became whites. No whites became black.
Once the government had slotted the population into genetic categories, step two of apartheid involved dividing the nation between them with a piece of legislation called the Group Areas Act. Residential segregation had been part of South African life since the early nineteenth century but this principle was now extended and implemented with vicious efficiency. The idea was to split each town and city into regions where a single race would live and trade. This was accomplished by controlling the purchase of homes or rentals on racial lines.
In hundreds of suburbs this involved the violent dissolution of neighbourhoods where numerous races had lived in harmony for decades. One of the best known was Sofiatown, a jumping neck of the Joburg woods where black gangsters who modelled themselves on Caponeâs boys mingled with Jewish clarinet players, Indian artists and torch-song chanteuses whose racial backgrounds were exotically indistinct. The National Party government, which introduced these acts and ruled from 1948 to 1994, viewed areas like Sofiatown as âthe deathbeds of the European raceâ.
If the one-two delivered by the Population Registration Act and Group Areas Act left the countryâs hopes of racial parity teetering like a punch-drunk fighter, a piece of legislation called the Bantu Authorities Act delivered the knockout strike, then got in a few cheap shots as its opponent fell to the canvas.
Designed to rid the African population of their last scraps of rights, it created a number of tribal reserves â or homelands â where these people could apparently enjoy the constitutional privileges so recently ripped from their grasp. The government spin likened this process to the decolonisation of European empires in tropical Africa. Although the South African economy flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, the nominally independent homelands were destitute. Nearly all consisted of up to nineteen fragments of land separated by white-owned farms and investing directly into these areas was a punishable offence under corporate law. With the often substandard land unable to support ever higher concentrations of people and stock, the inhabitants had no choice but to leave as migrant workers seeking employment in major industrial centres.
These three ideas â racial classification, dividing of urban areas according to skin colour and creating new territories that provided cheap labour without any social obligation â were the foundations of one of the most insidious attempts at social engineering the world has seen.
In my twelve years of history studies at whites-only government schools, the mechanics of the system that delivered my classmates and I such privileged lifestyles were only hinted at. And curiosity had its consequences. For example, when a schoolmate expressed an interest in writing a paper on influx control â the government term for ensuring black labourers didnât hang around white cities any longer than necessary â she was stripped of her prefectship and talk of expulsion filled the quadrangle.
The Apartheid Museum experience is designed to provoke alienation, discomfort and shame in people like me. It succeeded on all counts.
It tells two distinct tales and Iâd heard neither growing up in South Africa. Not only does it detail the system of legislated racism, it also covers the resistance it engendered.
One such event took place on 26 June 1952 and was known as the Day of Defiance. Throughout the Witwatersrand, Cape and Natal, cheering crowds watched groups of protesters deliberately break unjust laws. Entrances marked âEuropeans onlyâ were brazenly strode through, curfews were ignored with cavalier disdain and lunch menus were demanded at counters reserved for whites only.
When the government picked up its collective jaw from the parliament floor at the gumption of these uppity âBan-tusâ, legislation was
Once the government had slotted the population into genetic categories, step two of apartheid involved dividing the nation between them with a piece of legislation called the Group Areas Act. Residential segregation had been part of South African life since the early nineteenth century but this principle was now extended and implemented with vicious efficiency. The idea was to split each town and city into regions where a single race would live and trade. This was accomplished by controlling the purchase of homes or rentals on racial lines.
In hundreds of suburbs this involved the violent dissolution of neighbourhoods where numerous races had lived in harmony for decades. One of the best known was Sofiatown, a jumping neck of the Joburg woods where black gangsters who modelled themselves on Caponeâs boys mingled with Jewish clarinet players, Indian artists and torch-song chanteuses whose racial backgrounds were exotically indistinct. The National Party government, which introduced these acts and ruled from 1948 to 1994, viewed areas like Sofiatown as âthe deathbeds of the European raceâ.
If the one-two delivered by the Population Registration Act and Group Areas Act left the countryâs hopes of racial parity teetering like a punch-drunk fighter, a piece of legislation called the Bantu Authorities Act delivered the knockout strike, then got in a few cheap shots as its opponent fell to the canvas.
Designed to rid the African population of their last scraps of rights, it created a number of tribal reserves â or homelands â where these people could apparently enjoy the constitutional privileges so recently ripped from their grasp. The government spin likened this process to the decolonisation of European empires in tropical Africa. Although the South African economy flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, the nominally independent homelands were destitute. Nearly all consisted of up to nineteen fragments of land separated by white-owned farms and investing directly into these areas was a punishable offence under corporate law. With the often substandard land unable to support ever higher concentrations of people and stock, the inhabitants had no choice but to leave as migrant workers seeking employment in major industrial centres.
These three ideas â racial classification, dividing of urban areas according to skin colour and creating new territories that provided cheap labour without any social obligation â were the foundations of one of the most insidious attempts at social engineering the world has seen.
In my twelve years of history studies at whites-only government schools, the mechanics of the system that delivered my classmates and I such privileged lifestyles were only hinted at. And curiosity had its consequences. For example, when a schoolmate expressed an interest in writing a paper on influx control â the government term for ensuring black labourers didnât hang around white cities any longer than necessary â she was stripped of her prefectship and talk of expulsion filled the quadrangle.
The Apartheid Museum experience is designed to provoke alienation, discomfort and shame in people like me. It succeeded on all counts.
It tells two distinct tales and Iâd heard neither growing up in South Africa. Not only does it detail the system of legislated racism, it also covers the resistance it engendered.
One such event took place on 26 June 1952 and was known as the Day of Defiance. Throughout the Witwatersrand, Cape and Natal, cheering crowds watched groups of protesters deliberately break unjust laws. Entrances marked âEuropeans onlyâ were brazenly strode through, curfews were ignored with cavalier disdain and lunch menus were demanded at counters reserved for whites only.
When the government picked up its collective jaw from the parliament floor at the gumption of these uppity âBan-tusâ, legislation was
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