Apartheid

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word, meaning "separation" or literally "apartness". In English, it has come to mean any legally sanctioned system of racial segregation, such as existed in The Republic of South Africa between 1948 and 1990. The first recorded use of the word is in 1917, during a speech by Jan Smuts, then Prime Minister of South Africa.

Definition of Apartheid in international law

In 1973, the text of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid was agreed by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Article II of this convention contains a rigorous definition of the term. The Convention came into force in 1976.

Apartheid in South Africa

South Africa was colonised by the Dutch and English from the 17th Century onwards. As was typically the case in the African colonies, the European settlers dominated the indigenous population through political control and the control of land and wealth. In the years following the victory of the South African National Party in the general election of 1948, a flood of laws were enacted, formally instituting the dominance of white people over other races.

The principal apartheid laws were as follows:

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949)
Amendment to The Immorality Act (1950)
- This law made it a criminal offence for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race.
The Population Registration Act (1950)
- This law required all citizens to register as black, white or coloured.
The Suppression of Communism Act (1950)
- This law banned any opposition party the government chose to label as "communist".
The Group Areas Act (1950)
- This law barred people of particular races from various urban areas.
The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953)
- This law prohibited people of different races from using the same public amenities.
"The Bantu Education Act (1953)
- This law brought in various measures expressly designed to reduce the level of education attainable by black people.
"The Mines and Work Act (1956)
- This law formalised racial discrimination in employment.
The Promotion of Black Self-Government Act (1958)
- This law set up nominally independent "homelands" for black people. In practice, the South African government maintained control over these bantustans.
Black Homeland Citizenship Act (1971)
- This law changed the status of the inhabitants of the 'homelands' so that they were no longer citizens of South Africa, and therefore had none of the rights that came with citizenship.

On 21 March 1960, 20,000 people congregated in Sharpeville to demonstrate against the requirement to carry identity cards. Police opened fire on the demonstrators, killing 56 and injuring 162. All the victims were black. Most of them had been shot in the back. Colonel J. Pienaar, the senior police officer in charge on the day, was quoted as saying

"Hordes of natives surrounded the police station. My car was struck with a stone. If they do these things they must learn their lesson the hard way."

The event became known as the Sharpeville Massacre. In its aftermath the government banned the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress.

In 1964 Nelson Mandela, leader of the ANC, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 1974 the government issued the Afrikaans Medium Decree which forced all schools to use the Afrikaans language when teaching Mathematics, Social Studies, Geography and History at secondary school level. Punt Janson, The Deputy Minister of Bantu Education was quoted as saying

"I have not consulted the African people on the language issue and I'm not going to. An African might find that 'the big boss' only spoke Afrikaans or only spoke English. It would be to his advantage to know both languages."

The policy was deeply unpopular. On 30 April 1976, Children at Orlando West Junior School in Soweto went on strike, refusing to go to school. Their rebellion spread to other schools in Soweto. The students organised a mass rally for 16 June 1976, which turned violent - police responding with bullets to stones thrown by children. The incident triggered widespread violence throughout South Africa, which claimed many hundreds of lives.

Internal troubles and international trade and cultural boycotts persuaded the South African government that its hard-line policies were untenable, and in 1984 some reforms were introduced. Many of the apartheid laws were repealed, and a new constitution was introduced which gave limited representation to certain non-whites, although not to the black majority. The violence continued throughout the 1980s.

In 1989, F. W. de Klerk succeeded P. W. Botha as president. On 2 February 1990, at the opening of Parliament, he declared that apartheid had failed and that the bans on political parties, including the ANC, were to be lifted. Nelson Mandela was released from prison. De Klerk went on to abolish all the remaining apartheid laws.

Alleged apartheid in Israel

Some advocates seek to apply the UN convention on Apartheid to Israel, saying its treatment of Arab Palestinians violates it. One official Israeli position is that the disputed Israeli policies are in place because of security-related and political reasons, and will be removed when circumstances change.

However, discrimination in favour of Jews and against other ethnic groups is enshrined permanently in Israeli law. For example the Declaration of Independence defines Israel as the state of the Jewish people, and no political party that seeks to re-define it as the state of all its citizens is permitted to put up candidates for elections [Basic Law: The Knesset (Amendment No. 9)]. There are also laws preventing non-Jews from buying land in Israel, and 80% of the land still owned by Arabs after the War of Independence has since been appropriated by the state without compensation. In August 2001, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights & the Environment (LAW) published a paper in which they laid out in detail their case that Israel is guilty of apartheid (see external link, below). In 2002, LAW filed a petition at the office of the Attorney General of the Israeli army claiming that Israel's construction of a wall along the Green Line constitutes a crime of apartheid under the UN convention.

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