Master Harold and the Boys

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning “apartness.” It was a system of legal segregation enacted in South Africa from 1948 until 1994 by the Afrikaner National Party (NP). Afrikaners are white South Africans of Dutch descent; white South Africans are typically of Dutch or British ancestry. Before the NP came to power, segregation already existed in South Africa but had been relaxed during World War II, under Prime Minister Jan Smuts. During this time, Black South Africans were called on to fill labor shortages in jobs usually reserved for white people, who were the minority in South Africa. Many white South Africans, particularly Afrikaners, became dissatisfied with the sudden increase in Black populations in cities and began to push for more rigid segregation. The National Party was elected in 1948 on a white supremacist platform that looked to reaffirm white superiority and tightly control Black populations.

The National Party enacted laws that forbade racial integration and forced Black citizens to live in underfunded areas called homelands or townships. They were no longer allowed to live in cities or work certain jobs, and they had to carry ID numbers that identified them by race. In 1950, South Africans were divided into four racial categories: white, native (meaning Black), colored (meaning mixed-race), or Indian. This categorization system changed over time, but it always positioned white people as superior. These racial categories determined where people were allowed to go, whom they could marry, and even whom they could be friends with. Friendships across racial divides were regarded as suspicious and unnatural. Relationships between Black and white South Africans were affected by racial hierarchies, such that, like in “Master Harold”…and the boys, a white teenager would have been seen as more intellectually capable and socially powerful than an adult Black man. These ideas were based on white supremacist concepts that infantilized and undermined Black people and culture. 

After decades of struggle on the part of liberation movements such as the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), and the United Democratic Front (UDF), South Africa held its first democratic elections in 1994, electing freedom fighter Nelson Mandela as president.