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20YR Chapter 1 Introduction.Pdf TWENTY YEAR REVIEW 1 introduction 1 INTRODUCTION THE YEAR 2014 REPRESENTS A to systematically reduce black people’s right to vote, thus historic milestone of South Africa’s 20 years of freedom protecting white rule and domination. and democracy. On 27 April 1994, for the first time, South Africans of all races, gender and creed cast their Black people faced further subjugation when diamonds votes in the country’s first democratic election. Until this were discovered in the vicinity of present-day Kimberley in momentous occasion, South Africa could not speak of 1867 and when gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand one nation. The first democratic election in 1994 made it in 1884. The white mine and land owners sought to possible for people to stand together and begin to build consolidate their wealth while excluding black people from one country that belongs to all who live in it. For the economic activity apart from providing cheap labour. majority of South Africans who had never voted before, their dignity was restored as they determined who would Following land and livestock dispossession and lead the country and fundamentally transform it from an deprivation of the opportunity to earn sustainable apartheid state to a democratic state. livelihoods, many black people were forced to migrate towards white-owned mines and farms to work as cheap This chapter provides an overview of the colonial and labour under appalling working conditions. Workers apartheid past, the democratic transition and a summary had no rights, were paid very low wages, housed in of South Africa’s journey over the last 20 years. The compounds, controlled by pass laws and separated from other chapters provide more detailed descriptions of the their families. They were held criminally responsible for legacy of apartheid and its impact on the economy, the strikes and any breaches of work contracts. In 1918, environment, social services, infrastructure, safety and through the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union security and international relations. and other formations, there was protest action against low wages, poor housing and passes. The Bantu 1.1 AN OVERVIEW OF SOUTH Women’s League also launched a campaign against AFRICA’S PAST passes for black women in 1918. Under colonialism and apartheid, black people were oppressed, dispossessed of their land and other means In 1906 the Natal government had introduced a £1 poll of livelihoods and systematically stripped of their basic tax on each male in Zululand. The tax placed further human rights including the right to vote and freedom of financial burden on black families who had already been movement and association. dispossessed of land and cattle and were unable to ensure sustainable livelihood. Chief Bhambatha kaMancinza Following the mid-1650 warfare between Dutch settlers refused to accept the introduction and collection of the and the indigenous Khoikhoi population, the latter poll tax and waged a fierce rebellion against the colonial were dispossessed of their land and forced to work for administration, through what has since become known as the settlers who had been allotted farms in the arable the Bhambatha Rebellion. regions around the Cape. From the mid-1830s the Great Trek occurred and the British entered the rest of South Africa. Despite the Thembu, Sotho, Xhosa, Zulu and other tribes fiercely resisting being conquered and winning some battles, such as the Anglo-Zulu War of THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW 1878, they were later stripped of their independence The purpose of this Twenty Year Review is to reflect and subjugated to white rule. on the legacy that democratic South Africa inherited, how the country has progressed in realising the Freedom of movement of the black person was objectives it set for itself in 1994, the challenges controlled in the Cape Colony, Natal, and the Boer which still remain and how we could best address Republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State. At all these as we enter the third decade of democracy. times, black people had to carry pass documents that were used to control where they lived, their movement The Review has built on research undertaken for within the country, and where they could work. Through, the Ten and Fifteen Year Reviews, the National for example, the Glen Grey Act of 1894, the number of Development Plan (NDP), commissioned work black people who could live on and own their land and and inputs received from national departments, the size of land they owned were drastically reduced, provinces and local government. In developing dramatically changing people’s livelihoods and rendering the Twenty Year Review, 20 roundtable discussions many poor. Furthermore, the law laid the basis for racially were held with a range of stakeholders, including based spatial segregation through land dispossession. By academic and research institutions, the business introducing stringent property requirements to qualify for community and civil society. the vote, the Act used land (and dispossession thereof) MEDIACLUBSOUTHAFRICA.COM 2 TWENTY YEAR REVIEW When the First South African Wari (1880– possessions and became extremely poor. 1881) occurred, followed by the Second While government provided low-interest South African War (1899–1902) and the signing loans to white farmers, African farmers of the Treaty of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902, received no aid and increasingly found it the Boers lost their independence and agreed hard to compete with white farmers. Rights to be placed under the British Crown and of access to natural resources such as water government, paving the way for the formation of and minerals were reserved in perpetuity for a Union. Despite numerous appeals to the British a select few. government by black leaders, black people were excluded from political participation in Land dispossession, the lack of universal the Union, further eroding their political rights suffrage, and other forms of racial and aggravating their plight. The government oppression generated growing black of the Union of South Africa, established on political resistance and led to the formation 31 May 1910, formally introduced legislation that of a range of organisations amongst African, entrenched racially based discrimination and Coloured and Indian communities, including oppression. There was no universal suffrage and the African Peoples’ Organisation and the the multi-racial franchise with stringent property South African Indian Congress (which was and literacy requirements that had existed in formed by merging the Natal, Transvaal some provinces was gradually removed. and Cape Indian Congress). On 8 January 1912, the South African Native National Through the Mines and Works Act of 1911 Congress (SANNC) was formed (renamed and related amendments, an employment the African National Congress (ANC) in colour bar was established in the workplace, 1923). At the core of the formation of the and blacks were prohibited from competing SANNC was unity for all African people, for skilled work that was reserved for whites striving for universal suffrage, African rural only. A black person was not allowed to keep land ownership, equality before the law, a job if it could be given to a white person and, equal access to skilled work and the plight if there was a shortage of jobs, government of farm labourers, mine workers and other had the power to compel employers to lay off forms of employment. Pan-Africanism was blacks and provide jobs to whites1. The Act another key area of focus. These political weakened incentive and affected the standard organisations were united in their opposition of work, reduced labour mobility, limited to racially discriminatory and oppressive training and development and contributed to policies and increasingly collaborated with serious skills shortages that are still being felt each other in this regard. to this day. The Act also had a damaging effect on race relations, labour relations and reduced When the National Party came into power the efficiency of industrial firms and negatively in 1948, it formally introduced apartheid affected the general economy. and determinedly enforced it. Building on the Native Land Act of 1913, it established The Native Land Act of 1913 was one of the 10 homelands under the guise of ultimately first major pieces of segregation legislation providing “independence” to black people. passed by the Union and it formalised the The real intention was to deprive black people systematic dispossession of black people’s of their South African citizenship and enable land and livestock resulting in further the creation of a white Republic of South impoverishment and marginalisation. Through Africa. Through this system, the apartheid the Act, 87 percent of the land was reserved state would have no responsibility towards for whites and only 13 percent reserved for African people as citizens of South Africa. black people. Africans were stripped of the rights to purchase, own, lease, or use land, The homelands mainly served as labour except in “reserves” for African people. reservoirs for “white” South Africa, housing African people and releasing them into The Act resulted in large-scale, racially based white areas/towns when their labour was expropriation of land without compensation, required. Through this system, the apartheid as black people were evicted, lost land that government sought to serve the mining had previously belonged to them, and were industry’s labour requirements as well as forcibly removed to the reserves, which were those of farmers and other white-owned often areas with no prospects for economic businesses, while at the same time retaining i Previously known as development. Many black people lost their white political dominance in South Africa. the Anglo Boer Wars. 3 INTRODUCTION WIKIPEDIA.ORG The homelands were largely characterised by lived in townships and informal settlements marginal lands with low production capacity, on the outskirts of South African cities. Most were unable to develop local economies and remained isolated in the underdeveloped were dependent on the apartheid state for homelands, trapped in a vicious cycle of funding.
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