پایگاه تخصصی سیاست بین الملل (  INPO  )‌

واژه انگلیسی آپارتاید یکی از اشکال وحشیانه تبعیض نژادی را بیان می کند و در اصل عبارتست از سیاست تبعیضی که نژادپرستان کشور جمهوری آفریقای جنوبی علیه اکثریت سیاهپوست بومی و هندیان آن کشور اعمال می کنند. از نظر لغوی به معنای مجزا و جدا نگهداشتن است. آپارتاید یعنی جدا نگه داشتن افراد متعلق به نژادهای غیرسفید، مجبور کردن آن ها به اقامت در محلات و استان های خاص، محروم کردن آن ها از کلیه حقوق سیاسی وامکان تحصیل و پیشرفت. در مناطقی که سیاهپوستان مجبور به اقامت در آن می شوند و حق خروج از آن را ندارند حداقل امکانات زندگی نیز موجود نبود.کنگره‌ی ملی آفریقا با درخواست ایجاد جامعه‌ی آزاد چندقومی، جنگی علیه نظام آپارتاید به راه انداخت. طرفداران لغو آپارتاید، تظاهرات آرامی در شپرویل و تسوتو به راه انداختند، که با مقاومت مخالفان رو‌به‌رو شد. راهپیمایان سیاه‌پوست شلاق زده شدند، و حتی در مارس ۱۹۷۰، بیش از ۷۰ آفریقایی کشته شدند. دوتن از مخالفان اصلی آپارتاید، استیو بیکو و نلسون ماندلا بودند.استیو بیکو به حکومت سیاهان اعتقاد داشت، در حالی که ماندلا به حقوقی مساوی برای تمامی اهالی آفریقای جنوبی معتقد بود. در سال ۱۹۶۲، ماندلا دستگیر شد و پس از محاکمه به حبس ابد محکوم گردید. در سال ۱۹۹۰، ماندلا در سن ۷۲ سالگی آزاد شد و مبارزه برای حقوق انسانی اهالی آفریاقی جنوبی را از سر گرفت. سرانجام اف دبلیو دلکرک رییس جمهور آفریقای جنوبی با او وارد مذاکره شد. یک سال بعد، کنگره ملّی آفریقای جنوبی پیروز شد و ماندلا به ریاست جمهوری رسید و رژیم آپارتاید إلی‌الأبد در آفریقای جنوبی لغو گردید و در اقصی نقاط عالم هم لغو گردید.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: apartheid

Geography Dictionary: apartheid

Geographical DictionaryThe system of racial segregation first promulgated by the largely Afrikaner National Party of South Africa in 1948. Petty apartheid meant the separation of facilities such as lavatories, transport, parks, and theatres into two groups: white and non-white. On a much larger scale was the allocation of 12% of the land area into ‘independent republics’, or ‘homelands’, for the African population, which comprised 69% of the population when the policy began, in 1954. The long-term aim of this policy was to restrict Africans to these ‘homelands’, which were to be governed and developed separately from white South Africa, while allowing African workers strictly limited rights to live in the white areas, as and when their labour was required.

 With the election of South Africa's first democratic government in 1994, the last vestiges of apartheid were officially removed, but the policy will have left its mark on the South African landscape and its society for many years to come; for example, under the Nationalist Party regime, housing was zoned for racial groups so that predominantly African, Coloured, Asian, and White areas still exist, as do the homelands, to which every African was assigned, according to each one's major tribal group.

Political Dictionary: apartheid

Afrikaans word meaning, literally, ‘separateness’. In South Africa, an official government policy between 1948 and 1989 of racial segregation. The term originated as a political slogan coined by Dr D. F. Malan, leader of the South African National Party, in 1944, and derived from the Afrikaans word denoting ‘apartness’ or separation. It featured prominently in the party's successful election campaign in 1948, cementing a coalition of disparate Afrikaner groups and classes, and would serve for the next four decades as the rationale for the regime's racial programme. Segregation had long been practised by white governments in South Africa. White workers were traditionally privileged in an economy otherwise heavily dependent on black labour. The African population, three-quarters of the total, was disenfranchised and subject to coercion backed by law. And 70 per cent of the land had been reserved for white occupation. After 1948, under the new apartheid measures, racial differentiation and separation, already comprehensive, became rigid and systematized, with no further prospect of assimilation or integration.

