LIFE DURING APARTHEID
This image shows black South Africans reading about the conflicts between the police and protesting South Africans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2k6iDFCL4
This is a video explaining the system of apartheid, the segregations laws, and the violence that resulted from this racist regime. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We can't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." 5,000 people gather to mourn the deaths of 34 out of the 69 killed in the Sharpeville Massacre.
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Oliver Tambo lived during the time of apartheid which was a policy that governed the relations between the white minority and the nonwhite majority in South Africa through racial, economic and political segregations against nonwhites. During this time, the social hierarchy was extreme- whites were the most powerful, then coloureds, then Indians, and then blacks.
The apartheid imposed the Population Registration Act causing all South Africans to be classified as either white, coloured (mixed race), Bantu (black) or Asian (Indian/Pakistani). Any non-whites were forced to carry classification papers at all times in order to move from place to place. People often tried to be reclassified to a higher status (i.e. black to Indian) to receive better benefits. The Group Areas Act of 1950 created a division between whites and nonwhites with the establishment of business and urban sections for each race. Laws were also established to limit the contact between races including separate education, facilities, restrictions on jobs based on race, restrictions on non white labour unions and denial in the participation of nonwhites in national government. The apartheid received extreme disapproval from other countries whom did not approve of their social policies. The white minority had possession of 80% of the property in South Africa while the nonwhite majority lived in condensed and impoverished areas. The oppression of nonwhites led to feelings of injustice thus the ANC and the ANCYL and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) fighting for the end of the racial segregation. These extreme feelings lead to events such as the Sharpeville Massacre. On March 21, 1960, the PAC and the ANC were making countrywide peaceful protests against the apartheid. The participants in these demonstrations were instructed to give up their reference books and accept arrest. In the township of Sharpeville, 20,000 blacks were gathered outside a police station. According to police the protesters were throwing rocks at policemen and their armoured cars. The police opened fire killing or injuring 250 blacks including women and children. This was the first and most violent attack against the apartheid in South African history. This is what Tambo says lead the ANC to violence to match the apartheid’s vigor for violence. Shortly after this the ANC was outlawed by South African government and its leaders imprisoned or exiled. Tambo was left being the most important leader of the ANC unimprisoned. One of the most major setbacks to the ANC was the Nkomati Accord. This was an agreement between South African government and Mozambique stating that South Africa would halt attempts to destabilize Mozambique in return for the expulsion of the ANC from Mozambique. South African government did not keep its promise to Mozambique and made direct attacks on the ANC. Tambo said that the "loss of external bases" of their organization stimulated the new wave of violence in 1984. |