Apartheid
[10] The Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloured", and "Indian", the last two of which included several sub-classifications.
[45][better source needed] The United Party government of Jan Smuts began to move away from the rigid enforcement of segregationist laws during World War II, but faced growing opposition from Afrikaner nationalists who wanted stricter segregation.
The rapid economic development of World War II attracted black migrant workers in large numbers to chief industrial centres, where they compensated for the wartime shortage of white labour.
[49] Overcrowding, increasing crime rates, and disillusionment resulted; urban blacks came to support a new generation of leaders influenced by the principles of self-determination and popular freedoms enshrined in such statements as the Atlantic Charter.
Smuts' reluctance to consider South African foreign policy against the mounting tensions of the Cold War also stirred up discontent, while the nationalists promised to purge the state and public service of communist sympathisers.
[52] First to desert the United Party were Afrikaner farmers, who wished to see a change in influx control due to problems with squatters, as well as higher prices for their maize and other produce in the face of the mineowners' demand for cheap food policies.
Discriminated against by apartheid, Coloureds were as a matter of state policy forced to live in separate townships, as defined in the Group Areas Act (1950),[116] in some cases leaving homes their families had occupied for generations, and received an inferior education, though better than that provided to Africans.
[120][121] Scholar Judith Nolde has argued that, in general, the discriminatory system set up a "triple yoke of oppression: gender, race, and class" such that South African women became "deprive[d]" of their fundamental "human rights as individuals.
[123] In terms of mothers and their families, multiple South African children developed diseases caused by malnutrition and sanitation problems given the oppressive public policies, and mortality rates were therefore high.
In the 1980s, as the oppressive system was slowly collapsing the ANC and National Party started negotiations on the end of apartheid, football associations also discussed the formation of a single, non-racial controlling body.
[135] Chinese South Africans – who were descendants of migrant workers who came to work in the gold mines around Johannesburg in the late 19th century – were initially either classified as "Coloured" or "Other Asian" and were subject to numerous forms of discrimination and restriction.
Large portions of the garment industry and construction of new homes, for example, were effectively owned and operated by blacks, who either worked surreptitiously or who circumvented the law with a white person as a nominal, figurehead manager.
The first presidents of the UDF were Archie Gumede, Oscar Mpetha and Albertina Sisulu; patrons were Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr Allan Boesak, Helen Joseph, and Nelson Mandela.
The UDF, coupled with the protection of the church, accordingly permitted a major role for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who served both as a prominent domestic voice and international spokesperson denouncing apartheid and urging the creation of a shared nonracial state.
The newly founded United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid, scripted and passed Resolution 181 on 7 August 1963, which called upon all states to cease the sale and shipment of all ammunition and military vehicles to South Africa.
A "rebel tour" – not government sanctioned – went ahead in 1986, but after that sporting ties were cut, and New Zealand made a decision not to convey an authorised rugby team to South Africa until the end of apartheid.
"[171] Bradman's views were in stark contrast to those of Australian tennis great Margaret Court, who had won the grand slam the previous year and commented about apartheid that "South Africans have this thing better organised than any other country, particularly America" and that she would "go back there any time.
[191] From 1973 onwards, much of South Africa's white population increasingly looked upon their country as a bastion of the free world besieged militarily, politically, and culturally by Communism and radical black nationalism.
[192][193] Soviet support for militant anti-apartheid movements worked in the government's favour, as its claim to be reacting in opposition to aggressive communist expansion gained greater plausibility, and helped it justify its own domestic militarisation methods, known as "Total Strategy".
[202] The apartheid government made judicious use of extraterritorial operations to eliminate its military and political opponents, arguing that neighbouring states, including their civilian populations, which hosted, tolerated on their soil, or otherwise sheltered anti-apartheid insurgent groups could not evade responsibility for provoking retaliatory strikes.
[205] The scale and intensity of foreign operations varied, and ranged from small special forces units carrying out raids on locations across the border which served as bases for insurgent infiltration to major conventional offensives involving armour, artillery, and aircraft.
[206][207] The insurgent bases were usually situated near military installations of the host government, so that SADF retaliatory strikes hit those facilities as well and attracted international attention and condemnation of what was perceived as aggression against the armed forces of another sovereign state.
[211] One example was the Gaborone Raid, carried out in 1985, during which a South African special forces team crossed the border into Botswana and demolished four suspected MK safe houses, severely damaging another four.
[214] Successful sabotage actions of high-profile economic targets undermined a country's ability to negotiate from a position of strength, and made it likelier to accede to South African demands rather than risk the expense of further destruction and war.
Within South Africa, meanwhile, vigorous police action and strict enforcement of security legislation resulted in hundreds of arrests and bans, and an effective end to the African National Congress' sabotage campaign.
Black town councillors and policemen, and sometimes their families, were attacked with petrol bombs, beaten, and murdered by necklacing, where a burning tyre was placed around the victim's neck, after they were restrained by wrapping their wrists with barbed wire.
[235] The alleged sanctions-breaking was used to justify the seizure of some of BP's assets in Nigeria including their stake in SPDC, although it appears the real reasons were economic nationalism and domestic politics ahead of the Nigerian elections.
Botha's government stopped short of substantial reforms, such as lifting the ban on the ANC, PAC and SACP and other liberation organisations, releasing political prisoners, or repealing the foundation laws of grand apartheid.
Hani, the popular General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was assassinated in 1993 in Dawn Park in Johannesburg by Janusz Waluś, an anti-Communist Polish refugee who had close links to the White nationalist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB).
Hani enjoyed widespread support beyond his constituency in the SACP and ANC and had been recognised as a potential successor to Mandela; his death brought forth protests throughout the country and across the international community, but ultimately proved a turning point, after which the main parties pushed for a settlement with increased determination.
