NELSON MANDELA VS APARTHEID LAWS

NELSON MANDELA VS APARTHEID LAWS

South Africa is a country that has people of several races. There are black people who belong to South Africa, whites who came there to settle, and Indians who came as labourers and traders.

The African National Congress, a group of people who led the struggle against apartheid, and their most well-known leader, Nelson Mandela fought the apartheid system for several years. Finally, they succeeded and in 1994 South Africa became a democratic country in which people of all races were considered equal.

Maya’s Story

Maya Naidoo, an eleven-year-old South African girl living in the town of Johannesburg, was helping her mother clear up her old boxes. She found a scrapbook full of pictures and newspaper articles. There were many pictures of a young schoolboy of around fifteen years of age. When she asked her mother who the boy was, she was told that he was called, Hector Pieterson.

He had been shot by the police. Maya was shocked. "Why?" she asked.

Her mother explained that South Africa was earlier governed by apartheid laws. Apartheid means separation on the basis of race. South African people were divided into white, black, Indian and coloured races. According to the law, these races were not allowed to mingle with each other, to live near each other, or even to use common facilities.

Maya could not believe her ears. Maya's mother sounded angry when she spoke about life under apartheid. She told Maya that in those days hospitals were separate and so were ambulances. An ambulance meant for white people would always be well equipped while one meant for black people was not. There were separate trains and buses. Even the bus stops were different for black and white people Non-whites were not allowed to vote. The best land in the country was reserved for the white people, and non- whites had to live on the worst available land. Thus blacks and coloured people were not considered to be equal to whites.

One black township was the South Western Township (Soweto). Hector Pieterson lived here and he and his classmates joined the protest against learning the Afrikaans language in school. This was the language that the whites spoke. Hector and other school students were being forced to learn this language but they wanted to learn their own language, Zulu. The South African police beat up the protestors mercilessly and shot at the crowd. One of their bullets killed Hector. This was on 16 June 1976.

Activity:

What were Hector and his classmates protesting about?

List five ways in which the non-whites were discriminated against:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Do you think it is important for all persons to be treated equally? Why?

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK