Rights and Protest: South Africa Apartheid

Group Areas Act (1950)

Removing non-whites from inner city areas, hence these were "white- only" areas

Pass Laws Act (1952)

Booklets officially known as reference book that Blacks were required to carry at all times. It contained the person employment record, tax payments, encounters with the police, race classification

Population Registration Act (1950)

required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and registered in accordance with his or her racial characteristics as part of the system of apartheid.

Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949)

Made it illegal for people of different races to marry

Immorality Act (1950)

Prohibited all sexual relations between whites & non-whites.

Non-whites were given harsher sentences than whites.

Most couples found guilty were sent to prison!

Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953)

Strict segregation by race of all public amenities.

Natives resseltment and group areas development Acts

It armed the government with bureaucratic power that allowed the forced urban ressettlement of Africans.

Natives Laws Amendment Act (1952)

Allowed blacks to still live in a city only if they had been borned and employed for more than 15 years or been continous employed

Bantu Education Act (1953)

-Schools were segregated, the government controled the education

-Non-white schools had less resources than white schools and were in worse conditions

Students were taught about tribal identity and culture

Bantu Authorities Act 1951

An act in South Africa which created homelands for the nonwhites to live in.

Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act 1959

- Classified black people into eight ethnic groups.

- Each group had a Commissioner-General to govern in the Batustants

-Apartheid authorities never thought of these leaders as equals

-South Africa received cheap labor from the bantustans who had no employments rights

Defiance Campaign 1952

Designed to apply pressure on the government and force it into repealing apartheid legislation and negotiating with the ANC

Methods of Defiance Campaign

-Civil disobedience: purposelly breaking the law in public

- Aiming for a moral victory and highlight apartheid around the world

-overwhelm public authorities: police, courts, prisons

-involve other groups: coloured and indians

Grand Apartheid

The second stage of the Apartheid era, from 1960s to 1970s, its main goal was the complete territorial segregation of South Africa.

Petty Apartheid

The first stage of the Apartheid era from 1948 - 1959; it's main purpose was. through a series of laws and actions, to ensure the complete domination of the white ethnic minority over the blacks

Why the defiance campaign in 1952?

-Needed responde for the quick advance of the apartheid legislation

-Government rejected negotation with ANC

-ANC risked to lose crediability

-Anniversary of the first white establishment in South Africa

Congress of the People (COP) 1955

organization that was created to make a united front against apartheid

draft freedom charter

expand memeberships and broaden social base

working with other parties

Freedom Charter 1955

Announced at a mass meeting of the COP at a football field in Kliptown (Soweto, Johannesburg) in 1955

Documents with political goals of the congress movement as well as the democratic aspirations

Bus Boycotts

major form of protest

causes of the boycott are usually economic and occur as a consequence of bus companies

Limitation of bus Boycott

not initiated by liberation movements

hard to organize

depends on bus companies

Alexandra Bus Boycott (1957)

Blacks from the Alexandra suburb of Johannesburg refused to pay the 25% increase in bus fares and instead chose to walk or cycle to work each day.

Ultimately the government backed down

the white community and white media supported the boycott.

lasted 12 weeks

Sharpeville Massacre (1960)

demostrators outside a police station demontrating against pass law, were shooted. 69 killed

Consequences of Shaperville Massacre

state of emergency declared

thousand of ANC and PAC leaders arrested

ANC went underground

International attention

Rivonia Trial

Trial that took place in South Africa between 1963 and 1964 in which leaders of the ANC were tried. This trial sent Nelson Mandela to prison.

Trials were politized and an international campaign against the trials was formed

African National Congress (ANC)

Dominant force in the African nationalist opposition to the apartheid system.

Funded in 1912

Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK)

Armed wing of the African National Congress established in 1961

"fear of the nation"

MK operations

-sabotage phase(first phase):destroying high-value installations

-guerrillas campaigns(second phase): mass political agitation and strike action in the cities

second phase was never reached

Nelson Mandela

ANC leader imprisoned by Afrikaner regime; released in 1990 and elected as president of South Africa in 1994.

created a young wing with Sisulu and Lambede

Albert Luthili

general president of ANC

created defiance campaign