Apartheid is the policy of racial separation formerly followed in South Africa. The word "apartheid" means "separateness" in the Afrikaans language. It also describes the rigid racial division imposed by the governing white minority on the black (African, Colored, and Indian) population in South Africa. An agreement was reached in November 1993 pledging an end to apartheid, and South Africa held its first non-racial elections in 1994. Apartheid was much criticized and vilified internationally and many countries imposed economic sanctions on South Africa because of it. Despite the end of legal apartheid, the vast social, economic, and political inequalities was established between white and black South Africans. .

             Describes the situation:.

             Apartheid is the situation in which the National Party of South Africa made legislation"s not allowing the black people to vote. The National Party introduced apartheid as part of its campaign in the 1948 elections. With its victory, apartheid became the governing political policy for South Africa until the early 1990s. The Prime Minister of Native Affairs Dr H. F. Verwoerd claimed apartheid was built on a long history of racial segregation and discriminatory laws intended to ensure white supremacy. .

             Apartheid laws prohibited most social contact between races, and authorized segregated public facilities (such as reserving certain beaches for the use of whites only, or making separate entrances in post offices). The institutions of apartheid were the exclusion of blacks from any share in political power, and economic control by the white government. Also a network of laws kept a structure of discrimination, exploitation, and deprivation, in which Coloureds and Indians formed oppressed votes in relation to whites, but had considerable privileges compared to black Africans.

             A picture of South Africa"s former white government, which established a black township in order the segregate the country"s black and white populations.