Apartheid

Origins and installation of apartheid

If apartheid were installation starting from 1948, the Racial segregation in South Africa existed since nearly three centuries and had been established in a particular context with the complex history of this country.

Apartheid is the product of the History, the myths and the singularities of South Africa. This singularity is marked by the fact that former colonists took stock in this part of Africa as of the 17th century, challenged very early their European roots (Dutch be, German be and French be) and asserted their africanity. Their expression was carried out in particular in opposition to the Métropole colonial Dutchwoman but also compared to the British colonists made at the 19th century and attaches with their motherland. It leads finally to a Nationalisme afrikaner exacerbated by the Religion, the suffering and the Guerre against the British Impérialisme and whose policy of apartheid will be only one of the most notorious demonstrations.

Apartheid perhaps however not to be regarded as a faded form of the primitive Calvinism, neither a late bastion of the Colonialism nor even less one tropical alternative of the Fascism or European Nazism. Its ideology takes well root at the same time in the Théologie and the doctrines of justification of the Colonisation. It is by the doctrines calvinist of the Prédestination according to which the man is predestined by God and created elites to direct the world and not elected to obey the first that the segregationist concepts were initially endorsed by the preachers of the Dutch reformed church. The Boer S, isolated in the veld, had been thus easily assimilated to the elected people and good number of them believed until the end of the years of apartheid, that God had given them South Africa as it had given the country of Canaan to the Hebrew , the blacks being compared to Cananéens. The victory of the national party in 1948 devoted that of the people Afrikaans vis-a-vis acculturation Anglophone. The topic scour is not more consequently the defense of the identity Afrikaans but that of the white people of South Africa (2,5 million people in 1950, 21% of the total population) threatened by the power of African demography (8 million people in 1950 is 67% of the total population).

It is at the same time by Idéalisme, interest and Sécurité that Afrikaners work out and maintain also a long time the system of apartheid, which according to them, is the only means to enable them to not only survive as a distinct Ethnicity but also to preserve their interests of class within the white group. Apartheid is thus presented like an legal arsenal intended to ensure the survival of the people afrikaner like particular ethnos group but also like a " instrument of justice and equality which must allow each people which forms the South-African company to achieve his destiny and to open out as a nation distincte". Thus, much of nationalists afrikaners think sincerely that apartheid will open careers and will leave their chances to the blacks, chances that they could not have seized if they had been obliged to enter in competition with the white within an integrated company. However, at any time the proper aspirations of the black people of South Africa are not taken into account. Apartheid their is imposed in the purest tradition of the Baasskap. As from the Seventies, Afrikaners do not have any more the fear Pathologique of losing their identity which continues besides through the South-African State, a State militarily strong and economically powerful. Discrimination and the Racial segregation are not justified any more in ideological terms but in economic and political terms: the survival of the Capitalism and the fight against the Communism. Apartheid ends up representing the expression of desires, anguishes and complexes of a white population, fixed on a vision of the history which did not have any more course elsewhere since the end of the Second world war.

South-African context

South Africa is a Territoire characterized by large a Diversité Ethnique and Culture lle, inherited a complex past.

Before the arrival of Europeans, the African people which live in Southern Africa are varied by their physics, them Langue and their lifestyle. One distinguishes mainly the Bantou S, the Khoïkhoï S and the Bushmen.

At the 17th century, the Dutch found a colony in the Cape populated gradually immigrants coming from the United Provinces, of France, the German States and Scandinavia.

The descendants of these first colonists are the Boer S (which means “farm” or “stockbreeder”), then called Afrikaner S to indicate the whole of the white community of language Afrikaans and religion calvinist. They form the white independent group of South Africa and live agriculture or breeding.

For the period Dutchwoman, the colony imports thousands of slaves coming from Madagascar and Indonesia. The Coloureds result from the wise Métis between the various groups of population.

