Africans | Historical Context

Africans Historical Context

The First Free Elections in South Africa

"Africans" was first published in 1998, four years after the first one-person, one-vote, nonracial free election in South Africa. In this election, Nelson Mandela, a black South African who had been imprisoned for twenty-seven years on political charges, was elected president. This event occurred after centuries of racial unrest and inequality in South Africa, which culminated in the twentieth century in the institution of apartheid, a strict system of racial segregation and oppression that came into being in the 1940s.

World War I and the Beginning of Apartheid

Racial segregation and discrimination had existed in one form or another in South Africa for hundreds of years. However, it was not until the 1940s that these practices were formalized into a complete system. When World War II broke out in 1939, South Africa, as an official member of the British empire, took up arms with the Allies against German forces in Africa. However, many Afrikaners—who had relied on...
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