What is apartheid?

I can sum up "apartheid" in ONE other word - DISGUSTING!

mrlindsey, also if you are born in SA that makes you African whether you are black, white, yellow or green you just say I am black African or white African etc.

I live in South Africa and thank heavens Apartheid no longer formally exists as all the laws regarding that have long since been repealed. However, getting over the worst aspects of that dreadful regime is proving much more difficult especially over housing, where the poorest of the poor live (the Black Townships are a long distance away from the commercial life of the country and most of the really poor live in shacks with no direct access to water, electricity, etc), schooling and medical care. I am white but do some teaching in the Black Township nearest to where I live and it is very uplifting to see just how keen the students are at the primary school where I teach - reading, writing and understanding English as their language up to that time has been isiXhosa. I'm not a qualified teacher but a volunteer and all the other white people who teach at the same school are also volunteers.

mrlindsey, if you fill in documentation in SA ie medical aid application, you will see the question asking for your race. Black- Coloured- Asian or White. I know that for fact as I have just done that.

A load of rubbish. The blacks called the era "Apartheid" and I do agree that a lot of it was not right. But you say even after 1991 blacks do not represent government -This is completely incorrect - The government since then has and is mainly blacks . A lot of good they have done - they have ruined the country since then.

mrlindsey, African is NOT a nationality. There are 57 Nation States in Africa, some 3,000 tribal groups and around 6,000 languages and variants of languages. Genetically Africa is more diverse than all the rest of the world put together with some 45 distinctive Haplogroups as opposed to around 7 for the rest of the world. Add to that the fact there is a distinct divide in the populations north and south of the Sahara and you very rapidly discover that there are further divisions between West Africa, East Africa and Southern African peoples.

Unfortunately the institutional racism that occurred cannot be undone by just passing laws against it. The mindset that made it possible is what has to change. The damage done will take years to undo. Until we ALL embrace that skin tone doesn’t make any one person better or worse than the next we will all continue to be lost. Once you have been the victim of such discrimination it becomes hard to treat the victimizer with anything more than contempt. A vicious cycle and very sad.

The economical state of the country now is pretty much due to the mismanagement (read corruption, nepotism and cronyism) of the ANC government during the past 10 or so years of the Zuma regime.

Although the term came to mean racial segregation, of the type practiced until quite recently in the USA, it is actually an Afrikaans term that colloquially translates as "seperate development" & was the mistaken idea, based on the fallacy of racial superior, that races are separate & should be allowed to develop seperately.

Got it. I am Kenyan. Thanks to the Kenyan people we were spared this garbage.

I hate that I know this word and there is this policy!😭😱

Israel operates apartheid

South Africa was poised to be the next world power. The wonderful black government we forced on them has totally destroyed their once thriving economy and rich lifestyle's

Unfortunately afyer 1994 there is now reverse apartheid where the blacks opresses the whites they are fired from their jobs purely for heing white and incompetent people are employed hence the fall of major institutions in the country

I guessed , didn't realy know !

Wow what an intelligent question

Brenda Smith, I just say "I am South African". Why add a colour?? That is racist.

We are all God's children.

I knew !

Sad for this "racial segregation"

I definitely respect Mandela

I never understood and perhaps never will understand how a country like South Africa allowed the minority to become the ruling class. That said Shaka Zulu taught the British invaders a thing or two . I salute the Zulu .

Spike Holmes, Relax buddy, so many people were against it for so long that it thankfully doesn't exist anymore. And God Bless the late great Nelson Mandela for that!

Not only in SA but America too, until they saw sense.

Barbara Glasper, Americans are all that lives on The American continents.