On November 6, 1962, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning South Africa’s racist apartheid policy and calling on all its members to end economic and military relations with the country.
Indeed, from 1948 to 1993, apartheid, which comes from the Afrikaans word for “membership,” was government sanctioned racial segregation and political and economic discrimination against South Africa’s non-white majority. Among many injustices, black South Africans were forced to live in segregated areas and could not enter whites only quarters without having a special pass. Although white South Africans make up only a small fraction of the population, they own the vast majority of the country’s land and wealth.
Following the 1960 massacre of unarmed protesters in Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, South Africa, in which 69 blacks were killed and more than 180 injured, the international movement to end apartheid gained broad support . However, few Western powers or other major trading partners of South Africa were in favor of a full economic or military embargo against the country. Nonetheless, opposition to apartheid grew within the UN, and in 1973 a UN resolution called apartheid a “crime against humanity”. In 1974, South Africa was suspended from the General Assembly.
READ MORE: The harsh reality of life under apartheid in South Africa
After decades of increasingly violent strikes, sanctions and protests, many apartheid laws were repealed in 1990. Finally, in 1991, under President FW de Klerk, the South African government repealed all remaining apartheid laws and vowed to draft a new constitution. In 1993, a multi-racial, multi-party transitional government was approved, and the following year South Africa held its first fully free elections. Political activist Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison with other anti-apartheid leaders after being convicted of treason, has become South Africa’s new president.
In 1996, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established by the new government, opened an investigation into the violence and human rights violations that took place under the apartheid system between 1960 and May 10, 1994 (the day Mandela was sworn in as president). The commission’s goal was not to punish people but to heal South Africa by dealing with its past in an open manner. People who committed crimes were allowed to confess and ask for amnesty. Led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, the TRC heard from more than 20,000 witnesses from all sides of the issue – victims and their families as well as perpetrators of violence. He published his report in 1998 and condemned all major political organizations – the apartheid government in addition to anti-apartheid forces such as the African National Congress – for their contributions to the violence. Based on the recommendations of the TRC, the government began providing reparations of approximately $ 4,000 (US) to individual victims of violence in 2003.
