How did South African Apartheid happen, and how did it finally end? - Thula Simpson — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:07On June 16th 1976,
2. 0:10over 10,000 student protesters flooded the streets of Soweto, South Africa.
3. 0:16For 28 years, South Africans had been living under Apartheid,
4. 0:20a strict policy of segregation that barred the country’s Black majority
5. 0:24from skilled, high-paying jobs, quality education, and much more.
6. 0:30And in 1974, the government announced schools would be forced to teach
7. 0:34many subjects in Afrikaans—
8. 0:36a language used primarily by the nation’s white ruling elites.
9. 0:41But when protesters rose up to fight this injustice,
10. 0:44the government's response was swift.
11. 0:47Armed police officers turned their weapons onto the crowd,
12. 0:50and over the following days they killed over 150 students,
13. 0:55including victims as young as 13.
14. 0:59Even before Apartheid, South Africa’s long history of racial violence
15. 1:03had already cost countless Black Africans their jobs, homes, and lives.
16. 1:09Beginning in the 1600s,
17. 1:11first Dutch and later British settlers colonized the nation,
18. 1:15displacing local populations from their ancestral lands.
19. 1:21Over the following centuries,
20. 1:22Black Africans were segregated onto so-called native reserves;
21. 1:27and by the 20th century, that meant 70% of the population
22. 1:32was living on roughly 13% of the country’s land.
23. 1:35Deprived of their traditional livelihoods
24. 1:38and seeking to escape these overpopulated regions,
25. 1:41Black Africans began migrating to white-controlled areas.
26. 1:46There, they worked for low wages on white-owned farms and mines,
27. 1:50alongside the descendants of enslaved and indentured workers
28. 1:54from across Africa and Asia.
29. 1:57By 1948, this exploited labor force was a primary driver
30. 2:01of South Africa’s booming economy.
31. 2:04But economists argued that continued growth required a stable, educated,
32. 2:09and urbanized African labor force.
33. 2:11The ruling United Party accepted this logic,
34. 2:14but the rival National Party argued such a workforce
35. 2:18would threaten the white ruling class.
36. 2:20Naming their campaign Apartheid, the Afrikaans word for “separateness,”
37. 2:24the National Party won the 1948 elections.
38. 2:28And once in power, they began forcibly relocating millions of Africans
39. 2:32back to the reserves.
40. 2:34Under Apartheid, Black workers were considered temporary visitors
41. 2:38in white areas.
42. 2:40They were restricted to specific zones,
43. 2:42and their trade unions received no official recognition.
44. 2:46The government also abolished mixed race universities,
45. 2:50outlawed mixed marriages, segregated recreational spaces,
46. 2:55and purged the non-white population from the voters’ roll.
47. 2:58Within parliament at this time,
48. 3:00Apartheid only had a small group of outspoken opponents.
49. 3:04But outside the government,
50. 3:06three political groups were leading a popular resistance against the regime:
51. 3:10the Communist Party, which was then legally banned in 1950,
52. 3:15their allies in the African National Congress,
53. 3:17and later, a splinter group called the Pan-Africanist Congress.
54. 3:21Despite some ideological differences,
55. 3:24all three groups worked to mobilize the masses
56. 3:27against Apartheid by non-violent methods.
57. 3:30But the National Party wasn’t as restrained.
58. 3:33On March 21st, 1960, policemen massacred demonstrators at a PAC rally,
59. 3:40and within weeks, the ANC and PAC were outlawed.
60. 3:45These events radicalized anti-Apartheid leaders,
61. 3:48and in December of 1961,
62. 3:51Nelson Mandela and other ANC and Communist Party activists
63. 3:55established the resistance’s armed wing.
64. 3:59While the conflict grew increasingly violent,
65. 4:01the 1960s saw consistent economic growth throughout South Africa.
66. 4:06The National Party attributed this to the success of Apartheid,
67. 4:10but it was actually due to further exploitation.
68. 4:13Employers were illegally hiring Black laborers
69. 4:16for positions affluent white workers didn’t want to fill.
70. 4:20And since this prosperity was flowing disproportionately
71. 4:23to the ruling white minority,
72. 4:25the government happily turned a blind eye.
73. 4:28Meanwhile, the National Party leveraged global anti-communist sentiment
74. 4:33to demonize its adversaries.
75. 4:35In 1963, they tried Mandela and ten others for advancing communism
76. 4:41and training recruits in guerrilla warfare.
77. 4:44Eight of the defendants were sentenced to life in prison,
78. 4:47and many remaining anti-Apartheid leaders were forced into exile.
79. 4:51Over the next decade,
80. 4:53a generation of student activists rose up to continue the fight,
81. 4:57led in part by Steve Biko and the South African Students Organization.
82. 5:01Following the Soweto Massacre, student protesters spread nationwide.
83. 5:06But police violently smothered these demonstrations,
84. 5:09killing over 600 protesters by early 1977.
85. 5:14That same year, Biko was taken into police custody
86. 5:18and killed in a brutal assault.
87. 5:21In response to this violence,
88. 5:23the international community finally called for an end to Apartheid,
89. 5:28with some countries enacting trade embargoes against South Africa.
90. 5:32The state attempted to launch a reform process,
91. 5:35creating separate parliaments for the country's white,
92. 5:38non-white, and Indian populations.
93. 5:41But the exclusion of the African majority led to more nationwide rioting.
94. 5:46So when F.W. de Klerk, a long-time supporter of Apartheid,
95. 5:50came to power in 1989,
96. 5:53he concluded the only way to ensure white survival was to end the policy.
97. 5:58On February 2nd, 1990,
98. 6:01de Klerk shocked the world by unbanning the ANC,
99. 6:05releasing Mandela,
100. 6:06and calling for constitutional negotiations.
101. 6:10Four years later, in the nation’s inaugural all-inclusive elections,
102. 6:15Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president.
103. 6:19But today, the national trauma of Apartheid can still be keenly felt,
104. 6:25and many wounds from this period have yet to fully heal.