Opposition Leader

Apartheid was a system of rigid racial segregation practised in South Africa for most of the twentieth century. Black people could not live in the same neighbourhoods as white people (nor could “Coloureds” or “Indians”). They could work in white neighbourhoods in the day but had to return to their own townships at night. Black South Africans received a rudimentary “Bantu” education with almost no access to post-secondary training. They could not frequent the same restaurants, washrooms, or swimming pools as white people nor sit on the same park bench or play on the same beaches. It was illegal to marry or have sex with partners of another race. As the system grew in complexity and demanded even greater segregation, the regime formally established “Bantustans,” or homelands, usually poor rural regions where Black “self-government” was allowed. Anyone who opposed or defied this system might, if their resistance was threatening enough, end up dead in the back of a police van or...