Historical and political context

• Portuguese explorers first reached mainland South Africa in the 14th century. In 1488, the navigator Bartholomew Dias was the first European to discover the South African peninsula. As sailing around the peninsula was very strenuous for him due to the high seas, he christened what is now the Cape of Good Hope the "Cape of Storms"
• A little later, in 1497, the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama also set off for the South African coast. He managed to sail around the Cape of Storms with four boats so that he could continue his sea route to India. Da Gama is considered one of the pioneers when it comes to the art of seafaring and named the coast of South Africa St. Helena Bay, after St. Helena
• Then, at the beginning of the 16th century, the first European colonists arrived in South Africa. In 1652, the "Dutch East India Company" declared the port of the South African capital Cape Town to be the junction for shipping and trade routes to Asia. Within a brief time, maritime trade expanded and the Dutch colonists spread further and further inland
• The influence of Europeans on the South African population, however, now extended far beyond the trade business. The white colonists kept a large part of the black population as slaves and cultivated and claimed land that did not belong to them and was already inhabited by the indigenous people
• From 1795, the British entered South Africa and started fighting the Dutch from 1880 on on the ground for the sovereignty of South Africa. After numerous wars, the British won against the Dutch colonists in 1909
• Under the dominion of the British, The African National Congress is formed in 1912. Founders are members of the black upper middle class, who aligned themselves with the Christian ideals of white supremacy. Later leader of the ANC was human rights activist Nelson Mandela
• If we fast-forward a little in time, the start of the subsequent 50 years of apartheid can be recorded starting in 1948. Amongst other campaigns the African National Congress demonstrated against the policy of apartheid with no success
• As a final step, the leader of the African National Campaign sets up an armed unit to oppose the apartheid government. A few months later, Nelson Mandela is arrested in 1962, but his courage and activism are now known beyond the country's borders
• On 16 June 1976, the Soweto schoolboy uprising takes place, resulting in the deaths of at least 176 victims, including schoolchildren. The uprising results in fatalities as it is brutally put down with police violence
• In 1989, Willem de Klerk became president, aiming to put an end to the cruelty of the apartheid movement
• After 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela is finally released in 1990. Three years later he receives the Nobel Peace Prize and is elected South Africa's first black president in 1994

Apartheid

• The term apartheid comes from the Afrikaans language and means separation. However, the term is now prejudiced by the use of the strict racial segregation and the associated discrimination under which the black South African population had to suffer
• The beginning of apartheid can be traced to the early 1800s, the period when the British arrived in South Africa. Under apartheid rules, black South Africans had no human or civil rights. Both the ownership of land and travel to other regions and countries were the prerogative of whites alone. In addition, the black population was not allowed to participate in the search for diamonds, which were found in large quantities as earth treasures, especially in South Africa
• With the Native Administration Act introduced in 1927, native South Africans faced new restrictions. This law is also called "hostility law" for a reason. This Act included the establishment of a separate legal system for the administration of African law. Furthermore, the Native Administration Act stated that proclaimed black territories were subject to a political regime separate from the rest of the country. Thus, governance was ultimately subject only to rule by proclamation and parliament was left out of the equation. For the black population, this meant that the new two-tier citizenship meant that they legally had fewer rights than whites, without being able to use the law to oppose them
• The petty and great apartheid: The petty apartheid included racial segregation in the service sector. This includes, for example, the ban on blacks entering public parks, the separate compartments in public transport or the segregated schools. Apartheid laws did not only affect black people. Coloureds and Asians also suffered. Those affected also separated themselves from the other group. People of colour, metaphorically speaking, kept the same distance from blacks as whites did from blacks. Hospitals, post office buildings, town halls, banks and toilets always had two entrances marked by signs. Many areas of life were not clearly defined. Non-whites had to use word of mouth to find out and keep up to date about restaurants and cafés where you were served or not wanted as a black person
• Resistance: There were both moderate and militant resistance movements against the system of oppression during the apartheid era. One association that peacefully opposed apartheid represented the aforementioned African National Congress, also known as ANC. Even before the beginning of apartheid, the ANC had several hundred thousand members who demonstrated for the rights of the broad middle classes without excluding any religions or ethnic origins.
  Those who found the ANC's approach too soft formed another resistance organisation, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), in 1959. The PAC positioned itself as a purely black organisation and rejected any cooperation with the whites. Later, however, the ANC also founded an armed wing. Nelson Mandela himself led this wing called "Umkonto we Sizwe", which translates as Spear of the Nation. Umkonto we Sizwe distinguished itself in the following years, especially through acts of sabotage. A year before the formation of the armed wing of the ANC, a demonstration organised by the PAC in the township of Sharpeville ended in a bloodbath caused by panicked police officers. In the process, 69 Africans died. In response to these incidents, the government banned both the PAC and the ANC and sentenced Nelson Mandela to life imprisonment