolen our land. They
  have destroyed our families.
• We burrow into the belly of the earth to dig out
  gold, diamonds, coal, uranium. The white
  oppressors and foreign investors grab all this
  wealth.
• In the factories, on the farms, on the railways,
  wherever you go, the hard, dirty, dangerous,
  badly paid jobs are ours. The best jobs are for
  whites only.
• Our homes are hovels those of the whites are
  luxury mansions, flats and farmsteads.
• There are not enough schools for our children
  the standard of education is low, and we have to
  pay for it. But the government uses our taxes and
  the wealth we create to provide free education
  for white children.
• We have tried every way to reason with the white
  supremacists. We also organized mass
  demonstrations, pass-burnings, peaceful
  stay-at-homes.
• Strikers and demonstrators were shot in cold
  blood. Our organization, the African National
  Congress, was outlawed. Our meetings, journals
  and leaflets were prohibited.
• What we fight for
• We are fighting for democracy--majority rule--the
  right of the Africans to rule Africa. We are
  fighting for a South Africa in which there will
  be peace and harmony and equal rights for all
  people.

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Station 8
Umbulwana, Natal in 1982. Umbulwana was called
"a black spot" because it is in a "white" area.
It was eventually demolished and the inhabitants
forced to move to identically numbered houses in
"resettlement" villages in their designated
"homelands." Millions of black South Africans
were forcibly "resettled" in this way.
A girl looking through a window of her shack,
1978.
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Black boys looking in on a game of soccer at an
all-white school in Johannesburg. Government
spending, about 10 times more for white children
than for black, clearly revealed the gross
inequality designed to perpetuate white economic
and political power. Ill-trained teachers,
overcrowded classrooms, inadequate recreational
facilities were normal for black children, if in
fact they had any schooling available at all.
A passbook that the South African blacks were
required to carry.
Station 9
South African police at Alexandra Township in
1985.
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Station 10
A voter casts her ballot in a polling station in
April 1994.
Nelson Mandela, President of the African National
Congress (ANC), casting the ballot in his
country's first all-race elections, in April
1994, South Africa.
South Africans lining up to vote in the 1994
election the first time indigenous Africans
could vote.
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Station 11
New York Times 16 April 2003 South Africa Will
Pay 3,900 to Apartheid Victims
Families President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa
said today that his government would pay
reparations totaling 85 million to more than
19,000 victims of apartheid crimes who testified
about their suffering before the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission.