The all-white South African government enforced apartheid, which ensured racial segregation across the nation throughout the period from 1948 to 1994. The South African government restricted fundamental rights from the mainly non-white population while placing them into designated racial areas and blocking their entrance into white-controlled facilities. The state authorities divided South Africans through strict racial categories consisting of Black people alongside Indians and colored and white groups to determine their permissible locations, occupations, and marital prospects. The official policy of the time forced millions of Black South Africans into segregated and economically degraded territories even though white citizens-maintained control of urban centers and valuable assets.
But oppression fueled resistance. The African National Congress (ANC) conducted popular uprisings even when security forces carried out violent repressions, often in the form of political arrests, enforced disappearances, indeterminate incarcerations without trials, and the proscription of all political movements. The apartheid regime in South Africa faced heightened resistance from internal uprisings combined with growing international pressure that isolated the regime by the 1980s. When the system collapsed, political prisoners were freed, including Nelson Mandela, before South Africa conducted its first democratic elections in 1994. The nation regained its existence with an equality-based constitution that put an end to the extended racial oppression.
