The Cosmopolitan Conscience

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 was a law passed by the Malan Government one year before his retirement. The Act made it mandatory for all school in South African territory to admito students from only one race. In other words, the Bantu Education Act stopped interracial education and founded the basis for the sustainability of the Apartheid System. The Bantu Education Act also changed the way African people were educated. The new system left the non-Whites education in the hands of the Native Affairs Department, separating African education from the Ministry of Education. It is very important to note that the Minister of Native Affairs during that time was HF Verwoerd himself (the architect of Apartheid). Here is his speech as the Minister of Native Affairs regarding Bantu Education (7 June, 1954): "It is the policy of my department that education should have its roots entirely in the Native areas and in the Native environment and Native community. There Bantu educa...

In the previous entry, Apartheid was defined as a system of institutionalized segregation against the non-whites in South Africa, and it was mentioned that it was divided into two phases: Petty Apartheid and Grand Apartheid. Now, a big of what the term "institutionalized" englobes are laws (institutionalized can be defined as establishing something as part of an official organization, and in this case that organization was the South African Government). Apartheid was able to affect the South African population through its laws, that ranged from simple everyday things like having separate amenities to more regional and territorial segregation. There is a quite big list of laws that enforced Apartheid, but only the most significant ones will be mentioned, and in this entry, only the Acts passed during the DF Malan Government would be included. In 1949, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act was passed by the Malan government, becoming the first Apartheid law in the countr...

DF Malan  1948: a year remembered by all South African people. The year where D.F. Malan and the National Party won the elections to the shock of the whole country. It was the year where Apartheid appeared to oppress the non-whites; it was the year where the battle against discrimination officially began. Before looking back at the past, and revisiting the Apartheid era, it is of utmost importance to fully understand what the term "apartheid" means. Apartheid, according to the Oxford Learner's Dictionary, was " the former political system in South Africa in which only white people had full political rights and other people, especially black people, were forced to live away from white people, go to separate schools, etc." To put it simply, Apartheid was institutionalized segregation against the non-white population of South Africa.  Apartheid was divided into two different stages: Petty Apartheid and Grand Apartheid. Petty Apartheid basically consi...