Apartheid
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which encouraged state repression of Black African and Asian South Africans for the benefit of the nation's minority white population; the economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day. Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, grand apartheid, which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race. Prior to the 1940s, some aspects of apartheid had emerged in the form of minority rule by White South Africans and the enforced separation of Black South Africans from other races, which extended to pass laws and land apportionment. Apartheid was adopted as a formal policy by the South African government after the election of the National Party at the 1948 general election.
A codified system of racial stratification began to take form in South Africa under the Dutch Empire in the late-eighteenth century, although informal segregation was present much earlier due to social cleavages between Dutch colonists and a creolised, ethnically diverse slave population. With the rapid growth and industrialisation of the British Cape Colony in the nineteenth century, racial policies and laws became rigid. Cape legislation that discriminated against Black South Africans began appearing shortly before 1900; the policies of the Boer republics were racially exclusive. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines; the Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloured", "Indian", the last two of which included several sub-classifications.
Places of residence were determined by racial classification. From 1960–1983, 3.5 million Non-White South Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods, in one of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the Black population to ten designated "tribal homelands" known as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states; the government announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the bantustans. Apartheid sparked significant international and domestic opposition, resulting in some of the most influential global social movements of the twentieth century, it was the target of frequent condemnation in the United Nations and brought about an extensive arms and trade embargo on South Africa. During the 1970s and 1980s, internal resistance to apartheid became militant, prompting brutal crackdowns by the National Party government and protracted sectarian violence that left thousands dead or in detention.
Some reforms of the apartheid system were undertaken, including allowing for Indian and Coloured political representation in parliament, but these measures failed to appease most activist groups. Between 1987 and 1993, the National Party entered into bilateral negotiations with the African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid political movement, for ending segregation and introducing majority rule. In 1990, prominent ANC figures such as Nelson Mandela were released from prison. Apartheid legislation was repealed on 17 June 1991, pending democratic, multiracial elections set for April 1994. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", or "the state of being apart" "apart-hood", its first recorded use was in 1929. Under the 1806 Cape Articles of Capitulation the new British colonial rulers were required to respect previous legislation enacted under Roman Dutch law and this led to a separation of the law in South Africa from English Common Law and a high degree of legislative autonomy.
The governors and assemblies that governed the legal process in the various colonies of South Africa were launched on a different and independent legislative path from the rest of the British Empire. In the days of slavery, slaves required passes to travel away from their masters. In 1797 the Landdrost and Heemraden of Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet extended pass laws beyond slaves and ordained that all Khoikhoi moving about the country for any purpose should carry passes; this was confirmed by the British Colonial government in 1809 by the Hottentot Proclamation, which decreed that if a Khoikhoi were to move they would need a pass from their master or a local official. Ordinance No. 49 of 1828 decreed that prospective black immigrants were to be granted passes for the sole purpose of seeking work. These passes were to be issued for Coloureds and Khoikhoi, but not for other Africans, who were still forced to carry passes; the United Kingdom's Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire and overrode the Cape Articles of Capitulation.
To comply with the act the South African legislation was expanded to include Ordinance 1 in 1835, which changed the status of slaves to indentured labourers. This was followed by Ordinance 3 in 1848, which introduced an indenture system for Xhosa, little different from slave
Race (human categorization)
A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories viewed as distinct by society. First used to refer to speakers of a common language and to denote national affiliations, by the 17th century the term race began to refer to physical traits. Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, an identity, assigned based on rules made by society. While based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality. Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete, discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits. Though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications.
While some researchers use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behaviour, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is used in a naive or simplistic way, argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance by pointing out that all living humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Since the second half of the 20th century, the association of race with the ideologies and theories of scientific racism has led to the use of the word race itself becoming problematic. Although still used in general contexts, race has been replaced by less ambiguous and loaded terms: populations, ethnic groups, or communities, depending on context. Modern scholarship views racial categories as constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created by dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context; this involves the subjugation of groups defined as racially inferior, as in the one-drop rule used in the 19th-century United States to exclude those with any amount of African ancestry from the dominant racial grouping, defined as "white".