It is at the end of the 18th century that the English start to colonize South Africa: between 1815 and 1914, close to: 900000 British settle in South Africa. In 1814, the colony of the Cape passes definitively under the control of the the United Kingdom and English becomes an official language in 1822. Slavery is abolished in 1833: at this point in time the Grand Trek, the emigration of thousands of Boers begins towards the interior of the grounds.

After the discovery of the Diamond S and Gold in second half of the 19th century, European and African immigration increases. Tens of Indian workmen and Chinese are encouraged to come to work in the mines and agriculture. Two thirds of the Indians remain in South Africa after the end of their contract.

The construction of nationalism afrikaner

See also: Afrikaner (people)

Apartheid draws its ideological origins in the identity movement afrikaner. This one draws its roots of the Colonisation started in 1652 with Jan van Riebeeck before developing gradually at the 19th century and leading to the installation of apartheid in the middle of the 20th century.

The construction of a homogeneous group afrikaner rested overall on the language Afrikaans and the Calvinisme, from which the doctrines distinguished a Peuple elected and the others. The designation of Afrikaners as elected people constituted the central Paradigme of the South-African history of Afrikaners. However, these two unifying cultural factors which distinguished them from the other communities of the country were however not sufficient to erase the abyssal differences between the farmers of Transvaal and the business men afrikaners of the Cape. One needed a common screen of last to link them towards the same destiny. Thus, the history of Afrikaners continuously referred to a representation quasi-nun, using the biblical comparisons between the oppression of the Juif S in the Old will and the Exode of Afrikaners of the Cape in 1835. The Grand Trek thus became the historical root of the people afrikaner, the event which gave him its heart , the cradle of the nation .

The identity movement afrikaner will be consolidated by others Historien S like George McCall Theal, a native British of the Canada. Influenced by the social Darwinism, Theal exaltait colonialism like the triumph of progress on the less advanced races. It is thus one of the first historians to have examined South Africa like a nation and not like a heterogeneous whole of distinct colonies. It also goes idealized the epopee of Large Trek by stressing the hand of God.

The Nationalisme afrikaner is built initially against the Domination and the Oppression Britannique when, in 1815, the Great Britain definitively replaces the supervision Dutch E on the Colonie of the Cape and tries to anglicize Boers. It leads initially in 1835 to vast a Exode of: 15000 boers towards the interior of the grounds of South Africa.

This epopee, known under the name of Grand Trek was magnifiée by South-African historiography with through in particular of the account of the Massacre of Piet Retief and of the boers families in Blaauwkraus and Boesmanspruit by the Zoulou S then by the account of the Bataille Blood River against the warriors Zoulou S and the Serment of allegiance to God.

This exodus leads to the foundation of several small République S boers of which some unify to become the Republic of South Africa of the Transvaal in 1852 and the free State of Orange in 1854. In 1875, in the Cape, historians and pastors of the Dutch reformed church as Stephanus Jacobus Of the Roof forms a cultural movement of claim, (the “Association of truths Afrikaner S”, whose objective is to give to the Afrikaans, the spoken language by the Boer S, its noble letters and to make of it genuine communications tools written. By publishing the first newspaper in language Afrikaans and the first book of history on the people afrikaner in this language ( history of our country in the language of its people ), Of the Roof wants to wake up the national conscience of Afrikaners and to release them from their cultural complex of inferiority vis-a-vis the English. Consequently, the defense of the language merges with that of the identity Afrikaans. The Guerre of Boers (1899-1902) is the second historical event after that of Large Trek which crystallizes the national feeling afrikaner. The memory of the concentration camps where perished more: 26000 civilians boers, of the tactic of the burned Ground by the British troops and the annexation of the old republics boers, nourish their rancour against the English. The demographic puncture caused by the war, then the surge of thousands of African and Asian workers feeds the idea of a decline afrikaner in South Africa. Boers feel threatened by the demographic and political changes.

