South African 1948-2000: The rise and fall of apartheid

In 1947 the British royal family made a tour of South Africa. The tour was a great success. King George VI was proud to visit South Africa, which was part of the British Commonwealth. More than 300.000 South Africans, white and black, had fought courageously with the Allies during the Second World War. Their Prime Minister, Jan Smuts, was a famous international statesman who had played a leading part in setting up the League of Nations in 1919 and in writing the charter of the United Nations in 1945. Smuts, although a champion of democracy and liberty overseas, at home believed firmly in segregation - which meant separating black people from white - and in preventing blacks from having political rights. In 1947 such policies did not greatly worry British of white international opinion. Through their vast overseas empires, Europeans controlled almost all of Africa and much of the rest of the world. Segregation was common in the United States. White supremacy still seemed normal. In the next twenty years, world opinion changed completely. The European empires collapsed and with them much of the racist thinking that whites were superior. The US government outlawed segregation. But white South Africa would not change. On the contrary, the National Party which defeated Smuts in the 1948 general election set the country on an even more white supremacist and racist path. South Africa became an 'apartheid state', meaning that black people were separated from white people in every imaginable way.