Such racial identities reflect the cultural attitudes of imperial powers dominant during the age of European colonial expansion. This view rejects the notion. Although commonalities in physical traits such as facial features, skin color, hair texture comprise part of the race concept, the latter is a social distinction rather than an inherently biological one. Other dimensions of racial groupings include shared history and language. For instance, African-American English is a language spoken by many African Americans in areas of the United States where racial segregation exists. Furthermore, people self-identify as members of a race for political reasons; when people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved. In this sense, races are said to be social constructs; these constructs develop within various legal and sociopolitical contexts, may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations.
While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination. Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. Racial discrimination coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior; as a result, racial groups possessing little power find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes. Racism has led to many instances including slavery and genocide. In some countries, law enforcement uses race to profile suspects; this use of racial categories is criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond with patterns of social stratification, for social scientists studying social inequality, race can be a significant variable.
As sociological factors, racial categories may in part reflect subjective attributions, self-identities, social institutions. Scholars continue to debate the degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and constructed. For example, in 2008, John Hartigan, Jr. argued for a view of race that focused on culture, but which does not ignore the potential relevance of biology or genetics. Accordingly, the racial paradigms employed in different disciplines vary in their emphasis on biological reduction as contrasted with societal construction. In the social sciences, theoretical frameworks such as racial formation theory and critical race theory investigate implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. A large body of scholarship has traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language, their effects on the policing and disproportionate incarceration of certain groups.
Groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural and global. These features a
Coloureds
Coloureds are a multiracial ethnic group native to Southern Africa who have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including Khoisan, Afrikaner, Austronesian, East Asian or South Asian. Because of the combination of ethnicities, different families and individuals within a family may have a variety of different physical features. In the Western Cape, a distinctive Cape Coloured and affiliated Cape Malay culture developed. In other parts of Southern Africa, people classified as Coloured were the descendants of individuals from two distinct ethnicities. Genetic studies suggest. Mitochondrial DNA studies have demonstrated that the maternal lines of the Coloured population are descended from African Khoisan women; this ethnicity shows a gender-biased admixture. Male lines have been African, Asian Indian, Southeast Asian. Coloureds are to be found in the western part of South Africa. In Cape Town, they form 45.4% of the total population, according to the South African National Census of 2011.
The apartheid-era Population Registration Act, 1950, subsequent amendments, codified the Coloured identity, defined its subgroups. Indian South Africans were classified under the act as a subgroup of Coloured; the Coloured community is predominantly descended from numerous interracial sexual unions between Western European men and Khoisan or mixed-race women in the Cape Colony from the 17th century onwards. In KwaZulu-Natal, the Coloured possess a diverse heritage including British, German, Saint Helenian, Indian and Zulu. Zimbabwean Coloured are descended from Shona or Ndebele and Afrikaner settlers, as well as Arab and Asian people. Griqua, on the other hand, are descendants of Afrikaner Trekboers. Despite these major differences, as both groups have ancestry from more than one naturalised racial group, they are classified as coloured in the South African context; such mixed-race people did not self-identify this way. The Griqua were subjected to an ambiguity of other creole people within Southern African social order.
According to Nurse and Jenkins, the leader of this “mixed” group, Adam Kok I, was a former slave of the Dutch governor, manumitted and provided land outside Cape Town in the eighteenth century. With territories beyond the Dutch East India Company’s administration, Kok provided refuge to deserting soldiers, runaway slaves, remaining members of various Khoikhoi tribes. In South Africa and neighbouring countries, the white minority governments segregated Africans from Europeans after settlement had progressed, they classified all such mixed race people together in one class, despite their numerous ethnic and national differences in ancestry. The imperial and apartheid governments categorized them as Coloured. In addition, other distinctly homogeneous ethnic groups traditionally viewed the mixed-race populations as a separate group. During the apartheid era in South Africa of the second half of the 20th century, the government used the term "Coloured" to describe one of the four main racial groups it defined by law.
