South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 — timeline

Key topic 1 · Setting up apartheid, 1948–54

Segregation in 1948 and the Nationalist victory

1913 and 1936

Land Acts confine African land ownership to a small share of the country. Why this date: It establishes that the land settlement long predated apartheid, so the question about 1948 is what was added rather than what was begun.

May 1948

The National Party wins 79 seats to the United Party's 65 with fewer votes. Why this date: A minority of votes produced a majority of seats on a rural-weighted map, which is decisive for any claim about apartheid's popularity.

1948

The Fagan and Sauer Reports offer opposite answers to African urbanisation. Why this date: It shows the election was fought on a real policy choice rather than only on sentiment, and that the alternative had been set out.

The apartheid statutes, 1950–53

1950

The Population Registration Act classifies every person by race; the Group Areas Act zones the cities. Why this date: Classification is the foundation of everything else, and zoning is the instrument that moved the largest number of people.

1952

The pass system is consolidated into a single reference book carried by every African adult. Why this date: It is the point of daily contact between the system and the individual, and it generated hundreds of thousands of prosecutions a year.

1953

The Separate Amenities Act and the Bantu Education Act. Why this date: The first legalises unequal provision explicitly; the second states the system's purpose on the parliamentary record.

Early opposition and its suppression, 1948–54

1949

The ANC adopts the Youth League's Programme of Action. Why this date: It converts the ANC from a petitioning body into an organisation committed to boycotts, strikes and civil disobedience.

1952

The Defiance Campaign; about 8,500 arrests. Why this date: It changes no law and raises membership from about 7,000 to around 100,000, which is the option's clearest case of an organisational rather than a legislative achievement.

1953

The Criminal Law Amendment Act and the Public Safety Act. Why this date: The state's answer to civil disobedience is to raise the penalties, which shows how quickly legal protest was closed off.

Key topic 2 · The growth of apartheid, 1955–59

Petty apartheid and Bantu Education in practice

1953

The Bantu Education Act transfers African schooling to the state. Why this date: It begins the process that produces both the funding disparity and the mass enrolment.

1953–59

Mission schools close or are taken over; a separate curriculum is introduced. Why this date: It removes the one part of African education that had operated outside government control, and with it the main source of independent secondary schooling.

1950s–1970s

African school enrolment expands several times over while spending per pupil remains a fraction of the white figure. Why this date: The combination of scale and degradation is what produces the school-based protest movement of the mid-1970s.

Verwoerd, Vorster and the Bantu Self-Government Act

1958

Verwoerd becomes Prime Minister. Why this date: The architect of Bantu Education and of the homelands policy moves from a department to the leadership, and grand apartheid becomes the government's central project.

1959

The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act creates the national units and abolishes African representation in parliament. Why this date: It is the moment the denial of citizenship is given a legal form intended to survive international scrutiny.

1976

The Transkei takes nominal independence. Why this date: Recognition by no state except South Africa demonstrates that the policy failed in the international purpose it had been designed for.

Key topic 3 · Resisting apartheid, 1955–78

Anti-pass demonstrations and Sharpeville

1956

Some twenty thousand women march to the Union Buildings against the extension of passes to women. Why this date: It shows the scale of anti-pass feeling and the organisational capacity built since 1952, four years before Sharpeville.

21 March 1960

Sharpeville: 69 killed, about 180 wounded; most of those killed were shot in the back. Why this date: The medical evidence settles the disputed question of whether the crowd was advancing, which the testimony did not.

April 1960

A state of emergency; some 18,000 detained; the ANC and PAC banned. Why this date: Every lawful channel of national African political activity closes at once, which is the condition that makes the armed struggle a decision rather than an escalation.

1961

South Africa leaves the Commonwealth. Why this date: It marks the beginning of the international isolation that becomes decisive in the 1980s.

Spear of the Nation and the Treason and Rivonia trials

1955

The Congress of the People adopts the Freedom Charter. Why this date: It supplies both the movement's programme and the government's pretext for the Treason Trial the following year.

1956–61

The Treason Trial: 156 arrested, all eventually acquitted. Why this date: It removed the leadership from political activity for over four years, which is a result the state obtained regardless of the verdict.

December 1961

Umkhonto we Sizwe begins sabotage attacks on installations rather than people. Why this date: The choice of targets records a decision about which line was being crossed, and it is the key evidence in any judgement of the armed struggle.

April 1964

The Rivonia Trial; life sentences for Mandela and seven others. Why this date: It ends organised internal resistance for a decade and simultaneously creates the international cause of the following twenty-six years.

