Apartheid and its legacies

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning separateness or apartness. In practical terms, these were laws and statutes which enforced white South African superiority.

The roots of apartheid can be traced back to colonial South Africa when the British arrived into the area and despite tensions with the Boer tribes were motivated to stay in the area due to finding gold and diamonds there. This discovery also led to increased numbers of Europeans coming into the country. The tensions between the Boers, who were the original European farmer settlers, and the British would be a prelude to the racial tensions that would arise in the twentieth century. Despite both groups being hostile to each other, they shared a common feature: both exploited indigenous South Africans.

When the state of South Africa was formed in 1910, white South Africans were in a better position than native black South Africans so became less dependent on the British Empire for support. Afrikaans-speaking universities soon began to produce publications promoting partisanship and racial bias against the black population and insisted on separatism on the grounds of racial and cultural distinctions. This led to early laws being passed which reinforced this such as the Status Quo Agreement of 1918 which prevented white competition with native workers and preserved skilled jobs for whites only. As the South African constitution allowed for unequal treatment of equals, these laws were easily implemented.

The bulk of apartheid laws were passed after 1948 when the National Party, the party representing the interests of the white population, won the 1948 election. The white population feared black migration to the cities, so the government passed laws which regulated the lives and movements of the black and coloured African population. Laws restricted where people could live, who they could marry and what they could access. These laws aimed to remove non-whites from urban spaces and concentrate land ownership among white people. Rural non-whites were confined to overcrowded Bantustans, impoverished areas where black South Africans were forced to live, and urban non-whites were treated as migrant workers. Laws also banned communism, which allowed the government to imprison Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist and a member of the African National Congress. These actions and laws were all to try and maintain white power.

Cracks in this system were beginning to show in the 1950s when mass civil disobedience and protests occurred all over the country. Yet the government responded with brutality, as seen in the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 when sixty-nine protestors were killed by the police. The government issued a state of emergency, arrested over 2,000 people and banned anti-apartheid political parties, forcing activists to go underground. In the 1970s, apartheid became difficult to maintain due to the international community politically and economically isolating South Africa and imposing sanctions and divestment campaigns as well as boycotting South African exports.  The transnational campaign was coordinated by the South African United Front which aimed to overthrow white domination and create a democratic state based on universal suffrage. These pressures forced the government to introduce reforms, legalise anti-apartheid groups and release Mandela from prison. These reforms led to a crescendo in 1994 when Mandela and the ANC (African National Congress) party won the first ever democratic election in the country leading to the end of apartheid.

Today, the government is still trying to reverse the legacies of apartheid. One of the ways it is doing this is through university admissions. During the apartheid era, race-based admissions excluded the majority of black students from university so now universities are trying to redress this by developing inclusive race-based policies. The government has set targets for the number of non-white students that have to be admitted at university. This has been effective at increasing the number of black South African university students which in 1994 stood at only at 9%. However, the dropout rate of non-white students at university is still high. A range of reasons were given by students for dropping out, including financial reasons, poor academic support, familial pressure and a student’s poor entry level. Research at the University of Cape town shows that this high dropout rate meant that of those black South Africans admitted to the university under race-based policies in 2007, only 51% had graduated by 2013.

Perhaps offering lower entry requirements at university for those who were disadvantaged under the apartheid system is an insufficient way to try to improve their position due to the high dropout rate, indicating the issues are much deeper. Disadvantages are still vast with issues ranging from poor schooling, lack of foothold in the labour market and a lack of financial capital. If these issues are not solved, then it is unfeasible that lower entry requirements to university will improve on the inequalities formed under apartheid. The South African state has come a long way in recognising and trying to ameliorate its unequal past, but it still has a long way to go.

Bibliography

‘Apartheid: A Short History’, Anti-Apartheid Legacy, https://antiapartheidlegacy.org.uk/heritage-arts-culture/history/apartheid-a-short-history/, [Accessed 23 May 2026].

Dhanagare, D. N, ‘Apartheid- Its theory and practice in South Africa’, India Quarterly, 23 (1967), pp. 338–361, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45071222, [Accessed 23 May 2026].

Graham, Matthew, ‘Campaigning Against Apartheid: The Rise, Fall and Legacies of the South Africa United Front 1960–1962’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 46 (2018), pp. 1148–1170, https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2018.1506871, [Accessed 23 May 2026].

Kerr, Andrew, Piraino, Patrizio, and Ranchhod, Vimal, ‘Estimating the Size and Impact of Affirmative Action in Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Cape Town’, South African Journal of Economics, 85 (2017), pp. 515-532, https://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12174, [Accessed 23 May 2026].

Sehoole, Chika, Adeyemo, Kolawole, Samuel, and Phatlane, Rakgadi, 'The Complexities of Race-Based Admissions in South African Universities', International Higher Education, 117 (2024), pp. 16–17, https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ihe/article/view/17513, [Accessed 23 May 2026].