This was an effort to maintain racial divisions. Individuals were classified as white South Africans, black South Africans and Indians. Coloured people may have ethnic ancestry from Indonesia, mixed-race, Khoisan ancestry; the Apartheid government treated them as one people, despite their differences.'Cape Muslims' were classified as'coloured.' They have Indonesian and black ancestry, as many Indonesian slaves had children with African partners. Many Griqua began to self-identify as Coloureds during the apartheid era, because of the benefits of such classification. For example, Coloureds did not have to carry a dompas, while the Griqua, who were seen as an indigenous African group, did. In the 21st century, Coloured people constitute a plurality of the population in the provinces of Western Cape, a large minority in the Northern Cape, both areas of centuries of mixing among the populations. In the Eastern Cape, they make up 8.3% of the population. Most speak Afrikaans, as they were descendants of Dutch and Afrikaner men and grew up in their society.
About twenty percent of the Coloured speak English as their mother tongue those of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. All Cape Town Coloured are bilingual; some can comfortably codeswitch between Kaapse taal and suiwer Afrikaans, South African English. At least one genetic study indicates that Cape Coloureds have ancestries from the following ethnic groups. Indigenous Khoisan: Bantu peoples, chiefly from Southern Africa: Peoples from Western Europe, chiefly the Low Countries: Peoples from South and Southeast Asia: The Malagasy component in the Coloured composite gene pool is itself a blend of Malay and Bantu genetic markers; this genetic admixture appears to be gender-biased. A majority of maternal genetic material is Khoisan; the Coloured population is descended predominantly from unions of European and European-African males with autochthonous Khoisan females. Colou
Government of South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a parliamentary republic with three-tier system of government and an independent judiciary, operating in a parliamentary system. Legislative authority is held by the Parliament of South Africa. Executive authority is vested in the President of South Africa, head of state and head of government, his Cabinet; the President is elected by the Parliament to serve a fixed term. South Africa's government differs from those of other Commonwealth nations; the national and local levels of government all have legislative and executive authority in their own spheres, are defined in the South African Constitution as "distinctive and interrelated". Operating at both national and provincial levels are advisory bodies drawn from South Africa's traditional leaders, it is a stated intention in the Constitution that the country be run on a system of co-operative governance. The national government is composed of three inter-connected branches: Legislative: Parliament, consisting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces Executive: The President, both Head of State and Head of Government Judicial: The Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal, the High CourtAll bodies of the South African government are subject to the rule of the Constitution, the Supreme law in South Africa.
The bicameral Parliament of South Africa makes up the legislative branch of the national government. It consists of the National Council of Provinces; the National Assembly consists of 400 members elected by popular vote using a system of party-list proportional representation. Half of the members are elected from parties' provincial lists and the other half from national lists. Following the implementation of the new constitution on 3 February 1997 the National Council of Provinces replaced the former Senate with no change in membership and party affiliations, although the new institution's responsibilities have been changed. In ordinary legislation, the two chambers have coordinate powers, but all proposals for appropriating revenue or imposing taxes must be introduced in the National Assembly; the President is elected by the members of the General Assembly. Upon election the President resigns as an MP and appoints a Cabinet of Ministers from among the members. Ministers however retain their parliamentary seats.
The President and the Ministers are responsible to the Parliament, of which they must be elected members. General elections are held at least once every five years; the last general election was held on 7 May 2014. The President, Deputy President and the Ministers make up the executive branch of the national government. Ministers are Members of Parliament who are appointed by the President to head the various departments of the national government; the president is elected by parliament from its members. The ministers individually, the Cabinet collectively, are accountable to Parliament for their actions; each minister is responsible for one or more departments, some ministers have a deputy minister to whom they delegate some responsibility. The portfolios, incumbent ministers and deputies, departments are shown in the following table; the third branch of the national government is an independent judiciary. The judicial branch interprets the laws, using as a basis the laws as enacted and explanatory statements made in the Legislature during the enactment.
The legal system is based on Roman-Dutch law and English common law and accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction, with reservations. The constitution's bill of rights provides for due process including the right to a fair, public trial within a reasonable time of being charged and the right to appeal to a higher court. To achieve this, there are four major tiers of courts: Magistrates' Courts – The court where civil cases involving less than R100 000, cases involving minor crimes, are heard. High Courts – The court of appeal for cases from the magistrates courts, as well as the court where major civil and criminal cases are first heard. Supreme Court of Appeal – The final court of appeal for matters not pertaining to the constitution. Constitutional Court – The final court of appeal for matters related to the constitutionIn addition provision is made in the constitution for other courts established by or recognised in terms of an Act of Parliament; the provincial governments of the nine provinces of South Africa have their own executive and legislative branches, but not separate judicial systems.
