I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
- Nelson Mandela
The experiences
Civil rights are rights that are bestowed by a nation upon individuals within the nation's jurisdiction and protect them from infringement by government and private organization, and guarantee their ability to participate in the civil and political society without the fear of repression or discrimination. They ensure the protection of people's physical integrity, procedural fairness in law, protection from discrimination based on gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc., and individual rights such as privacy, freedom of thought and conscience, speech and expression, religion, press, assembly and movement.
However, civil rights had not always been enforced as strongly as they are now, with the implementation of civil right laws in many countries such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the United States of America. Civil rights reforms were the result of series of movements, which aimed for equality for all individuals, regardless of gender, race or color. Civil rights movements were long and tenuous, and did not always achieve their goals. Nonetheless, these movements lead to improvements in the legal rights of the oppressed party.
South Africa was one such country, where civil rights were lacking for certain groups of people, especially black people in particular. They were prejudiced against by the white society and faced discrimination before the law. The system of racial segregation, apartheid, separated and isolated black people from Europeans in the society. While South Africa was under this system, there was a dominance and strong sense of white supremacy. This was an ideology, or belief, that white people where superior to people of other racial backgrounds and that whites should politically, economically and socially dominate aforementioned people of non-white ethnic groups.
Apartheid
Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced through legislation by the National Part governments, the ruling political party from 1948 to 1994. The word apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning the state of being apart, literally 'apart-hood'. Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times under Dutch rule and became an official structured policy following the general election of 1948. The legislation classified the citizen of South Africa into 4 racial classes; black, white, colored, and Indian, with Indian and colored divided into sub-categories, and segregated residential areas. 3.5 million non-white South Africans were removed from their homes and forced into these segregated neighborhoods in 1960 to 1983, becoming one of the largest mass removals in modern history. Non-white political representation was abolished in 1970, and starting in that year black people were deprived of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of one of ten tribally based self-governing homelands called bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government segregated education, medical care, beaches, and other public services, and provided black people with services inferior to those of white people. Entrances to public facilities were separated by whites and non-white and some facilities specifically only served either whites or non-whites. Segregation was extended to other areas of social interaction: education (with separate schools and universities for each racial group), transport (separate railway carriages), and most municipal facilities such as parks and beaches. Where complete segregation was not possible, partial segregation was implemented through providing separate entrances and counters (at stations and post offices, for example).
Discrimination and racism
As a result of racial segregation, under which non-white races were given inferior services to that of white people, colored races were discriminated against. This was induced by the aforementioned ideology of white supremacy, of which white people were believed to be superior to other races in all aspects. Obviously, apartheid was an obvious form of discrimination implemented by the government to cement their control over the economic and social system. Initially, the aim of the apartheid was to maintain white domination while extending racial separation. The National party used its majority in Parliament to eliminate the voting rights of Colored and African people. Thompson (1996, 191) says that the government transformed the administration of the African population. It grouped the reserves into eight (eventually ten) territories. These territories became "homelands" for potential African "nation", administered under white tutelage by a set of Bantu authorities. The idea was that Africans would be citizens of the homeland, losing their citizenship in South Africa and any right of involvement with the South African Parliament which held complete hegemony over the homelands. All blacks were required to carry "pass books" containing fingerprints, photo and information on access to non-black areas.
However, there were other blatant forms of discrimination that sparked internal resistance within South Africa. As black people were seen as an inferior race and of a lower social class, they were only given sufficient education until they were entered into the workforce. Even so, they were regarded as only able to do semi-skilled tasks such as manual labour but were given a far lower wage than that of white people with the same occupation. The labor of black people had become a mainstay of South Africa's economy, but with wage discrimination. A law had been passed creating what was called a Civilized Labor Policy, which protected the wage levels of white workers and left employers free to hire blacks at wages as low as possible.