A young girl heard a knock on the door. It was Christmas Day, and her mother had just arrived home.

Like many black children, this was the only time of year she got to see her parents. Her mother worked for a family in another part of the country where only white people were allowed to live. In these places, signs on the stores, buses, and benches said, “White Only.” When the young girl asked her mother why black and white people were separated, the mother told her it was the law.

This story was repeated tens of thousands of times in South Africa as black families lived through a period known as apartheid.

In 1948, the National Party came into power in South Africa. This party introduced a harmful policy known as apartheid. Apartheid was a system that separated black and white people from each other. Within a short period, the National Party passed many laws that would make life in South Africa very different depending on the color of a person’s skin.

At the heart of the apartheid laws was the government’s desire to keep white people in charge and separate from people of color. During this time, the term “black” referred to all people of color oppressed by apartheid. The government made it illegal for black and white people to marry each other. Its laws also forced kids of different colors to go to different schools where education was unequal. Black and white people had to use separate parks, beaches, building entrances, and buses.

The government would pass many other laws, including the Population Registration Act. With this act, people had to be identified as a certain racial group. People were either White, Black (African), Coloured, or Indian. Which group you were placed into determined where you were allowed to live, what work you could do, and what public spaces you used. 

This law was very unfair and harmful. Sometimes, families were torn apart because they were placed in different groups and were no longer allowed to live with each other.

Under apartheid laws, the best areas were often set aside for white people, and many black people were forced to leave their homes. One law, called the Group Areas Act, caused much hardship. Vibrant communities, like Sophiatown, were destroyed, and the people who lived there were removed to new townships. The townships were often far away from places of work, had very few facilities, and were controlled by the police.

Decades before apartheid began, many African people had already been pushed off their land and forced to live in small areas called reserves. These places were difficult to farm, and many struggled to survive. In 1959, the government said that these reserves were the original homelands of the different African peoples. The government then claimed these areas were not part of South Africa but rather foreign countries. This lie made it so that the African people had no voice in South Africa. White South Africans could vote for their own government. But all Africans were now considered foreigners in their own land.

Many Africans had to move again. Their land was taken away and sold to Afrikaner farmers at low prices. They were then removed to the homelands where there were usually no facilities or jobs nearby. Families were split up as the parents had to go to the “white” cities to look for work, and mothers or other relatives stayed in the reserves to look after the children.

For those living under apartheid, life was a constant struggle. From the beginning, people fought back against the government to protest the unfair laws. The National Party did all it could to silence any opposition.

If the government thought someone was speaking up against apartheid, it would ban them. When a person was banned, they weren’t allowed to be with more than one person at a time. They also had to report to the local police station twice a day. This ban usually lasted for five years. For the individual, the effect of banning was devastating.

The government also banned political organizations. Any group that protested apartheid was not allowed in South Africa. Many other people were held in prison or lost their lives trying to fight back against inequality.

However, the government could not silence the cry for change. In the townships, people began to resist, and the government was unable to stop it. Many protests began peacefully but soon turned violent, and the police could no longer control the anti-apartheid movement.

Throughout the world, countries began to speak out against apartheid. Eventually, in 1990, the South African government put an end to the policy. The country voted in its first democratic government in 1994, with Nelson Mandela as its leader. Apartheid had ended, yet South Africans would have many hardships to overcome in the years ahead. But now, they were working toward a nation no longer separated by the color of a person’s skin. They were working toward a country in which all people, cultures, and languages had a voice.

In this story, we use the word black with a lowercase “b.” This term refers to all people of color who were impacted by apartheid. Africans, or Black people, Coloured people, and Indians were all people of color living under apartheid. In South Africa, “Coloured” refers to people of mixed race.