In each province the legislative branch consists of a provincial legislature, varying in size from 30 to 80 members, elected through party-list proportional representation. The legislature elects one of its members as Premier to lead the executive branch, the Premier appoints between five and ten members of the legislature as an executive council to lead the various departments of the provincial government. Local government in South Africa consists of municipalities of various types; the largest metropolitan areas are governed by metropolitan municipalities, while the rest of the country is divided into district municipalities, each of which consists of several local municipalities. After the municipal election of 18 May 2011 there were eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district municipalities and 226 local municipalities. Municipalities are governed by municipal councils; the councils of metropolitan and local municipalities are elected by a system of mixed-member proportional representation, while the councils of district municipalities
Free State (province)
The Free State is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bloemfontein, South Africa's judicial capital, its historical origins lie in the Boer republic called Orange Free State and Orange Free State Province. The current borders of the province date from 1994 when the Bantustans were abolished and reincorporated into South Africa, it is the only one of the four original provinces of South Africa not to undergo border changes, excluding the reincorporation of Bantustans. The provincial government consists of a premier, an executive council of ten ministers, a legislature; the provincial assembly and premier are elected for five-year terms, or until the next national election. Political parties are awarded assembly seats based on the percentage of votes each party receives in the province during the national elections; the assembly elects a premier, who appoints the members of the executive council. The premier of Free State as of 2009 was Ace Magashule of the African National Congress. In 2018, Sisi Ntombela was appointed premier.
The Free State is situated on a succession of flat grassy plains sprinkled with pastureland, resting on a general elevation of 3,800 feet only broken by the occasional hill or kopje. The rich soil and pleasant climate allow for a thriving agricultural industry. With more than 30,000 farms, which produce over 70% of the country's grain, it is known locally as South Africa's breadbasket; the province is high-lying, with all land being 1,000 metres above sea level. The Drakensberg and Maluti Mountains foothills raise the terrain to over 2,000 m in the east; the Free State lies in the heart of the Karoo Sequence of rocks, containing shales, mudstones and the Drakensberg Basalt forming the youngest capping rocks. Mineral deposits are plentiful, with gold and diamonds being of particular importance found in the north and west of the province; the flats in the south of the reserve provides ideal conditions for large herds of plain game such as black wildebeest and springbok. The ridges and plains typical of the northern section are home to kudu, red hartebeest, southern white rhinoceros and buffalo.
The Southern African wildcat, black wildebeest, eland, white rhinoceros and wild dog can be seen at the Soetdoring Nature Reserve near Bloemfontein. The South African cheetahs has been reintroduced in the Free State for the first time in June 2013 after a hundred years of regional extinction, at Laohu Valley Reserve near Philippolis. Following the reintroduction of an adult female South African cheetah in early 2016, three wild cheetah cubs has been born for the first time in Laohu Valley Reserve in February 2017, making the three new cubs the first cheetahs born in the wild since their disappearance from the Free State province in over a century; the Free State experiences a continental climate, characterised by warm to hot summers and cool to cold winters. Areas in the east experience frequent snowfalls on the higher ranges, whilst the west can be hot in summer. All precipitation falls in the summer months as brief afternoon thunderstorms, with aridity increasing towards the west. Areas in the east around Harrismith and Ficksburg are well watered.
The capital, experiences hot, moist summers and cold, dry winters frequented by severe frost. Bloemfontein averages: January maximum: 31 °C, July maximum: 17 °C, annual precipitation: 559 mm Bethlehem averages: 27 °C, July maximum: 16 °C, annual precipitation: 680 mm In the southeast, the Free State borders seven districts of Lesotho: Mokhotlong – farthest to the east Butha-Buthe – northwest of Mokhotlong and northeast of Leribe Leribe – southwest of Butha-Buthe and northeast of Berea Berea – southwest of Leribe and north of Maseru Maseru – south of Berea and northeast of Mafeteng Mafeteng – southwest of Maseru and northwest of Mohale's Hoek Mohale's Hoek – southeast of MafetengDomestically, it borders the following provinces: KwaZulu-Natal – east Eastern Cape – south Northern Cape – west North West – northwest Gauteng – north Mpumalanga – northeastThe Free State borders more districts of Lesotho and more provinces of South Africa than any other province, it is traversed by the northwesterly line of equal longitude.
