Explaining the Start of Apartheid in South Africa

Explaining the Start of Apartheid in South Africa The doctrine of apartheid (separateness in Afrikaans) was made law in South Africa in 1948, but the subordination of the black population in the region was established during European colonization of the area. In the mid-17th century, white settlers from the Netherlands drove the Khoi and San people out of their lands and stole their livestock, using their superior military power to crush resistance. Those who were not killed or driven out were forced into slave labor. In 1806, the British took over the Cape Peninsula, abolishing slavery there in 1834 and relying instead on force and economic control to keep the Asian and Africans in their places. After the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, the British ruled the region as the Union of South Africa and the administration of that country was turned over to the local white population. The Constitution of the Union preserved long-established colonial restrictions on black political and economic rights. The Codification of Apartheid During World War II, a vast economic and social transformation occurred as a direct result of white South African participation. Some 200,000 white males were sent to fight with the British against the Nazis, and at the same time, urban factories expanded to make military supplies. The factories had no choice but to draw their workers from rural and urban African communities. Africans were legally prohibited from entering cities without proper documentation and were restricted to townships controlled by the local municipalities, but strict enforcement of those laws overwhelmed the police and they relaxed the rules for the duration of the war. Africans Move Into the Cities As increasing numbers of rural dwellers were drawn into urban areas, South Africa experienced one of the worst droughts in its history, driving nearly a million more South Africans into the cities. Incoming Africans were forced to find shelter anywhere; squatter camps grew up near major industrial centers but had neither proper sanitation nor running water. One of the largest of these squatter camps was near Johannesburg, where 20,000 residents formed the basis of what would become Soweto. The factory workforce grew by 50 percent in the cities during WWII, largely because of expanded recruitment. Before the war, Africans had been prohibited from skilled or even semi-skilled jobs, legally categorized as temporary workers only. But the factory production lines required skilled labor, and the factories increasingly trained and relied on Africans for those jobs without paying them at the higher skilled rates. Rise of African Resistance During World War II, the African National Congress was led by Alfred Xuma (1893-1962), a medical doctor with degrees from the United States, Scotland, and England. Xuma and the ANC called for universal political rights. In 1943, Xuma presented the wartime Prime Minister Jan Smuts with Africans Claims in South Africa, a document which demanded full citizenship rights, fair distribution of the land, equal pay for equal work, and the abolishment of segregation. In 1944, a young faction of the ANC led by Anton Lembede and including Nelson Mandela formed the ANC Youth League, with stated purposes for the invigorating of an African national organization and developing forceful popular protests against segregation and discrimination. Squatter communities set up their own system of local government and taxation, and the Council of Non-European Trade Unions had 158,000 members organized in 119 unions, including the African Mine Workers Union. The AMWU struck for higher wages in the gold mines and 100,000 men stopped work. There were over 300 strikes by Africans between 1939 and 1945, even though strikes were illegal during the war. Anti-African Forces Police took direct action, including opening fire on demonstrators. In an ironic twist, Smuts had helped write the Charter of the United Nations, which asserted that the people of the world deserved equal rights, but he did not include non-white races in his definition of people, and eventually South Africa abstained from voting on the charters ratification. Despite South Africas participation in the war on the side of the British, many Afrikaners found the Nazi use of state socialism to benefit the master race attractive, and a Neo-Nazi grey-shirt organization formed in 1933, which gained increasing support in the late 1930s, calling themselves Christian Nationalists. Political Solutions Three political solutions for suppressing the African rise were created by different factions of the white power base. The United Party (UP) of Jan Smuts advocated the continuation of business as usual, that complete segregation was totally impractical but said there was no reason to give Africans political rights. The opposing party (Herenigde Nasionale Party or HNP) led by D.F. Malan had two plans: total segregation and what they termed practical apartheid. Total segregation argued that that Africans should be moved back out of the cities and into their homelands: only male migrant workers would be allowed into the cities, to work in the most menial jobs. Practical apartheid recommended that the government intervene to establish special agencies to direct African workers to employment in specific white businesses. The HNP advocated total segregation as the eventual ideal and goal of the process but recognized that it would take many years to get African labor out of the cities and factories. Establishment of Practical Apartheid The practical system included complete separation of races, prohibiting all intermarriage between Africans, Coloureds, and Asians. Indians were to be repatriated back to India, and the national home of Africans would be in the reserve lands. Africans in urban areas were to be migratory citizens, and black trade unions would be banned. Although the UP won a significant majority of the popular vote (634,500 to 443,719), because of a constitutional provision that provided greater representation in rural areas, in 1948 the NP won a majority of seats in the parliament. The NP formed a government led by D.F. Malan as PM, and shortly thereafter practical apartheid became the law of South Africa for the next forty years. Sources Clark NL, and Worger WH. 2016. South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid. London: Routledge.Hinds LS. 1985. Apartheid in South Africa and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Crime and Social Justice 24:5-43.Lichtenstein A. 2005. Making Apartheid Work: African Trade Unions and the 1953 Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act in South Africa. The Journal of African History 46(2):293-314.Skinner R. 2017. The dynamics of anti-apartheid: international solidarity, human rights . Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa: Future Imperfect? London: UCL Press. p 111-130.and decolonization

