9781422285909

An anti-apartheid protest that took place at the South Africa House in London in 1989.

(Urban Areas) Act of 1923, the cities were reserved for “whites” and off limits to blacks who did not have jobs there. The townships outside city limits were “black.” By 1936, whites controlled 87 percent of the land, while the black majority controlled 13 percent of the worst acreage in the country. STUDENT PROTESTS In 1976, black students revolted in the township of Soweto, near Johannesburg, on June 16, when the government insisted they learn Afrikaans, the language of the white minority. The army fired on the protesters, killing a 13-year-old boy named Hector Pietersen. The protests later spread from town to town killing nearly 600 people. By the middle of the twentieth century, the government had enacted a new set of laws under the umbrella of apartheid. Apartheid segregated the races even further. It outlined where blacks could and could not live. It specified which schools they could attend and which jobs they could work. The govern- ment forced blacks to carry passes that proved they had jobs. The system of apartheid became more entrenched as the years wore on. The government created ten “homelands” where blacks had to stay if they were not working for white employers. Eventually, South Africa’s black popula- tion rose up, tossing South Africa into one bloody crisis after another. Finally, after years of international pressure, apartheid ended and a new era for South Africa dawned with the election of Nelson Mandela as the country’s first black president.

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MAJOR NATIONS IN A GLOBAL WORLD: SOUTH AFRICA