the end of apartheid in South Africa (1948 to 1994), including the National Party victory (1948), the Sharpeville Massacre (1960), the Soweto Uprising (1976), the role of the ANC and Nelson Mandela, international sanctions, the FW de Klerk reforms (1989 to 1990), and the 1994 election

What this dot point is asking

VCAA expects you to explain how the apartheid system imposed by the National Party from 1948 was dismantled through a combination of mass resistance, international pressure and negotiated settlement, ending with the 1994 election that brought Nelson Mandela to power. Strong responses pair the legal framework of apartheid with the resistance milestones (Defiance Campaign, Sharpeville, Soweto, the UDF) and a named historian.

The answer

The 1948 National Party victory and the apartheid statutes

The National Party under D. F. Malan won the 26 May 1948 South African general election on the slogan "apartheid" (separateness), defeating Jan Smuts's United Party. The NP base was rural Afrikaners and the Broederbond network. The 1948 election was contested only by white voters; the Black majority (around 80 per cent of the population) had no vote.

The apartheid legislative framework was built rapidly:

• Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949): banned marriage between whites and non-whites.
• Immorality Amendment Act (1950): banned sexual relations across racial lines.
• Population Registration Act (1950): classified every person as White, Coloured, Bantu (Black), or Asian.
• Group Areas Act (1950): assigned residential zones by race; around 3.5 million people were forcibly removed under successive Group Areas legislation.
• Suppression of Communism Act (1950): the Communist Party of South Africa banned; used against any opposition.
• Bantu Authorities Act (1951): created tribal authorities in the "homelands."
• Pass Laws (consolidated in the Natives Act 1952): all Black men (and from 1956, women) had to carry pass books.
• Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953): segregated public facilities.
• Bantu Education Act (1953): segregated and reduced-quality Black schooling; Hendrik Verwoerd: "What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics?"
• Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act (1959): the homelands ("Bantustans") as the basis for stripping Black South Africans of South African citizenship.

The Defiance Campaign and Freedom Charter (1952 to 1956)

The African National Congress (founded 8 January 1912) launched the Defiance Campaign of Unjust Laws on 26 June 1952 in alliance with the South African Indian Congress. Around 8,000 volunteers, including Nelson Mandela (campaign volunteer-in-chief), deliberately broke apartheid laws. The campaign ended in 1953 after government violence and crackdowns; ANC membership had grown from around 7,000 to around 100,000.

The Congress of the People, held at Kliptown on 25 to 26 June 1955, adopted the Freedom Charter, which declared "South Africa belongs to all who live in it." The government responded with the Treason Trial (1956 to 1961) against 156 Congress leaders including Mandela; all were ultimately acquitted.

Sharpeville and the banning of the ANC (1960)

The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), founded by Robert Sobukwe in April 1959 as an Africanist split from the ANC, planned a national anti-pass-law campaign for 21 March 1960. At Sharpeville township, around 5,000 protesters gathered at the police station. Police opened fire, killing 69 and wounding around 180, many shot in the back.

The government declared a State of Emergency on 30 March 1960. The Unlawful Organisations Act (8 April 1960) banned the ANC and PAC. South Africa left the Commonwealth on 31 May 1961 after international criticism (the Wind of Change speech by British PM Macmillan in Cape Town on 3 February 1960 had already signalled the shift).

The ANC and PAC went underground and abandoned exclusive nonviolence. Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation," MK), the armed wing of the ANC, was launched on 16 December 1961 with sabotage attacks on government installations. Mandela was its first commander.

Rivonia and the underground (1962 to 1976)

Mandela was arrested on 5 August 1962 and sentenced to five years on incitement and travel charges. The MK underground headquarters at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia was raided on 11 July 1963. Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and others were arrested.

The Rivonia Trial (October 1963 to June 1964) charged Mandela and the others with sabotage. Mandela's "I am prepared to die" speech from the dock on 20 April 1964 became one of the defining statements of the movement: "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." Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island on 12 June 1964.

The 1960s and early 1970s were apartheid's high noon. The ANC was suppressed internally; Oliver Tambo led the movement in exile. Economic growth was strong (around 6 per cent annually). Apartheid seemed entrenched.

The Soweto Uprising and Steve Biko (1976 to 1977)

The Black Consciousness Movement, led by Steve Biko (Students' African Students Organisation, 1968; Black People's Convention, 1972), built a new generation of Black political organisation outside ANC and PAC structures.

The Soweto Uprising began on 16 June 1976 when around 20,000 schoolchildren marched to protest the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in Black schools. Police opened fire. The death toll over the next year was officially 575 (probably closer to 700). The image of 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, killed in the first hours, carried by Mbuyisa Makhubu and photographed by Sam Nzima, became a global symbol of apartheid violence.

Steve Biko was detained on 18 August 1977 and beaten to death by Security Branch police; he died on 12 September 1977. The Donald Woods documentation of his death and the international outcry produced the UN Security Council's mandatory arms embargo (Resolution 418, 4 November 1977).

The UDF and the township uprisings (1983 to 1989)

The 1983 Constitution introduced a tricameral parliament (Whites, Coloureds, Indians) but excluded Black South Africans completely. The United Democratic Front (UDF), launched on 20 August 1983, was a coalition of around 600 community, church, student, women's and trade union organisations that opposed the new constitution and coordinated mass resistance.

The 1984 township uprisings began in the Vaal Triangle (3 September 1984) and spread. Rent boycotts, school boycotts, consumer boycotts of white businesses, and attacks on apartheid local officials produced a state of near-ungovernability. The government declared a State of Emergency on 21 July 1985 (renewed and expanded through 1986 and 1989). Around 30,000 people were detained. Over 5,000 died in the 1984 to 1986 violence.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), founded on 1 December 1985, became the major Black labour federation. Stayaways and general strikes added economic pressure.