The Free State Province is divided into one metropolitan municipality and four district municipalities. The district municipalities are in turn divided into 19 local municipalities: See List of cities and towns in the Free State The Free State's major towns include: Bloemfontein & Botshabelo in Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality Welkom and Virginia in Lejweleputswa Bethlehem and Phuthaditjhaba in Thabo Mofutsanyana Kroonstad and Parys in Fezile Dabi The Free State is the only province in South Africa that operates a free 24-hour dedicated rotorwing aeromedical service from a public hospital, they are able to deliver a high level of care on scene. On 31 October 2018 Free State Emergency Medical Service launched an additional 65 road ambulances to augment the fleet. Free state has many private hospitals; some of them are: Bloemfontein Medi-clinic Bethlehem Medi-clinic Welkom Medi-clinic Mofumahadi Mmanapo Regional Hospital in Phuthaditjhaba. The province is the granary of South Africa, with agriculture central to its economy, while mining on the rich goldfields reef is its largest employer.
Agriculture dominates the Free State landscape, with cultivated land covering 32,000 square kilometres, natural veld and grazing a further 87,000 square kilometres of the province. It is South A
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a representative democratic election, his government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress party from 1991 to 1997. A Xhosa, Mandela was born to the Thembu royal family in British South Africa, he studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party's white-only government established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged whites, he and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow.
Mandela was appointed President of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party. Although committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government, he was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state following the Rivonia Trial. Mandela served 27 years in prison, split between Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison, Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure, with fears of a racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk led efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid, which resulted in the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president.
Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country's racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Economically, Mandela's administration retained its predecessor's liberal framework despite his own socialist beliefs introducing measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and served as Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999, he declined a second presidential term, in 1999 was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman and focused on combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation. Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist and those on the far-left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid's supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism.
Regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours—including the Nobel Peace Prize—and became the subject of a cult of personality. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is referred to by his Xhosa clan name and described as the "Father of the Nation". Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in the village of Mvezo in Umtata part of South Africa's Cape Province. Given the forename Rolihlahla, a Xhosa term colloquially meaning "troublemaker", in years he became known by his clan name, Madiba, his patrilineal great-grandfather, was king of the Thembu people in the Transkeian Territories of South Africa's modern Eastern Cape province. One of Ngubengcuka's sons, named Mandela, was the source of his surname; because Mandela was the king's child by a wife of the Ixhiba clan, a so-called "Left-Hand House", the descendants of his cadet branch of the royal family were morganatic, ineligible to inherit the throne but recognised as hereditary royal councillors.
Nelson Mandela's father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa Mandela, was a local chief and councillor to the monarch. In 1926, Gadla was sacked for corruption, but Nelson was told that his father had lost his job for standing up to the magistrate's unreasonable demands. A devotee of the god Qamata, Gadla was a polygamist with four wives, four sons and nine daughters, who lived in different villages. Nelson's mother was Gadla's third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, daughter of Nkedama of the Right Hand House and a member of the amaMpemvu clan of the Xhosa. Mandela stated that his early life was dominated by traditional Thembu custom and taboo, he grew up with two sisters in his mother's kraal in the village of Qunu, where he tended herds as a cattle-boy and spent much time outside with other boys. Both his parents were illiterate, but being a devout Christian, his mother sent him to a local Methodist school when he was about seven. Baptised a Methodist, Mandela was given the English forename of "Nelson" by his teacher.
When Mandela was about nine, his father came to stay at Qunu, where he died of an undiagnosed ailment which Mandela believed to be lung disease. Feeling "cut adrift", he said that he inherited his father's "proud rebelliousness" and "stubborn sense of fairness". Mandela's mother took him to the "Great Place" palace at Mqhekezw
Sophiatown
Sophiatown known as Sof'town or Kofifi, is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sophiatown was a legendary black cultural hub, destroyed under apartheid, rebuilt under the name of Triomf, in 2006 returned to its original name. Sophiatown was one of the oldest black areas in Johannesburg and its destruction represents some of the excesses of South Africa under apartheid. Despite the violence and poverty, it was the epicentre of politics and blues during the 1940s and 1950s, it produced some of South Africa's most famous writers, musicians and artists. Sophiatown was part of the Waterfall farm. Over time it included the neighbouring areas of Newclare, it was purchased by a speculator, Hermann Tobiansky, in 1897. He acquired 237 acres four miles or so west of the centre of Johannesburg; the private leasehold township was surveyed in 1903 and divided into 1700 small stands. The township was named after Tobiansky's wife and some of the streets were named after his children Toby, Gerty and Victoria.
