Liberation from Colonial Rule: South Africa

Liberation from Colonial Rule: South Africa

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The struggle against colonial rule and apartheid in South Africa is a significant theme within the UPSC History Optional syllabus, particularly under World History’s coverage of decolonization, racial segregation regimes, and 20th-century liberation movements. This article traces the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the introduction and entrenchment of apartheid under the National Party, the decades-long resistance led by the African National Congress (ANC) and Nelson Mandela, and the eventual negotiated transition to black majority rule under F. W. de Klerk and Mandela in the early 1990s. Understanding this trajectory is essential for tracing the broader history of racial discrimination, civil rights movements, and decolonization in the 20th century.

The Union of South Africa

• In 1910, the Union of South Africa was formed after joining Transvaal, Orange Free State, Cape Colony, and Natal.
• The population of the new state was mixed:
  • 70% black Africans, known as Bantus;
  • 18% whites of European origin, of whom about 60% were Dutch and the rest British;
  • 9% of mixed race, known as “coloureds”;
  • 3% Asians.

Discrimination Against Black People

• Although they made up the vast majority of the population, black Africans suffered even worse discrimination than black people in the USA.
• The whites dominated politics and the economic life of the new state, and blacks were not allowed to vote.
• Black people had to do most of the manual work in factories, gold mines, and farms; the men mostly lived in barracks accommodation away from their wives and children.

Reserve Areas

• Black people were generally expected to live in areas reserved for them, away from white residential areas.
  • These reserved areas made up only about 7% of the total area of South Africa and were not large enough to enable Africans to produce sufficient food for themselves or pay all their taxes.
  • Black Africans were forbidden to buy land outside the reserves.

Pass Laws

• The government controlled the movement of blacks through a system of pass laws.
  • A black person could not live in a town unless he had a pass showing he was working in a white-owned business; an African could not leave the farm where he worked without a pass from his employer, nor could he get a new job unless his previous employer signed him out officially.
  • Many workers were forced to remain in difficult working conditions, even under abusive employers.
• Living and working conditions for blacks were primitive — for example, in the gold-mining industry, Africans had to live in single-sex compounds, with sometimes as many as 90 men sharing a dormitory.
• By a law of 1911, black workers were forbidden to strike and were barred from holding skilled jobs.
• The Natives’ Land Act of 1913 severely restricted the ownership of land by blacks; at that stage, natives controlled only 7% of the country.
• In 1931, the Union became fully sovereign from the United Kingdom with the passage of the Statute of Westminster, which abolished the last powers of the British Government over the country.
• In 1948, the National Party was elected to power, and strengthened the racial segregation begun under Dutch and British colonial rule.

Dr Malan Introduces Apartheid

• After the Second World War, there were important changes in the way black Africans were treated.
• After the general election of 1948, under Prime Minister Malan (1948–54), a new officially structured policy called apartheid (“separateness”) was introduced, tightening control over blacks still further.

Why Was Apartheid Introduced?

• When India and Pakistan were given independence in 1947, white South Africans became alarmed at the growing racial equality within the Commonwealth and were determined to preserve their supremacy.
• Most whites, especially those of Dutch origin, were against racial equality, but the most extreme were the Afrikaner Nationalist Party, led by Dr Malan, who claimed whites were a master race and non-whites were inferior beings.
  • The Dutch Reformed Church (the official state church of South Africa) supported racial inequality and quoted passages from the Bible which, they claimed, proved their theory — a position very much out of line with the rest of the Christian churches, which believe in racial equality.
  • The Broederbond was a secret Afrikaner organization that worked to protect and preserve Afrikaner power.
• The Nationalists won the 1948 elections with promises to rescue the whites from the “black menace” and to preserve the racial purity of the whites, thereby ensuring continued white supremacy.

The Main Features of Apartheid

Separation of Blacks and Whites

• There was complete separation of blacks and whites as far as possible at all levels.
  • In country areas, blacks had to live in special reserves; in urban areas, they had separate townships built at suitable distances from white residential areas.
  • If an existing black township was thought too close to a “white” area, the whole community was uprooted and “re-grouped” elsewhere to make separation as complete as possible.
  • There were separate buses, coaches, trains, cafés, toilets, park benches, hospitals, beaches, picnic areas, sports facilities, and even churches.
  • Black children went to separate schools and were given a much inferior education.

