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South Africa
Mass internal mobilisation, armed struggle and sanctions forced negotiations that ended apartheid and produced the first universal-suffrage elections.
- Independence
- April 27, 1994
- Before
- Union / Republic of South Africa
- Metropole
- United Kingdom
- Leader
- Nelson Mandela
- Transition
- Negotiated
- Movement
- African National Congress (ANC); Pan Africanist Congress (PAC); United Democratic Front (UDF)
“I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
— Nelson Mandela, April 20, 1964
Conquest, Union and Exclusion
Dutch settlement at the Cape began in 1652, Britain took the Cape in 1795 and again in 1806, and the African kingdoms of the interior were conquered during the nineteenth century. The Union of South Africa, formed in 1910 as a self-governing British dominion, denied almost all Black South Africans the vote. The South African Native National Congress, later the ANC, was founded in 1912; the 1913 Natives Land Act restricted African land ownership to about 7 percent of the country.
Apartheid and the Turn to Armed Struggle
After the National Party won the 1948 election it built apartheid into law. The 1952 Defiance Campaign, the 1955 Freedom Charter and the 9 August 1956 women's march on the Union Buildings against pass laws were met with repression. After police killed 69 people at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960, the ANC and PAC were banned. Umkhonto we Sizwe began sabotage in December 1961, and Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial in 1964.
Uprising, Sanctions and Negotiation
The 1976 Soweto uprising, the mass mobilisation of the UDF and trade unions in the 1980s, and international sanctions left apartheid in crisis. F. W. de Klerk unbanned the liberation movements and Mandela was released on 11 February 1990. Multiparty negotiations produced an interim constitution in 1993, and in late April 1994 South Africans of all races voted together for the first time.
Chronology
- January 8, 1912 — South African Native National Congress (later ANC) founded
- May 1948 — National Party wins election and begins legislating apartheid
- March 21, 1960 — Sharpeville massacre
- June 12, 1964 — Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial
- June 16, 1976 — Soweto uprising
- February 11, 1990 — Mandela released
- April 27, 1994 — First democratic elections begin
Aftermath
Mandela was inaugurated as president on 10 May 1994. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (established 1995) investigated gross human rights violations of the apartheid era, and the final constitution was adopted in 1996. The end of apartheid closed the era of legally entrenched white-minority rule on the continent.
Legacy
The negotiated transition to majority rule avoided the full-scale civil war many had feared, although political violence killed thousands between 1990 and 1994. The settlement left much of apartheid's economic inequality in place, and South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world.