From 1948 to 1994 apartheid was enforced in South Africa. Apartheid was the name given to a form of legal segregation in South Africa. Apartheid first came about in 1948 when South Africa's National party took power. South Africa's government broke the country's population into four groups. Those groups were the whites, who included approximately 13 percent of the population, Africans, who were 77 percent of the population, people who were of mixed descent comprised eight percent of the population, and Asians who were only 2 percent of the population. South Africa's government set aside certain lands for each of the groups, and those groups were forced to live in those homelands. Besides residential segregation many other restrictions were placed on the black men and women of South Africa. .
For half of a century, these racist laws remained in place, completely unchanged. In the 1970's and 1980's the government in South Africa relaxed the laws slightly. Some of these changes included desegregating certain public facilities, lifting some occupational restriction, and repealing the law prohibiting intermarriage that had been in use since apartheid began. In 1983, the constitution allowed Asians and coloreds, but not blacks to have limited representation in the usually all white parliament. Thanks to the help of many people, apartheid was completely abolished in 1994. .
In 1990 President F.W. de Klerk committed himself to the abolition of apartheid. De Klerk knew that one of the first steps that he would have to take was to reincorporate the homelands (Homelands, are places where a certain race is forced to live away from other races.) into South Africa. In order to do that de Klerk had to repeal The Group Areas Act of 1966, and the Lands Act of 1913, and 1936. The same month that both those laws were repealed The Population Registration Act of 1950 was also erased. The Population Registration Act required that all South Africa's record their race with the government.
