Apartheid in South Africa

Go here for the assignment – hard copy only…don’t Google docs this one. It is due by class period on Thursday. This assignment is worth fifty points.

Some of you have no knowledge of Apartheid in South Africa. It is nearly impossible to understand Nelson Mandela’s impact on the world, without a working comprehension of the practice. It is my goal with this assignment to provide you a brief introduction.

Apartheid is an Afrikaans’ word meaning “being apart” or “apart hood”. The Afrikaans language is an off-shoot of Dutch and was introduced into South Africa in colonial times. With roughly 7 million native speakers, or 13.5% of the population, it was along with English the focal language of white Europeans. It was also the language of apartheid and National Party which carried out apartheid. While African blacks were persecuted from colonial times, it wasn’t until 1948 when the National Party’s white minority (12% of the population) seized full control of the government that Apartheid was fully institutionalized practice within the country and the South African constitution. From then until 1994 the white minority in South Africa created – a separation between European whites and all other races.

This separateness permeated all of society, in a manner (in my opinion) far more entrenched and brutal than even United States Southern segregation. Remember, the Jim Crow laws in the United States were balanced at least in theory and constitutional law by the Bill of Rights. We have a Federal government; Southern states rights eventually ran into a federal interpretation of the Constitution that struck down their segregation laws. In South Africa under apartheid rule there would be no Brown vs Board of Education. In South Africa apartheid was fully institutionalized through out the country. The legislature, executive, and courts all sustained it. This public policy was validated by a white public interest (blacks and coloreds could not vote) that fully supported its implementation.

So…for this assignment, keep your ears and eyes open to the video we watch in class. Also, make sure to take a good long look, and maybe a second, at the Rachel Maddow piece. You will find it here.

Finally, lets go to good ole Wikipedia. Below, I will identify fifteen terms or laws (dealing with apartheid) that I want you to summarize each. For most of the following terms, you can go to the highlighted Wiki-link. That or read around the definitions… each should be in your own words. Please write at least paragraph on each. Make absolutely sure that you are not cutting and pasting; if you choose that route you will not pass this assignment.