1. What racial groups were South Africans divided into by the Population Registration Act of 1950?

2. How were White South Africans affected by the Population Registration Act of 1950 and other laws related to racial classification?

3. How were Black and Coloured South Africans affected by the Population Registration Act of 1950 and other laws related to racial classification?

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, South Africa’s rail system grew quickly. Different colonies and territories, like the Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal, each started building their own railway lines. These lines were later connected to create a larger, more unified system.

The map from 1901 shows how far the railroads had spread by then. It was useful for planning travel, trade routes, and military movements—especially during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), when control of transportation was very important.

First, during the 1950s and 1960s, large-scale removals of Africans, Indians, and Coloreds were carried out to implement the Group Areas Act, which mandated residential segregation throughout the country. More than 860,000 people were forced to move in order to divide and control racially-separate communities at a time of growing organized resistance to apartheid in urban areas. Sophiatown in Johannesburg (1955–1963) and District Six in Cape Town (beginning in 1968) were among the vibrant multi-racial communities that were destroyed by government bulldozers when these areas were declared “white.” Blacks were forcibly removed to distant segregated townships, sometimes 19 miles from places of employment in the central cities. In Cape Town, many informal settlements were destroyed. In one incident over four days in 1985, Africans resisted being moved from Crossroads to the new government-run Khayelitsha township farther away; 18 people were killed and 230 were injured.

Second, African farm laborers made up the largest number of forcibly removed people, mainly pushed out of their jobs by mechanization of agriculture. While this process has happened in many other countries, in South Africa these rural residents were not permitted to move to towns to find new jobs. Instead they were segregated into desperately poor and overcrowded rural areas where there usually were no job prospects.

Third, removals were an essential tool of the apartheid government’s Bantustan (or homeland) policy aimed at stripping all Africans of any political rights as well as their citizenship in South Africa. The goal was to take non-white people out of South Africa and put them into Bantustans which were declared countries independent of South Africa. As a result, non-white people would no longer be citizens of South Africa and the government would not need to care for them. Hundreds of thousands of Africans were moved to resettlement camps in the bantustans with no services or jobs. The massive removals in the early 1960s to overcrowded, infertile places was condemned internationally. These were dumping grounds for Africans who the white South Africans felt were unneeded in the labor market. Hundreds of thousands of other Africans were dispossessed of land and homes where they had lived for generations. By the 1980s, popular resistance to removals was widespread, and government plans to remove up to two million more people were never carried out.

Source: Adopted from Matrix Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Michigan State University. http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-6.

1. What were the Bantustans? How did the Bantustans help the white minority gain, maintain, and consolidate power in apartheid South Africa?

2. How did the Bantustans reduce the political power of Africans?

Source: South African History Online, “Race and Ethnicity in South Africa”https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/race-and-ethnicity-south-africa

In the 1700s the Dutch imported slaves from other areas of Africa and from southeast Asia and required that they carry passes with them stating where they were allowed to go and for what purpose. Later, the same was required for indigenous South Africans like the Khoikhoi who, having lost their land to the Dutch, worked under harsh conditions in the Dutch colony. Pass laws continued when the British took over the Cape Colony. Afrikanners (Boers) left the Cape Colony in response to British rule and the abolition of slavery to settle towns and farms in northeast South Africa. They created pass laws when black South Africans came to work in the towns that required them to live on the outskirts on undesirable land. When diamonds and gold were discovered in South Africa in the 1860s it created a whole new industry. Again, white South Africans needed black labor. Pass laws gave white mine owners the right to restrict the movements of black workers, forcing them to live in compounds at the mines in poor conditions away from their families, while white workers could settle elsewhere and come and go when not working. 