Before the enactment of the Natives Land Act, 1913, black South Africans had freehold rights, they bought properties in the suburb. The distance from the city centre was seen as disadvantageous and after the City of Johannesburg built a sewage plant nearby, the area seemed less attractive; because of these and other reasons most of the whites had moved out by 1920, leaving behind a vibrant multi-racial community. By the late 1940s Sophiatown had a population of nearly 54 000 Black Africans, 3 000 Coloureds, 1 500 Indians and 686 Chinese; as neighbouring white working-class areas, such as Westdene and Newlands, developed adjacent to Sophiatown, the perception arose that the suburb was too close to white suburbia. From 1944 onwards, the Johannesburg City Council planned to move the black population out of the Western Areas, including Sophiatown. After the election victory of the National Party in 1948, relocation plans were debated at the level of national politics. Under the Immorality Amendment Act, No 21 of 1950, people of mixed races could not reside together, which made it possible for the government to segregate the different races.
When the removals scheme was promulgated, Sophiatown residents united to protest against the forced removals, creating the slogan "Ons dak nie, ons phola hier". Father Trevor Huddleston, Nelson Mandela, Helen Joseph and Ruth First played an important role by becoming involved in the resistance. On 9 February 1955, 2 000 policemen, armed with handguns and clubs known as knobkierries, forcefully moved the black families of Sophiatown to Meadowlands, Soweto. Other ethnic groups were moved: Coloured people moved to Eldorado Park in the south-western part of Johannesburg in addition to Westbury and other so-called coloured townships. Over the next eight years Sophiatown was removed from the maps of Johannesburg. After the forced removals and demolition, carried out under the Natives Resettlement Act of 1954, the area was rezoned for whites only and renamed'Triomf —Afrikaans for Triumph—by the government; the social engineers of apartheid tried to create a suburb for the white working class. In the end it turned out that Triomf became a suburb for poor white Afrikaners.
This just showed how apartheid failed those it was ideologically designed to benefit. The Johannesburg City Council took the decision in 1997 to reinstate the old name Sophiatown for the suburb. On 11 February 2006, the process came to fruition when Mayor Amos Mosondo changed the name of Triomf back to Sophiatown. Sophiatown is located on one of Johannesburg's ridges called Melville Koppies. Melville Koppies lies on the Kaapvaal craton; the Koppies lie at the base of lithified sediments in the form of conglomerate, quartzite and siltstone. It represents shallow beds of an ancient sea, it forms part of the lowest level of one of the world's most well known geological features, the Witwatersrand Supergroup. Several narrow layers of gravel, deposited quite late in the sequence, bearing heavy elements, made the Witwatersrand Supergroup famous; these are the gold-bearing conglomerates of the main reefs. Melville Koppies represents in microcosm most of the features of the Witwatersrand Supergroup. What it does not have is gold-bearing rock.
The gold occurs millions of years and several kilometres higher up, in the sequence. The Melville Koppies Nature Reserve is a Johannesburg City Heritage Site. In the last 1 000 years, Iron Age immigrants arrived and remains of their kraal walls can be found in the area. Sophiatown, unlike other townships in South Africa, was a freehold township, which meant that it was one of the rare places in South African urban areas where blacks were allowed to own land; this was land that never belonged to the Johannesburg municipality, so it never developed the form of municipal "matchbox" houses, built row upon row, with the same uniformity and lack of character. The houses were built according to people's ability to pay and cultural background; some houses had four or more rooms. Others were built like homes in the rural areas; the majority of the families living in Sophiatown were sub-tenants. Eight or nine people lived in a single room and the houses hid backyards full of shanties built of cardboard and flattened kerosene cans, since many Black property owners in Sophiatown were poor.
In order to pay back the mortgages on their properties, they