For her—a first-generation university student—this history was deeply personal. Nkabinde and her fellow students demanded the removal of a Verwoerd plaque; in response to their efforts, it was taken down, as was a statue of the mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town. For a long time, white South Africans viewed Verwoerd from a strikingly different perspective than blacks. A few still bear his name—including Melanie Verwoed, a well-known politician who adopted the family name by marriage her ex-husband is H.
Verwoerd's grandson. When Melanie Verwoerd enters the country from abroad, border control officers raise their eyebrows. It can help when she explains that she fought late apartheid, and belonged to the same political party as Nelson Mandela. But her surname carries too much weight to be easily shrugged off. Only a tiny minority of South Africans stubbornly maintain that H.
Verwoerd was a good man. When asked if he thought Verwoerd's vision of apartheid was a good idea at the time, he says yes. White nationalists notwithstanding, Verwoerd's status as a symbol of evil isn't likely to change anytime soon. His name is now shorthand for injustice; in Parliament, comparisons to Verwoerd have become a dagger of accusation that politicians brandish at each other. This, says Melanie Verwoerd, is for the most part a good thing.
It certainly unifies people. Just as Nelson Mandela has become one focal point in stories of liberation, Verwoerd has become a focal point in stories of injustice—a darkness against which wrongs are measured. Too rarely are his collaborators and successors condemned with such passion. Melanie Verwoerd, who had recently won a seat in Parliament, was in attendance. History was almost palpable that day. When freedom came to South Africa, the present didn't replace the past—it only added new layers to what had come before.
If you read the debates that led up to the Act of Union, the most striking thing is that the words 'racial conflict' referred to the Anglo- Boer war. What we would call the racial issue was then 'the native problem'. The British had fought the war partly, it was said, to protect the interests of the natives from the Boers, the Afrikaners.
During the war the British had encouraged Africans to work for British victory, which they did in large numbers. With victory, Britain might have been expected to extend the Cape non-racial franchise to the conquered territories of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony so that blacks would be represented in the whole territory the way they had been in the British colony.
But not only did they not do so, they also limited the 'native' vote to the Cape. Africans were to have no say in the election of a national parliament, although they retained their voting rights to the Cape parliament. The young Churchill, then Under-Secretary for the Colonies, had covered the South African war as a journalist and had been captured by - and escaped from - the Boers. His knowledge and influence in making the agreement after peace was signed was crucial. In a debate in July he called the peace treaty 'the first real step taken to withdraw South African affairs from the arena of British party politics'.
He argued passionately that the Afrikaners should be allowed self-rule, a self-rule which he admitted would mean that black Africans would be excluded from the vote. In parliament he told those who pointed out that the treaty had enshrined the rights of Africans that the Afrikaners interpreted the peace treaty differently.
He said: 'We must be bound by the interpretation which the other party places on it and it is undoubted that the Boers would regard it as a breach of that treaty if the franchise were in the first instance extended to any persons who are not white. When South Africa was discussed four years later, Churchill's successor tried to reassure parliament that the Afrikaners would come round to the view that it was wiser to include Africans in the franchise.
Because of Churchill and his policy the British parliament had already washed its hands of responsibility for the rights of its black citizens in South Africa. When the new parliament in South Africa passed the Land Act, making it illegal for Africans to purchase land from Europeans anywhere outside the reserves, a delegation of Africans who came to London to protest were told that it was a matter for the South African parliament.
The deputy leader of the party which passed the Land Act was Jan Smuts. He had fought against the British and his troops had been responsible for massacres of unarmed Africans acting as drivers and porters for the British army.
After the war he played a crucial role in striking the deal between Britain and the Afrikaners and is usually regarded as the man who represented liberal democratic values in South Africa. In fact, Smuts believed that South Africa should be a 'white man's country' and he believed in 'segregation' - which is simply English for apartheid.
He passed the first piece of legislation which separated white and black areas and in the Native Urban Areas Act which laid down the principle of residential segregation in urban areas, keeping blacks away from white residential areas. He also initiated the principle of reserving jobs for whites in the Mines and Work Act. In the 'Black Peril' election, when fear of being dominated by Africans became the major issue, Smuts demanded that the rate of black integration into white society must be curtailed.
He also called for South African influence to be extended north and east in the creation of a British Confederation of African States. People would then be treated differently according to their population group, and so this law formed the basis of apartheid. It was however not always that easy to decide what racial group a person was part of, and this caused some problems. Group Areas Act, This was the act that started physical separation between races, especially in urban areas.
The act also called for the removal of some groups of people into areas set aside for their racial group. Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act, This Act said that different racial groups had to live in different areas.
Only a small percentage of South Africa was left for black people who comprised the vast majority to form their 'homelands'. This Act also got rid of 'black spots' inside white areas, by moving all black people out of the city.
Well known removals were those in District 6, Sophiatown and Lady Selborne. These black people were then placed in townships outside of the town. They could not own property here, only rent it, as the land could only be white owned. This Act caused much hardship and resentment. People lost their homes, were moved off land they had owned for many years and were moved to undeveloped areas far away from their place of work. Resistance to apartheid came from all circles, and not only, as is often presumed, from those who suffered the negative effects of discrimination.
Criticism also came from other countries, and some of these gave support to the South African freedom movements. There were also Indian and Coloured organized resistance movements e.
We shall consider the ANC. It was started as a movement for the Black elite, that is those Blacks who were educated. In , the ANC sent a deputation to London to plead for a new deal for South African blacks, but there was no change to their position. The history of resistance by the ANC goes through three phases. The first was dialogue and petition; the second direct opposition and the last the period of exiled armed struggle. In , just after apartheid was introduced, the ANC started on a more militant path, with the Youth League playing a more important role.
The ANC introduced their Programme of Action in , supporting strike action, protests and other forms of non-violent resistance.
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