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Starting in 1948, the Nationalist Government in South Africa enacted laws to
define and enforce segregation.
What makes South Africa's apartheid era different to
segregation and racial hatred that have occurred in other countries is the
systematic way in which the National Party, which came into power in 1948, formalised it through the law. The main laws are
described below.
Prohibition of
Mixed Marriages Act, Act No 55 of 1949
Prohibited marriages between white people and people of other races.
Between 1946 and the enactment of this law, only 75 mixed marriages had
been recorded, compared with some 28,000 white marriages.
Immorality
Amendment Act, Act No 21 of 1950; amended in 1957 (Act 23)
Prohibited adultery, attempted adultery or related immoral acts
(extra-marital sex) between white and black people.
Population
Registration Act, Act No 30 of 1950
Led to the creation of a national register in which every person's race was
recorded. A Race Classification Board took the final decision on what a
person's race was in disputed cases.
Group Areas Act,
Act No 41 of 1950
Forced physical separation between races by creating different residential
areas for different races. Led to forced removals of people living in
"wrong" areas, for example Coloureds
living in District Six in Cape Town.
Suppression of
Communism Act, Act No 44 of 1950
Outlawed communism and the Community Party in South Africa. Communism was defined so
broadly that it covered any call for radical change. Communists could be
banned from participating in a political organisation
and restricted to a particular area.
Bantu Building
Workers Act, Act No 27 of 1951
Allowed black people to be trained as artisans in the building trade,
something previously reserved for whites only, but they had to work within
an area designated for blacks. Made it a criminal offence for a black
person to perform any skilled work in urban areas except in those sections
designated for black occupation.
Separate
Representation of Voters Act, Act No 46 of 1951
Together with the 1956 amendment, this act led to the removal of Coloureds from the common voters' roll.
Prevention of
Illegal Squatting Act, Act No 52 of 1951
Gave the Minister of Native Affairs the power to remove blacks from public
or privately owned land and to establishment resettlement camps to house
these displaced people.
Bantu Authorities
Act, Act No 68 of 1951
Provided for the establishment of black homelands and regional authorities
and, with the aim of creating greater self-government in the homelands,
abolished the Native Representative Council.
Natives Laws
Amendment Act of 1952
Narrowed the definition of the category of blacks who had the right of
permanent residence in towns. Section 10 limited this to those who'd been
born in a town and had lived there continuously for not less than 15 years,
or who had been employed there continuously for at least 15 years, or who
had worked continuously for the same employer for at least 10 years.
Natives
(Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act, Act No 67 of 1952
Commonly known as the Pass Laws, this ironically named act forced black
people to carry identification with them at all times. A pass
included a photograph, details of place of origin, employment record, tax
payments, and encounters with the police. It was a criminal offence to be
unable to produce a pass when required to do so by the police. No black
person could leave a rural area for an urban one without a permit from the
local authorities. On arrival in an urban area a permit to seek work had to
be obtained within 72 hours.
Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act of 1953
Prohibited strike action by blacks.
Bantu Education
Act, Act No 47 of 1953
Established a Black Education Department in the Department of Native
Affairs which would compile a curriculum that suited the "nature and
requirements of the black people". The author of the legislation, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd (then
Minister of Native Affairs, later Prime Minister), stated that its aim was
to prevent Africans receiving an education that would lead them to aspire
to positions they wouldn't be allowed to hold in society. Instead Africans
were to receive an education designed to provide them with skills to serve
their own people in the homelands or to work in labouring
jobs under whites.
Reservation of
Separate Amenities Act, Act No 49 of 1953
Forced segregation in all public amenities, public buildings, and public
transport with the aim of eliminating contact between whites and other
races. "Europeans Only" and "Non-Europeans Only" signs
were put up. The act stated that facilities provided for different races
need not be equal.
Natives
Resettlement Act, Act No 19 of 1954
Group Areas
Development Act, Act No 69 of 1955
Natives
(Prohibition of Interdicts) Act, Act No 64 of 1956
Denied black people the option of appealing to the courts against forced
removals.
Bantu Investment
Corporation Act, Act No 34 of 1959
Provided for the creation of financial, commercial, and industrial schemes
in areas designated for black people.
Extension of
University Education Act, Act 45 of 1959
Put an end to black students attending white universities (mainly the
universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand). Created separate tertiary
institutions for whites, Coloured, blacks, and
Asians.
Promotion of Bantu
Self-Government Act, Act No 46 of 1959
Classified black people into eight ethnic groups. Each group had a
Commissioner-General who was tasked to develop a homeland for each, which
would be allowed to govern itself independently without white intervention.
Coloured Persons Communal Reserves Act,
Act No 3 of 1961
Preservation of Coloured Areas Act, Act No 31 of 1961
Urban Bantu
Councils Act, Act No 79 of 1961
Created black councils in urban areas that were suppoed
to be tied to the authorities running the related ethnic homeland.
Terrorism Act of
1967
Allowed for indefinite detention without trial and established BOSS, the
Bureau of State Security, which was responsible for the internal security
of South Africa.
Bantu Homelands
Citizens Act of 1970
Compelled all black people to become a citizen of the homeland that
responded to their ethnic group, regardless of whether they'd ever lived
there or not, and removed their South African citizenship.
Various segregation
laws were passes before the Nationalist Party took complete power in 1948.
Probably the most significant were The Natives Land Act, No 27 of 1913 and The Natives (Urban
Areas) Act of 1923. The former made it illegal for blacks to purchase
or lease land from whites except in reserves; this restricted black
occupancy to less than eight per cent of South Africa's land. The latter
laid the foundations for residential segregation in urban areas.
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