Apartheid
Apartheid was a legally sanctioned system of racial segregation enforced in South Africa which was officially instituted after the victory of the South African National Party in 1948 and continued until the mid-1990s. The word means "separateness" or "apartness" in Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch descended settlers, many of whom were early proponents of the policy.
Apartheid denied black South Africans the vote and restricted other rights. Segregation of living areas, education, public transport and many other facilities was enforced. Marriage and sexual relations between people of different races was prohibited, and all citizens were classified into racial groups, sometimes dividing members of the same family. Homelands were set up in which blacks where required to live apart from white South Africans. Others, notably the "Coloureds" - people of mixed race - and decendants of Indian workers who had been brought to South Africa to work on sugar cane farms, occupied a middle ground in the law.
In 1973, the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid was ratified by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Article II of this convention contains a rigorous definition of the term.
It is often argued - by, for example, Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a speech in Capetown in April 2002 - that the state of Israel is guilty of this crime. In particular, they have been accused of breaching paragraphs (a)(iii), (c), (d) and (f) of Article II.
See also: racism, discrimination, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu Stephen Biko, Jim Crow laws
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