71. Nelson Mandela Part 1- The History of Apartheid

Trigger warning: extreme racial violence and discrimination

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The Dutch arrived at the Cape in 1652, dispossessing the Khoikhoi and San and building a slave economy racially ordered from the start. Britain took over in 1806; abolition in 1834 helped drive the Boer Great Trek inland. Diamonds (1867) and Witwatersrand gold (1886) demanded cheap Black labor, producing pass laws, migrant labor, and compounds — apartheid's machinery in embryo. The 1910 Union unified white rule and excluded Black voters; the 1913 Natives Land Act confined the African majority to 7% of the land. The ANC formed in 1912.

The National Party won in 1948 and codified segregation into a total system: race classification for every citizen, forced removals from Sophiatown and District Six, an education policy designed to train Black children for subordination, and Bantustans that stripped millions of citizenship.

Sharpeville (1960) ended nonviolent strategy; Mandela was imprisoned in 1964. Soweto (1976) and the 1980s township revolts made the country ungovernable. Sanctions forced De Klerk to unban the ANC in 1990. Apartheid law was repealed in 1991, and the first nonracial election came in April 1994.

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