Nelson Mandela Guide: Apartheid

On 21 March 1960 police opened fire on members of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) protesting peacefully in the South African township of Sharpeville against apartheid's iniquitous 'pass laws'. Sixty-nine people died, many shot in the back. The shots fired that day in an obscure corner of South Africa reverberated around the world and Sharpeville became the symbol of the evil of the apartheid system.

On 21 March 1960 several hundred Black Africans were injured and 69 killed when South African police opened fire on demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, protesting against the Apartheid regime's racist 'pass' laws. The Sharpeville Massacre, as the event has become known, signaled the start of armed resistance in South Africa, and prompted worldwide condemnation of South Africa's Apartheid policies.

A journalist’s recollection of living in South Africa from 1955 to 1963, the book starts with the ratification of the Freedom Charter, covers the Sharpeville massacre, and ends with Nelson Mandela's life sentence. The focus is not on politics, but on the day-to-day experiences of citizens and on contemporary journalism, with emphasis on magazines and newspapers which catered to a Black readership.

This book covers the history and role of the South African Students Movement (SASM) and the National Youth Oraganisation (NAYO), in the students uprising that exploded on the day of June 16, 1976. The book also contextualizes and chronicles many other historic events both inside and outside the country that had relevance to the fight against apartheid.

This book provides a narrative on the uprising in Soweto in 1976, when school children protested being taught in Afrikaans, the language of their oppressor. Hector Pieterson, a thirteen year old school boy who was shot in the back by a white policeman. would become the first casualty of the uprising. Among the strengths of the book is the timeline of events.

This book is about Soweto (South Western Townships) and its inhabitants. V.P. Gorodnov traces and exposes the roots of the fight against apartheid. In Afrikaans apartheid means “separation”, but a literal translation rather obscures than reveals its true meaning. Apartheid did not merely separate races; it institutionalized a system of oppression, thereby enabling one race to rule another. It is against this background that the 1976 Soweto uprisings happened, and this book attends to provide a historical overview which led to that uprising.

Shot illegally in the Republic of South Africa, this documentary exposes the oppression of Blacks and other people designated as colored under apartheid rule in South Africa. Filmed throughout South Africa, from Capetown to Johannesburg, as well as in the surrounding Black townships and the desolate bantustans, this film visually portrays the stark contracts between living and working conditions for the 18 million Blacks and the 4 million Whites who ruled over them.

Using never before seen archival footage and interviews in South Africa and the United States, filmmakers ... tell the unknown story of Robert Kennedy's 1966 visit to South Africa during the worst years of Apartheid. The film evokes the connections between the American Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa. The filmmakers find witness to this special moment in time through the sights and sounds of present day South Africa.

Tells the story of black South African freedom music and the central role it played against apartheid. Specifically considers the music that sustained and galvanized blacks for more than 40 years. Focuses on the struggle's spiritural dimension named for the Xhosa word for "power". An uplifting story of human courage, resolve and triumph.

Details Cuba's support for African revolutions, with 300,000 Cubans fighting alongside Africans in independence struggles from 1960 onwards. Discusses Che Guevara's military campaign to avenge Lumumba in the Congo and Cuban involvement in Angola and in the fall of Apartheid in South Africa. Features archival footage and eye-witness accounts.

The peaceful birth of Black majority rule in South Africa was a transcendent moment. Many South Africans believe this negotiated revolution to be a miracle: at the very least it was a feat of political magic. One false step along the way could have ignited the race war that had been widely predicted as South Africa's destiny.

In this anthology, we hear voices of many South Africans; P.W. Botha, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Godimer, Nelson Mandela, Mothobi Mutloatse and Desmond Tutu, together with foreign economists, political scientists, and journalists who have studied the country. They speak of South Africa's past.

Sipo E. Mzimela compares the situation of apartheid in South Africa with the racial tyranny of Nazi Germany, examining the connection between the roles played by the Western governments, the transnational corporations, and the Western church in apartheid South Africa and the roles played by these groups in Nazi Germany.

This is the first book in English to explore systematically what Afrikaner nationalist ideologists wrote about their world, and the symbolic structures in terms of which they cast their interpretations of reality. Based on impressive research, this book explores the development, refinement and articulation of these beliefs.

This book provides a full account of the development of U.S. foreign policy towards South Africa from apartheid's inception in 1948 through to the fall of white minority rule in 1994. Drawing upon documents sourced in key archives, the twists and turns of the U.S. response to Pretoria's racial policies are pieced together.

In The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, David Welsh views the topic against the backdrop of a long history of conflict spanning apartheid’s rise and demise, and the liberation movement’s suppression and subsequent resurrection. His view is that the movement away from apartheid to majority rule would have taken far longer and been much bloodier were it not for the changes undergone by Afrikaner nationalism itself. There were turning points, such as the Soweto Uprising of 1976, but few believed that the transition from white domination to inclusive democracy would occur as soon—and as relatively peacefully—as it did. In effect, however, a multitude of different factors led the African National Congress and the National Party to see that neither side could win the conflict on its own terms. Utterly dissimilar in background, culture, beliefs, and political style, Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk were an unlikely pair of liberators. But both soon recognized that they were dependent on each other to steer the transformation process through to its conclusion.

Written by Mary Monteith of the Apartheid Museum in South Africa. This book is divided into five chapters. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of apartheid. The book encourages you to go on a journey of understanding from the tortured history of South Africa's past to the hope for the future that the democratic elections of the 1994 offered.

During the final fifteen years of the Cold War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval, with dramatic twists and turns in relations between the superpowers. Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa's last colony. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa. Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to provide an unprecedented international history of this important theater of the late Cold War. These sources all point to one conclusion: by humiliating the United States and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in southern Africa. It was Cuba's victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans "destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa." See interview with author.