What was the apartheid system?

South Africa – Apartheid in Context, 1450-1994

In this course, Dr Onyeka Nubia (University of Nottingham) explores the system of apartheid in the context of history and the wider world. In the first lecture, we think about what the apartheid system in South Africa was. In the second lecture, we think about where the ideas of the apartheid system originated. In the third lecture, we think about the origins of ‘race science’ and its links to the apartheid regime. Next, we think about the reality of South Africa’s ‘separate but equal’ doctrine. In the fifth lecture, we think about the political divisions present in South Africa under the apartheid regime. In the sixth lecture, we think about how the anti-apartheid movement gained traction in South Africa and internationally. In the seventh and final lecture, we think about the legacies of the apartheid regime across Africa and the world.

What was the apartheid system?

In this lecture, we think about what the apartheid system was, focusing in particular on: (i) apartheid as an Afrikaner word, the language of descendants of Dutch settlers who arrived in Africa in the 17th century, which means separateness; (ii) the National Party as the Afrikaner-founded party which enforced the apartheid regime; (iii) Nelson Mandela as the first President of the reformed South Africa in 1994; (iv) the origins of ethnography and understanding the concept of race; (v) Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach as key figures in the development of ‘race science’; (vi) understanding South Africa as a region within the continent of Africa; (vii) the condition of the African person in apartheid South Africa as having no rights, yet still having obligations to the state.