What is Apartheid ?

Correct — D, (d) A policy of racial segregation.

Apartheid was the system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa, and in South West Africa under South African administration — now Namibia — from 1948 until 1994. The word itself is Afrikaans and means ‘separateness’ or the state of being apart, and the policy did exactly what its name says: it separated people by race and attached different rights to each classification. The keyed option, a policy of racial segregation, is the definition.

The machinery was legal and comprehensive. The Population Registration Act of 1950 formalised racial classification and required everybody over eighteen to carry an identity card recording it. The Group Areas Act of the same year divided urban areas into zones in which ownership and residence were restricted to particular groups. Marriage and sexual relations across racial lines were prohibited by statute. Most black South Africans were assigned to ten designated ‘tribal homelands’, the Bantustans, four of which were declared nominally independent. Public facilities and social events were segregated — what was called petty apartheid — while housing, land and employment were segregated by the grand apartheid laws.

The system drew repeated condemnation at the United Nations and brought international sanctions, including arms embargoes, and India was among the earliest and most persistent of its opponents in international forums. Its dismantling came in stages: the legislation underpinning classification was repealed in 1991, and the country’s first non-racial government followed elections under a universal franchise in 1994.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)An international organization of peace — ‘An international organization of peace’ is the sort of description that would suit a body such as the United Nations, and it may attract a candidate who has met the word only in the phrase ‘the struggle against apartheid’ at the United Nations and has taken it for the name of an institution rather than of a policy. Apartheid was neither international nor an organisation: it was the domestic policy of one state, enforced by its own legislature, courts and police. If anything, the international dimension of the story runs the other way — apartheid was the subject of condemnation at the United Nations and of sanctions imposed by other states. One small note on the printing: this option spells ‘organization’ with a z, where the rest of the paper generally uses the -ise spelling; the booklet has it so.
• (b)A medical term — ‘A medical term’ has nothing to connect it with the word except the vague technical sound that an unfamiliar word acquires when it is met cold. The temptation, if there is one, comes from the prefix: a candidate might hear ‘apart-’ and think of a clinical description of separation. The word is Afrikaans, not Latin or Greek, and Afrikaans is not a language from which English medical vocabulary is drawn — the two great sources for that are Greek and Latin. Etymology is a genuine tool in a general-knowledge paper of this kind, and here it does most of the work: knowing that ‘apartheid’ is Afrikaans and that Afrikaans is the language of one community in South Africa places the term geographically and politically at once.
• (c)A trade charter — ‘A trade charter’ moves the term into the vocabulary of commerce, where it does not belong. There is a historical connection between South Africa and chartered trading companies, since European settlement at the Cape began with a trading company’s station, but that is centuries away from a policy adopted in 1948 and has nothing to do with the word. The option is the third of three fillers on this list, and its presence tells a candidate something useful about the item: when the wrong options are drawn from unrelated fields — an international body, medicine, trade — the question is testing plain recall of a term, and there is no partial reasoning that will recover the answer. Such items should be answered quickly or left, and the time given to the questions that can be worked out.

Apartheid was the organising principle of the South African state between 1948, when the National Party took office, and the transition of the early 1990s. It is worth studying as the fullest modern example of segregation imposed by law, and it appears in general-studies papers both as a definition and as part of the history of decolonisation and of India’s foreign policy.

Its structure had three layers. Classification came first: every person was assigned to a racial category, recorded and carried on an identity document. Separation followed: where a person could live, own property, work, study, travel and marry was determined by that classification, with the ‘homelands’ policy intended to confine the black majority to a small fraction of the country’s land. Enforcement was the third layer, through pass laws, security legislation and a police apparatus that met resistance with force.

The resistance is as examinable as the system. The African National Congress and other movements, the Sharpeville shootings, the long imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, the sports and cultural boycotts and the international sanctions campaign are all part of the standard account, and Mandela’s release, the negotiations, the repeal of the apartheid statutes and the elections of 1994 are its conclusion.

India’s connection is direct and often asked about: India raised the treatment of Indians in South Africa at the United Nations in its earliest years, broke off trade relations with the apartheid state, and Nelson Mandela was among the non-Indians honoured with the Bharat Ratna.

Key facts

• Apartheid was the system of institutionalised racial segregation in South Africa and in South West Africa, now Namibia, from 1948 to 1994.
• The word is Afrikaans and means ‘separateness’ or the state of being apart; its first recorded use was in 1929.
• The Population Registration Act, 1950 formalised racial classification and required an identity card recording it; the Group Areas Act, 1950 restricted ownership and residence in urban areas by group.
• Most black South Africans were assigned to ten designated ‘tribal homelands’ or Bantustans, four of which were declared nominally independent.
• ‘Petty apartheid’ segregated public facilities and social events; ‘grand apartheid’ segregated housing, land and employment.
• The system was repeatedly condemned at the United Nations and met with international sanctions including arms embargoes; the classification law was repealed in 1991 and the first non-racial elections under universal franchise were held in 1994.

Common traps

• Taking a famous term from international affairs to be the name of an organisation rather than of a policy.
• Reasoning from the sound of an unfamiliar word instead of from its language of origin.
• Confusing the international campaign against apartheid with apartheid itself.
• Spending time on an item whose wrong options come from unrelated fields; such questions test recall alone.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The two laws of 1950 that formed the foundation of apartheid legislation in South Africa were

  • (a)The Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act
  • (b)The Native Land Act and the Pass Laws Act
  • (c)The Immorality Act and the Suppression of Communism Act
  • (d)The Bantu Education Act and the Extension of University Education Act

  Answer(a) The Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act — the first formalised racial classification and the second restricted ownership and residence in urban areas by group. The other statutes named belong to the apartheid system or its precursors but are not the two foundational laws of 1950.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The word ‘apartheid’ comes from which language ?

  • (a)Portuguese
  • (b)Afrikaans
  • (c)Zulu
  • (d)Latin

  Answer(b) Afrikaans — the word means ‘separateness’ or the state of being apart. Portuguese and Latin have contributed many political terms to English but not this one, and Zulu is a language of the population the policy was directed against rather than of those who framed it.