Pearson Edexcel International GCSE History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed
South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 — exam questions
15 original Incandio exam-style questions on South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94, 150 marks, about 225 minutes of writing. Each one carries the command word, the tariff and the specification statement it assesses, exactly as a paper presents them. This is an original Incandio practice question, written to reflect the structure and demands of the qualification. It is not an official Pearson Edexcel past-paper question.
This is the practice set for South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 — the option that teaches it. Read the option first if the idea is new; come here when you want to find out whether you can turn it into marks. Completely free, no account needed to read.
What these questions ask of you
3 command words run through this set, and on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE History each one means something precise. Answering the wrong command is the commonest way a candidate who understands the option still loses the mark.
- What (6 marks)
- analysis of what the author SELECTED and how they treated it, rather than what happened Misread as: evaluating whether the author is right, which earns nothing on this question
- Explain (6–8 marks)
- TWO of whatever is asked for — effects, causes or ways — each analysed and shown to lead somewhere Misread as: one of them explained superbly, which is capped at 4 with no access to Level 3
- How (8–16 marks)
- a judgement on the EXTENT, built from both sides — agreement and disagreement, or three aspects and a criterion Misread as: agreement only on the source question (capped at 4), or the two printed bullets and nothing else on the sixteen-marker (held at 10)
Assessed on Paper 1 (4HI1/01) and Paper 2 (4HI1/02), against AO1, AO2, AO4.
Where these sit in the specification
Pearson Edexcel International GCSE History (4HI1) — statements 4HI1 8.1 AO4 · 4HI1 8.2 AO4 · 4HI1 8.4 AO4 · 4HI1 8.3 AO4 · 4HI1 8.5 AO4 · 4HI1 8.3 AO1 · 4HI1 8.3 AO2 · 4HI1 8.5 AO1 · 4HI1 8.5 AO2 · 4HI1 8.1 AO1 · 4HI1 8.1 AO2 · 4HI1 8.2 AO1 · 4HI1 8.2 AO2 · 4HI1 8.4 AO1 · 4HI1 8.4 AO2. Incandio is aligned to this specification; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's wording.
The 15 questions
Answer them on paper, then open the option's exam practice to have them marked. The mark scheme, the accepted and rejected answers and the annotated model answer are in Incandio and are not printed here — an answer beside its question is not practice.
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the election of 1948 in South Africa? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.
Extract A: The winners took seventy-nine seats and rather fewer votes than the party they replaced, in a country where about one adult in five was entitled to vote at all. It is worth pausing on that arithmetic before reaching for the word mandate. What the election settled was not whether South Africa would be segregated, which it already was and had been since the Union, but whether segregation would continue as a collection of habits with exceptions or become a single system with a register, a definition and a court to enforce them. From a history of twentieth-century South Africa, written by a British historian in 2011. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 1 = 6 marks)
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the homelands policy? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.
Extract A: Ten territories, some of them in a dozen separate pieces, on about an eighth of the land, for something like seven people in ten. No industry to speak of; no city; wages earned, when they were earned at all, several hundred miles away in mines and kitchens belonging to the country these citizens had just stopped being nationals of. Four of them accepted independence and were recognised by nobody at all except the government that had granted it. Whatever else this was, it was not decolonisation, and the men who designed it were not confused about the difference. From a study of apartheid policy, written by a South African historian in 2014. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 2 = 6 marks)
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about P. W. Botha's reforms? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.
Extract A: He legalised the unions, ended job reservation, repealed the pass laws and struck the marriage prohibitions off the statute book — more of apartheid dismantled in seven years than in the thirty before them. He also declined, at every opportunity and in terms nobody could misunderstand, to allow a single African a vote in the parliament that governed him. The effect was to persuade his opponents that the system could be moved and his own supporters that it was being surrendered, which is a difficult position for any government to occupy and an impossible one to occupy for long. From a study of the last decade of apartheid, written by a British historian in 2019. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 3 = 6 marks)
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the consequences of Sharpeville? You must use Extract C to explain your answer.
Extract C: Sixty-nine dead in an afternoon bought headlines in every capital, a resolution at the Security Council and, within a year, an exit from the Commonwealth. It is the photographs that are remembered. What actually reordered the following thirty years was passed in April, in a chamber, with almost no coverage at all: two organisations proscribed on the same afternoon, and with them every lawful means by which the African majority of a country might express a political opinion. The 1960s were the safest decade the government ever had. From an account of South African politics after 1948, written by an American historian in 2013. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 4 = 6 marks)
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(6)What
What impression does the author give about the South African transition of 1990–94? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.
Extract A: The word usually reached for is miracle, and the figure that ought to accompany it is fourteen thousand — the political dead of the four years in which the settlement was negotiated, which is more than the decade of emergency rule that preceded them. A leader with no office and no army went on television after an assassination and asked a country not to burn, and it did not. Whether that is a miracle or simply two exhausted sides discovering they had nowhere else to go is a question the participants have never agreed on either. From an account of the end of apartheid, written by a South African historian in 2020. Incandio-authored for practice, not a real document.
(Total for Question 5 = 6 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two causes of the ANC's decision to begin an armed struggle in 1961.
(Total for Question 6 = 8 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two causes of F. W. de Klerk's decision to unban the liberation movements in 1990.
(Total for Question 7 = 8 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two effects of the Defiance Campaign of 1952 on South Africa.
(Total for Question 8 = 8 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two effects of the Bantu Education Act on South Africa.
(Total for Question 9 = 8 marks)
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(8)Explain
Explain two effects of the tricameral constitution of 1983 on South Africa.
(Total for Question 10 = 8 marks)
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(16)How
'Apartheid after 1948 was a continuation of what already existed rather than something new.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 • The Population Registration Act (1950)
(Total for Question 11 = 16 marks)
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(16)How
'Apartheid ended because the regime ran out of options rather than because it was defeated.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The financial crisis of 1985 • The end of the Cold War
(Total for Question 12 = 16 marks)
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(16)How
'International pressure did more than internal resistance to weaken apartheid in the years 1978–90.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The financial crisis of 1985 • The township revolt of 1984–86
(Total for Question 13 = 16 marks)
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(16)How
'Resistance to apartheid achieved very little before 1978.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The Defiance Campaign (1952) • The Soweto uprising (1976)
(Total for Question 14 = 16 marks)
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(16)How
'The homelands policy was the most important development of apartheid in the years 1955–59.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. • The Bantu Self-Government Act (1959) • Bantu Education in practice
(Total for Question 15 = 16 marks)
Have them marked, then defend the answer
Practice tells you the mark; teaching it back tells you whether you understand it. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it.
- Mark these questions — 15 questions, marked on Incandio against the authored scheme, with the mistake you actually made named.
- Teach it — explain South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 to Ember, an AI pupil who does not have it yet and asks the awkward question.
- Defend it — three rounds against the mind with the strongest claim on it, marked against descriptors you can read first.
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Back to the option
- South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 — Option 8: setting up apartheid, 1948–54; the growth of apartheid, 1955–59; resisting apartheid, 1955–78; PW Botha – response to resistance, 1978–90; Dismantling Apartheid, 1990–94.
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