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Unlock This Course'South Africa: From Union to the End of Apartheid, 1948-94' is one of the eight Paper 1 depth studies. You study two of them, so only work through these lessons if South Africa is one of your chosen options.
The Union of South Africa was created in 1910, when four territories joined together: the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. It ruled itself, but it was part of the British Empire. At the start of 1948 the prime minister was Jan Smuts, leader of the United Party.
The census of 1946 counted about 11.4 million people. The government put everyone into four groups:
Key terms:
Only white people could sit in Parliament. This had been the rule since the Union began in 1910. All white men could vote, and white women gained the vote in 1930. So one fifth of the people chose the government for everyone.
The Cape was different. There, African and Coloured men who owned enough property could vote alongside white men. In 1936 this was cut back. African voters in the Cape were taken off the main voters' list and could only elect three white MPs to speak for them. Coloured men in the Cape kept their vote. Because white voters decided every election, governments passed laws that suited white people. So segregation grew, law by law.
The Natives Land Act of 1913 stopped Africans buying or renting land outside the reserves. The reserves were only about 7 per cent of the country. A law of 1936 promised to raise this to about 13 per cent. The reserves were crowded and the soil was often poor, so families could not live from farming alone.
The Mines and Works Act of 1911 set up a colour bar in the mines. Skilled jobs went to white workers. Africans did the hard, unskilled work for far lower pay. Many were migrant workers: men who left their families in the reserves for months and lived in closed hostels called compounds beside the mine. From 1924 African men were also shut out of the official trade unions.
The Natives (Urban Areas) Act of 1923 treated the towns as places for white people. Africans were allowed there only while their work was needed. They had to live in locations on the edge of town, away from the white suburbs. In 1946 a new law also limited where Indians could own land.
Whites elected the Parliament and filled every seat in it. Africans in three of the four provinces had no vote for MPs at all, and after 1936 those in the Cape had only a separate, weaker vote.
Notice how these parts fitted together. Too little land pushed African men out of the reserves to look for wages. The colour bar kept those wages low. This gave the white-owned mines and farms a steady supply of cheap workers. Segregation was about wealth as well as race.
Pass laws were not invented in 1948. For many years African men had been made to carry passes. A pass showed who a man was, who he worked for and whether he had permission to be in a town. In 1945 the rules for the towns were pulled together into one law.
A policeman could stop an African man at any time and demand his pass. A man without the right papers could be arrested, fined or sent back to the reserve. The pass laws let the government control how many Africans came into the towns, and they kept workers tied to their employers.
The exam asks about the nature of segregation (what it was like) and its extent (how far it went). By 1948 it reached into land, work, housing and politics. But it was not complete.
The Second World War (1939-45) loosened segregation further. Factories grew quickly and needed workers, so many thousands of Africans moved to the towns. For a time during the war the pass laws were relaxed in the big cities. By 1946 more Africans than white people lived in the towns.
So the South Africa of 1948 was deeply segregated, but segregation was under strain. What white voters did about that is the subject of the next lesson, The 1948 Election and the Origins of Apartheid.
Many students write as if segregation began in 1948. It did not. The land, work, town and pass laws in this lesson were all in place before then. Don't swing too far the other way either: segregation in 1948 still had gaps, such as Coloured voters in the Cape and mixed areas like Sophiatown. Also, don't call the white population one group. Afrikaners and English speakers had different languages and histories.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)
Long before 1948, black South Africans were already strangers in their own country. Laws had robbed them of all but a sliver of the land, barred them from skilled work in the mines and herded them into bleak locations on the edge of the white towns. A man who could not produce his pass was simply marched off to court. Shut out of Parliament entirely, the African majority had no way to change any of this.
What impression does the author give about segregation in South Africa before 1948? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that segregation before 1948 was already harsh, unjust and complete. This is shown by the author's language. Saying Africans were 'strangers in their own country' suggests they had lost everything that should have been theirs. The land laws 'robbed' them, which makes segregation sound like a crime, and 'herded' suggests they were treated like animals, not people. Describing the reserves as only 'a sliver' stresses how unfair the share of land was. The author has also selected points to stress. Land, work, towns, passes and Parliament are listed one after another, so segregation seems to cover every part of life, and the extract ends by saying Africans had 'no way to change any of this'. It leaves out anything that does not fit, such as Coloured men voting in the Cape or mixed areas like Sophiatown. This selection makes segregation look total.
What lifts this to the top level: it names one clear impression, proves it with short quotations, and explains how the author's choice of words and of what to include and leave out create that impression.
Start with the verbs. Here 'robbed', 'herded' and 'marched off' all show Africans having things done to them by force, and that is how the author builds the impression. Quote two or three of them, say what each suggests, then add a sentence on what the author has left out. Don't explain what the Natives Land Act or the pass laws were: your own knowledge earns nothing in this question.