The key legislation enacted 1948-50 dealt with Population Registration, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages, demarcation of Group Areas and restructuring of Bantu Education, as well as the Suppression of Communism. The main architect of apartheid was H. F. Verwoerd (1901-66), the leading intellectual and ideologue of the National Party. Determined to resist the movement towards self-determination and independence elsewhere in Africa, Verwoerd insisted that in South Africa self-determination for the white and other racial minorities was incompatible with majority African rule. Instead the government proposed to implement a programme of separate development, promising eventual independence for the various ethnic groups that were held to comprise the African population. Having been assigned a national homeland, or Bantustan, Africans settled and working in South Africa would lose their residence and other rights and became liable to deportation in the event of political unrest or large-scale unemployment. Under the guise of ‘trusteeship’, government policy was to confine the African majority to reserves that could not support them, thus ensuring the continuation of a cheap, compliant labour force.

Within South Africa opposition to apartheid was forcibly suppressed, with the main African political movements banned after 1960 and their leaders imprisoned or exiled. Through the 1970s, however, there was mounting criticism, not only from white liberals, but also from a younger generation of Africans who had grown up under apartheid and were attracted by Black Consciousness ideology. Resistance to the regime continued after the Soweto uprising of 1976, reinforced by the collapse of white rule elsewhere in southern Africa, and by growing international pressure for sanctions. Among ‘enlightened’ whites it was already clear that apartheid was unworkable (and increasingly unprofitable) in a closely integrated, urban society, with a growing industrial base looking for a wider domestic market and heavily dependent on a skilled, educated African labour force. The gradual scrapping of petty apartheid discrimination, and the recognition accorded black trade unions 1979 were evidence of revisionist thinking among Verwoerd's political successors. Meanwhile, without infrastructure or resources, deprived of investment, and denied international recognition, the four ‘independent’ and six self-governing homelands offered no prospect of development and served only to underline the contradictions inherent in official policy. After 1978 the term apartheid was itself rejected by the new Prime Minister, P. W. Botha.

It was 1984, however, before constitutional changes were made, providing for an executive-style President and a tricameral legislature. Structured along racial lines and with no provision for the African majority, the ‘reform’ provoked sustained unrest throughout South Africa during 1984-6, with the state declaring a state of emergency and exceptional levels of violence on both sides. The international community responded with further sanctions, while foreign banks withheld investment, precipitating a financial crisis in an economy already experiencing prolonged recession and record unemployment. With the end of the Cold War in southern Africa, and independence for Namibia, there was growing pressure for democratization in South Africa itself. Meanwhile apartheid no longer commanded the loyalty of the white electorate as a whole, or even of its entrenched Afrikaner component. Like the English-speaking community the Afrikaners now had much to lose from domestic conflict generating widespread insecurity. The far right had quit the National Party as early as 1982 to form the Conservative Party and, by 1989, there was majority support for new leadership, under F. W. de Klerk, and a new political dispensation.

De Klerk freed Mandela and the other political detainees, unbanned the nationalist parties and the Communists and, by 1992, had repealed all the principal apartheid legislation. The Dutch Reformed Church, which had claimed scriptural backing for apartheid, split with the white branch, which was prepared to acknowledge that apartheid was a serious error, if not a heresy. Even the Broederbond, the original inspiration for apartheid, whose select membership has been credited with a disproportionate influence on government, considered the admission of non-whites.

Columbia Encyclopedia: apartheid

Top Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Columbia Encyclopediaapartheid (əpärt'hīt) [Afrik.,=apartness], system of racial segregation peculiar to the Republic of South Africa, the legal basis of which was largely repealed in 1991-92.

History

Racial segregation and the supremacy of whites had been traditionally accepted in South Africa prior to 1948, but in the general election of that year, Daniel F. Malan officially included the policy of apartheid in the Afrikaner Nationalist party platform, bringing his party to power for the first time. Although most whites acquiesced in the policy, there was bitter and sometimes bloody strife over the degree and stringency of its implementation.

The purpose of apartheid was separation of the races: not only of whites from nonwhites, but also of nonwhites from each other, and, among the Africans (called Bantu in South Africa), of one group from another. In addition to the Africans, who constitute about 75% of the total population, those regarded as nonwhite include those people known in the country as Coloured (people of mixed black, Malayan, and white descent) and Asian (mainly of Indian ancestry) populations.

