Rights and Protest: SA Apartheid - Nature of Discrimination

Social Darwinism

* Survival of fittest → negative traits = racial origins
* “Vices are generational” 
* Certain races need to be controlled/in power


* Trying to sciencify racism → Nazis did this too with the Jews
* Calvinism: “God created different races, wanted to keep them separate” 
* Apartheid follows rule of God, can’t go wrong with God
* “Chosen” ones are Afrikaners (the whites)

Grand Apartheid

* Large-scale separation of homelands and communities across the nation


* Ideologically sophisticated (late 1950s) Verwoerd


* Less ‘obvious’ racism → grand, wider strategy 
* Aim for complete segregation and higher ambitions 
* Both groups have their own jurisdiction → allowed to achieve “full independence” 
* Achieve and convince people of Apartheid’s legitimacy

Petty Apartheid

* Smaller scale
* More nitpicky legislation
* Specific and fussy → affect all aspects of life in SA


* Subjugation of the black minority → economic and political 
* Eg. segregation of public facilities (transport, parks, schools etc.) 
* Firm manner in how government dealt with opposition 
* More early apartheid → Malan

Impact of Apartheid on Individuals

* Comparison to US → not separate but unequal, it’s separate AND unequal
* No pretence of fair treatment
* Blacks in white people world = need separation of worlds
* Blacks go to whites so they need to abide by their rules
* Separate amenities = don’t need to be equal

Bantu Education Act (1953)

* Government approved inequality in education
* Education system run by Ministry of Native Affairs rather than teachers
* Students learn how to do anything just for work
* No cultural education
* Goal: good and compliant workers
* Justification: future workers learning their place

Sophiatown Removals (1955)

* Black residents evicted from Sophiatown → lively, multicultural suburb on the edges of Johannesburg 


* Existence of Sophiatown was defiance of Apartheid messages → keeping different races 
* Multicultural + free nature was a threat to the government 
* Policemen armed with rifles and guns, residents moved with a few days → forced out of homes, police had families move goods onto trucks
* Rehoused in a sterile estate called Meadowlands
* Sophiatown bulldozed and turned into whites only area called Triomph
* First stage of policy known as “separate development” 

Bantu Self-Government Act (1959)

* Reserves created in 1913 Land Act would become 10 separate “homelands” or Bantustans 
* Each based on African language spoken in area
* Every African in SA would become a ‘citizen’ of one of the homelands 


* Dividing Africans into ten different cultural, political + ethnic groups = Nationalist government can claim there’s African majority in SA
* Highlighting ethnic identities of Africans = create divisions between them 
* Prevent growth of united African nationalism that could threaten the apartheid state