The imposition of English in the old republics boers, the prohibition of the teaching of the Afrikaans and various vexatious measurements will have for corrolaire the creation of private schools managed by Afrikaners themselves which then provide a ground favourable with the creation of a common identity founded on the language Afrikaans, the belief calvinist and an interpretation quasi-nun of the history.

In 1910 is created the Union of South Africa which joined the Dominion S of the the Commonwealth. The first segregationist laws at the national level are adopted like Native the Act Land (1913) or Native Urban Act (1923) but these measurements are not registered in a coherent overall project but rather like an answer to the increasing interpenetration between white and blacks. For Smuts or Botha, the racial segregation is not considered as a long-term solution. For Smuts, it is about one dispatch temporary.

In 1914 - 1915, several former officers boers tries to be opposed to the participation of South Africa in the First World War, in particular when the government raises a quota to invade the South-western African. In a proclamation, they proclaim the re-establishment of the republics boers. The death of one of its chiefs, the general Koos of Rey whereas this one tries to force a stopping of police force, precipitates a rebellion of almost: 12000 boers against the government of Louis Botha. In a few weeks the rebellion is crushed. Politically, it caused a nationalist reflex within the four provinces reinforcing the position of the young whole national Parti James Barry Hertzog.

After the First World War, the peasants Afrikaners, driven out platteland by a serious dryness and an economic crisis, is found confronted with a double phenomenon of urbanization and acculturation, and enters in competition with the black workmen to the lower costs. The values and the traditional order of crumbling Afrikaners, the latter feel driven back vis-a-vis the domination of the english-speaking, their values dependant on the businesses and the money and vis-a-vis the risk of immersion of the blacks which flow then towards the cities.

Vis-a-vis this situation, the nationalists afrikaners endeavor to reinvent cultural models starting from Afrikanerdom, concept forged by Paul Kruger in the years 1880. Intended to tear off Afrikaners the poor under their miserable condition and to align them on the anglophone lower middle class, the concept ressuscite dreams of independence and self-sufficiency of Boers.

In 1918, the Afrikaner Broederbond, a brotherhood of the freemason type, is founded with Johannesburg by three Afrikaners young people of which the goal is the defense of the members of their community in order to recover the rights lost in 1902 at the end of the second war of Boers. Initially baptized Jong Suid-Afrika, then Afrikaner Broederbond (League of the brothers afrikaners), this association which gathered at its origin of the pastors calvinists, of the police officer and railroad workers, becomes 6 years later a secret society freemason, recruiting a growing number of teachers, professors, academics and politicians. The Jump will increase its activism and will extend its influence and its audience within the community of language Afrikaans and will define the identity of Afrikaner of which it will place the interests above all the other communities of South Africa. Thus, Broederbond rests its doctrines on the National-Christianity, inspired of the neocalvinism, which stipulates that " the nations were born from a divine will, that each one of them is holder of a specificity and a mission with accomplir". The defense of the identity afrikaner becomes a crowned mission whose triumph requires the total mobilization of the people of language Afrikaans (the Volk ). The concept of apartheid gradually will be elaborate on this doctrinal basis.

In March 1922, the army is sent to put an end to the insurrectionary strike of the workmen afrikaners mines of Or of the Witwatersrand. The minors afrikaners had put themselves in strike to protest against the recourse increased to the black workers, abundant and less paid labor, by the employers of the mining sector. For the minors afrikaners, employers called into question Color Bar and the reserved uses of the mines. . The conflict had started in the coal mines with the assistance of the nationalists of Tielman Roos and of the communist of Bill Andrews, then had extended to all the field from the Rand, gathering 20.000 white workers. The strike had been then transformed into insurrection, with the proclamation of Soviets whereas confrontations violent one ensanglantaient the area of the Rand. A few days after the release of the general strike two months after the beginning of the conflict, the Prime Minister Jan Smuts carried out a bloody repression. During 5 days the engagements made rages in the working districts of the Rand rammed by aviation. The movement was broken in the blood (214 killed including 76 strikers, 78 soldiers, 30 African killed by the strikers) and 5000 minors were imprisoned. It is by singing a communist anthem that 4 of the 18 condemned to deaths were carried out.