Sanctions and the economic squeeze (1985 to 1989)

The Anti-Apartheid Movement had campaigned for international sanctions since the 1960s. Major escalations came in the mid-1980s.

The 1985 debt crisis. P. W. Botha's "Rubicon" speech on 15 August 1985 promised reform but offered no specifics. Chase Manhattan refused to roll over short-term loans on 31 July 1985. Other foreign banks followed. The rand collapsed 35 per cent in a month. South Africa imposed a debt moratorium on 1 September 1985.

Sanctions. The US Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act passed over Reagan's veto on 2 October 1986 banned new US investment, loans and air links. The Commonwealth (excluding the UK), the EEC and Australia imposed parallel sanctions. Sports boycotts and cultural boycotts had been growing since the 1960s (the Springboks were excluded from rugby tours; the Special AKA's "Free Nelson Mandela," 1984, became an anthem).

By 1989 South Africa's economy was shrinking, capital was leaving, and the white minority's standard of living was falling. Major Afrikaner business leaders met with the ANC in Dakar (July 1987) and Lusaka.

The end of the Cold War and the de Klerk reforms

Cuban troops fought the South African Defence Force in southern Angola through the 1980s (Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, December 1987 to March 1988). The New York Accords (22 December 1988) ended the war, withdrew Cuban troops from Angola, and provided for Namibian independence (which came on 21 March 1990).

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 removed the "communist threat" justification for apartheid. The Soviet Union had backed the ANC; its collapse removed that backing but also removed the National Party's strongest international argument.

F. W. de Klerk replaced P. W. Botha as State President on 14 August 1989. On 2 February 1990, in his opening address to Parliament, de Klerk unbanned the ANC, PAC, the South African Communist Party, and 33 other organisations, freed political prisoners, and committed to negotiations. Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison on 11 February 1990 after 27 years and 6 months in custody.

Negotiation and transition (1990 to 1994)

Negotiations were difficult. The Inkatha Freedom Party under Mangosuthu Buthelezi, partly armed by the apartheid security forces, fought the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal and the Witwatersrand; around 14,000 people died in this violence between 1990 and 1994. The Boipatong Massacre (17 June 1992, 45 dead) and the Bisho Massacre (7 September 1992, 28 dead) threatened to derail talks.

CODESA I (Convention for a Democratic South Africa, 20 to 21 December 1991) and CODESA II (15 to 16 May 1992) failed. The Record of Understanding (26 September 1992) between de Klerk and Mandela broke the deadlock. The Multi-Party Negotiating Forum (from April 1993) produced the Interim Constitution (signed 18 November 1993).

Communist Party leader Chris Hani was assassinated by Polish-born right-wing extremist Janusz Walus on 10 April 1993; Mandela's televised address that night urged calm and prevented mass violence.

South Africa's first non-racial democratic election was held from 26 to 29 April 1994. The ANC won 62.65 per cent, the National Party 20.39 per cent, and the IFP 10.54 per cent. Mandela was inaugurated as President on 10 May 1994.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996 to 2003)

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was established by the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (19 July 1995). It opened hearings in April 1996. The TRC offered amnesty in exchange for full disclosure of politically motivated crimes; it heard around 21,000 victim statements and around 7,000 amnesty applications. The Final Report (29 October 1998, supplemented 21 March 2003) documented apartheid-era abuses by the state, the ANC, Inkatha and others.

The TRC was praised internationally and criticised domestically (notably by the Biko family, who challenged the amnesty provision in court). It became an influential model for transitional justice elsewhere.

Historiography

Saul Dubow (Apartheid 1948 to 1994, 2014) is the standard recent academic history of the apartheid period and its end.

Hermann Giliomee (The Afrikaners, 2003; The Last Afrikaner Leaders, 2012) explains the politics of Afrikaner nationalism and the National Party's retreat from power.

Patti Waldmeier (Anatomy of a Miracle, 1997) is a journalist's account of the 1990 to 1994 negotiations.

William Beinart and Saul Dubow (eds, Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth-Century South Africa, 1995) is the standard analytical anthology.

Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom, 1994) remains the major movement memoir; pair it with Anthony Sampson's biography Mandela (1999).

Common exam traps

Calling apartheid a creation of 1948. Racial segregation existed long before 1948 (the Glen Grey Act 1894, the Mines and Works Act 1911, the Natives Land Act 1913 reserving 87 per cent of land for whites). The National Party systematised and intensified segregation as apartheid.

Forgetting the Cold War context. The National Party used "anti-communism" to justify apartheid and the Cold War shielded South Africa diplomatically. The end of the Cold War removed both the rhetoric and the shield.

Treating de Klerk as the hero of the transition. De Klerk made the necessary reforms but he was responding to economic and political crisis. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission later found his administration responsible for some violence in the transition.

Calling 1994 "the end" of apartheid's legacy. The 1994 election ended legal apartheid; economic apartheid (land ownership, wealth distribution, educational outcomes) persists. By 2014, around 73 per cent of farmland was still white-owned.

In one sentence

Apartheid in South Africa, imposed by the National Party from 1948, was ended between 1989 and 1994 by the combined pressure of economic crisis (debt moratorium 1 September 1985, sanctions including the US Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act 2 October 1986), internal mass resistance (the UDF from 20 August 1983, the township uprisings 1984 to 1986), the end of the Cold War, and the negotiated transition led by F. W. de Klerk's reforms (2 February 1990) and Nelson Mandela (released 11 February 1990) culminating in the first non-racial democratic election on 26 to 29 April 1994 and Mandela's inauguration as President on 10 May 1994.