Racism in South Africa can be traced back to the earliest historical accounts of interactions between African, Asian, and European peoples along the coast of Southern Africa. It has existed throughout several centuries of the history of South Africa, dating back to the Dutch colonisation of Southern Africa, which started in 1652. Before universal suffrage was achieved in 1994, White South Africans, especially Afrikaners during the period of Apartheid, enjoyed various legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights that were denied to the indigenous African peoples and to the immigrants and descendants of immigrants who had not originated from Europe. Examples of systematic racism over the course of South Africa's history include forced removals, racial inequality, racial segregation, uneven resource distribution, and disenfranchisement. Racial controversies and politics remain major phenomena in the country.
Colonial racism
The region that would become modern-day South Africa was located in a position of advantage for European merchants who were seeking to organize and carry out trade in the East Indies, primarily Portuguese and Dutch colonists. In 1652, the Dutch East India Company founded the Cape Colony at the Cape of Good Hope. The purpose of the colony was to ensure that Dutch ships sailing to and from Batavia would have a source of fresh provisions, as death by starvation claimed a large number of passengers. During the period of Dutch rule, Dutch settlers (eventually known as Boers) began to migrate to the colony, instituting settlements throughout the region.
The region attracted Dutch slave traders, who imported slaves for wheat farming and viticulture to serve the various Dutch settlements. Many slaves escaped their masters by fleeing inland and joining existing groups such as the Xhosa or forming groups that were headed by warlords such as those of the Bloem, Kok, and Barends families. By the late 18th century, Arabs and European merchants traded beads, brass, cloth, alcohol, and firearms in exchange for slaves, ivory, gold, wax, cattle, and skins. The profits from these trades encouraged the warlords to hunt elephants and slaves by raiding local communities such as Rolong, Tlhaping, Huruthshe, and Ngwaketse. During the Mfecane, the Zulu under Shaka overran many smaller tribes and enslaved them.
Many Indians were brought to the colony as slaves. The practice of importing slaves from India stretches back to the 1600s, when the Dutch bought non-Muslim slaves from various kingdoms of India that were ruled by Muslims. By the early part of the 18th century, 80% of the slaves were South Asians, who were not just from the Indian subcontinent but also those South Asians who were living in south-east Asian regions such as Java. A slave-trading station was established in Delagoa Bay (present-day Maputo) in 1721 but was abandoned in 1731. Between 1731 and 1765, many Madagascan slaves were bought from Madagascar.
The Dutch colonial law defined slaves as property that could be traded, bought, and sold, a form of slavery known as 'chattel slavery'. There are many examples of discriminatory practices toward slaves during the colonial period, such as whipping, starvation, being forced to work for long hours, laborers having to carry passes, being subject to high taxation, not being able to walk on the sidewalks, and being banned from living, entering, or working in certain areas, such as the Orange Free State. Other examples include the allocation of rations during the Siege of Ladysmith.
The word "Kaffir" was used with apparently derogatory connotations during the period of European colonial rule until the early 20th century.
Non-racialism in the Cape Colony
From 1853, the Cape Colony had a representative democracy that granted suffrage to all men regardless of color; policies the emerged from the Representative government and Responsible government movements notably during the administration of Cape Prime Minister John Molteno.M.Plaut: Promise and Despair: The First Struggle for a Non-racial South Africa. Jacana, Cape Town. 2016. . pp.19-20. However, beginning in 1887, the Cape government of Prime Minister Gordon Sprigg began to change voting laws in order to impede black votes with the adoption of the Cape Parliamentary Registration Act. The erosion of non-White voting rights would continue during the government of Cecil Rhodes culminating in the Glen Grey Act of 1894 before the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910.
Apartheid racism
Apartheid (Afrikaans pronunciation: ; an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", or "the state of being apart", literally "apart-hood") was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, the rights, associations, and movements of the majority black inhabitants and other ethnic groups were curtailed, and white minority rule was maintained. Apartheid was developed after World War II by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party and Broederbond organizations. The ideology was also enforced in South West Africa, which was administered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate (revoked in 1966 via United Nations Resolution 2145) until it gained independence as Namibia in 1990. By extension, the term is currently used for forms of systematic segregation established by the state authority in a country against the social and civil rights of a certain group of citizens due to ethnic prejudices.