The Taklamakan Desert in China

The Taklamakan Desert in China In the Uigur language, Taklamakan may mean you can get into it but can never get out, according to Travel Guide China. We cant verify whether or not the translation is accurate, but the label fits such a large, dry, dangerous place for humans and most animals. Large lakes, including Lop Nor and Kara Koschun, have dried up, so over the millennia, the area of the desert has increased. The Taklamakan Desert is an inhospitable approximately 1000x500 km (193,051 sq. mi.) oval. It is far from any ocean, and so hot, dry, and cold, by turns, with shifting sand dunes covering 85% of the surface, propelled by northerly winds, and sandstorms. Alternate Spellings:  Taklimakan and Teklimakan Lack of Rainfall Wang Yue and Dong Guangrun of the Desert Research Institute in Lanzhou, China, say that in the Taklamakan Desert the average annual rainfall is less than 40 mm (1.57 inches). It is about 10 mm- thats just over a third of an inch- in the center and 100 mm at the bases of the mountains, according to Terrestrial Ecoregions- Taklimakan desert. Bordering Countries While it is in China, and bordered by various mountain ranges (Kunlun, Pamir, and Tian Shan), there are other countries around it: Tibet, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and India. Ancient Inhabitants People would have lived there comfortably 4000 years ago. Mummies were found in the region, perfectly preserved by the arid conditions, are presumed to be Indo-European-speaking Caucasians. Science, in a 2009 article, reports: In the northeastern edge of the desert, archaeologists from 2002 until 2005 excavated an extraordinary cemetery called Xiaohe, which has been radiocarbon-dated to as early as 2000 B.C.E.... A vast oval sand hill covering 25 hectares, the site is a forest of 140 standing poles marking the graves of long-lost society and environment. The poles, wood coffins, and carved wooden statues with pronounced noses come from the poplar forests of a far cooler and wetter climate. Silk Road Trade Routes One of the worlds largest deserts, the Taklamakan, is located in the northwest region of modern China, in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. There are oases located on two routes around the desert that served as important trading spots on the Silk Road. Along the north, the route went by the Tien Shan Mountains and along the south, the Kunlun Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. Economist Andrà © Gunder Frank, who traveled along the northern route with UNESCO, says the southern route was most used in ancient times. It joined up with the northern route at Kashgar to head into India/Pakistan, Samarkand and Bactria. Sources Archaeology in China: Bridging East and West, by Andrew Lawler; Science 21 August 2009: Vol. 325 no. 5943 pp. 940-943.News and Short Contributions, by Derrold W. Holcomb; Journal of Field Archaeology.On the Silk Road: An Academic Travelogue Andre Gunder Frank Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 25, No. 46 (Nov. 17, 1990), pp. 2536-2539.Sand Sea History of the Taklimakan for the Past 30,000 Years. by Wang Yue and Dong Guangrun Geografiska Annaler. Series A, Physical Geography Vol. 76, No. 3 (1994), pp. 131-141.Ancient Inner Asian Nomads: Their Economic Basis and Its Significance in Chinese History, by Nicola Di Cosmo; The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 53, No. 4 (Nov. 1994), pp. 1092-1126.