The document provides a detailed history of South Africa from the arrival of outsiders in the 15th century through the end of apartheid in the early 1990s. It describes the establishment of apartheid and the various acts that enforced racial segregation and discrimination. It then discusses the rise of resistance movements like the African National Congress and the growing conflict, including protests, violence, and crackdowns by the government. Finally, it outlines the transition to democracy in the 1990s, including the release of Nelson Mandela and the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

1. South Africa’s Struggle:
Freedom in our Lifetime
September’s Theme

4.  Word meaning “separate” or “apartness”
 Racial discrimination and separation of whites, blacks,
coloureds, and Asians
 Schools, housing, jobs, and transportation
 Asians had fewer rights than whites but more than
blacks.
 Modern day “rainbow nation”
Apartheid

5.  Khoisan
 Thousands of years ago
 Hunter-gatherers and pastoralists
 Cattle, sheep, and goats
 Bantu
 3rd C. – 16th C.
 Farmers
 Cattle as currency/power
The First South Africans

6.  Portuguese arrive at the Cape of Good Hope (1487)
 First settlement (1652)
 Provisions stop for trading ships
 Composed of Dutch, some French and Germans
 Afrikaner = “African”
Arrival of Outsiders

7.  Granted settlers 28 acres (1/3 KM x 1/3 KM)
 Khoisan resisted in sporadic battles
 Defeated
 Dutch stole their cattle
 Afterward, Khoisan:
 Free laborers, tradesmen with settlers, retreated from
settlements
Conflict with Khoisan

8.  Becomes increasingly popular
 60,000 over the next 150 years
 From Madagascar, eastern Africa, western Africa,
India, and SE Asia
 Interbreeding of slaves and Khoisan and whites
 Descendants = “coloureds”
Slavery

9.  Boer = “farmer”
 Trekboer = “travelling farmer”
 Pioneers who settled north and east of Cape Town
 Until the 1810’s
 Violence to the east with Xhosa
 More organized and unified than Khoisan
 Defended territory well
Boer/trekboer

10.  Dutch East India Company goes bankrupt
 Britain takes over
 First large groups of British arrive
 Unlike Boers, do not adopt culture or language
 Called “English”
In Come the British

11.  British quickly abolished slavery in all colonies (1834)
 Boers lose free labor supply
 Afrikaners migrate north
 “Great Trek”
 To preserve a society with clear color-based distinctions
between master and servant
 Import Indians as indentured servants
 6,000
Impact of the English

12.  Reading on page 6
 Ss sketch and explain life working in the mines of
South Africa
Control of the Mines

13.  Afrikaners launch attacks against the British for
control of the gold and diamond mines.
 Britain = 500,000 soldiers
 Afrikaners = 40,000 soldiers
 Britain implements scorched-earth campaign
 Women and children placed in concentration camps
 28,000 died of disease
 Fuels Afrikaner nationalism
Anglo-Boer War

16.  British colonies and Afrikaner Republics joined
together as Union of South Africa (1910)
 S. Africa self-governed, but part of British Empire
 Blacks fought on both sides
Those who fought with the British expected further rights
Nope
End of War

17.  Native Lands Act (1913)
 Legislation creating separate areas for Europeans and
Africans land ownership
 8% of countryside
Apartheid

18.  Formation of African National Congress, ANC (1912)
 Opposed discrimination through petitions
 “We are one.”
 Policy of passive resistance
 influenced by Mohandas Gandhi
 Lawyer for Indians in S. Africa (1893)
 Later forms South African Indian Congress, SAIC
Response to Apartheid

19.  Non-violent demonstration against passbooks (1919)
 Blacks needed to carry passbooks with them at all times
 Mounted police ran down protestors
 Officers encouraged white civilians to attack black
demonstrators
 Several protestors died
ANC Demonstration

20.  National Party victory brings ultra-right wing ideology
 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949)
 Blacks and whites could not marry
 Population Registration Act (1950)
 Created three official races: white, African, and coloured
 African further divided, “divide and conquer”
 Asians = coloured
Election of 1948

21.  Group Areas Act (1950)
 Designation of all of the land of S. Africa
 Whites = 86% (best land), 20% of population
 Schools came under control of government
 Textbooks focused on white experiences
 Taught only basic, low-level skills for low-level jobs
More Effects of the Afrikaner Rise

23.  Group Areas Act forced blacks into townships in
urban areas
 Commuted to jobs such as gardeners, servants, and
factory workers
 One family in a 2/3 room house, often:
 No electricity, running water, sewer system
 Africans without a job were forced to the countryside
 Millions reassigned
Life in a Township

25.  Congress Youth League emerges from the ANC (1944)
 Adopts a confrontational stance
 Radicals
 ANC used non-violent means
 Boycotts and strikes
 Opposed Natives Abolition of Passes Act
 Actually required more information in passbook
More Opposition to Apartheid

27.  Inspired by Gandhi, ANC filled courts and prisons with
people arrested on pass offenses
 Overloading system
 Five months, eight thousand arrested an imprisoned
 Drew much support: coloureds, whites, Communists
 Began publishing magazines and newspapers
ANC opposition, cont.

