What happend during apartheid?

Answer 1

POLITICAL CONTROL

In South Africa the ruling parliament is elected solely by white voters. Blacks*, who outnumber whites by five to one, are completely disenfranchised.

Under new constitutional proposals for a tricameral parliament, those designated as Coloureds and Indians will be given separate institutions with the whites retaining the monopoly of power. The white chamber will have the largest number of members and will dominate the process of electing a president who will have wide-ranging executive power. The African majority remains totally excluded from this new structure.

LAND

Eighty-seven percent of the land has been designated for whites. Whites determine what small areas within this territory may be occupied by Coloureds, Indians and Africans. The bantustans, which comprise the remaining 13 percent of the land allocated to Africans, are largely barren and poverty stricken. No African may purchase land outside the bantustans.

CITIZENSHIP

The minority government is committed to creating a South Africa with no African citizens. Although citizenship for black South Africans has always been precarious, what restricted rights did exist are being withdrawn. The land allocated to the African majority has been divided into ten isolated and fragmented bantustans or "homelands." Already South Africa has declared four of these bantustans "independent," thus stripping eight million people of their South African citizenship. The intention of the white government is to declare all the bantustans independent, arriving at a time when, by stroke of the white pen, every African will be a foreigner. These pseudostates are recognized by no government on earth except the South African regime.

REMOVALS

The South African Government has embarked on a policy of massive forced resettlement. The number of black South Africans who have been driven from their homes, removed to less desirable locations, is about equal to the entire white population. During the 35 years the present government has been in power, three million Africans, 800,000 Coloureds and 400,000 Indians have been resettled, and two million more Africans will suffer a similar fate.' When people resist removals, their homes are simply knocked down or bulldozed or burned. Leaders who organize to resist these removals face imprisonment and even death.

The South African Government divides the black population into three racial groups: Africans who number about 22 million, Coloureds (mixed race) 2.6 million and Indians 821,000. There are 4.5 million whites.

Millions of Africans are forced to become migrant workers, living away from home and family in single sex barracks-like hostels.

INFLUX CONTROL

The movement of Africans is strictly regimented by

"influx control" which regulates who may enter

*"white" South Africa and under what conditions. The number of Africans allowed to remain in the white areas is determined by the needs of the white-owned economy. Unless Africans meet very rigid residence and employment criteria they can be "endorsed out." Africans who are not employed in the white-owned economy are regarded as "superfluous appendages," i.e. women, children, and old people, and are sent to the bantustans.

Millions of Africans are migrant workers who must leave their homes in the rural bantustans and travel alone to the cities, where they are employed on yearly contract. They are forced by this system to live much of their married life as if they were single, seeing their families for short visits only once a year. It is illegal for an African lacking the required permits of residence and employment to be in an urban area for longer than 72 hours.

PASS LAWS

The rigid system of labor control requires all Africans to carry passbooks which indicate where the individual can legally live and work. They must be kept up-to-date with regular endorsements and are subject on demand to scrutiny by the police. In 1982 more than 200,000 people were arrested under these laws, a twenty-percent increase over 1981

.2 A total of at least 6.1 million people were tried for pass law offences between 1967 and 1980.3

POLITICAL TRIALS AND IMPRISONMENTS

The right to protest against apartheid or to organize for fundamental change is explicitly prohibited by South African law. Under laws including the Public