(S African) (former) policy of segregating racial groups, especially in S Africa.Segregation by race; SYN. racial segregation.
Racial-segregation policy of the government of South Africa 1948–94. Nonwhites—classified as Bantu (black), colored (mixed), or Indian—did not share full rights of citizenship with the white minority (for example, black people could not vote in parliamentary elections), and many public facilities and institutions were until 1990 restricted to the use of one race only. The establishment of Black National States was another manifestation of apartheid. In 1991 President de Klerk repealed the key elements of apartheid legislation and by 1994 apartheid had ceased to exist.
The term “apartheid” was coined in the late 1930s by the South African Bureau for Racial Affairs (SABRA), which called for a policy of “separate development” of the races. It was first legislated 1948, when the Afrikaner National Party gained power.
Internally, organizations opposed to apartheid—for example, the African National Congress and the United Democratic Front —were banned, and some leading campaigners for its abolition were, like Steve Biko, killed, or, like Archbishop Tutu, harassed. Anger at the policy sparked off many uprisings, from Sharpeville 1960 and Soweto 1976 to the Crossroads squatter camps 1986.
Abroad, anti apartheid movements sprang up in many countries. In 1961 South Africa was forced to withdraw from the Commonwealth because of apartheid; during the 1960s and 1970s there were calls for international sanctions, especially boycotts of sporting and cultural links; and in the 1980s advocates of sanctions extended them into trade and finance.
The South African government’s reaction to internal and international pressure was twofold: it abolished some of the more hated apartheid laws (the ban on interracial marriages was lifted 1985 and the pass laws, which restricted the movement of nonwhites, were repealed 1986); and it sought to replace the term “apartheid” with “plural democracy”. Under states of emergency 1985 and 1986 it used force to quell internal opposition, and from 1986 there was an official ban on the reporting of it in the media. In Oct 1989 President F W de Klerk permitted anti apartheid demonstrations; the Separate Amenities Act was abolished 1990 and a new constitution promised. In 1990 Nelson Mandela, a leading figure in the African National Congress, was finally released. In 1991 the remaining major discriminating laws embodied in apartheid were repealed, including the Population Registration Act 1950, which had made it obligatory for every citizen to be classified into one of nine racial groups. Finally, multiracial elections wer
e held for both the state presidency and the new nonracial assembly April 1994.
The term has also been applied to similar movements and other forms of racial separation, for example social or educational, in other parts of the world. + prikaži više