Biko, Black Consciousness and Soweto

1968–72

Biko founds SASO; Black Consciousness spreads through campuses, schools and community projects. Why this date: It rebuilds a politics of resistance during a decade in which the political organisations were banned and invisible.

16 June 1976

Soweto schoolchildren march against compulsory Afrikaans instruction; police open fire. Why this date: It begins the largest internal challenge to the regime since 1960, and it was organised by pupils rather than by the exiled movements.

September 1977

Steve Biko dies in police custody. Why this date: It produces the mandatory UN arms embargo and is widely identified as the moment the regime lost the international argument.

The extent of threats to apartheid by 1978 and the international reaction

1962–63

The UN General Assembly calls for sanctions; a voluntary arms embargo follows. Why this date: It establishes the pattern of the following fifteen years: resolutions that expressed opinion and changed very little.

1974–75

Portuguese rule collapses in Angola and Mozambique. Why this date: It removes the buffer of friendly white-ruled states and gives the exiled movements bases far closer to South Africa.

November 1977

The UN Security Council makes the arms embargo mandatory. Why this date: It is the first mandatory sanction imposed on a member state, and it produced a domestic South African arms industry rather than a change of policy.

Key topic 4 · PW Botha – response to resistance, 1978–90

The United Democratic Front and township unrest

1983

The tricameral constitution is approved by white referendum; the UDF is founded to oppose it. Why this date: A reform intended to broaden the regime's base created the mass organisation that made the country ungovernable within two years.

1984

The Coloured and Indian chambers are elected on very low turnout. Why this date: The boycott destroyed the constitution's legitimacy at the moment it took effect, which is the clearest measure of the UDF's early success.

1984–86

Township revolt; black local authorities collapse across the country. Why this date: It is the point at which the regime loses effective administrative control of the areas where most of its population lived.

Botha's reforms, Afrikaner resistance and the State of Emergency

1979

African trade unions are legalised. Why this date: It is the most consequential of Botha's reforms, because it created the legal industrial power that COSATU exercised from 1985.

August 1985

The Rubicon speech: a reform briefed in advance is delivered as a refusal. Why this date: The rand fell about 35 per cent and the banks called in loans, which is the moment financial pressure became decisive.

July 1985 and June 1986

A partial and then a national State of Emergency, renewed until 1990. Why this date: It restored control without restoring governability, and confirmed to investors that the country was not stable.

1986

The pass laws are repealed. Why this date: The most hated instrument of daily control is abandoned while the franchise is untouched, which is Botha's reform strategy in a single measure.

International opposition, boycotts and sanctions

1962–63

UN calls for sanctions; voluntary arms embargo. Why this date: It establishes twenty years of measures that expressed disapproval and altered very little.

July 1985

Chase Manhattan refuses to roll over South African loans. Why this date: A commercial decision by a private bank did more in three months than two decades of intergovernmental measures.

September 1985

The government closes the exchanges and declares a standstill on short-term debt. Why this date: It is the moment apartheid becomes unfinanceable rather than merely expensive.

1986

The US Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act passes over a presidential veto. Why this date: It shows government sanctions following the financial crisis rather than causing it, which is the sequence answers usually reverse.

Key topic 5 · Dismantling Apartheid, 1990–94

De Klerk's reforms and the repeal of apartheid

November 1989

The Berlin Wall falls. Why this date: It removes the ANC's principal patron and the regime's anti-communist alibi within the same three months, twelve weeks before de Klerk's speech.

2 February 1990

De Klerk unbans the ANC, PAC and SACP and announces negotiations. Why this date: It ends thirty years in which African political organisation had been illegal.

11 February 1990

Mandela is released after twenty-seven years. Why this date: It puts the negotiation's central figure inside the country for the first time since 1962.

June 1991

The Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act and the Land Acts are repealed. Why this date: It removes the legal architecture of apartheid three years before any African voted, which shows that repeal and transfer of power were separate processes.

Negotiation, violence and the 1994 election

1990–94

About 14,000 people are killed in political violence. Why this date: More died during the negotiations than during the repression of the 1980s, which is what makes the settlement an achievement rather than a formality.

June 1992

The Boipatong massacre; the ANC suspends negotiations. Why this date: It shows how close the process came to collapsing, and it forced the question of security-force involvement into the talks.

April 1993

Chris Hani is assassinated. Why this date: The country came closest to general collapse here, and it was defused by an appeal from a man holding no public office.

April 1994

The first non-racial election; the ANC takes about 62 per cent. Why this date: The share falls short of the two thirds needed to write the final constitution alone, which made the 1996 constitution a negotiated document.