Apartheid

1948-05-26 - 1994-04-27

Apartheid (Afrikaans for "separateness") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to 1994. It ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the minority white population, with Indians, Coloureds, and black Africans ranked below in that order. Broadly divided into petty apartheid (segregation of public facilities and social events) and grand apartheid (strict segregation of housing and employment by race), its first law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949.