Apartheid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This page or section needs to be cleaned up. Please help cleaning it up if you can. When the cleanup is done, this template should be removed. For tips on making this article better, read "How to edit a page" and "How to write Simple English articles". Tagged since April 2009 |
 |
An editor thinks that this article may not be neutral. This can be talked about on the article's talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2009. |
Apartheid is a political system in South Africa in which people where divided into racial groups and kept apart by law. The policy officially existed in from 1948 to 1994, although racial discrimination started much earlier. The system was used to deny many rights of non-white people. The laws allowed the white minority to keep the black majority out of certain areas. Black people had to carry special papers (passes) or have permission to live and work in particular areas. The government separated mixed communities and forcibly moved many people. Many laws were made, for example: people of different races were not allowed to get married; black people could not own land; and black people could not vote.
Many countries and the United Nations did not agree with the South African government's policies. There were protests in South Africa, like in Sharpeville in 1960 and in Soweto in 1976. The Soweto uprising started because Africans were forced to study some subjects at school in Afrikaans. Many black people did not like Afrikaans because it was the language of the apartheid government. It was also not the first language of black people.
Finally, after much struggle, the South African government ended apartheid in 1994. After that, equal rights were shared among both black and whites. Nelson Mandela stood up to apartheid and became president when apartheid was ended. Although granted equal rights since 1994, 90 percent of the country's poor people are non-white, and poverty remains a big problem.
Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness".
[change] Aims
The aim of apartheid was to separate all the people of South Africa into small independent nations. But the National Party government did not want to spend a lot of money on this project. Also, they wanted to keep most of South Africa's land for white people. Especially the rich parts of the country, like the gold mines of Johannesburg. They also wanted black people to work in these mines for little money. But they did not want black men's families to live in the same area.
[change]
[change] Notes
