Collaboratively Building Concepts/Apartheid

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word. Translated directly into English it means "seperateness". The idea with seperateness was that the economic, social and political destinies of each racial population group in South Africa should develop seperately from the other. This was necessitated by the arrival in Africa of European settlers from the seventeenth century onwards. The European settlers saw themselves as economically, socially, moraly and politically more advanced than the indigeounous tribes that they encountered in Africa. The indigeoness African peoples, at the time of Colonialisation of Africa were decimated by:

1. Slavery - all the best people were removed from the continent to become slaves on another continent; (If you wanted to buy a slave, will you want a hardworking one or a lazy one? Would you prefer an honest one or a dishonest one?) 2. Inter tribal warfare - fueled by the need to capture people and sell as slaves; 3. Colonial powers - removing natural resources from Africa; 4. Disease - as a result of contact with foreigners.

The European settlers, first the Dutch and later the British, saw themselves as superior to the other races on the continent and wanted to maintain this superiority through the system of Apartheid.

Apartheid prevented the racial groups from mixing: Towns, schools, churches, public transport, marriage; all institutions were seperated on racial lines.

The Afrikaner Nationalist government succeded in ending the appearance of British rule in South Africa in 1948 and perpetuated the apartheid institutions that it inherited from the British. The English speaking South Africans sought to undo their hegemoney by supporting forces that rose to oppose appartheid. Thus began the first effective resistance against apartheid. However, the more it was resisted, the more the Nationalists sought to entrench appartheid. This eventually led to a relatively bloodless revolution with the establishment of the post Apartheid South Africa in 1994, when Mandela was elected the first black president.

All the institutions that supproted apartheid, including the law enforcement authorities were removed after 1994. This led to a rise in violent crime that caused the death of many more people than what was caused by apartheid or the struggle to overthrow apartheid.