Complete Separation Was Impossible

• There was a flaw in the system: complete separation was impossible because over half the non-white population worked in white-owned mines, factories, and other businesses.
  • The economy would have collapsed if all non-whites had been moved to reserves; in addition, virtually every white household had at least two African servants.

Racial Classification and Identity Cards

• Every person was given a racial classification and an identity card.
  • Strict pass laws meant black Africans had to stay in their reserves or townships unless travelling to a white area to work, in which case they were issued passes; otherwise, all travelling was forbidden without police permission.

Marriage and Sexual Relations

• Marriage and sexual relations between whites and non-whites were forbidden, in order to preserve the purity of the white race; police spied on anybody suspected of breaking the rules.

Homeland System

• Under the homeland system, the government attempted to divide South Africa into a number of separate states, each supposed to develop into a separate nation-state for a different ethnic group.
  • The Bantu Self-Government Act (1959) set up seven regions called Bantustans, based on the original African reserves, which were claimed to be moving eventually towards self-government.
  • In 1969, it was announced that the first Bantustan, the Transkei, had become “independent”; however, the outside world dismissed this with contempt, since the South African government continued to control the Transkei’s economy and foreign affairs.
  • The whole policy was criticized because the Bantustan areas covered only about 13 per cent of the country’s total area, while over 8 million black people were crammed into these relatively small, vastly overcrowded areas, unable to adequately support the black populations.
  • The government ignored the protests and continued its policy; by 1980, two more African “homelands” had received “independence.”

No Political Rights

• Africans lost all political rights, and their representation in parliament — which had previously been by white MPs — was abolished.

Opposition to Apartheid

Inside South Africa

• Inside South Africa, opposition to the system was difficult: anyone who objected — including whites — or broke the apartheid laws was accused of being a communist and severely punished under the Suppression of Communism Act.
  • Africans were forbidden to strike, and their political party, the African National Congress (ANC), was largely helpless.
• In spite of this, protests did take place inside South Africa:
  • Chief Albert Luthuli, the ANC leader, organized a protest campaign in which black Africans stopped work on certain days.
    • In 1952, Africans attempted a systematic breach of the laws by entering shops and other places reserved for whites; over 8,000 blacks were arrested and many were flogged. Luthuli was deprived of his chieftaincy and jailed for a time, and the campaign was called off.
  • In 1955, the ANC formed a coalition with Asian and coloured groups, and at a massive open-air meeting at Kliptown (near Johannesburg), they just had time to announce a freedom charter before police broke up the crowd.
    • The charter soon became the main ANC programme, opening with the declaration: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and no government can claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.”
    • It went on to demand:
      • equality before the law;
      • freedom of assembly, movement, speech, religion, and the press;
      • the right to vote;
      • the right to work, with equal pay for equal work;
      • a 40-hour working week, a minimum wage, and unemployment benefits;
      • free medical care;
      • free, compulsory, and equal education.
  • Church leaders and missionaries, both black and white, spoke against apartheid.
  • The ANC organized other protests, including the 1957 bus boycott: instead of paying a fare increase on the bus route from their township to Johannesburg (ten miles away), thousands of Africans walked to work and back for three months, until fares were reduced.

The Sharpeville Massacre

• Protest reached a climax in 1960, when a huge demonstration took place against the pass laws at Sharpeville, an African township near Johannesburg.
  • Police fired on the crowd, killing 67 Africans and wounding many more; after this, 15,000 Africans were arrested and hundreds were beaten by police.
  • This was an important turning point in the campaign — until then, most protest had been non-violent, but this brutal treatment by the authorities convinced many black leaders that violence could only be met with violence.

Spear of the Nation

• A small action group of the ANC, known as Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), or MK, was launched, with Nelson Mandela as a prominent member.
  • They organized a campaign of sabotaging strategic targets: in 1961, there was a spate of bomb attacks in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, and Durban.
  • But the police soon clamped down, arresting most of the black leaders, including Mandela, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island.