The failure of the labor movement led to a mobilization strange gathering Labor, socialist, communist, of the political movements of colors behind the nationalists of the national left who gained the general elections of 1924.

In 1925, under the new nationalist government of JB Hertzog, the Afrikaans replaces Dutch and is recognized like official language beside English in 1925. In 1927, the country obtains its first national flag, fruit of a consensus between afrikaners and english-speaking and of a national anthem " Die Stem van Suid Afrika ". The oldest church of the country, the Dutch, true reformed Church Church of the people afrikaner ( Volkskerk ), diffuses and generalizes, within the framework of an education main road-Christian woman the idea of a collective election of Afrikaners and works out theological justifications with the segregation.

Several movements nonparliamentary extremists, some influenced by the Nazism, at the time try to exploit this ambient nationalism like the Ossewa Brandwag, Active Citizen Force, the gray Shirts of Louis Weichardt, SA Gentile National Socialist Movement or the Boernasie of Maritz Mania.

On its side, the national Party is divided as of 1940 when the Hertzogienne minority, more liberal and follower of a bringing together with the english-speaking, found the Parti afrikaner.

In 1948, the victory of the national party of Daniel François Malan combined with the party afrikaner of Nicolaas Havenga, devotes the victory of Broederbond. The anglophone danger of domination is definitively drawn aside and the unit of the people Afrikaans carried out. However, the ethnic cohesion of this one remains threatened by the " Swaartgevaar" (the black danger). The topic scour nationalists is not consequently more defense of the identity Afrikaans vis-a-vis the english-speaking but that of the white people of South Africa (english-speaking, Afrikaners, Portuguese-speaking) threatened by the African masses. Apartheid is then presented like an legal arsenal intended to ensure the survival of the people boer but also like a " instrument of justice and equality which must allow each people which forms the South-African company to achieve his destiny and to open out as a nation distincte".

The segregation before 1948

The Racial segregation was a reality well before the establishment of the South African Union. Practiced as of the 17th century, the space containment of the not-white in the rural areas of the Cape or Native just like in the industrial centers resulted from the double will to reduce the social dangerosity (vagrancy, flight…) Africans to control the availability of labor. The generalized character of the segregation concerned yet only empirical payments.

The segregation with large scales dates from the time of Alfred Milner, high commissioner in South Africa after the Guerre of Boers when it exclusively sets up an intercolonial commission of the South-African indigenous businesses made up of British and of which the goal was to work out a plan for the future racial relations of the dominion by taking account of the disparate legislation of the four colonies. The theories of the social Darwinism and the scientific Racisme then impregnate a great number of intellectuals of the time and, pretexting superiority of the White , one of the recommendations of the commission chaired by Sir Geofrey Lagden recommends the creation of Réserve S natives through all South Africa.

The first use of the word “apartheid” goes back to 1917 at the time of a speech made by Jan Smuts which became the Prime Minister for the country in 1919.

Even if the implementation of apartheid is allotted to the national party which directed the country between 1948 and 1994, the policy of Racial segregation is quite former and goes up for him at the beginning even establishment of Dutch in 1652.

The Color Bar

The Prime Minister afrikaner Louis Botha (1910-1919) applied and reinforced the British colonial laws applied according to the code of color, the Color Bar (“barrier of color”), which regulated the relations interraciales in the old South-African colonies.

As of 1911, the Native Ploughing Regulation Act regulates indigenous work by founding a pass. The Native Land Act (“law on the indigenous land and buildings”) in 1913 interdict with the Africans to be ground owners apart from the indigenous “reserves” (only 7% of the total surface area of the South African Union are then allotted to the Blacks). This law causes the expropriation of many black peasants independent and the constitution of an agricultural proletariat. The Native Urban Areas Act (“law on the indigenous urban areas”) of 1923, introduced the residential segregation. In 1936 is repealed the Representation off Native Act ((law on the representation of the natives), which calls into question the right to vote of the Blacks in the Cape Province. A separate electoral roll is drawn up for the whole of the mongrels of South Africa. Thus, the latter can elect four senators, those of the Cape three deputies who will be obligatorily white. Lastly, in 1942, the strikes of the black workers are prohibited.

