The word Apartheid literally means apart-ness. It is a system of racial segregation that is upheld through governmental policies and measures and is characterized by forcible transfer of populations, land control, labor exploitation, humiliation and murder. Apartheid was officially made a universal term by the United Nations in the 1976 “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”. However, the most widely known historical example of Apartheid is South Africa. 

Between 1948 and 1994 the South African government instituted various policies and measures that systematically discriminated, displaced, and dispossessed the Indigenous black population. In South Africa, the Apartheid framework can be understood as resting on seven pillars: stricter definitions of races; exclusive white participation and control in central political institutions (and repression of those who challenge this); separate institutions or territories for blacks; spatial segregation in town and countryside; control of African movement to cities; tighter division in the labour market; and segregation of amenities and facilities of all kinds (from universities to park benches) One key element of Apartheid in South Africa was the creation of Bantustans (“Homeland”).

In 1959 South Africa passed a law promoting self-government of the Bantu people, institutionalizing Apartheid. The Bantustans or “Bantu Homelands” were created under the pretense of “black independence”, “state-building” and “separate development.” The reality was that these enclosed areas contained Africans in 10 different homelands made of 13% of South Africa. While Bantustans were promoted as self-governing entities, the South African government made sure that foreign affairs, security, national resources and mines were carefully kept in the hands of the white regime in addition to keeping the best land for white South Africans and severely exploiting black South African labour. In essence, by making blacks South African’s citizens of Bantustans they became “foreigners” to the nation of South Africa and were deprived of their electoral, social and fundamental rights.

The concept and reality of Apartheid can only be fully understood within the history of colonialism.  Frequently understood as “colonialism of a special type”, Apartheid was a colonial project in which the colonizer sought to permanently settle in the colonized land and replace the indigenous population, and where the “ruler” was not somewhere in Europe but occupying the same territory. Fundamental to Apartheid is government sanctioned expansionism and racist subjugation that attempts to eradicate a people through law, policy, and military force.