More About Nelson Mandela

• Nelson Mandela had joined the ANC and become a founding member of its Youth League.
  • After the Afrikaner government of the National Party established apartheid in 1948, he rose to prominence in the ANC’s 1952 Defiance Campaign, was appointed superintendent of the organisation’s Transvaal chapter, and presided over the 1955 Congress of the People.
  • Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities, and, along with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961.
• Chief Luthuli still persevered with non-violent protests, and after publishing his moving autobiography Let My People Go, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; he was killed in 1967.
• Discontent and protest increased again in the 1970s, because the wages of Africans failed to keep pace with inflation.

Protest Against the Imposition of the Afrikaans Language

• In 1976, when the Transvaal authority announced that Afrikaans (the language spoken by whites of Dutch descent) was to be used in black African schools, massive demonstrations took place near Johannesburg.
  • Although there were many children and young people in the crowd, police opened fire, killing at least 200 black Africans.
  • This time the protest did not die down — it spread over the whole country, and the government again responded with brutality: over the next six months, a further 500 Africans were killed.

Outside South Africa

Opposition from the Commonwealth

• Outside South Africa, there was opposition to apartheid from the rest of the Commonwealth.
  • Early in 1960, the British Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, had the courage to speak out against it in Cape Town, addressing the growing strength of African nationalism in his “Wind of Change” Speech: “the wind of change is blowing through the continent … our national policies must take account of it.”

The UN and OAU

• The United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) condemned apartheid and were particularly critical of the continued South African occupation of South West Africa.
  • The UN voted to place an economic boycott on South Africa (1962), but this proved useless, as not all member states supported it.
  • Britain, the USA, France, West Germany, and Italy condemned apartheid in public but continued to trade with South Africa — among other things, selling it massive arms supplies, apparently hoping it would prove a bastion against the spread of communism in Africa.
  • Consequently, South Africa was able to ignore protests from the outside world until well into the 1970s.

The End of Apartheid

• The system of apartheid continued without any concessions being made to black people until 1980.

P. W. Botha

• The new prime minister, P. W. Botha (elected 1979), realized that all was not well with the system, and decided he must reform apartheid, dropping some of its most unpopular aspects in an attempt to preserve white control.

What Caused This Change?

• Criticism from abroad — from the Commonwealth, the United Nations, and the Organization of African Unity — gradually gathered momentum.
  • External pressures became much greater in 1975, when the white-ruled Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique achieved independence after a long struggle.
  • The African takeover of Zimbabwe (1980) removed the last of the white-ruled states that had been sympathetic to the South African government and apartheid.
  • South Africa was now surrounded by hostile black states, and many Africans in these new states had sworn never to rest until their fellow Africans in South Africa had been liberated.
• There were also economic problems:
  • South Africa was hit by recession in the late 1970s, and many white people were worse off; whites began to emigrate in large numbers, while the black population continued to increase.
    • In 1980, whites made up only 16 per cent of the population, whereas between the two world wars they had formed 21 per cent.
  • African homelands were a failure — poverty-stricken, with corrupt rulers, and recognized by no foreign government as genuinely independent states.
  • The USA began to criticize the South African government’s racist policy, as it was treating its own black people better during the 1970s.
• In a speech in September 1979 that astonished many of his Nationalist supporters, the newly elected Prime Minister Botha said: “A revolution in South Africa is no longer just a remote possibility. Either we adapt or we perish. White domination and legally enforced apartheid are a recipe for permanent conflict.”
  • He went on to suggest that the black homelands must be made viable and that unnecessary discrimination must be abolished.

Reforms by P. W. Botha

• Gradually, he introduced important changes he hoped would be enough to silence critics both inside and outside South Africa:
  • Blacks were allowed to join trade unions and to go on strike (1979).
  • Blacks were allowed to elect their own local township councils, though not to vote in national elections (1981).
  • A new constitution was introduced, setting up two new houses of parliament — one for coloureds and one for Asians (but not for Africans) — with the system weighted so that whites kept overall control; it came into force in 1984.
  • Sexual relations and marriage were allowed between people of different races (1985).
  • The hated pass laws for non-whites were abolished (1986).

Limitations of the Reforms

• Botha was not prepared to go far enough — he would not even consider the ANC’s main demands (the right to vote and to play a full part in ruling the country).
• Far from being won over by these concessions, black Africans were incensed that the new constitution made no provision for them, and were determined to settle for nothing less than full political rights.

