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50 Years Ago in South Africa

Nelson Mandela South African troops see action in Ethiopia and in the North African desert against Rommel. However, there was a large segment of white South Africans who favoured neutrality in the war, or who even openly sided with the racist policies of Nazi Germany. In spite of the victory over Nazism, racism in South Africa would grow after the war.

1948, Afrikaner National Party, led by Daniel Malan, comes to power in the Republic of South Africa. Only the 3 million whites had full voting rights, although non-whites totalled 11 million. The racist policies of the pre-war era were formalized and made law under the term Apartheid (which literally means "separateness").

Just as the First Nations in Canada were denied political rights and limited to small reservations, Apartheid sought to divide South Africa into a number of separate racial communities-- but with whites getting more than 80 percent of the country.

Opposition against the National Party was centred in the Youth League of the African National Congress or ANC, and the more radical Pan-African Congress, led by Robert Sobukwe, established in 1959. Nelson Mandela's Youth League, created in the 1950s, gave the ANC, which had been originally formed in 1912 and had become largely insignificant, new life and importance. March 1960 sees the killing of 67 Africans in the Sharpeville Massacre near Johannesburg. Anti-Apartheid feeling in the world community leads South Africa to leave the Commonwealth in 1961. ANC leader, Mandela is arrested on and imprisoned in 1964. He will not be released until 1990.

While visual arts remained dominated by American or European schools of thought, South African writers developed distinctive styles to express the culture of their homeland. Nadine Gordimer, born in 1923 in a segregated town outside of Johannesburg, focuses on the complex human tensions that resulted from Apartheid. A number of her works were banned in South Africa during the Apartheid era. Her most recent book, written in 1991, is called Jump and Other Stories. Ezekiel Mphahlele, born in the slums of Pretoria in 1919, wanted to be teacher, but was barred from working in segregated schools. He worked as a reporter, but was finally exiled because of his criticisms of the South African government. He lived in Nigeria, France and the United States where he worked as a professor. In 1977, he returned to South Africa, where he eventually became professor of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand. He has written more than a dozen books.

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