28.  Criminal Law Act
 If the intent of the law-breaker was to protest the law,
the punishment was magnified
 3 years in prison and/or public flogging
More Apartheid

29.  Alexandra bus boycott (1957)
 Bus company introduced an increase to fares
 Residents of Johannesburg township in Alexandra
refuse to use bus system
 Walked or rode bicycles, up to 20 miles away
 Productivity fell, workers late and exhausted
 Decreased productivity leads to govt. subsidy of bus fares
Power of Change

30.  From the Youth League of the ANC, the Pan African
Congress, PAC, emerges
 African Nationalism = “Africanism”
 PAC was anti-colonial
 “government of the Africans, for the Africans,
by the Africans.”
 “mental revolution”
 Lose the “slave mentality”
Radicals Emerge

32.  PAC volunteers fanned out across South Africa to
recruit those willing to demand their own arrest
 Homeless, jobless, uneducated, and oppressed were
eager to participate
 PAC wrote a letter explaining they would surrender in
large numbers peacefully
 Protestors were under strict orders to avoid violence
Resistance in Sharpeville

33.  The crowd of 5,000 (many children) gathered at the
police station
 The surging crowd knocked over a police officer
 The crowd pushed further to see what happened
 Police opened fire, continuing to fire into the backs of
fleeing protestors
 69 Africans died and 186 wounded
The Sharpeville Massacre

35.  PAC called on workers to remain home
 Police forced themselves into worker homes and forced
abstainers to work
 More protests followed
 30,000 at the Parliament building in Cape Town
 ANC publicly called for a day of mourning, stay-at-
home campaign, and burned their passbooks
 Work refusal continued for 3 weeks
Responses to Sharpeville

37.  United States and Britain sharply criticize S. Africa’s
tactics
 Talk of sanctions further disrupts economy
 S. African govt. bans both the ANC and PAC
 18,000 people detained
 ANC/PAC meet clandestinely at night
 What should their next step be?
Government Reactions

38.  Read theme reading p.17 and choose the one option
that you would like to express.
 Read p. 18, 21, or 24 according to your decision.
 Await further instruction from your teacher.
Three Options

39.  Chief Albert Luthuli accepts the Nobel Peace Prize
(1961)
 Five days later, “Spear of the Nation” emerges
 Also called MK
 Led by Nelson Mandella
 Armed wing of the ANC, kept separate from Chief
Luthuli
 HQs in secluded house in Johannesburg,
paid for partly by Communist Party
Epilogue: Becoming South Africa

40.  Use of small bombs to damage administrative offices
 In eighteen months, launched 200 attacks
 Jails, railways, etc.
Actions of the MK

41.  PAC formed its own militant wing
 “Poqo” = “pure” or “independent”
 “The white people shall suffer, the black people will
rule. Freedom comes after bloodshed.”
 Incites widespread panic
 Hacking to death of five whites camping at a river (1963)
 Also killed several police officers
PAC’s Movement

42.  Some members join the MK movement
 Most continued the peaceful protest approach
 Called on international community to intervene
 Refused to cooperate with any segregation policy
SAIC Movement

43.  S. African govt. responds to sabotage and guerilla
tactics
 Sabotage Act (1962)
 Able to arrest anyone believed to threaten security
 90-Day Act (1963)
 Able to detain for 90 days without charges or trial
 Hundreds of ANC and PAC arrested, including Nelson
Mandela (1964)
 Electric shock, beating, suffocation with plastic bags
 Mandela, and seven others, sentenced to life in prison
The Rivonia trial

45.  Steve Biko led the Black Consciousness Movement
 Based on Black Power movement in the U.S.
 Whites excluded from joining
 Soweto, South West Townships
 High school students angered at poor learning
conditions
 Lack of materials, adequate teachers, white-focused
studies
A New Generation of Protestors

46.  Over months, hundreds of people killed, 2500 injured
 Many young people left and trained as guerillas in
Mozambique
 Steve Biko later died in prison, a victim of torture
 Triggers more protests, increasingly violent
Response to Soweto Protests

48.  S. African police force over-extended
 Recruits blacks
 Protests continue
 State of Emergency (1985)
 Protestors against government and black
“conspirators”, African police officers
 “necklacing” = car tire filled with gasoline, placed
around neck, and ignited
 Black-on-black crimes encouraged by police
 Excuse for increased power and restrictions on blacks
Conflict Continues

49.  United States and other nations imposed sanctions
on South Africa
 Oil and arms
 De Klerk, new S. African president elected
 Releases Nelson Mandela from prison (1990)
 Unbanned anti-apartheid groups and met with leaders
 Removed apartheid laws (1991)
 Mandela and de Klerk jointly awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize (1993)
Liberation

51.  Truth and Reconciliation Commission, TRC
 Perpetrators on either side granted amnesty for crimes
if their act was politically motivated
 Testimony revealed before live audiences, often the
families of those involved
 Painful healing
 Families learned of prisoner gang rape, electrocution,
slow poisoning, shoved from windows to death, mass
burnings of bodies unceremoniously, intentional release
of cholera into water systems, and more.
 19,000 families received 1,500 BD in reparations
Healing a Hurting Land

52.  What can we learn from the struggle and
perseverance of the South African people?
 Which groups do you admire? Why?
 In hindsight, are there any changes you would have
made in the fight for equality?
Conclusion