The 25th Anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre (1985)

• Violence escalated, with both sides guilty of excesses; the ANC also murdered black councillors and black police, regarded as collaborators with apartheid.
• On the 25th anniversary of Sharpeville, police opened fire on a procession of black mourners going to a funeral near Port Elizabeth, killing over forty people (March 1985).
• In July, a state of emergency was declared in the worst-affected areas, and extended to the whole country in June 1986.
  • This gave the police the power to arrest people without warrants and freedom from all criminal proceedings; thousands of people were arrested, and newspapers, radio, and TV were banned from reporting demonstrations and strikes.
• However, as so often happens when an authoritarian regime tries to reform itself, it proved impossible to stop the process of change — the same happened in the USSR when Gorbachev tried to reform communism.
• By the late 1980s, international pressure on South Africa was having more effect, and internal attitudes had changed.

Sanctions by the Commonwealth (1986)

• In August 1986, the Commonwealth (except Britain) agreed on a strong package of sanctions — no further loans, no sales of oil, computer equipment, or nuclear goods to South Africa, and no cultural and scientific contacts.
  • British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would commit Britain only to a voluntary ban on investment in South Africa, arguing that severe economic sanctions would worsen the plight of black Africans, who would be thrown out of their jobs.
  • This caused the rest of the Commonwealth to feel bitter against Britain; Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi accused Mrs Thatcher of “compromising on basic principles and values for economic ends.”

The USA Congress’s Sanctions

• In September 1986, the USA joined the fray when Congress voted (over President Reagan’s veto) to stop American loans to South Africa, cut air links, and ban imports of iron, steel, coal, textiles, and uranium from South Africa.

Growing Number of Educated Black People

• The black population was no longer just a mass of uneducated and unskilled labourers — there was a steadily growing number of well-educated, professional, middle-class black people, some holding important positions, like Desmond Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and became Anglican archbishop of Cape Town in 1986.

Changed Views of the Church

• The Dutch Reformed Church, which had once supported apartheid, now condemned it as incompatible with Christianity.

Moderation of Whites

• A majority of white South Africans now recognized it was difficult to defend the total exclusion of blacks from the country’s political life; though nervous about what might happen, they became resigned to the idea of black majority rule at some point in the future, and white moderates were prepared to make the best of the situation and secure the best deal possible.

F. W. de Klerk

• The new president, F. W. de Klerk (elected 1989), had a reputation for caution, but privately had decided that apartheid would have to go completely, and accepted that black majority rule must come eventually.
  • The problem was how to achieve it without further violence and possible civil war; with great courage and determination, and in the face of bitter opposition from right-wing Afrikaner groups, de Klerk gradually moved the country toward black majority rule.
• Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in jail (1990) and became leader of the newly legalized ANC; most of the remaining apartheid laws were dropped.
  • Namibia, the neighbouring territory ruled by South Africa since 1919, was given independence under a black government (1990).
  • Talks began in 1991 between the government and the ANC to work out a new constitution that would allow blacks full political rights.

Changed Attitude of the ANC

• The ANC did its best to present itself as a moderate party with no plans for wholesale nationalization, seeking to reassure whites that they would be safe and happy under black rule; Nelson Mandela condemned violence and called for reconciliation between blacks and whites.
• The negotiations were long and difficult; de Klerk faced growing opposition from his own National Party and from various extreme white racialist groups who claimed he had betrayed them.
• The ANC was also involved in a power struggle with another black party, the Natal-based Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, led by Chief Buthelezi.

Transition to Black Majority Rule

• In the spring of 1993, the talks succeeded, and a power-sharing scheme was worked out to carry through the transition to black majority rule.
  • A general election was held, and the ANC won almost two-thirds of the votes.
  • As agreed, a coalition government of the ANC, National Party, and Inkatha took office, with Nelson Mandela as the first black President of South Africa, and two vice-presidents — one black and one white (Thabo Mbeki and F. W. de Klerk).
• A right-wing Afrikaner group continued to oppose the new democracy, vowing to provoke civil war, but in the end it came to nothing.
• Although there had been violence and bloodshed, it was a remarkable achievement — for which both de Klerk and Mandela deserve credit — that South Africa was able to move from apartheid to black majority rule without civil war.

