A letter to 6. Write a short note on "Apartheid. ( of 5 marks)
Answers
Explanation:
Apartheid was a political and social system in South Africa during the era of White minority rule. It enforced racial discrimination against non-Whites, mainly focused on skin colour and facial features. This existed in the twentieth century, from 1948 until the early-1990s. The word apartheid means "distantiation” in the Afrikaans language.[1] Racial segregation had existed in Southern Africa for centuries. In the elections of 1948 the National Party took power and in the next few years made new apartheid laws. The new laws more strictly enforced segregation. In theory, it was to bring independence to the African majority in their own little countries to be created from South African territory.Under this system, the people of South Africa were divided by their race and the different races were forced to live separately from each other. There were laws in place to ensure that segregation was abided by. The apartheid system in South Africa was abolished in 1994, when a new constitution was ratified which abolished the previous system of segregation.[2] The last President who held office during the apartheid era was Frederik Willem de Klerk; who was responsible for holding negotiations with political prisoner Nelson Mandela to bring an end to apartheid.[3] Following these successful negotiations, Nelson Mandela was elected to the Presidency of South Africa after multi-racial elections were held in April 1994, and became the first black person to hold the position. He was 75 years old [4][5] The pair were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. Today, the term apartheid is sometimes used for similar segregational systems in other countries. The goal of apartheid was to separate the people of South Africa into small independent nations. The black ones were called Bantustans. South Africa said they were independent countries and exchanged ambassadors but other countries did not. The National Party government did not want to spend a lot of money on this project. They also wanted to keep the majority of South Africa's land for white people, especially the richest places, like the gold mines of Johannesburg. They wanted black men to work in these mines for little money but their families had to live far away or face imprisonment.