South Africa - How was Apartheid codified and implemented, 1948-59? Flashcards
STRENGTHENING THE NP
What was one of the National Party’s priorities? How did they try to do this?
to stay in political power
1949 - 6 members of Parliament were added for whites in Namibia (South West Africa)
because Nationalists had support there
STRENGTHENING THE NP
What was the National Party’s approach to Coloured people? Why?
although they share much cultural history with whites
the Nationalists were determined that they should become a separate racial category
because Coloured people still had a vote in central parliamentary eelctions
they voted overwhelmingly for United Party
STRENGTHENING THE NP
How was the Coloured vote specially protected?
Coloured vote in the Cape required 2.3 majority of parliament to change a law
the remaining of Parliament just needed a simple majority
STRENGTHENING THE NP
When was the remaining Coloured vote removed? By what Act?
1951
Separate Representation of Voters Act
STRENGTHENING THE NP
Name 2 other ways the NP set about strengthening their party?
- ‘packing’ senate with sympathetic Afrikaner judges
2. Afrikaners is senior positions (military, army, police, bureaucracy)
STRENGTHENING THE NP
Did these measures work? Di the NP increase their vote?
Yes
1953 - the NP vote increased from 400,000 to 600,000
they narrowly outpolled the UP
STRENGTHENING THE NP
How else, other than politics, did the NP get their vote strengthened?
1950s - state employment increased from 482,000 to 799,000
majority of them Afrikaners
APARTHEID LAWS
Name 3 laws that began segregation of lands and what they did.
- Bantu Authorities Act 1951
place responsibility for local government onto a conservative rural African leadership (traditional tribal leader) that would cooperate with the government - Urban Areas Act 1952
limited the category of blacks who had right to permanent residence in urban area. (had to be living for there fore 15yrs+ or employed for 15yrs) - Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act 1959
envisaged self-governing African units
APARTHEID LAWS
Name 3 race laws and what they did.
- Prohibition of Mixed Marriage’s Act 1949
prohibited marriages between ‘Europeans’ and ‘Non-Europeans’ - Immorality Act 1950
prohibited marriage and sex by whites - Population Registration Act 1950
national register and documents were issued so race could be public knowledge (1 of 4 categories)
APARTHEID LAWS
Name a law used to crush opposition and what it did.
Suppression of Communism Act 1950
formally banned the Communist Party
prohibited any groups/party subscribing to Communism
APARTHEID LAWS
Name 2 laws to separate races in public areas and what they did.
- Natives Abolition of Passes Act 1952
made it compulsory for all black SAs to carry a ‘passbook’ in white areas - Reservation of Separate Amenities Act 1953
legalised racial segregation of public premises, vehicles and services . (only public roads were excluded)
APARTHEID LAWS
Name a law that governed where the races lived and what it did.
Group Areas Act 1950
assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections in urban areas in a system of urban apartheid
APARTHEID LAWS
Name 2 laws that separated the races in school and what they did.
- Bantu Education Act 1953
enforced separate educational facilities - Extension of University Education Act 1959
made it criminal for a non-white student to register at a formerly open university
without written permission of Minister of Internal Affairs
SOPHIATOWN
What was the state of Sophiatown in 1904 when it was established until NP moved in?
- black people has freehold ownership of their properties
- racially mixed
- overcrowded
- gang crime and ANC activity
SOPHIATOWN
Forced removal isn’t legal unless the government provide costly alternative accommodation, so what did the government do?
Pass/use the Group Areas Act 1950 enforced residential segregation
SOPHIATOWN
When and where were residents relocated?
1955
to Meadowlands Western Townships which became (Soweto)
SOPHIATOWN
What was the removal date set to? What did the Minister of Justice say?
12 February 1955
The ANC would oppose removal with violence (e.g. cars loaded with explosives and tyres to roll at police)
SOPHIATOWN
What was the ANC campaign? How long did it go on for?
‘We Won’t Move’ Campaign in 1955
18 months
SOPHIATOWN
What happened when forced removals were put in place?
- 2000 armed police invaded
- 110 families moved on 1st night
- took several years and 65,000 were removed
SOPHIATOWN
What was the impact?
new homes had no tiolets, water or electricity
Trimof was built in its place
SOPHIATOWN
What was the effect on the ANC when they didn’t save Sophiatown?
galvanised the anti-apartheid movement
forced the ANC to consider a change in strategy
DISTRICT 6
Where was District 6? How many people lived there? What races lived there?
a former inner city residential area of Cape Town
60,000 people resided
predominantly Coloured and Indian with smaller black/white communities
DISTRICT 6
Who were the first to be “resettled” and when?
blacks in 1901
DISTRICT 6
What did the 1950 Groups Areas Act declare District 6?
a white area
DISTRICT 6
What campaign turned up?