Mandela’s Presidency

• While continuing the former government’s liberal economic policy, Mandela’s administration also introduced measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services.
• One of Mandela’s most successful initiatives was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which looked into human rights abuses during the apartheid regime.
  • The commission’s approach was not one of taking revenge but of granting amnesty; people were encouraged to talk frankly, acknowledge their crimes, and ask for forgiveness.
  • This was one of the most admirable things about Mandela — that although he had been kept in prison under the apartheid regime for 27 years, he still believed in forgiveness and reconciliation.
• The president decided not to stand for re-election in 1999; he retired with his reputation high, almost universally admired for his statesmanship and restraint.
• Mandela is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, or as Tata (“Father”); he is often described as the “Father of the Nation.”

Nelson Mandela

• The South African activist and former president Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) helped bring an end to apartheid and was a global advocate for human rights.
  • A member of the African National Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he was a leader of both peaceful protests and armed resistance against the white minority’s oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa.
• In 1949, the ANC proposed a plan of mass protest called the Programme of Action, which aimed to secure freedom from the dominance of white people over black people, and political independence for black South Africans, through strikes, boycotts, and similar non-violent actions; this movement laid the groundwork for future active resistance efforts.
• Mandela helped lead the ANC’s 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, travelling across the country to organize protests against discriminatory policies.
  • Given the role of National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign, Mandela and 19 others were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for their part in the movement.
  • He promoted the manifesto known as the Freedom Charter, ratified by the Congress of the People in 1955.
  • Also in 1952, Mandela and Tambo opened South Africa’s first black law firm, which offered free or low-cost legal counsel to those affected by apartheid legislation.
• On December 5, 1956, Mandela and 155 other activists were arrested and went on trial for treason; all of the defendants were acquitted in 1961, but in the meantime, tensions within the ANC escalated, with a militant faction splitting off in 1959 to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).
• The next year, police opened fire on peaceful black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, and Mandela decided that the time had come for a more radical approach than passive resistance.
  • In 1961, Nelson Mandela co-founded and became the first leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), also known as MK, a new armed wing of the ANC.
  • Under Mandela’s leadership, MK launched a sabotage campaign against the government, which had recently declared South Africa a republic and withdrawn from the British Commonwealth.
• In January 1962, Mandela travelled abroad illegally to attend a conference of African nationalist leaders in Ethiopia, visit the exiled Oliver Tambo in London, and undergo guerrilla training in Algeria.
  • On August 5, shortly after his return, he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to five years in prison for leaving the country and inciting a 1961 workers’ strike.
  • Several years later, during the trial that would put him behind bars for nearly three decades, Mandela and seven other defendants narrowly escaped the gallows and were instead sentenced to life imprisonment in the so-called Rivonia Trial.
    • He ended his statement with the words: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
  • He also smuggled out political statements and a draft of his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, published five years after his release.
  • For many of his 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela studied law as a University of London student through distance and flexible learning.
• In 1980, Oliver Tambo introduced a “Free Nelson Mandela” campaign that made the jailed leader a household name and fuelled the growing international outcry against South Africa’s racist regime.

Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa

• After attaining his freedom, Nelson Mandela led the ANC in its negotiations with the governing National Party and various other South African political organizations for an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government.
  • Though fraught with tension and conducted against a backdrop of political instability, the talks earned Mandela and de Klerk the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993.
• On April 26, 1994, more than 22 million South Africans turned out to cast ballots in the country’s first multiracial parliamentary elections in history; an overwhelming majority chose the ANC to lead the country, and on May 10, Mandela was sworn in as the first black president of South Africa, with de Klerk serving as his first deputy.
• As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights and political violations committed by both supporters and opponents of apartheid between 1960 and 1994.
  • He also introduced numerous social and economic programs designed to improve the living standards of South Africa’s black population.
• In 1996, Mandela presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution, which established a strong central government based on majority rule and prohibited discrimination against minorities, including whites.

Nelson Mandela’s Later Years

• After leaving office, Nelson Mandela remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own country and around the world.
  • He established a number of organizations, including the influential Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Elders, an independent group of public figures committed to addressing global problems and easing human suffering.
• In 2002, Mandela became a vocal advocate of AIDS awareness and treatment programs, in a culture where the epidemic had been cloaked in stigma and ignorance.