Apartheid in South Africa

1. Apartheid in South Africa • Tracing the history of South Africa… • What events stick out as the most important? • What comparisons can you make to other events/people in history?

2. As you view the stations, consider the following: • Which station would make the best movie? • Which station would make the best news headline? • What is the most powerful image? • What conclusions might you draw about how South Africa has changed?

3. Station1 A black South African shows his passbook issued by the government. Blacks were required to carry passes that determined where they could live and work. Adolescents in Transkei. Their faces are painted white and they are swathed in blankets as part of puberty rights. Transkei was one of the ten so-called black "homelands" created around the country since 1913. The United Nations condemned the creation of such areas as a means of promoting the inhumane policies of apartheid. Houses in Soweto, a black township.

4. Station 2 Statement by the National Party of South Africa, March 29, 1948 There are two sections of thought in South Africa in regard to the policy affecting the non-European community. On the one hand there is the policy of equality, which advocates equal rights…. On the other hand there is the policy of separation (apartheid) which has grown from the experience of established European population of the country, and which is based on the Christian principles of Justice and reasonableness. Its aim is the maintenance and protection of the European population of the country as a pure White race…. Either we must follow the course of equality, which must eventually mean national suicide for the White race, or we must take the course of separation (apartheid) through which the character and the future of every race will be protected and safeguarded with full opportunities for development and self-maintenance in their own ideas….

5. Station 3 • Statement by the National Party of South Africa, March 29, 1948 Continued • The party believes [in] a definite policy of separation (apartheid) between the White races and the non-White racial groups…. • All marriages between Europeans and non-Europeans will be prohibited. • The State will exercise complete supervision over the molding of the youth. • The Coloured community takes a middle position between the European and the Natives. A policy of separation (apartheid) between the Europeans and Coloureds and between Natives and Coloureds will be applied in the social, residential, industrial and political spheres. • The Coloured community will be represented in the Senate by a European representative to be appointed by the Government

6. Station 4 Children of Soweto, a Black township some ten miles away from Johannesburg, in 1982. The Zulu world "Amandla" scrawled on the wall means "Power". This has been adopted as a rallying call in the struggle for Black rights. Segregated public facilities in Johannesburg, 1985. Station 4 • UN Resolution 1598: On Race Conflict in South Africa, 1961 • The General Assembly, • The Government of South Africa has failed to revise its racial policies. Therefore, the UN • Requests all States to consider taking action to bring about the abandonment of these policies; • Affirms that the racial policies being pursued by the Government of South Africa are a flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

7. Station 5 Mourners at a funeral ceremony for those who were killed by the South African police in the 1985 International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The day commemorates the anniversary of the March 21, 1960 Sharpeville massacre. Sharpeville Massacre – 69 people killed (8 women, 10 children) "the Native mentality does not allow them to gather for a peaceful demonstration. For them to gather means violence."

8. Station 6 "Nothing, not even the most sophisticated weapon, not even the most brutally efficient policy, no, nothing will stop people once they are determined to achieve their freedom and their right to humanness. " -Desmond Tutu Bishop Desmond Tutu (1931-) was the first Black Archbishop of Capetown, the head of the Anglican Church in South Africa. Tutu used this position to speak out against Apartheid. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Shortly afterwards he gave following speech, attacking South Africa's racial policies, to the United Nations Security Council. …there is little freedom in this land of plenty. So the unrest is continuing, in a kind of war of attrition…. And the root cause is apartheid -- a vicious, immoral and totally evil, and unchristian system. White South Africans are not demons; they are ordinary human beings, scared human beings, many of them; who would not be, if they were outnumbered five to one? I wish to appeal to my white fellow South Africans to share in building a new society, for blacks are not intent on driving whites into the sea but on claiming only their rightful place in the sun in the land of their birth. We deplore all forms of violence, the violence of an oppressive and unjust society and the violence of those seeking to overthrow that society, for we believe that violence is not the answer to the crisis of our land.

9. Station 7 • Umkhonto We Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") was founded partly in response to the notorious Sharpeville Massacre of March 1960. Its leader, Nelson Mandela, was to be arrested shortly after this manifesto was published, eventually being sentenced to life in prison, though he was released in 1990, with the end of apartheid. • On 16th December, 1961, Umkhonto We Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, made it known that we, the oppressed people of South Africa, would fight for our rights. We made this known not only with words. Dynamite blasts announced it. • The truth is very different from what the newspapers have reported. Our men are armed and trained freedom-fighters, not "terrorists." The fighting will go on in Rhodesia and South Africa. • Why we fight • The white oppressors have stolen our land. They have destroyed our families. • We burrow into the belly of the earth to dig out gold, diamonds, coal, uranium. The white oppressors and foreign investors grab all this wealth. • In the factories, on the farms, on the railways, wherever you go, the hard, dirty, dangerous, badly paid jobs are ours. The best jobs are for whites only. • Our homes are hovels; those of the whites are luxury mansions, flats and farmsteads. • There are not enough schools for our children; the standard of education is low, and we have to pay for it. But the government uses our taxes and the wealth we create to provide free education for white children. • We have tried every way to reason with the white supremacists. We also organized mass demonstrations, pass-burnings, peaceful stay-at-homes. • Strikers and demonstrators were shot in cold blood. Our organization, the African National Congress, was outlawed. Our meetings, journals and leaflets were prohibited. • What we fight for • We are fighting for democracy--majority rule--the right of the Africans to rule Africa. We are fighting for a South Africa in which there will be peace and harmony and equal rights for all people.

10. Station 8 Umbulwana, Natal in 1982. Umbulwana was called "a black spot" because it is in a "white" area. It was eventually demolished and the inhabitants forced to move to identically numbered houses in "resettlement" villages in their designated "homelands." Millions of black South Africans were forcibly "resettled" in this way. A girl looking through a window of her shack, 1978.

11. Black boys looking in on a game of soccer at an all-white school in Johannesburg. Government spending, about 10 times more for white children than for black, clearly revealed the gross inequality designed to perpetuate white economic and political power. Ill-trained teachers, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate recreational facilities were normal for black children, if in fact they had any schooling available at all. A passbook that the South African blacks were required to carry. Station 9 South African police at Alexandra Township in 1985.

12. Station 10 A voter casts her ballot in a polling station in April 1994. Nelson Mandela, President of the African National Congress (ANC), casting the ballot in his country's first all-race elections, in April 1994, South Africa. South Africans lining up to vote in the 1994 election: the first time indigenous Africans could vote.

13. Station 11 New York Times 16 April 2003 South Africa Will Pay $3,900 to Apartheid Victims’ Families President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa said today that his government would pay reparations totaling $85 million to more than 19,000 victims of apartheid crimes who testified about their suffering before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.