Do you know what “Apartheid” means?
It is not just a word, but a set of policies designed to maintain white supremacy. Forcing the well armed and ruthless whites to abolish apartheid, at gunpoint if necessary, was itself an achievement.
As a ruthless form of divide and rule Apartheid puts the PAP’s efforts at the same basic strategy in Sinkieland to shame. It meant putting an end, among other things, to this:
Under the homeland system, the government attempted to divide South Africa into a number of separate states, each of which was supposed to develop into a separate nation-state for a different ethnic group.
Territorial separation was not a new institution. There were, for example, the "reserves" created under the British government in the nineteenth century.
Under apartheid, 13 per cent of the land was reserved for black homelands, a relatively small amount compared to the total population, and generally in economically unproductive areas of the country. The Tomlinson Commission of 1954 justified apartheid and the homeland system, but stated that additional land ought to be given to the homelands, a recommendation that was not carried out.
When Verwoerd became Prime Minister in 1958, the policy of "separate development" came into being, with the homeland structure as one of its cornerstones. Verwoerd came to believe in the granting of independence to these homelands. The government justified its plans on the basis that "(the) government's policy is, therefore, not a policy of discrimination on the grounds of race or colour, but a policy of differentiation on the ground of nationhood, of different nations, granting to each self-determination within the borders of their homelands – hence this policy of separate development".
Under the homelands system, blacks would no longer be citizens of South Africa, becoming citizens of the independent homelands who worked in South Africa as foreign migrant labourers on temporary work permits. In 1958 the Promotion of Black Self-Government Act was passed, and border industries and the Bantu Investment Corporation were established to promote economic development and the provision of employment in or near the homelands.
Many black South Africans who had never resided in their identified homeland were forcibly removed from the cities to the homelands.
Ten homelands were allocated to different black ethnic groups: Lebowa (North Sotho, also referred to as Pedi), QwaQwa (South Sotho), Bophuthatswana (Tswana), KwaZulu (Zulu), KaNgwane (Swazi), Transkei and Ciskei (Xhosa), Gazankulu (Tsonga), Venda (Venda) and KwaNdebele (Ndebele). Four of these were declared independent by the South African government: Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981 (known as the TBVC states).
Once a homeland was granted its nominal independence, its designated citizens had their South African citizenship revoked, replaced with citizenship in their homeland. These people were then issued passports instead of passbooks. Citizens of the nominally autonomous homelands also had their South African citizenship circumscribed, meaning they were no longer legally considered South African. The South African government attempted to draw an equivalence between their view of black citizens of the homelands and the problems which other countries faced through entry of illegal immigrants.
For more on Apartheid, follow this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid_in_South_Africa
