What Do You Know About Apartheid?

Apartheid was policy of racial segregation that used to be followed in South Africa. The word 'Apartheid' is derived from the Afrikaans language and its meaning is 'separateness'. Apartheid was, in fact, racial division between the ruling white minority population and the nonwhite majority people of South Africa. It was the National Party which introduced this policy of racial discrimination and after winning the 1948 elections, it made Apartheid the governing political policy for South Africa which remained intact till the early 1990s. Although Apartheid does not exist anymore, social, economic, and political inequalities between white and black communities continue to exist in South Africa.

The apartheid laws initially classified people as three major racial groups—white; Bantu, or black Africans; and colored, or people of mixed descent. Later Asians of Indian and Pakistani origin were added as a fourth category. Apartheid laws prohibited social contact between races and denied representation of the black and nonwhite population in government. These laws also segregated public facilities for the white and non-white population. In 1990, President FD de Klerk, declared a formal end to Apartheid and announced the release of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, who had been in jail for 27 years, from prison and the legalisation of black African political organisations.