Initial emphasis was on restoring the separation of races within the urban areas. A large segment of the Asian and Coloured populations was forced to relocate out of so-called white areas. African townships that had been overtaken by (white) urban sprawl were demolished and their occupants removed to new townships well beyond city limits. Between the passage of the Group Areas Acts of 1950 and 1986, about 1.5 million Africans were forcibly removed from cities to rural reservations.

Separate Development Policy

Under the prime ministership of Hendrik Verwoerd apartheid developed into a policy known as "separate development," whereby each of the nine African (Bantu) groups was to become a nation with its own homeland, or Bantustan. An area totaling about 14% of the country's land was set aside for these homelands, the remainder, including the major mineral areas and the cities, being reserved for the whites. The basic tenet of the separate development policy was to reserve within the confines of the African's designated homeland rights and freedoms, but that outside it blacks were to be treated as aliens.

Movement to and between other parts of the country was strictly regulated, the location of residence or employment (if permitted to work) was restricted, and blacks were not allowed to vote or own land. Thus African urban workers, including those who were third- or fourth-generation city dwellers, were seen as transients, their real homes in rural reservations from which they or their ancestors migrated. Only those holding the necessary labor permits, granted according to the labor market, were allowed to reside within urban areas. Such permits often did not include the spouse or family of a permit holder, contributing to the breakup of family life among many Africans.

Most African urban dwellers had to live in townships on a city's perimeter. All Africans living outside the Bantustans were subject to strict curfew regulations and passbook requirements, especially in the cities; if unable to produce these when challenged, they were subject to arrest. The police were granted sweeping powers of preventive detention in 1962, initially for 30 days, later for indefinite periods.

The Bantustans

In 1962 the South African government established the first of the Bantustans, the Transkei, as the homeland of the Xhosa people, and granted it limited self-government in 1963, later becoming "independent." Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, and Venda were also granted "independence," but no nation other than South Africa recognized them. Lebowa, Kangwane, Gazankulu, Qwaqwa, KwaZulu, and KwaNdebele were declared "self-governing" in the 1970s.

None of the reserves were viable nations; they were made up of broken tracts of poor-quality land, riddled with erosion and incapable of supporting their large designated populations. With no industry, opportunities for employment were few. Urban wage earners attempted to contribute to the support of their families in the reserves, but the level of black wages was so low that this was barely feasible. In 1994 the Bantustans were abolished and the territories were reabsorbed into the nation of South Africa.

Opposition and Repeal

Despite public demonstrations, UN resolutions, and opposition from international religious societies, apartheid was applied with increased rigor in the 1960s. In 1961 South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations rather than yield to pressure over its racial policies, and in the same year the three South African denominations of the Dutch Reformed Church left the World Council of Churches rather than abandon apartheid. Although the policy of apartheid was continued under Prime Minister John Vorster, there was some relaxation of its pettier aspects, and this accelerated under his successor, P. W. Botha.

 Probably the most forceful pressures, both internal and external, eroding the barriers of apartheid were economic. International sanctions severely affected the South African economy, raising the cost of necessities, cutting investment, even forcing many American corporations to disinvest, for example, or, under the Sullivan Rules, to employ without discrimination. In addition, the severe shortage of skilled labor led to lifting limits on African wages, and granting Africans the right to strike and organize unions. Unions, churches, and students organized protests throughout the 1970s and 80s. Moreover, political, economic, and military pressures were exerted by the independent countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

 As a result of these pressures, many lesser apartheid laws-such as those banning interracial marriage and segregating facilities-were repealed or fell into disuse by 1990. In 1991 President de Klerk obtained the repeal of the remaining apartheid laws and called for the drafting of a new constitution. In 1993 a multiracial, multiparty transitional government was approved, and fully free elections were held in 1994, which gave majority representation to the African National Congress.

 Bibliography

 See R. Sutter, The Freedom Charter (1984); R. Ormond, The Apartheid Handbook (rev. ed. 1986); M. Uhlig, Apartheid in Crisis (1986); M. Merideth, In the Name of Apartheid (1988); S. Mallaby, After Apartheid (1992).