Apartheid in South Africa officially came to an end on this day in 1992, when white South Africans voted to end minority rule with 69 percent of the vote. The legal system of segregation banned nonwhite South Africans from living in the same areas as white South Africans and required them to use separate public facilities. The point was to very literally divide the two populations—apartheid means "apartness" in Afrikaans.
Racial discrimination had been a factor in South Africa since the Europeans showed up in 1652, but in 1948, the ruling Nationalist Party built a legal construct around it, blocking all peaceful forms of protest and instituting the most extreme measures of segregation that constituted apartheid.
Leaders of parties representing the Black majority (whites were around 20 percent of the population in 1946), including Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress, were imprisoned in 1960 when the opposition parties were outlawed. The use of violence by the government against protesters was frequent and brutal. In one notorious case in 1960, police shot and killed 69 people and wounded 186.
In 1990, the lack of international support and disruption at home drove South African Prime Minister F. W. de Klerk to make an earth-shattering pronouncement: Black liberation parties were now allowed to participate in politics, the press would be free to report the news as they chose, and political prisoners would be released. Apartheid was over.
Among those prisoners set free that month was Mandela, who had served 27 years in prison for his advocacy and was a figurehead of the liberation movement. He toured the world advocating for his cause, including speaking before a joint session of Congress. He was elected as South Africa's first Black president in 1994. If you'd like to learn more about the end of apartheid, read this article from the BBC.
