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An average person who is well aware of the definition of a word 'apartheid' would not even attempt to ask this question. On the other hand your screen-name brings an understanding as to why the answer to your own question is not obvious to you. I'll give you a clear picture of what apartheid was like in South Africa, and surely after reading you'll be able to make your own judgement.
Apartheid (literally "apartness" in Afrikaans and Dutch) was a system of racial segregation that was enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, people were legally classified into a racial groups - the main ones being White, Black, Indian and Coloured - and were geographically, and forcibly, separated from each other on the basis of the legal classification. The Black majority, in particular, legally became citizens of particular "homelands" that were nominally sovereign nations but operated more akin to United States "Indian Reservations" and Australian "Aboriginal Reserves." In reality, a majority of Black South Africans had never resided in these "homelands."
In practice, this prevented non-white people — even if actually resident in white South Africa — from having a vote or influence, restricting their rights to faraway homelands which they may never have visited. Education, medical care, and other public services were sometimes claimed to be separate but equal, but those available to non-white people were in fact vastly inferior.
Apartheid was implemented by the law. The following restrictions were not only social but were strictly enforced by law (the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act specifically allowed government to provide different levels of amenities for the different races):
* Non-whites were not allowed to run businesses or professional practices in those areas designated as 'white South Africa' without a permit. They were supposed to move to the black homelands and set up businesses and practices there.
* Transport and civil facilities were segregated.
* Blacks were excluded from living or working in white areas, unless they had a pass - nicknamed the 'dompas' ('stupid pass' in Afrikaans). Only blacks with "Section 10" rights (those who had migrated to the cities before World War II) were excluded from this provision.
* A pass was only issued to a black person with approved work. Spouses and children had to be left behind in non-white areas. Many white households employed blacks as domestic workers, who were allowed to live on the premises— often in small rooms external to the family home.
* A pass was issued for one magisterial district confining the holder to that area only.
* Being without a valid pass made a person subject to immediate arrest and summary trial, often followed by deportation to the person's homeland. Police vans patrolled the "white" areas to round up the "illegal" blacks. In practice this was sporadic because of the vast number of blacks resident in tiny "boyslines" or staff quarters at white properties.
* Black areas rarely had plumbing or electricity.
* Hospitals and ambulances were segregated: the white hospitals were generally of a very good standard with well-educated staff and ample funds, while black hospitals were understaffed and underfunded.
* In the 1970s each black child's education cost the state only a tenth of each white child's. The Bantu Education Act specifically aimed to teach blacks only the basic skills they would need in working for whites. Higher education was provided in separate universities and colleges after 1959.
* Trains and buses were segregated. Black buses, known as "green" buses because they had a green marker on the front windscreen, stopped at black bus stops and white buses at white ones.
* Public beaches were racially segregated, with the best ones reserved for whites.
* Public swimming pools and libraries were also segregated. There were few black pools or libraries.
* Sex and marriage between the races was prohibited.
* A white driver was not allowed to have a black in the front of the car if that person was of a different sex.
* Cinemas in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks.
* Most restaurants and hotels in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks, unless the government had given prior permission.
* Black Africans were prohibited from attending "white" churches under the Churches Native Laws Amendment Act (1957). This was never rigidly enforced, and churches were one of the few places races could mix without the interference of the law.
* Although trade unions for black and "coloured" (mixed race) workers had existed since the early 20th century, it was not until the 1980s reforms that trade unions for black workers were recognized by the government.
* The minimum yearly taxable income for blacks was 360 Rand (30 Rand a month), while the white threshold was much higher, at 750 Rand (62.5 Rand per month).
Apartheid pervaded South African culture, as well as the law. The perception of non-white South Africans as second-class citizens was reinforced in many media, and the lack of opportunities for the races to mix in a social setting entrenched social distance between people.
* Ambulances, bridges, drive-in cinema parking spaces, graveyards, maternity wards, parks, pedestrian crossings, public toilets, taxis and theatres were also segregated.
* During the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the government implemented a policy of 'resettlement', to force people to move to their designated 'group areas'. Some argue that over three and a half million people were forced to resettle during this period. The victims of these removals included:
•Labour tenants on white-owned farms
•The inhabitants of the so-called 'black spots', areas of African-owned land surrounded by white farms
•The families of workers living in townships close to the homelands
•'Surplus people' from urban areas, including thousands of people from the Western Cape (which was declared a 'Coloured Labour Preference Area') who were moved to the Transkei and Ciskei homelands.
The best-publicized forced removals of the 1950s occurred in Johannesburg, when 60,000 people were moved to the new township of Soweto (an acronym for South Western Townships).
Until 1955, Sophiatown had been one of the few urban areas where blacks were allowed to own land, and was slowly developing into an entirely multiracial settlement. As industry in Johannesburg grew, Sophiatown became the home of a rapidly expanding black workforce, as it was convenient and close to town. It could also boast the only swimming pool for Black children in Johannesburg. It was however one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg, and held an almost symbolic importance for the 50,000 blacks it contained, both in terms of its sheer vibrancy and its unique culture. Despite a vigorous ANC protest campaign and worldwide publicity, the removal of Sophiatown began on 9 February 1955 under the Western Areas Removal Scheme. In the early hours, heavily armed police entered Sophiatown to force residents out of their homes and load their belongings onto government trucks. The residents were taken to a large tract of land, thirteen miles from the city centre, known as Meadowlands (now part of Soweto), that the government had purchased in 1953. Sophiatown was destroyed by bulldozers, and a new white suburb named Triomf (Triumph) was built in its place. This pattern of forced removal and destruction was to repeat itself over the next few years, and was not limited to people of African descent. Forced removals from areas like Cato Manor (Mkhumbane) in Durban, and District Six in Cape Town, where 55,000 coloured and Indian people were forced to move to new townships on the Cape Flats, were carried out under the Group Areas Act of 1950. |
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