‘Hands off District 6” that prevented private development and some land remained vacant
DISTRICT 6
How did the Afrikaners portray District 6 to prove their point?
a place riddled with immoral activity such as gambling and prostitution
DURBAN
What was the population of Durban? What was the ratio of races?
450,000
1/3 Indian
1/3 African
1/3 White
DURBAN
Where and how did each race live?
White - suburbs
Indians - owed private property and lent to Africans
Africans - bought from Indians and built shacks
DURBAN
Why did the Africans attack Indians in 1949? How many were killed/injured in the riots and police suppression?
they felt like they were exploiting them
142 killed
1000 injured
DURBAN
What was the governments action? What did this mean for blacks?
they imposed the Group Areas Act
the shacks were largely removed and 10,000s of people sent to far-flung townships
DURBAN
Where the Indians moved too? To where? What was different in Indian settlements though?
Yes
41,000
to south zone of the city
they could own their private property unlike Africans
PASS LAWS
Why were pass laws central to National Party policy?
helped their policy of influx control - focus on reducing African migration to the cities
PASS LAWS
Why did the NP want to make the cities a white zone?
to protect them from:
- cheap black labour
- African protest
- from crime
PASS LAWS
Before 1948, what did pass laws enforce?
all african men travelling outside the reserves to carry a pass
PASS LAWS
What act did the NP pass to build on current pass laws? What did this act do?
1952 Natives Abolition of Passes Act
- requires a reference book for each African adult (to present on demand)
- established their identity
- established their right to be in the urban areas (by Urban Areas Act 1952)
PASS LAWS
Were Africans allowed to buy houses or land in cities? How did this affect them?
no, not even in townships
hugely undermined their security and their capacity to accumulate family wealth
PASS LAWS
How were the pass laws enforced? How was this received by Africans?
- frequently stopped and searched in streets and houses
- those who had rights to stay int he city were still constantly harassed
they deeply resented it
PASS LAWS
When were pass laws extended to women?
1956
PASS LAWS
How did convictions under pass laws increase from 1952 to 1962?
1952 - 164,324
1962 - 384, 497
PASS LAWS
Were the pass laws effective?
YES: they were a massive issue of African political opposition and this shows it may have been effective
NO: the pass laws failed to keep Africans out of the city
- African urban population increased
1946 - 1.8 million
1960 - 3.5 million
- many were prepared to brave pass laws to find work opportunities
- some white employers colluded with black workers to bypass influx control
EDUCATION LAWS
What was education like prior to and during the 40s?
- mostly racially segregated
- small number of Africans attended elite schools (that had broad syllabus and black teachers too)
EDUCATION LAWS
Prior to and during the 40s, what was the great bulk of schools for Africans like?
- funded by gov
- managed by local churches
- given a basic education
EDUCATION LAWS
Why was the Bantu Education Act 1953 passed?
- to extend education to African children
- segregate the content of education
- brought African schools under state control
EDUCATION LAWS
What was one of the main fears that drove the expansion of education?
fear of tsotsis (street youths)
fear the young were joining gangs rather than attending school
EDUCATION LAWS
Why else did the NP expand education to Africans?
- needs for African workers in factories and shops was rapidly increasing.
- unskilled workers were not fit for the job
some degree of academic ability was seen as valuable to building the black workforce
- 1951 census recorded that only 21% of Africans were literate
EDUCATION LAWS
Name one good and one bad effect of the Act?
good:
did greatly increase educational opportunities at all levels
bad:
African education was made only to prepare them for limited roles and opportunities
EDUCATION LAWS
Before the 1950s, what happened to the students who finished their matric (and were wealthier)?
able to attend:
- Uni of Fort Hare
- few hundred were admitted to Universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand (Johannesburg)
EDUCATION LAWS
When Fort Hare became akey point for black student opposition to apartheid, what did the government do?
passed 1959 Extension of University Education Act to ensure that Fort Hare came under government control
EDUCATION LAWS
What else did the Extension of University Education Act ensure?
- full segregation by race of the largely white English-language unis
- set out plans for new unis for racially defined minorities
TOMLINSON REPORT
Why did the Afrikaner nationalists see potential in the bantustans (African homelands)
the post-war era saw state planning and modernisation as the route to solving social and economic problems
TOMLINSON REPORT
Who was Tomlinson?