The Indian community has been subject to Zulu racist attacks dating back to the arrival of indentured labor in South Africa, which ultimately resulted in the Durban Riots, of 1949 followed by riots in 1985 where homes for 1500 Indians were set on fire.
Governmental racism under Apartheid The first example of apartheid legislation was the Population Registration Act. This act was the first to force citizens to be registered under their race, and this set the stage for later racial tension. One example of apartheid legislation was the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act, which was passed into law in 1959. This law resulted in the forced relocation of black people, reserving much less land for the black citizens to live on, despite making up a large majority of the population. The way the South African government did this at the time was by reserving off pieces of land called Bantustans and forcing the black South Africans onto these pieces of land. The Bantustans were a series of ten distinct territories created in South Africa for different "ethnic groups." Black South Africans who relocated to these areas forfeited their status as South African citizens and were designated as permanent residents of the reserves. The expectation was that they would establish and operate their own governments. These regions were underdeveloped and received minimal economic support from the South African government. Residents of the Bantustans had to travel long distances to find work in industrial areas on the borders of their territories. Despite the South African government's efforts to keep the Bantustans viable, In the 1970s, four of these Bantustans gained independence and seceded from the South African government, which was the original purpose of their creation: to segregate black South Africans from the rest of the country.
Another example of restricting legislation in South Africa is the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents) Act of 1952. This act forced black South African citizens to carry their passbooks with them at all times. If someone was found without their passbook, they could be arrested for no reason other than that. This caused immense anger within the black community, which would eventually spark the defiance campaign of 1952.
These apartheid laws sparked some resistance within the black South African community, and several oppositional groups were formed. One of these groups that emerged was the ANC (African National Congress), a group that eventually became involved in many resistance activities. One movement the ANC got involved in was a defiance campaign in the black suburb of Sharpeville. This eventually led to the Sharpeville massacre, where 69 black South Africans were killed and 180 more were injured. This event resulted in the apartheid protest that South Africa would see, and in that moment, the black South African community was horrified. In response, the following week was full of demonstrations, protests, and marches. Because of this, the South African government saw fit to declare a state of emergency and arrest thousands of people who had been protesting. Numbers had approached 10,000 by May, and many of these people were not released for months afterwards. Also in the fallout of the Sharpeville massacre, the South African government banned any organizations that were considered a threat to public safety or order. This included organizations such as the ANC and the PAC (another organization that was committed to activism for black South Africans through peaceful protesting).
Under apartheid, black women were affected to an extreme degree due to discriminatory racial and gender laws. There were not many opportunities for women to become political leaders, as many organizations allowed only male membership, so not many women got very involved with politics. There were several organizations that let women join or had entirely separate organizations for women to join, one of which was the ANCWL, or ANC Women's League. In a protest of the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents) Act of 1952, as mentioned above, and several other pieces of legislation, many women participated in movements against the government for the first time in the form of the Defiance campaign. The defiance campaign was a movement organized in part by the ANC because of new apartheid legislation from the government. Women were not the only people to take part in this campaign, but the inclusion of women is noteworthy because this was the first campaign to see major participation from women. The movement itself involved thousands of black citizens doing nonviolent things that would normally be considered as civil disobedience, such as going into areas that only White people were allowed to go into or burning their pass books. The idea behind the movement was that if enough black people flooded the South African prison and judicial systems, it would force the government to reform the apartheid laws. Thousands of people were arrested in a matter of months, but the campaign did not accomplish its goal of achieving radical change. However, it did capture the attention of the global community and that of the United Nations. In time, the UN would launch an investigation into the apartheid policy.
In the 1980s, resistance to apartheid became extreme. The United Democratic Front was formed in order to try and unite people all over to join in the fight against government oppression. The leader of the front, Allan Boesak, called on organizations all over South Africa to help him. This included churches, civic associations, trade unions, student organizations, and sports bodies. The UDF became extremely popular among the black community and helped unite everyone who was fighting for equality, something that had not happened in the past. The government's response was to declare another national emergency, and again, South Africa saw thousands of arrests and hundreds of killings. However, by 1990, the burden of public violence was too much. The government began losing its iron grip on the country, and eventually the state president, F.W. de Klerk, decided that reform was absolutely necessary.
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