Question concerning Apartheid

[OwnedByFerrets]

What is the difference between the Apartheid forced upon the South Africans and what has been done to Native Americans. I'm sure there is no easy answer, but there must be some experts on the subject here. Is it something that can be discussed?

[tabatha]

1. The apartheid in South Africa included the following:

- blacks were not allowed to live anywhere other than areas given to them (usually the least desirable land)
- many had to bus into white areas every day to work
- those that lived in white areas lived in hostels or small buildings on the property of whites
- most white-only (high-paying) jobs were unavailable to them
- there were white-only/blacks-only train cars, ablution buildings, hotels, universities, etc - no mixing
- interracial marriages not allowed


just some of a few

[RethugAssKicker]

2. Major, major difference....Apartheid was just like

Jim Crow... It was a system of severe discrimination backed by state laws.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Among other things:

All public facilities were segregated, down to the level of park benches and ticket lines

All housing areas were segregated. A family that had live-in servants (who could be hired for incredibly low wages) had to provide a separate building for them to live in. If a servant had a child, the child could not legally live with its parent(s) but had to be sent to live in a black area.

Black people were considered to be not citizens of South Africa but citizens of their "tribal homeland," which was usually some hardscrabble patch of dirt that no one else wanted. They needed a work permit to set foot in other areas, including black townships such as Soweto. Men such as the gold miners had to leave their families to find work and were given leave to visit them only once a year.

Black people had to carry identification papers at all times, and these papers included information about where they were legally allowed to live, e.g. whether they had permission to seek work in a city.

Schools for white children were free, while schools for non-white children (including South Asian and mixed race or "Coloured") charged tuition.

Certain occupations were reserved for whites only. For example, when playwright Athol Fugard brought two fine actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, to the States to perform his play Sizwe Banzi is Dead, he had to list them as his servants on their passport applications, because 1) "Actor" was not a legal profession for non-whites in South Africa at the time, and 2) Black people were rarely allowed to travel abroad on their own.

The government was constantly on the look out for people who they saw as trying to "pass" as white. There were cases in which families who always thought they were white were suddenly and arbitrarily reclassified as "Coloured" without explanation or appeal and then lost their jobs and their homes.

If you want to see some fictional and semi-fictional accounts of that era, I recommend the mystery novels of James McClure, especially The Steam Pig. McClure was a white South African who was disgusted with his country and went to live in England. His books give you a real feel for what it was like to live under that system. If you get a chance to see the play The Syringa Tree, don't miss it. It's an autobiographical one-woman show about a little girl growing up in a liberal white family in 1960s South Africa.

[tabatha]

4. One of the best books to read about this time is:

"Kaffir Boy"

http://www.amazon.com/Kaffir-Boy-Autobiography-Youths-Apartheid/dp/B00150GHN8/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210710305&sr=8-1