From the beginning, the government of the newly formed country was controlled by the Whites, even though the majority of the people who lived there were Blacks.  They passed laws to keep people from different races apart. This series of laws became known as Apartheid, which means being “separate”  in the Afrikaans language. 

The Black people started to organize themselves in their battle against the Whites. In 1912 the African National Congress was founded.  Its aim was to put the Blacks in power in South Africa. Some ANC leaders were arrested and put into prison, the most famous of them being Nelson Mandela. 

The apartheid system was criticized by many countries around the world. They stopped trading with South Africa and tried to isolate it.  As the country was becoming economically weaker a new president, Frederik de Klerk, announced that apartheid was going to end. He made the ANC legal again and released its leader Nelson Mandela from prison, where he was kept for over twenty years.

In the first democratic elections, in which all races could take part, the ANC won and Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black President in 1994. Mandela retired in 1999 and since then South Africa has been trying to give freedom and equality to people of all races.  



Apartheid sign in Durban

Sign in Durban that allows only White people on the beach
Image: Guinnog, CC BY-SA 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons



Words

  • Afrikaans = language spoken by Dutch settlers in South Africa 
  • aim = goal, wish
  • Apartheid = the political and social system in South Africa, in which only white people had rights: other races had to live separately
  • announce = to officially tell people about something
  • arrest = to take to a person to a police station because they may have done something wrong
  • battle = fight
  • economically = about business and the financial system of a country
  • election = when people choose someone for an official position
  • equality = being the same
  • even though = while
  • found-founded = create ; to start something new
  • government = the people who rule a country
  • isolate = here: to separate the country from the whole world
  • legal = to be officially allowed
  • majority = the largest group of people in a country, opposite of minority 
  • pass a law = when parliament makes a law
  • prison = a building or room where people are kept if they have done something wrong
  • race = group of people who have the same skin colour 
  • release = to set free
  • retire = to stop working because you are old 
  • trade = to buy and sell things