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« The four ideas that were at the heart of Apartheid in South Africa was: • First, four different racial groups were created: for white people, colored people, Indians and South Africans. • The second was to establish the superiority of the whites over the other groups • The third set the priority of the whites interests over those of others • The fourth was to establish the whites as the most important nation because the blacks were spread into various groups according to their tribal and linguistic origins. Black people were discriminated against.

Many pubs, restaurant and areas…remove these marks developed a special place for “non-white” people.

The discrimination took place in every sphere: juridical, political and economic. In this second part we will speak about the action of Nelson Mandela and the end of the Apartheid in South Africa.

I will present a few sentences Mandela's life: Nelson Mandela was a black political man who fought against the Apartheid during his lifetime.

In 1943, he joined the African National Congress and in 1952 he was elected President of the ANC.

Nelson Mandela wished for a color-blind society which could be on an equal footing and in his point of view, no system was to rely on hierarchy in classes of peoples.

He thus preached equality and open-mindedness. Moreover, in class we interpreted a picture taken in the nineteen sixty (1960), where blacks South Africans are burning their passbooks, which represented the white domination over them, and they seem relieved as if they were regaining their freedom.

By the same token, in 1970 sixteen-nine Blacks demonstrators were killed at Sharpeville where people protested against passbooks and for an increase of their incomes, turned into a slaughter that was not organized by the ANC but by its competitor, the Pan African Congress.

The apartheid government decreed a state of emergency and banned the ANC.

Its leaders go underground and founded the armed wing of the movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe, which organize campaigns of sabotage, taking care to spare civilian casualties.

Sharpeville became a symbol of the unfair white power. Nelson Mandela, who represented a counter power, because he struggled tirelessly for egalitarianism, in 1962, he was put in jail and regarded as a political prisoner.

Since his mandate, a black middle-class has been emerging.

Besides, politics is no longer the preserve of the whites.

And in 1991, the President South-African Frederik De Klerk decided to lift the ban on the ANC and announces the end of the Apartheid.

When Mandela walked out of jail and became the first democratically elected president in nineteen ninety-four (1994), he aimed at building a new South Africa that would be democratic, non-racist and non-sexist.

As well as writing a new constitution which proclaims the recognition of black people’s rights, he set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

He fostered forgiveness over vengeance and his will to create a unified and harmonious Rainbow Nation.. »