These laws are in conformity with the spirit pragmatic and of the economic situation color bar . The indigenous and racial policy of the governments of then is not presented as immutable but rather as one dispatch provisional. The Prime Minister Jan Smuts besides states the principle of the “civil laws for all the people " become civilisés" without reference to race”. This expression is regarded as the pledge of one opening to the citizenship for all the residents of the Union. All the evolutions thus remained then possible as the Commission Report Fagan presented the shortly after the Second world war proves it. Elected by the government of Jan Smuts, this report/ratio recommended a liberalization of the racial system in South Africa while starting with the abolition of the ethnic reserves as well as the end of the rigorous control of migrant worker. The Prime Minister Jan Smuts approved the conclusions of the report whereas on his side, the opposition represented by the National Party elected his own commission (the Sauer commission) whose conclusions were exactly opposite. By recommending the hardening of the segregationist laws, the Commission Report Sauer referred explicitly to the new concept of apartheid. This one into force drew mainly its inspiration in the segregationist laws in the south of the the United States and in the policies of reserves installation for the Indians in this country like at the Canada and also in the indigenous policies followed then in Australia against the Aborigène S, in New Zealand for the Maori S. In 1934, the national Parti (with the capacity since 10 years) amalgamated with the South-African Parti of Jan Smuts to form a party of liberal inspiration, the Plain Parti. The hostile minority of the National Party remained within a party radicalized on the right, preaching the superiority of nationalism afrikaner on all the other nations of South Africa. In fact, Daniel François Malan and the deputies who had followed it to maintain in life the national Party were primarily members of the Broederbond , a Ligue Calvin secret ist and Franc-maçon of the community afrikaner. Removed from moderate, the national Party became the window and the political tool of the Broederbond .

In parallel, in 1946, the South-African Workers party which was of all the government coalitions between the two world wars, adopted a “not-racial policy” innovating in the context of the time by claiming the “recognition of certain fundamental human rights, the right to work, free education, the social security, a suitable housing, and the abolition of work under individual contract”, by recommending the granting of “more grounds with the natives, the improvement of their processes of culture, a State aid equal to that granted to the White” and by proposing the replacement of the districts reserved to the natives by “ cities well ordered and managed democratically by its inhabitants”. The party is even further while being opposed to the segregationist law on the mines and the building sites and calling with the “recognition of the African trade unions, the equal wages for an equal work, the possibility of a professional training”. The party decided finally for a Federal state granting the exercise of all the rights of citizen all the individuals residing on their territory. In spite or because of this innovative program, the South-African workers party was not going to survive the general elections of 1948.

In 1947, Broederbond took the control of the South-African office of the racial businesses ( South African Bureau off Racial Affairs - SABRED). In its center, the concept of total segregation through the dogma of apartheid is finalized. In addition, the electoral constituencies are then redécoupées supporting the rural districts.

Resistances

Resistance to the institutionalized segregation and daily discriminations is organized: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi carries out non-violent protest actions against vexations with regard to the Indian middle-class. Several associations are founded: organization of people African ( African People' S Organization , 1902), National congress of Natives South-African ( South African Native National Congress , 1912) which will become in 1923 the African National congress ( African National Congress or ANC), the Youth League (1944).

The trade union of Commercial Industrial Union, founded in 1919, organizes strikes for the defense of the black workers, relayed by the Communist party of South Africa, created in 1921.

