1650-1954 ApartheidThe Apartheid was introduce in South Africa when the Dutch and British colonized and take power of the population of the 9 original native tribes. The segregation began in 1920. The people were divided into 4 racial groups: Black, White, Coloured and Asians. They identified the groups by pencil test and paper bag test, passbooks were issued to Blacks and Coloured, and Asians declared "honorary whites". In 1954 Blacks and Cooured move into native reserves Soweto, Sophiatown and Sharpeville. There was a Act established, The Native Resettlement Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natives_Resettlement_Act,_1954 https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01860.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1650s_in_South_Africa |
Sophiatown 1955The Blacks community was force to move to another town called Soweto. The community has the population of 70,000. 2,000 policemen force them to move. The resettlement was bulldozed. After the Blacks were forced to move, the Sophiatown was rezoned only for whites and renamed Afrikans for Triumph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophiatown http://www.sahistory.org.za/place/sophiatown |
1960 Sharpeville MassacreThe Blacks are protesting because of the pass law. 5,000 to 7,000 people went to the police station protesting. The South African Police opened fire to the crowd killed 69 people and injured 108. The other people are saying that the crowd are peaceful and other said that they are throwing stones to the police.
The massacre created a crisis for the apartheid government, both in the country and internationally. The government immediately declared a State of Emergency and banned political meetings. Within less than a month, it banned both the Pan Africanist Congress, which had organized the action in Sharpeville, and the African National Congress. After lengthy internal discussions, the ANC and PAC turned to armed struggle and went underground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-E |
Steve Biko 1976-1977Steve Biko was a student activist, who was an anti-apartheid. He founded the Black Consciousness Movement which empower and mobilize the urban black population. He was put to coma by the police in 1976 and a year after he was beaten to death. 10,000 attended his funeral including foreign diplomats and ambassadors.
Biko's contribution to the black fight for freedom from apartheid is often placed as second only to that of former President Nelson Mandela. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/12/newsid_3573000/3573054.stm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko |