Petty Apartheid
Source A
http://www.historystudycenter.com/search/displayMultiResultReferenceItem.do?Multi=yes&ResultsID=15AE717EBF6&fromPa
ge=search&ItemNumber=2&QueryName=reference
The policy of separate racial development in the Republic of South Africa, supported
traditionally by the Nationalist Party, and more recently by other right-wing parties. The
ideology has several roots: Boer concepts of racial, cultural and religious separation arising out
of their sense of national uniqueness; British liberal notions of indirect rule; the need to preserve
African traditional life while promoting gradualism in their Christianization and westernization;
and the concern for job protection, promoted by white workers to maintain their status in the face
of a large and cheaper black proletariat. Under the policy, different races were given different
rights. In practice, the system was one of white supremacy, blacks having no representation in
the central state parliament. Many of the provisions of apartheid regarding labour, land
segregation (reserves, Homelands, Bantustans), municipal segregation, social and educational
separation, and a virtually exclusive white franchise, were in place before the Nationalist victory
of 1948, but after that date it was erected into a complete political, social and economic system,
down to the provisions of ‘petty apartheid’ relating to transport, beaches, lavatories, park
benches, etc. Some of its provisions began to be dismantled in the mid-1980s, for example the
abolition of the ‘pass laws’ in 1986 and the modification of the Group Areas Act, and in 1991
President F W DE KLERK bowed under international pressure and internal unrest to repeal all
remaining apartheid legislation. In December of that year the Convention for a Democratic South
Africa was created to draft a new constitution, which enfranchised blacks and other racial
groups, and in 1994 the first multiracial elections were won by Nelson Mandela and the ANC.
Source B
Petty Apartheid
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age=search&ItemNumber=1&QueryName=multimedia​
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Source C
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ype=relevance&fromPage=search&ItemNumber=4&QueryName=reference
From 1948 to 1989, each successive prime minister, all of whom represented the Afrikaner
National Party, strengthened white hegemony in South Africa. However, apartheid was not
institutionalized without the resistance of its victims; segments of each of South Africa's racial
groups actively protested the policy of apartheid. The ANC, for example, formed a Youth
League made up of younger members ready to enforce its 1949 Programme of Action, which
called for nonviolent acts of disobedience against apartheid.
Petty Apartheid
In 1950, the government passed the Population Registration Act, which established distinct racial
categories and forbade intermarriage and sexual relations between members of different races.
These homelands would comprise about fourteen percent of South African land and would
exclude urban and mineral-rich areas reserved for whites only.
The justification for the development of homelands was that it would enable Africans to preserve
their cultural heritages. However, it soon became evident that support of the Group Areas Act
was based in part on racism and the desire of the white-controlled government to solidify
economic hegemony. Africans working in menial jobs in urban areas were, in fact, permitted to
retain their jobs (they were given labor permits to work inside the cities but were required to live
in townships located on the outer edges of the cities). Their families, however, were required to
live in homelands, thereby ensuring the breakup of the African family. All Africans living
outside homelands were required to carry pass books and observe curfew requirements or face
arrest.
Source D
​Title: ​South Africa: Apartheid, 1948–1959
http://www.historystudycenter.com/search/displayReferenceItem.do?QueryName=reference&ResultsID=15AEC38615A&SortT
ype=relevance&fromPage=search&ItemNumber=3&QueryName=reference
The segregation of education became more rigid in the 1950s. Few areas of basic human activity
and social life were left untouched by apartheid. Laws passed in 1949 and 1950 prohibited either
marriage or sexual relations between whites and persons of color. Mixed sports clubs were
banned, as were sporting contests between whites and blacks. Most places of entertainment were
almost entirely segregated. And the 1953 Reservation of Separate Amenities Act required that
Petty Apartheid
racial segregation be implemented in a whole range of public facilities: toilets, elevators, public
transportation, post offices, beaches, and park benches (but not shops). Although seemingly
absurd, these “petty apartheid” laws could have tragic consequences. There were, cases where an
ambulance would arrive at the scene of an accident and refuse to convey an accident victim to
hospital if the victim's color was wrong for that particular ambulance.
While much of the apartheid system amounted to a tightening of previous segregation policies,
there was one significant new departure—the development of the bantustan/homeland system.
The first step was taken with the passing of the 1951 Bantu Authorities Act, which set up a
three-tiered authority structure in the reserves at tribal, regional, and territorial levels, with
government-appointed chiefs in effect becoming the state's administrative agents in the reserves.
Apartheid was never to be a smoothly functioning system. That it functioned at all was due much
to four key pillars on which it rested. The first was the system of racial classification. Under the
1950 Population Registration Act, everybody was designated as a member of one for four racial
groups—white, African, “colored,” or Asiatic. Second, apartheid policies required tougher
repressive measures to quell growing opposition. One such measure was the 1950 Suppression of
Communism Act, which enabled the minister of justice to use a very broad definition of
communism to declare opposition organizations unlawful. Third, apartheid depended on an
expanded bureaucratic apparatus. After H. F. Verwoerd became minister of native affairs in
1950, his department took on a new importance. Fourth, apartheid's defenders made vain
attempts to offer ideological justification for the system. In the 1950s crude notions of white
superiority and black inferiority were articulated in defense of white domination (known as
baaskap​). Other justifications rested on rigid ideas of racial difference, seemingly ordained by
Petty Apartheid
scripture and science—ideas that assumed a strict correlation between physical and cultural
difference.
During the 1950s the future direction of apartheid policy remained a matter of debate within NP
circles, between those who wanted total, vertical separation, and the pragmatists who saw that
total apartheid could not be implemented without ending the economy's dependence on cheap
black labor. In the end, the pragmatists won, and apartheid policy makers were left to continue
grappling with the fundamental contradiction in the system—between the insistence on racial
separation and the necessary exploitation of cheap black labor. This contradiction would prove
unable to resolve, and would lead to the ultimate collapse of apartheid.
Petty Apartheid
Question 1a:​ Using Source A, what were the roots of the ideology that led to apartheid?
Question 1b: ​Using Source B What is the message within the image?
Question 2: ​With reference to its origin, purpose and content, assess the values and limitations
of Source C for historians studying the impact of the petty apartheid.
Question 3: ​Compare and contrast the views presented in source C and D concerning petty
apartheid.
Question 4 ​Using all the sources and your outside knowledge, examine the reasons apartheid
was put into place and the effect that had on South Africans?