- an agricultural economist at Uni of Stellenbosch
- he reported in 1955
TOMLINSON REPORT
What did Tomlinson believe?
sustained development of the Bantu areas on a large scale was the ‘germinal point’
it would allow for a compromise between total integration and ultimate segregation
TOMLINSON REPORT
How did the Tomlinsom Commission believe that the Bantustans could be trasnformed?
through an investment of £100 million
TOMLINSON REPORT
What was its 3 recommendations?
- class of full time farmers to increase size of plot and turn communal tenure into private tenure
- major funding for rural industries
- private enterprise should be encouraged in all areas
TOMLINSON REPORT
What did the recommendations of the report suggest?
pushing families off land to create bigger ‘economic units’
TOMLINSON REPORT
Why did Verweord reject these ideas (even though he believed in separate development)?
- whites would not support expenditure on this scale
- did not want to create competition for urban white businesses
- felt Bantustans should develop at their own pace
- if landholdings were enlarged, millions of Africans would potentially lose their jobs (and have to travel to cities to find work)
- private land ownership would undermine the power of the chiefs on whom he relied for political support
TOMLINSON REPORT
Rather than investing in the bantustans as Tomlinson recommended, what did the NP gov adopt as a policy?
‘betterment’ or ‘rehabilitation’
TOMLINSON REPORT
Was it a better policy?
it was cheaper
but more disruptive
TOMLINSON REPORT
Why did the gov introduce this policy foremost? What did the government claim it would do?
they were worried about soil erosion and environmental degradation
claimed it would stop environmental degradation but enable Africans to intensify their farming
TOMLINSON REPORT
What did the government say was the solution to the erosion?
they thought livestock was the reason this was happening
- divide paddocks into small areas with barbed wire
- move animals from paddock to paddock throughout the year to avoid over-grazing
TOMLINSON REPORT
What didi the government do to create and control the space needed for this policy?
moved rural families from scattered settlements into compact villages
TOMLINSON REPORT
What was the effect on the people who lived in these areas during the betterment policy?
- 1 million+ people were force to move into villages
2. some were forced to sell their livestock to ease pressure on pastures
TOMLINSON REPORT
Why was the betterment policy deeply resented?
- cut across traditional ways of living
2. culling livestock was so unpopular
TOMLINSON REPORT
Was the betterment policy kept?
no, the government largely abandoned it in the 60s
TOMLINSON REPORT
What were some inadequacies of the bantustans policy?
- although substantial new areas of white-owned land were bought to extend the homelands, homelands made a very limited percentages of SA land area
- the NP was not prepared to divide SA equally - Africans were to be subdivided into their historical chieftainships and language groups but whites would remain whites
- there was no bits of ‘white SA’ for Afrikaners, British Afrikaners etc.
- the Africans had not lost their old identities but they could see themselves as members of extended groups (e.g. Zulu, South African and Johannesburg worker all at once)
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
How did the NP handle opposition?
they permitted a degree of opposition
but they used force to suppress various protests
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
The 1950s saw gov become increasingly concerned of growing Congress movement, who did they arrest in dawn raids in 1956?
156 members of the Congress Alliance
e.g. a broad coalition of anti-apartheid orgs incl, ANC, Indian Congress, trade unionists
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What did the government accuse the Congress Alliance members of?
high treason
trialled for 5 years
the prosecution tried to prove that the Congress movement planned to overthrow the government by force with communist ideals
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What did the trial demonstrate?
the multi-racial nature of the anti-apartheid struggle
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
With media attention, what else did the trial allow the members to do?
use the rial as a chance to speak from the dock about their ideas
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What negative effect did the trial have on the ANC?
its leaders were tired up in legal proceedings for several years
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What was the outcome of the trial?
prosecution unable to prove their case and all were acquitted in 1961
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What did Mandela do after the Treason Trial?
- went underground
- disguised as a chauffeur
- spent time at Rivonia in a farm
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
Who was Mandela accompanied by?
white sympathisers and Communist Party members
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What did Mandela do in 1962?
travelled to other countries to seek support
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What happened when Mandela returned from his travels in 1962? Why?
arrested at Howick Falls
charged for:
- incitement to vote
- travelling abroad without a passport
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What was Mandela sentenced to after being arrested at Howick Falls?
5 years without parole
POLITICAL SUPPRESSION
What happened while Mandela was in prison for the Howick Falls raid?
the security forces raided the farm in 1963
they found incriminating documents
he became involved in Rivonia Trial
