How did the government implement apartheid? Flashcards
What was the 1951 Separate Representation of Voters Act?
It withdrew voting rights from coloured people in SA
Why was the 1951 Separate Representation of Voters Act initially unsuccessful?
How did the NP tackle this?
1) the act was initially opposed in law courts
2) the NP hired more Afrikaner judges
What was the situation in parliament for the NP in 1953?
the NP managed to increase its share of the votes due to its increasing popularity. It wasn’t the majority, but it was comfortable
What happened after the election?
Many key posts in the public sector were given to Afrikaners
What was the idea of separate development? who advocated for it?
1) separate development: the idea that white and black Africans should live entirely separately and be allowed to develop at their own rates
2) it was advocated for by prime minister Verwoerd
how did the Bantu Authorities Act (1951) help Verwoerd’s goal of separate development?
It involved employing African chiefs in Bantustans/homelands to maintain control, who were typically conservative, traditional and willing to work with the government
What was the 1950 Group Areas Act?
The 1950 Group Areas Act forcibly removed ethnic groups out of areas such as city centres to make them exclusively white districts. Those removed were sent to townships and Bantustans
Give three examples of places cleared under the 1950 Group Areas Act
District 6, Cape Town
Cato Manor, Durban
Sophiatown, Johannesburg
What happened to District 6, Cape Town?
District 6, Cape Town(An originally multi racial area near the centre of Cape Town): From 1966 60,000 people were forcibly removed and resettled on the Cape Flats. Buildings were bulldozed
What happened to Cato Manor, Durban?
Cato Manor, Durban (3rd largest city, with tensions between Indian and Black SA residents. Indians owned substantial amounts of private property near city centre): 41,000 Indians were removed and tens of thousands of Africans were sent to far flung townships
What happened to Sophiatown, Johannesburg?
Sophiatown, Johannesburg(Racially mixed, diverse residents and culture, many shebeens and Tsotsis): removal began in 1950 and by 1956 very little remained. It was renamed Triumph
Why was separate development unsuccessful? How did the NP respond to it?
Many rural supporters of the NP relied on black farm labour
The NP instead created a hierarchy of power based on race
What did the pass laws set out to do? Why were they unpopular?
The pass laws gave urban rights to a minority of African people, who had been born in a town, had worked in a town for 10yrs or lived in a town for 15yrs
the aggressive behaviour of police when checking passes led to resentment
What was the 1953 Bantu Education Act
Brought education under government control, including universities
How did the 1953 Bantu Education act impact Black students?
Only provided students with basic education to prepare them for limited roles and opportunities after school(typically in manual labour)
less money was spent on them (1953: 63.92 rand per white student, while it was 8.99 rand per black student), leading to poor quality of education
Black children were taught about white superiority and were often taught in their ethnic language rather than English
What was the Tomlinson Report? What did it say?
A commission done by agricultural economist F R Tomlinson in 1955
said that the government would need to invest over a £100 million
What actions did the Tomlinson Report (1955) suggest the government to take?
1) To expand agricultural plots by pushing families off of their land, thus creating a class of full time farmers
2) Major funding should by provided by the government for rural industries (100 million Rand)
3) Private enterprise (Both SA and foreign) should be encouraged to invest in these areas
What was Verwoerd’s response to the Tomlinson Report (1955)? Why?
He rejected it, because:
1) Too expensive
2) He didn’t want industrial industries in homelands that may compete with urban white businesses
3) If farms were expanded Africans may move to cities
What was betterment?
The process of splitting pastures into smaller paddock’s that livestock would be rotated through, with the aim of rectifying soil erosion and to enable Africans to intensify farming
What was the impact of betterment?
Families were forced off of their land and moved to compact villages, with many African farmers forced to sell livestock.
Due to being unsuccessful and unpopular, the policy was dropped in the 1960s
