Search Results for "Apartheid"

How a Black South African turned a small loan from a friend during apartheid into a multimillion-dollar empire 

Herman Mashaba is a South African entrepreneur and politician. He founded the Black Like Me skincare company during the height of apartheid when it was nearly impossible for Blacks to operate a business....

Why the 30-year-old murder of South African leader Chris Hani is reopening Apartheid-era wounds and challenging the nation’s rule of law

The political atmosphere in South Africa remains tense following the ruling of the Constitutional Court – the country’s highest court, to release on parole, Janusz Walus, the far-right Polish-born...

How South Africa’s golden rhinoceros exposed untruths in apartheid campaigns against inhabitants

In 1934, a team of archaeologists discovered the golden rhinoceros in a royal grave at the site of Mapungubwe in the northern part of South Africa close to the border of Zimbabwe. The golden rhinoceros...

On this day in 1976, this Black child became the iconic image of the Soweto Uprising that helped end apartheid

On June 16 each year, Youth Day is celebrated nationally in South Africa to commemorate the Soweto Uprising, or the “16 June” events, which took place on this day in 1976. Thousands of Sowetan students...

Anti-apartheid activist Dulcie September was assassinated in Paris 34 yrs ago. Her case is still unsolved

On March 29, 1988, at the age of 52, anti-apartheid activist Dulcie September was assassinated in central Paris. Working as the representative of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in France,...

‘It was the language of apartheid’ – Why people are protesting Ryanair’s Afrikaans quiz for SA passengers

Irish budget airline Ryanair has doubled down on its decision to make South Africans traveling to the UK take a test in Afrikaans to prove they are not from a different country. The airline’s policy...

How white leaders in South Africa carved out ‘free’ Black states to avoid ending apartheid

Apartheid existed before the 1948 election that ushered in South Africa’s white supremacist National Party which oversaw the overarching legislation that set the ethnicities of the territory apart....

Meet Mozambique’s independence leader Samora Machel who took the war to apartheid South Africa

The story is quite popular that Samora Machel was forced into political activism by the fact that while a hospital aide at Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Mozambique, he joined others to protest the wage discrimination...

Do you know the major multinational companies who allegedly profited off apartheid?

As was well-argued by Naomi Klein in her bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, capital has never failed to profit off disasters, natural or orchestrated. Klein explained that...

Andrew Mlangeni, icon of anti-apartheid struggle and Rivonia trialist dies at 95

The last surviving anti-apartheid defendant at the famous Rivonia trials in South Africa, Andrew Mlangeni, has died at the age of 95 in a Pretoria hospital, the government has said. Mlangeni had been admitted...

Read Nelson Mandela’s fiery 1997 speech on apartheid that shocked the world

South Africa’s first Black president and anti-apartheid activist, Nelson Mandela, was born on this day in 1918. Nelson Mandela Day celebrates the life and values of a global icon, a man who spent his...

The bravery of Anton Fransch who singlehandedly fought apartheid police in 7-hour gun battle

Anton Fransch was in high school when he decided to become a freedom fighter in the 1980s during the height of the fight against apartheid in South Africa. The anti-apartheid struggle forms a significant...

Is the last white president of South Africa still defending apartheid?

Controversial South African politician, Julius Malema and parliamentary members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), last week tried to remove former President F.W. de Klerk from the country’s...

The unsolved murder of South Africa’s pioneering investigative journalist under apartheid

Henry Nxumalo, in the early post-war years, believed that Africa was about to witness great things and that a free and responsible press would facilitate that change. As such, the man, who would be described...

From a freedom fighter to the most feared man under apartheid, meet Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe

When the South African apartheid regime prolonged his sentencing in 1963 for inciting Africans to demand the repeal of the Pass Laws, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was imprisoned on Robben Island. But while...

25 years after apartheid, black South Africans are today earning three times less than their white counterparts

It has been 25 years since South Africa’s first all-race democratic elections, held on April 27, 1994. The exercise produced a coalition government with a black majority led by anti-apartheid...

Top 10 classic films that portrayed hatred for black people during apartheid in South Africa [Videos]

“Stupid, stupid reasons.” This was how Tonie van der Merwe, the writer and producer of Joe Bullet, a 1973 ground-breaking film screened at the Eyethu Cinema in Soweto described the reasons given...

How music and resilience beat Apartheid in South Africa

Apartheid wasn’t only a cruel, brutal and oppressive regime for the black majority in South Africa, in the very land of their birth – it also denied them of their confidence and robbed them of truly...

This South African woman who once performed for the Queen in 1897 fought for black freedom long before apartheid

Often honoured as ‘Mother of Black Freedom in South Africa’, Charlotte Maxeke (maiden name Manye) lived at a time when repressive colonial laws meant that she could not acquire further education in...

Meet the 90-year-old South African writer and hero who survived several years in prison under apartheid

His name is James Matthews, one of Africa’s writers who has paid the price for using his writing as a mouthpiece during the years of apartheid in his own country South Africa. However, James is one...