Petty Apartheid and Grand Apartheid legislation
Nature and characteristics of discrimination
- The second case study for this Prescribed Topic in Paper 1 focuses on Apartheid (“apartness” in Afrikaans), the legal and political system in South Africa (1948-1994) that enforced strict racial separation between Whites and non-Whites, especially Black South Africans.
- It gave political power, economic privilege, and social rights almost exclusively to the White minority, while denying basic rights like voting, land ownership, and freedom of movement to the majority Black population and other non-Whites.
- Through laws and policies, apartheid controlled where people could live, work, go to school, and whom they could marry-based solely on race. These laws were put forward by the National Party (NP)
- Even though Apartheid ended in 1994, the events for this Prescribed Topic focuses on the period between 1948 and 1964.
Note
- Who is who in South Africa
- Apartheid meant the strict division of people according to race. In South Africa, the main groups were:
- White South Africans: mainly comprised two groups: Afrikaners and English-speaking Whites.
- Afrikaners, who formed roughly 60% of the White population, descended from Dutch settlers. Their language, Afrikaans, is closely related to Dutch.
- Most supported the National Party during its rule. Afrikaners are sometimes referred to as Boers.
- They are not strictly the same, as Boers were originally farmers and Afrikaners urban dwellers, but for the purpose of this course they can be used as exchangeable terms.
- English-speaking Whites, making up the remaining 40%, traced their roots to 19th-century British colonists.
- While also Protestant, they leaned toward the more moderate United Party, which opposed Afrikaner dominance but still accepted segregation principles.
- Non White people were divided into:
- Coloureds (mixed-race people) and Indians occupied a middle tier in apartheid’s racial hierarchy; they opposed apartheid but were treated better than Black Africans.
- Black South Africans, the majority group, were ethnically diverse and split into two major linguistic families: Nguni and Sotho-Tswana. They were called Bantu as a derogatory term.
Common Mistake
- Be very careful with the term “Bantu”.
- Unless you’re quoting a source, remember that during Apartheid years it became very offensive, so write “Black South Africans” or “Black population” instead.
Colonization
- South Africa was colonized by the Dutch in the late 1700s and the British in the 1800s.
- During that time, there were clashes with the native groups of South Africa as well as fighting between the British and the Dutch, especially after the discovery of gold towards the end of the 19th C.
- Tensions escalated into the South African War (1899-1902), where the Boers fought a guerrilla campaign until brutal British tactics forced their surrender.
- A political union followed, creating the Union of South Africa in 1910 under White rule.
- Only white men could vote (and white women after 1931).
- Even when there were some provisions for non whites to vote, in practice they were virtually impossible to meet and political participation was restricted to whites.
- Early 20th-century politics saw Afrikaner nationalism strengthen.
- Racial segregation was institutionalized, and resistance among Black South Africans grew, with the formation of the SANNC (later ANC) and rise of trade unions.
- After WWII, amid growing urban Black activism, White voters backed the National Party and its apartheid platform in the 1948 election.
Note
- In 1948, South Africa's population was approximately 12 million. While exact figures vary slightly by source, the racial breakdown can be estimated as follows:
- White population: ~2.4 to 3 million → approximately 20–25%
- Coloured population: ~1.1 to 1.5 million → approximately 10–13%
- Black population: ~7.5 to 8 million → approximately 65–70%
National Party
- After gaining power in 1948, the National Party under DF Malan rapidly introduced a set of laws that laid the foundation for apartheid, with major elements firmly established by 1954 and further reinforced in subsequent years through additional legislation like the 1959 Bantu Self-Government Act.
- Although apartheid built upon earlier segregationist policies from pre-1948 governments, it marked a dramatic intensification in both ideology and execution, going far beyond previous efforts in its systematic and deeply racist structure.
- More than a collection of discriminatory laws, apartheid was a comprehensive framework designed to legitimize white dominance at every level of society, creating a rigid and institutionalized system of racial inequality.
Note
- The ideological legitimacy for Apartheid was based on Social Darwinism and Calvinism.
- Social Darwinism had also been popular among Nazis. This “philosophy” applied Darwin's theory on natural selection and survival of the fittest as a law for human societies, where some groups (or races) were naturally ordained to dominate inferior races.
- Calvinist “predestination” was entrenched in Afrikaaner and Boer tradition, and it stood for the idea that some people had been chosen by God to be saved and go to Paradise, while others had been condemned to hell.
- Because the whites had won the wars against the blacks in South Africa, that was a “sign” of their superiority and “legitimized” their dominance over non-whites.
Theory of Knowledge
- How was it humanly possible?
- When Apartheid was imposed in 1948, the horrors of the Holocaust had just been made known to the world.
- How was it possible that a system of racism, oppression and inequality was put up right after?
- Think about possible links of this topic with a TOK approach:
- How can knowledge of past atrocities fail to prevent the repetition of similar injustices?
- To what extent can religious and scientific knowledge be used to justify political ideologies?"
Petty and Grand Apartheid
- Apartheid unfolded in two distinct phases, the first of which focused on rigid racial control and harsh dominance by the white minority, marked by strict enforcement of racial hierarchies.
- This was called “baasskap”, or rule of the bosses, also dubbed Petty Apartheid.
- This early stage, associated with leaders like Malan and Strijdom, involved aggressive suppression of Black South Africans and strict regulation of daily life through excessive, bureaucratic rules.
- In terms of legislation, the Petty Apartheid introduced separate public facilities, education segregation and prohibition of mixed marriages, among other laws and regulations.
- The second phase, the Grand Apartheid, was launched by Prime Minister HF Verwoerd in the late 1950s, and introduced a more structured and ideologically framed approach to segregation.
- This second phase sought to justify racial separation through claims of national self-determination, aiming to create isolated, self-governed territories for different racial groups as a way to gain international acceptance.
- During Grand Apartheid, there were laws for homelands for black South Africans, residential segregation and heavy control over everyday movement of non-whites.