Despite recommendations from governement commissions to end pass laws because of the cost of enforcing them and the animosity of the black population towards them, the National Party expanded the pass laws after it gained control of the government in 1948 as part of its apartheid policy. In 1952, the government enacted an even more rigid pass law called the Natives Act of 1952. This law forced Black South Africans over the age of 16 to carry a range of documents, including a photograph, place of birth, employment records, tax payments and criminal records, and enabled the government to further restrict their movement. It was illegal to be without a Pass the penalty for which was arrest and jail. Often, black South Africans had to violate the pass laws to find work to support their families, so harassment, fines, and arrests under the pass laws were a constant threat to many urban Africans. In the 1970s and 1980s, many Africans found in violation of pass laws were stripped of citizenship and forced to move out of cities to poverty-stricken rural “homelands.” By the time the increasingly expensive and ineffective pass laws were repealed in 1986, they had led to more than 17 million arrests.

Sources: Adopted from Matrix Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Michigan State University.

http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-3; South African History Online, “Pass Laws in South Africa 1800-1994” https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994

1. What were the pass laws? How did these laws help the white minority gain, maintain, and consolidate power in apartheid South Africa?

2. How did the pass laws change in 1952?

3. What were the consequences of violating the pass laws?

4. How did many urban Africans respond to the pass laws?

First, during the 1950s and 1960s, large-scale removals of Africans, Indians, and Coloreds were carried out to implement the Group Areas Act, which mandated residential segregation throughout the country. More than 860,000 people were forced to move in order to divide and control racially-separate communities at a time of growing organized resistance to apartheid in urban areas. Sophiatown in Johannesburg (1955–1963) and District Six in Cape Town (beginning in 1968) were among the vibrant multi-racial communities that were destroyed by government bulldozers when these areas were declared “white.” Blacks were forcibly removed to distant segregated townships, sometimes 19 miles from places of employment in the central cities. In Cape Town, many informal settlements were destroyed. In one incident over four days in 1985, Africans resisted being moved from Crossroads to the new government-run Khayelitsha township farther away; 18 people were killed and 230 were injured.

Second, African farm laborers made up the largest number of forcibly removed people, mainly pushed out of their jobs by mechanization of agriculture. While this process has happened in many other countries, in South Africa these rural residents were not permitted to move to towns to find new jobs. Instead they were segregated into desperately poor and overcrowded rural areas where there usually were no job prospects.

Third, removals were an essential tool of the apartheid government’s Bantustan (or homeland) policy aimed at stripping all Africans of any political rights as well as their citizenship in South Africa. The goal was to take non-white people out of South Africa and put them into Bantustans which were declared countries independent of South Africa. As a result, non-white people would no longer be citizens of South Africa and the government would not need to care for them. Hundreds of thousands of Africans were moved to resettlement camps in the bantustans with no services or jobs. The massive removals in the early 1960s to overcrowded, infertile places was condemned internationally. These were dumping grounds for Africans who the white South Africans felt were unneeded in the labor market. Hundreds of thousands of other Africans were dispossessed of land and homes where they had lived for generations. By the 1980s, popular resistance to removals was widespread, and government plans to remove up to two million more people were never carried out.

Source: Adopted from Matrix Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Michigan State University. http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-6.

1. What did the apartheid government do to 3.5 million black South Africans between 1960 and 1986? How did this help the white minority gain, maintain, and consolidate power in apartheid South Africa?

2. What were the Forced Removals? How did this help the white minority gain, maintained, and consolidated power in apartheid South Africa?

You can click on the posts to get a better view and read the text.

Pick an image # and explain which of the prior historical documents may have led to the inequalities shown in the images in 2-3 sentences.

On your page, summarize in 2-3 sentences how did this lead to or support the system of apartheid.

In each post, there are questions to guide your thinking. You do not have to answer the questions, but you can use them to help summarize your response.

Mooifontein Cemetery next to Vusimuzi, Tembisa.

Pick an image # and explain which of the prior historical documents may have led to the inequalities shown in the images in 2-3 sentences.

Pick an image # and explain which of the prior historical documents may have led to the inequalities shown in the images in 2-3 sentences.