Apartheid

In this entry, I will focus on the Apartheid system in South Africa. The very beginning of this thinking started in 1652 when the Dutch installed a base for the shipping activity that went from Europe to Asia. For the next century, many white people came to Africa. Many years later, a new government was elected. This new government started a campaign with many ideas that reflected around the white man as the dominant person. The other parts of the population suffered under what we are to remember for many years to come as a terrible period of grave racism.

The explorers from Europe were active in this time by means of exploring and conquering the “new lands”. They slaughtered and put down the inhabitants of the areas they came by, thinking this was their own property. We know about this from many films and documentaries of this event, for instance the Disney classical movie Pocahontas. But the explorers were not the ones responsible for the Apartheid System. In 1948, a political party called Herenigde National Party was elected. They went into coalition with the party called the African Party. This government was the ones to introduce the system. A film that has been made to document this is called Invictus. The system consists of four different groups that all the people in South- Africa were put into. These groups were the white, the black, the Asian and the colored. The white group was the dominant party, while the others were discriminated by means of habitats, education, politics, health and employment.

Nelson Mandela was a very dominant character in this historic event. He fought for equality and mutual respect between the races in South Africa. He was arrested many times for his unstoppable involvement and interest in the welfare of all the different varieties people and cultures. He was imprisoned at Robben Island, where he expiated for 27 years. He was elected president in 1994, and was the first to be elected in a fully democratic election. He has been given around 250 prizes for his work against the Apartheid system in the country, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Today, South Africa is a republic with eleven official languages. The population is of various origins; about 79.5 % of the inhabitants are of black African ancestry, 2.9 % of the inhabitants have their roots in Asia, and about 9.2 % are originally from Europe. We can thank Nelson Mandela for the improved situation in the country today, and his sacrifice for peace and equality will not be forgotten.

Sources:
- www.globalis.no/Land/Soer-Afrika/(show)/indicators
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa
- www.southafrica.info/about/people/population.htm
- www.qwiki.com/q/#!/South_Africa_under_apartheid

The Picture is found at:

- nelsonmandelafacts.com/