The End of Apartheid
26 May 1948 – 10 May 199467 items
rightssouth africaFrom the 1948 election to the Union Buildings
In 1948 a whites-only electorate put the National Party in power on a programme it called apartheid, “apartness”. Over the next decade it classified every South African by race, zoned every town, and gave black children a schooling meant to fit them for labour. This timeline follows that system and the struggle against it, from Kliptown and Sharpeville to Soweto, the township revolt of the 1980s, sanctions abroad, and the negotiations that ended in the first election open to all, in April 1994.
South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people. — the Freedom Charter, Kliptown, 26 June 1955
How it is built
Periods frame the story: the building of apartheid in the 1950s, the thirty years the ANC and PAC were banned, Black Consciousness, the Soweto uprising, the township revolt and the states of emergency, and the negotiations. The violence that surrounded the talks is drawn as its own band over them. Every date is Gregorian and every time UTC; South Africa is two hours ahead.
Death tolls are given as the ranges the cited sources give, with the source named. Nelson Mandela’s own life has its own timeline; this one follows the laws, the movements and the country.
Threads to follow
apartheid: the laws, from race classification to repealprotest: the Defiance Campaign to the UDFviolence: Sharpeville, Soweto, Boipatong and Bishoarmed struggle: Umkhonto we Sizwe and the state’s raidssanctions: boycotts, embargoes and disinvestmentnegotiations: from Groote Schuur to the constitutionelections: four whites-only votes, then one for all
Items
The National Party wins the whites-only election
Mixed marriages are banned
The Population Registration Act classifies everyone by race
The Group Areas Act zones every town by race
One pass book for every African man
The Bantu Education Act
Sophiatown is cleared
The Freedom Charter is adopted at Kliptown
Twenty thousand women march on the Union Buildings
The Pan Africanist Congress is founded
A boycott movement starts in London
The homelands law
Macmillan’s “wind of change”
The Sharpeville massacre
Philip Kgosana leads 30,000 into Cape Town
A republic, and out of the Commonwealth
Albert Luthuli receives the Nobel Peace Prize
The UN calls for sanctions
Police raid Liliesleaf Farm
District Six is declared white
Verwoerd is stabbed in Parliament
Expelled from the Olympic movement
The Durban strikes
Police fire on the students’ march in Soweto
The uprising reaches Cape Town
Transkei, the first “independent” homeland
Steve Biko dies in detention
Black Wednesday
A mandatory UN arms embargo
The United Democratic Front is launched
Whites approve a three-chamber parliament
Desmond Tutu receives the Nobel Peace Prize
Police fire on a funeral procession at Uitenhage
Botha’s “Rubicon” speech
COSATU is founded
Raids on ANC targets in three capitals
Congress overrides Reagan: the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act
The New York accords
Thirty thousand march through Cape Town
De Klerk unbans the liberation movements
Mandela walks out of Victor Verster
The Groote Schuur Minute
The Population Registration Act is repealed
CODESA opens at Kempton Park
The last whites-only referendum
The Boipatong massacre
The Bisho massacre
The Record of Understanding
Chris Hani is assassinated
An armoured car crashes into the talks
An interim constitution is agreed
Bophuthatswana collapses
The new flag goes up at midnight
Mandela is inaugurated at the Union Buildings