south Afrika is a country blessed with an abundance of natural resources including fertile farmland and unique mineral resources. south afrikan mines are world leaders in the production of diamonds and gold as well as strategic metals such as platinum. south afrika was colonized by the british and Dutch in the seventeen's century. after independizing from great Britain, an uneasy power-shareing between the two descendent groups held until 1940's, when the Dutch descendents gain a major support.
to get control over the economic and social system, the national party invented apartheid, the original plan was to maintein white domination whileextending racial separation. at the beggining of the 60's, a plan of "grand apartheid" was executed. consisted in territorial separation and police represion. race laws touched every aspect of social life, for instance, marriage between whites and non-whites was prohibited or sanction of white only jobs took place. in in 1950, the goverment, required all south afrikans to be racially classified inone out of three categories, white blacks or coloured (mixed decent). clasification was based in appearance, social acceptance and descent.
But, was apartheid successful? for answering this we have to analyse first what does "success" means. for some, it is doing possitive actions for the wellbeing of humans, particulary, I believe succes is the correct accomplishment of the goals. appliyng this definition, Apartheid was successfulsince increased white's power and encoureged racial segregation. black were dominated, they had very few rights and whites were in power. for the 23.5 million South Africans, 19 million were black while 4.5 million whites owned 87% of the land. these whites earned 14 times more and had 110 times more doctors per habitant. the blacks infant mortality rate was 10 times higher in urban areas and 20 times higher in rural areas. these examples can go on and on, showing the great differences in the living conditions.