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The Acts that Established Apartheid

1923: Urban Areas Act---This act declared that blacks should live in separate areas from whites. This act was the vanguard of the the apartheid acts that were passed in the 1950's.

1949: Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act---Banned marriages between members of different races. Greatly helped by the more rigid racial definitions established by the Population Registration Act passed a year later.

1950: Population Registration Act---Divided people into three classes: "whites", "coloreds", and "natives". The "native" classification included all blacks, but the "colored" grouping consisted of all people with mixed heritage, as well as Indians and Asians.

Immorality Act---Made sex between whites and non-whites illegal. (Alan Paton's novel Too Late the Phalarope dealt extensively with this issue.)

Group Areas Act---Specified areas that could only be occupied by members of a particular racial group. This act led to massive relocations of black and colored populations to townships outside the cities.

Suppression of Communism Act---Allowed people considered to be communists to be banned from political organizations or restricted to particular areas. The definition of "communism" was intentionally loose, and could be used to justify the removal of any social or political leader the Chamber of Mines found inconvenient. Part of this response came from an actual fear of communism taking root among black workers, but it was also a move calculated to gain support from the United States and Britain, who were committed to halting the spread of communism. This act came about as a direct result of the the mineworker's strike in 1946.

1951: Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act---Allowed the Minister of Native Affairs to send "illegal" African tenants to relocation camps. This act was frequently abused.

1952: Abolition of Passes Act---This peculiarly-named act did the exact opposite of what its name would suggest. It consolidated numerous documents into one pass that blacks were requred to carry, and allowed blacks with proper authorization to temporarily enter white areas. (By 1982 it was estimated that one person was arrested for pass offenses every two and a half minutes (Hayward 19).)

1953: Reservation of Separate Amenities Act---Made it illegal for blacks to mix with whites on public property (e.g., parks, trains, beaches, etc.). It is interesting to note that this type of segregation was beginning in South Africa almost at the same time as it was ending in the United States. (Rosa Parks' bus incident occured two years later, in 1955.)

Bantu Education Act---Caused massive revision of the black school system. Assuming that blacks should have the lowest jobs of society, this act required that black education primarily encourage manual labor. It required that schooling not be compulsory, and that blacks would have to pay for it themselves. (Schooling for whites was free.) The act also ended government subsidies to missionary schools; the Minister of Bantu Affairs (and later Prime Minister), Hendrik Verwoerd, believed that they caused blacks to raise their expectations to an unacceptably high level.

Native Labor Act---Ruled that blacks were not allowed to strike under any circumstance.

1956: Industrial Conciliation Act---Allowed the government to restrict racial groups to specific kinds of work. Although job segregation was common before this time, this act made it mandatory.

1961-1968: The Publications Control Board was formed during this period, and the Infamous Terrorism Act was passed. This act allowed any police officer at or above the rank of lieutenant colonel to "detain for interrogation" any person suspected of "terrorism." Since terrorism was not really defined, this act had massive potential for abuse; torture of suspects became common during this period, and the number of deaths in detention increased dramatically.

1974: Affected Organizations Act---Gave the Bureau of State Security (BOSS) power to investigate any organization it deemed suspicious. This bureau answered only to the Prime Minister.