Apartheid

In June 1948, the National Party and its ally of the Parti Afrikaner arrived at the capacity with the program of apartheid conceptualized by the commission Sauer and which was going to be set up by one as of its originators, the doctor Hendrik Verwoerd, under the authority of the new Prime Minister, Pasteur Daniel François Malan. Apartheid, by blocking the system, by solidifying the relationship between races, excludes the simple and peaceful evolutions henceforth and becomes the angular stone of the South-African national policy while forming part of a precise philosophy, fixes, permanent and immutable, quite far away from the old concept of the Color Bar .

The goal of this racial policy is of officially and institutionnellement to ensure the “separate development” of the communities, without one exploiting another, according to the words of its theorist, Doctor Verwoerd. South Africa would be a “community of distinct nations”. All the individuals are systematically categorized on the basis of their membership racial or ethnic (arbitrarily definite): white, Zulu and bantous, Indians, mongrel, etc (differentiation between afrikaners and other white was finally abandoned). The marriage is regulated and prohibited between white and blacks.

In 1956, the successor of Malan, JG Strijdom, removed the residual right to vote of the colored persons (mongrel and blacks) of the the Cape Province.

The habitat, teaching, the movements of the people, employment, etc are regulated in order to separate all the groups.

Ethnic States, the Bantustan S (or Homeland), are created on the ancestral grounds. Economically not very viable, limited to only 13% of the territory, they lock up whole populations in private small islands whose majority are private of natural wealth and industry, without access to the international business. If this independence of frontage satisfies sometimes local potentates, it is primarily factitious.

Only the white profit from the guarantees of a democratic regime, then to a lesser extent starting from 1984, the Indians and the mongrels.

Principal laws of apartheid

Law on the prohibition of the mixed marriages (1949)
Law of immorality (1950) penalizing the sexual relationships between white and nonwhite.
Law of classification of the population (1950), distinguishing the individuals according to their race.
Law of suppression of Communism (1950), allowing to prohibit any political party catalogued like Communist by the government.
Law of separate dwelling (the famous Group Areas Act of April 27th, 1950), distributing racialement the urban areas of dwelling.
Law on the passes (“Not Laws Act”) of 1952 making obligation with the Blacks having more than 16 years to have on them a pass in fact a document resembling a passport which stipulated if they had an authorization of the government to be in certain districts.
Law on the distinct public conveniences (1953), ségrégant the public toilets, fountains and all installations.
Law of education Bantoue (1953), concerning the school program of the blacks.
Withdrawal of the right to strike to the black workers, prohibition of the passive resistance (1953).
Law of relocalization of the natives ( Native resettlement Act of 1954): allows to move the black populations living in zones declared white.
Law on work and the mines (1956), formalizing racial discrimination in the work world.
Law on the promotion of autonomous black governments (1958), creating the Bantustan S under administration of nonthe white.
Law of citizenship of the blacks of the homelands (1971), withdrawing the South-African citizenship with the blacks resulting from ethnic communities concerned with Bantustans already created.
Decree on the Afrikaans (1974), obliging all the schools, same black, to exempt in Afrikaans all the lesson of maths, social sciences, History and geography of the secondary level.
Law on prohibition with the Blacks the access to professional training (1976)

Applications

Some examples:

It is interdict with an employer to give to a African worker the wages of a White, even for an identical work and a duration.
Any African being 16 years old completed, owes exhiber on simple request of a policeman, its " notebook of référence" , indicating: its race, its tribe, its places of dwelling and work, its statement of taxes, etc
a White does not have the right to learn how to read with a African servant.
Any African who finds an employment out of his city must leave it in the 72 hours.
It is interdict with any African to attend a meeting of family if the number of guests makes the meeting “undesirable”.
It is interdict with any white person to have sexual relationships with a African, mongrel, or Indian person.
It is interdict with any African to put itself in strike, for any reason that it is.
No African has the right to acquire a property or grounds on all the territory of South Africa (out of the territories which are allotted to him).

Evolution and international judgment of apartheid

References

Random links:

JBuilder | Spatha | Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis church | Leni | Billy MacLellan