 Hello and welcome to our video summarizing all you need to know about South Africa. We'll examine South Africa's history between 1948 and 1994, essentially the period that South Africa underwent the apartheid system, but also post-apartheid system, with the first post-apartheid president being Nelson Mandela. So let's get started. Now, 1948 was a very important year in South Africa because this was essentially the year where the introduction of apartheid really became far more prevalent. So in 1948 the National Party was elected to power in South Africa. It strengthened the racial segregation that began under Dutch and British colonial rule much earlier on. Taking Canada's Indian Act as a framework, the nationalist government, which was essentially all white, classified all peoples into three races and developed rights and limitations for each. The white minority, less than 20% of the South African population, controlled the vastly larger black majority, the African-South Africans. The legally institutionalized segregational framework became known as apartheid. This meant that while whites enjoyed the highest standard living in all of Africa, comparable to First World Western nations, the black majority in South Africa remained disadvantaged by almost every standard, including income, education, housing and life expectancy. Translated from the Afrikaans meaning a partners, apartheid was essentially the ideology supported by the National Party government and was introduced in South Africa in 1948. A apartheid called for the separate development of different racial groups in South Africa. On paper, it appeared to call for equal development and freedom of cultural expression, but the way it was implemented made this impossible. A apartheid made laws that forced the different racial groups to live separately and develop and also this meant gross inequalities in this level of separation. It also tried to stop all intermarriage and social integration between racial groups. So during apartheid, to have a friendship with someone of a different race generally brought suspicion upon you or even worse. More so than this, apartheid was a social system which severely disadvantaged the majority of the black population simply because that they did not share the same skin color as the Rulers who were white. Many were kept just above destitution because they were none white. A codified system of racial stratification began to take form in South Africa under the Dutch Empire in the late 18th century and really this is where the roots of apartheid began. So although informal segregation was present much earlier due to social cleavages between Dutch colonists and a creolized ethnically diverse slave population, the rapid growth and industrialization of the British Cape colony in the 19th century meant that racial policies and laws became increasingly rigid. Cape legislation that discriminated specifically against Black South Africans began appearing shortly before 1900. Now the first apartheid law was the prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in 1949 followed closely by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950 which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines. The Population Registration Act in 1950 classified all South Africans into one or four racial groups based on appearance known as Ancestry, Socioeconomic Status and Cultural Lifestyle. So this was Black, white, coloured and Indian categories, the last of two which included several subs classifications. Places of residence were also determined by this racial classification. So between 1960 to 1983, 3.5 million non-white South Africans were removed from the homes and forced into segregated neighborhoods in one of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the Black population for 10 designated tribal homelands known as Bantu Stans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government announced that relocated persons would locate the South African or rather would lose the South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the Bantu Stans. Organized resistance to Afrikaner nationalism was not confined exclusively to activists of the oppressed dark skinned population. So of course this very harsh apartheid system did draw huge resistance across the board. So a movement known as the Torch Commando was formed in the 1950s led by white war veterans who had fought fascism in Europe and North Africa during World War II only to find fascism on the rise in South Africa when they returned home. With 250,000 paid up members at the height of its existence, it was the largest white protest movement in the country's history. By 1952 however the brief flame of mass-based white radicalism was extinguished when the Torch Commando disbanded due to the government legislation under the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950. Some members of the Torch Commando subsequently became leading figures in the armed wing of the banned African national congress known as the ANC. Now to go into a little bit of depth about the ANC. So from the 1940s to the 1960s anti-apartheid resistance within the country took form mainly of passive resistance influenced in part by the pacifist ideology by Mahatma Gandhi in India. After the March 1960 massacre of 69 peaceful demonstrators in Sharpeville, the subsequent declaration of state emergency and the banning of anti-apartheid parties including the African National Congress, the ANC, the Pan-Africanist Congress, the PAC and the Communist Party of South Africa, the focus of national resistance turned to armed struggle and underground activity. The history of resistance by the ANC goes through three phrases. The first was a dialogue and petition, the second direct opposition and the last the period of our exiled armed struggle. In 1949 just after apartheid was introduced the ANC started on a more militant path with the youth league playing a more important role. The ANC introduced a program of action in 1949 supporting strike action protests and other forms of non-violent resistance. Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Susulu started to play an important role in the ANC in this period. In 1952 the ANC started the Defiance Campaign and this campaign essentially called on people to purposefully break apartheid laws and offer themselves for arrest. It was hoped that the increase in prisoners would cause a system to collapse and get international support for the ANC. Black people got onto white buses, used white toilets and entered white areas and refused to use passes. Despite 8,000 people ending up in jail the ANC caused no threat to this apartheid regime. The armed wing of the ANC, Umhonto Wasezwe, abbreviation MK, meaning spare of the nation, claimed moral legitimacy for the resort to violence on the grounds of unnecessary defense and just war. From the 1960s until 1989 MK carried out numerous acts of sabotage and attacks on military police and personnel. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission noted in 2003 that, despite the ANC's stated policy of attacking only military and police targets, the majority of casualties were civilians. The National Liberation Movement was divided in the early 1960s when an Africanist faction within the ANC objected to an alliance between the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa. Leaders of the Communist Party of South Africa were mostly white, hence the Africanists broke away from the ANC to form the Pan-Africanist Congress and its military wing named Poco which became active mainly in the Cape provinces. During the early 1990s Poco was renamed Azanian People's Liberation Army, APLA. Its underground cells conducted armed robberies to raise funds and obtain weapons and vehicles. Civilians were killed or injured in many of these robberies. In 1993 attacks on white civilian targets and public places increased. APLA denied the attacks were racist and character claiming that they were directed against the apartheid governments as all whites according to the PAC were complicit in the policy of apartheid. An attack on a Christian church in Cape town in 1993 left 11 people dead and 58 injured. Now of course the most famous figure to emerge from apartheid but equally the anti-apartheid resistance movement was Nelson Mandela who was the first post-apartheid president. So on 5th August 1962 police captured Mandela along with fellow activist Cecil Williams near Horwick in South Africa. Many MK members suspected that the authorities had been tipped off with regards to Mandela's whereabouts although Mandela himself gave these ideas a little credence. In later years Donald Ricard, a former American diplomat revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency who fared Mandela's association with Communists had informed the South African police of his location. Jolden at Johannesburg's Marshall Square Prison Mandela was charged with inciting worker strikes and leaving the country without permission. Representing himself with Slovo as legal advisor Mandela intended to use a trial to showcase the ANC's moral opposition to racism while supporters demonstrated outside the court. He moved to Pretoria where when you could visit him and there he began a correspondence series Studies Rather for a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of London International Programs. His hearing however began in October but he disrupted the proceedings by wearing a traditional carross, refusing to call any witnesses and turning his plea of mitigation into a political speech.