Essay on Effects of Apartheid

Apartheid Essay
Josh Upadhyay

Imagine waking in jail cell. What did you do? That’s right, you were walking on white streets after 6:30 pm without a pass. You got questioned, beaten, and thrown in here. As you look around, you begin to notice the other inmates. They are black, just like you. This was the reality from 1948 to 1994, during the Apartheid law. Black people were being discriminated against financially, emotionally, and mentally. Apartheid was a way for whites to gain more power and more control over the black population.

The higher you are in your job, the more power your wield. (With CEOs having all the power.) That’s what the whites thought so too, when they passed the Color Ban Act. This prevented blacks from doing skilled/semi-skilled jobs, forcing them to resort to bad, low wage jobs, effectively decreasing the amount of power they have economically (Aylett 4). With all the increased competition, (lots of people applying for the same jobs) people became desperate, making it so that they would have to accept any job they got- Or die penniless. This also ensured that blacks do not have enough money to fund political demonstrations/banners, keeping the whites in power.

Voting is a source of political power, whoever can vote has a small but influential part in electing their country’s leader. That opportunity was soon unavailable for black people as in 1936, Apartheid blocked blacks from voting. (Aylett 11) Instead, they had to elect three white people as their representatives. This prevented black people from saying what they thought, restricting them the freedom of choosing a leader for their country. Even though both whites and blacks live in South Africa, only the whites got to choose. (As the white people didn’t want the black people to have their way, the white representatives did not represent the true thoughts of the black community.) With this full white system, the whites could remain in power without fear of the blacks voting against them.

The power of real estate can also be very influential. The more land you have, the more resources you have. When Apartheid was in effect, the government restricted 92.7% of the land for the white people, and gave the land no one wanted to buy to the African population, 7.3% of the total land(Aylett 4). (Keep in mind, during this time; the population of South Africa was six million. Out of that, four million was black. To make matters worse, the whites made the blacks grow their own food on their land. People had roughly a garden’s worth of land to themselves, and they also had to save a portion of it for growing some meager food. Since the whites and already grabbed the best land, the food didn’t grow very well. Add the fact that it was thousands of blacks living together, and you get a very harsh place. (Trash everywhere, bad hygiene, lots of diseases, thugs, etc.) This way, blacks would be more focused on staying alive rather than getting equal rights.

Apartheid was a way for the rich to get richer, and the poor to get poorer. It was the key that enabled the whites to grab more resources, while the blacks had to fight for their very survival. The scheme was for the whites to be the ‘majority’, and have more power. They changed the voting systems, allocated land to certain people and decided jobs on skin color, not skill.