Apartheid South Africa, 1940s-1960s: Making, Resistance and Repression

Apartheid did not appear from nowhere - it systematised and hardened decades of existing segregation.

By the 1940s South Africa was already deeply segregated. The 1913 Natives Land Act reserved roughly 87% of the land for the white minority, pass laws controlled the movement of black men, and the colour bar limited black workers to unskilled jobs. What changed after 1948 was the scale, coherence and intent of segregation.

• Segregation under earlier governments was extensive but uneven and incomplete.
• Rapid wartime urbanisation of black workers alarmed white authorities.
• Afrikaner nationalism and pseudo-scientific 'ideas of race' gave apartheid its ideology.

The National Party won power on the explicit promise of apartheid.

The National Party (NP) under D.F. Malan, in alliance with the Afrikaner Party, defeated Jan Smuts's United Party. Its 1948 election blueprint (the Sauer Report) called for total racial separation. Crucially, the NP won a majority of seats while winning fewer total votes than the United Party, because rural constituencies were weighted more heavily.

• Only white voters could take part; the black majority had no vote.
• 'Apartheid' (Afrikaans for 'apartness') became official state policy.
• The NP would then convert its ideology into a chain of laws from 1949 onward.

Historians distinguish 'petty' apartheid (daily segregation) from 'grand' apartheid (territorial separation into homelands).

Between 1949 and 1950 the state built the legal skeleton of apartheid.

• Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, No. 55 of 1949 - banned marriage across racial lines.
• Immorality Amendment Act, No. 21 of 1950 - criminalised sexual relations across racial lines.
• Population Registration Act, No. 30 of 1950 - classified every person as White, Coloured or Native (Indian/Asian added as a distinct group), the master key for every other law.
• Group Areas Act, No. 41 of 1950 - divided towns into racial zones, enabling mass forced removals such as Sophiatown and District Six.

Further laws reached into public space, movement and the minds of children.

• Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, No. 49 of 1953 - segregated public facilities and allowed them to be openly unequal ('separate but not equal').
• Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act, 1952 - despite its name, tightened and extended the pass system (the 'reference book').
• Bantu Education Act, No. 47 of 1953 - took black schooling from the churches and, in Verwoerd's own words, aimed to prepare black children only for labour.

There is no place for [the African] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. H.F. Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs, on Bantu Education, 1953

The state tried to redefine black South Africans as citizens of separate 'homelands' rather than of South Africa.

Grand apartheid aimed to divide the country territorially. The Bantu Authorities Act, No. 68 of 1951 set up tribal authorities in the reserves, and the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act, No. 46 of 1959 - driven by Verwoerd - grouped Africans into separate ethnic 'national units' that would supposedly become self-governing homelands.

• The long-term goal was to deny Africans citizenship of a common South Africa.
• The homelands held a fraction of the land and lacked economic viability.
• Chiefs were co-opted, splitting communities and undermining resistance.

Alongside separation, the state built legal machinery to crush dissent.

The Suppression of Communism Act, No. 44 of 1950 defined 'communism' so broadly that it could be used against almost any opponent - banning people, restricting their movement and silencing them without trial. Through the early 1960s this was reinforced by the Sabotage Act (General Law Amendment Act, 1962) and detention-without-trial laws (the 90-day detention clause of 1963).

• 'Banning' and 'listing' silenced leaders without a court hearing.
• Vague definitions let the state target unionists, liberals and church figures.
• Detention without trial removed basic legal protection for activists.

The 1950s saw the largest organised, multi-racial, non-violent resistance yet seen in South Africa.

The Defiance Campaign of 1952, led by the ANC and the South African Indian Congress, mobilised thousands of volunteers to break apartheid laws deliberately and court arrest. In 1955 the Congress of the People at Kliptown adopted the Freedom Charter, whose opening line declared that 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.'

• The Defiance Campaign drove a sharp rise in ANC membership.
• The Congress Alliance united the ANC with Indian, Coloured and white democrats.
• The Freedom Charter later shaped the values of South Africa's 1996 Constitution.

The state answered resistance with prosecution and, at Sharpeville, with lethal force.

In December 1956 the state arrested 156 activists and charged them with high treason, using the Freedom Charter as evidence of a supposed violent plot; the Treason Trial dragged on until 1961, when all the accused were acquitted. Then on 21 March 1960 police opened fire on an anti-pass protest at Sharpeville, killing 69 people, many shot in the back.

• The Sharpeville protest was called by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) under Robert Sobukwe.
• The state declared a State of Emergency and banned the ANC and PAC in April 1960.
• Sharpeville turned world opinion sharply against apartheid.

With peaceful protest banned, the liberation movements took up arms.

After the bannings of 1960, the ANC and its allies concluded that non-violent protest alone could no longer work against a state willing to shoot and jail. In 1961 they formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, 'Spear of the Nation'), which launched a sabotage campaign on 16 December 1961, targeting installations while trying to avoid loss of life. The PAC formed its own armed wing, Poqo.

• MK initially chose sabotage over guerrilla war to limit casualties.
• The decision marked a historic shift after decades of non-violent struggle.
• The move gave the state a pretext for its harshest security laws yet.

A police raid on Liliesleaf Farm led to the trial that jailed the liberation movement's leaders.

On 11 July 1963 police raided Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, near Johannesburg, the secret headquarters of the MK high command, seizing documents and arresting much of the leadership. In the trial that followed (October 1963 - June 1964), the accused were charged with sabotage. On 12 June 1964 eight men - including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki - were sentenced to life imprisonment rather than death.

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society... It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. Nelson Mandela, statement from the dock, Rivonia Trial, 20 April 1964

1. 1948 National Party wins power; apartheid becomes state policy
2. 1950 Population Registration, Group Areas and Suppression of Communism Acts
3. 1952 Defiance Campaign
4. 1953 Bantu Education and Separate Amenities Acts
5. 1955 Freedom Charter adopted at Kliptown
6. 1956 Treason Trial arrests begin
7. 1960 Sharpeville massacre; ANC and PAC banned
8. 1961 MK launches armed struggle
9. 1964 Rivonia Trial: life sentences

By 1964 apartheid was fully entrenched in law and its main opponents were jailed or exiled - yet the ideals of the Freedom Charter survived.

In under two decades the National Party engineered a comprehensive system of racial domination through law, met rising resistance with escalating repression, and by the Rivonia Trial had driven the liberation movement underground and abroad. The struggle was contained, not defeated - the vision set out in the 1950s would shape a democratic South Africa four decades later.