Key takeaways
- Wikipedia defines apartheid as a system of institutionalised racial segregation in South Africa from 1948 to 1994; South African History Online says it made existing segregation part of the law.
- The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified South Africans by race, and the Group Areas Act of 1950 began the physical separation of where people could live.
- Wikipedia says 3.5 million Black Africans were forcibly removed from their homes between 1960 and 1983.
- Police killed 69 people at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960; at Soweto in 1976 the official toll was 23, though the figure usually given is 176, with estimates up to 700.
- Negotiations from 1990 led to the first universal-suffrage election on 27 April 1994; a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up under a 1995 Act.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation and white minority rule in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. The word is Afrikaans for "separateness." Wikipedia describes a hierarchy in which white citizens held the highest status while others were classified as Indian/Asian, Coloured and Black African, with differing and lesser rights. South African History Online (SAHO) makes a sharper point: apartheid "did not differ that much" in basic principle from the segregation that came before 1948 — "the main difference is that apartheid made segregation part of the law."
This page covers the laws, the resistance and the negotiated end.
Segregation before 1948, and what changed
Discrimination was much older than the National Party. Wikipedia traces pass laws for enslaved people at the Cape back to Dutch rule, their extension to the Khoikhoi in 1797, and later restrictions on the franchise and movement under British and Union governments. SAHO argues that what made apartheid stand out was its timing as well as its rigidity: it was introduced just as the Second World War had turned much of the world against racist policy and towards decolonisation.
SAHO gives two main explanations for its support: ideas of racial superiority, and fear among a white minority worried about losing jobs, culture and language — adding firmly that this "is obviously not a justification."
The legal architecture
Apartheid was built statute by statute. The key laws, from Wikipedia and SAHO:
| Year | Law | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1949 | Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act | Banned marriage across racial lines (Wikipedia calls it the first apartheid law) |
| 1950 | Population Registration Act | Classified every South African by race — SAHO calls it the basis of apartheid |
| 1950 | Group Areas Act | Began physical separation, especially in cities, and removals into racial areas |
| 1951 | Bantu Authorities Act | Separate government structures, a first step towards the bantustans |
| 1953 | Bantu Education Act | A separate school system designed, Wikipedia says, to prepare Black people for lives as a labouring class |
| 1959 | Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act | Assigned Black South Africans to ethnic "homelands" |
The franchise was stripped back too. Wikipedia records that a 1956 law let Coloured voters elect four MPs, that a 1969 law abolished those seats, and that, since Indians had never been allowed to vote, whites became the only enfranchised group. Pass laws compelled Black South Africans to carry identity documents and to be employed in a city to live there.
Removals, homelands and unequal schools
Wikipedia states that between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million Black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods — "some of the largest mass evictions in modern history." SAHO names well-known removals at District Six, Sophiatown and Lady Selborne, where people lost homes they had owned for years and were moved far from their work into townships where they could only rent.
The destination, for many, was a bantustan. Wikipedia counts 20 homelands — ten in South Africa and ten in South West Africa (now Namibia) — and notes that South Africa was the only country ever to recognise the independence of those it declared independent.
Schooling shows the scale of inequality in a single ratio. Wikipedia reports that in the 1970s the state spent ten times more per child on white children's education than on Black children's within the Bantu Education system. Put as a share, for every 11 units of spending on one white child and one Black child together, 10 went to the white child — about 91% of the pair's total.
Resistance, and the numbers we are unsure of
SAHO describes the ANC, founded in 1912, moving from petitions to mass non-violent action with its 1949 Programme of Action and the 1952 Defiance Campaign, in which people deliberately broke apartheid laws and offered themselves for arrest. In 1959 a breakaway group formed the Pan Africanist Congress.
On 21 March 1960, at a PAC protest against pass books in Sharpeville, police killed 69 people. Wikipedia records that more than 18,000 people were then arrested and both the ANC and PAC were banned; resistance went underground and into exile. The leaders of that period are discussed in liberation leaders of the twentieth century.
Some death tolls are genuinely uncertain. In the 1976 Soweto uprising, when police fired on students protesting against Afrikaans as the only language of instruction, Wikipedia gives the official figure as 23 dead but says the number "is usually given as 176, with estimates of up to 700." The usual figure is more than seven times the official one, which is itself a fact worth recording about how the state counted. Wikipedia adds that international sanctions, including arms embargoes, and condemnation at the United Nations grew alongside internal resistance in the 1970s and 1980s, met by states of emergency and brutal crackdowns.
Negotiating the end, 1987–1994
Wikipedia dates bilateral talks between the National Party and the ANC from 1987. On 2 February 1990, President F. W. de Klerk announced he would repeal discriminatory laws and lift the 30-year ban on leading anti-apartheid groups, and political prisoners were released. Apartheid legislation was abolished in 1991; the CODESA talks began that December; and in a Whites-only referendum in March 1992, 69% voted to continue negotiating.
The election of 27 April 1994 was the first held with universal suffrage. The ANC won 62.65% of the vote and 252 of the 400 seats (63% of the seats). Wikipedia notes that the vote share was less than the 66.7% that would have allowed it to rewrite the constitution.
Reckoning with the past fell to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The South African Department of Justice's TRC site says it was set up under the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995, worked through amnesty, reparation and human-rights-violations committees, and recognised that violence and abuses came "from all sides." How such legacies are argued over is the subject of contested legacies in history.
World History Timeline Sim, our app, covers social movements among its event categories and lets you browse by country, so 1948–1994 can be read as one sequence. Its what-if mode is a simulation, not history, and the app is a companion to coursework. More history guides sit under education and brain training.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
What does the word apartheid mean?
What were the main laws of apartheid?
What were the bantustans?
How did apartheid end?
Sources
- A history of Apartheid in South Africa (opens in a new tab)South African History Online — accessed
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission (opens in a new tab)Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, South Africa — accessed
- Apartheid (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
About the author
Reign Creative LLC — The independent app studio that builds the apps covered on this site and publishes every article here. On Google Play it publishes as Reign Collective Apps.
We use AI tools to help research, draft and edit our articles. Each article lists the sources its factual claims rely on, and details about our apps come from their live Google Play listings. No article on this site has been reviewed by an independent expert unless the reviewer is named on it.
No person at Reign Creative LLC has read this article in full. It was published after automated checks and an AI editorial review, which are described in our editorial policy and are not the same as a person reading every sentence.
Spotted an error? Tell us — how corrections are handled is set out in our editorial policy.