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How Apartheid Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know front House stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that
0:15
Speaker 1: makes this stuff you should know the podcast. I've been
0:19
Speaker 1: working on. My Africana accent was that it sort of.
0:24
Speaker 1: I've also been told by some people Chuck, we love
0:26
Speaker 1: your accents because they're kind of bad, but they're funny.
0:29
Speaker 1: And other people said, oh my god, please don't ever
0:31
Speaker 1: do accents again. Oh, you gotta keep doing it. Of course,
0:34
Speaker 1: people can't tell me what to do. I think your
0:37
Speaker 1: African or um is a little rough, you know, on
0:41
Speaker 1: the edges, especially compared to your Italian. Sure that's easy though,
0:46
Speaker 1: but um, that's no problem. So do you want to
0:48
Speaker 1: say a word in African er? I think I know
0:51
Speaker 1: that you know one apartoteid yes, and it means a
0:56
Speaker 1: partners in Africana and yeah in Afrikaans, sure, which is
1:01
Speaker 1: the language? Yeah? Well where did I get African er? Uh?
1:05
Speaker 1: That is the person is an Africana the speak Afrikaans.
1:09
Speaker 1: So in Afrikaans, apartheid means a partners and you capitalize it.
1:14
Speaker 1: And the reason you capitalize it is because for about
1:19
Speaker 1: fifty years, a little less than fifty years, it was
1:22
Speaker 1: a national policy in South Africa and it was brutal
1:28
Speaker 1: and awful, and the whole world said, you know what,
1:31
Speaker 1: South Africa, we judge you, and for good reason. Yeah.
1:34
Speaker 1: I remember being a kid, and we'll get to this later.
1:37
Speaker 1: But the artist against Apartheid was the first time I
1:39
Speaker 1: ever heard that word as a young teenager, Bano telling me,
1:44
Speaker 1: don't play some city. Sun City was built in eighty one. Okay.
1:48
Speaker 1: Sun City, first of all, is a resort in South Africa.
1:52
Speaker 1: And you know, little Stephen Van's aunt of the Sopranos
1:57
Speaker 1: and the E Street Band wrote the song called Ain't
2:00
Speaker 1: Gonna play some City, got all these people to sing
2:02
Speaker 1: on it, sort of in the It was like you
2:04
Speaker 1: two to Curtis Below, to um Africa Boombada to Peter
2:09
Speaker 1: Gabriel did like so many people are on that song,
2:12
Speaker 1: all these Miles Davis was on there like everybody was.
2:15
Speaker 1: It was a good song. Um, it was a good
2:18
Speaker 1: ish song, Okay, but it was like I ain't gonna
2:21
Speaker 1: play some City. And not only was it a song,
2:23
Speaker 1: but it was like a movement and in an agreement,
2:27
Speaker 1: like a creed that you were kind of signing. So
2:30
Speaker 1: who played. I saw that Elton John and Queen and
2:31
Speaker 1: Linda Ronstadt played during apartheid, Sinatra played. I mean yeah,
2:35
Speaker 1: they knew ahead of time that there was like a
2:39
Speaker 1: you know, Sun City was not a good place to
2:41
Speaker 1: be and it was in apartheid. It was a good
2:44
Speaker 1: place to be if you were in a pro apartheid
2:47
Speaker 1: South African with a lot of money, because it was
2:49
Speaker 1: a very nice resort and you want to gamble and
2:51
Speaker 1: they would get big name acts. But um, if you
2:54
Speaker 1: went there and played there and made money there, even
2:57
Speaker 1: if you didn't make money there, actually, um, the you
3:00
Speaker 1: when had an anti apartheid unit and they kept track
3:04
Speaker 1: of who was playing there and they would publish a
3:06
Speaker 1: blacklist and there was a huge, huge um backlash against it.
3:11
Speaker 1: Most people were just like sorry, sorry. If you said publicly,
3:14
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry that I went and played Sun City,
3:17
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go to apartheid South Africa again. Um,
3:20
Speaker 1: as a performer, they would take you off the list,
3:23
Speaker 1: but it was still like that. It's really smacked of
3:25
Speaker 1: McCarthyism because they used a blacklist for suspected communists in
3:30
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry. And this is the same thing, but
3:32
Speaker 1: in this case, in this case they were on the
3:35
Speaker 1: side of right, the black listeners were. But but yeah, so, um,
3:39
Speaker 1: if you went to Sun City, you ended up on
3:40
Speaker 1: this list. And actually, really interestingly, Tim Reid Venus fly Trap,
3:45
Speaker 1: he went down to South Africa with Howard Hussman, Johnny
3:48
Speaker 1: Fever w Carapean Cincinnati because w CA Arapian Cincinnati was
3:51
Speaker 1: a really huge hit down there. Yeah, so they had
3:55
Speaker 1: Venis and uh and Johnny Fever come down and Tim
3:59
Speaker 1: Reid is one of the first African Americans invited to
4:05
Speaker 1: apartheid South Africa to not perform like this was just
4:09
Speaker 1: a publicity tour, and he spent the whole time speaking
4:12
Speaker 1: out against apartheid. And he still ended up on the
4:15
Speaker 1: UN's blacklist because he received like a per diem or
4:19
Speaker 1: something during his his publicity tour there, and he uh,
4:22
Speaker 1: he spoke out. There's a Chicago Tribune article from the time,
4:26
Speaker 1: from like night six that interviews him and he was
4:28
Speaker 1: a really smart guy speaking out against this blacklist, or
4:32
Speaker 1: at the very least, like how um clumsy it was
4:35
Speaker 1: that they weren't using a scalpel at all. They were
4:37
Speaker 1: just like, oh, you went to South Africa and they
4:38
Speaker 1: gave you some money and now you're blacklisted. He's like,
4:41
Speaker 1: I was speaking out against apartheid, Like you get what
4:45
Speaker 1: are you doing? So let's talk. Let's talk apartheid. Let's
4:48
Speaker 1: where did this come from, Chuck. I mean, it's it
4:51
Speaker 1: was instituted in but it was way older than that. Yeah,
4:55
Speaker 1: racial suppression was going on sort of from the seventeenth
5:00
Speaker 1: century on in Africa, or at least in Southern Africa.
5:04
Speaker 1: And it wasn't South Africa at the time. We should
5:06
Speaker 1: point out. We'll get to that though. Um. But the
5:08
Speaker 1: Dutch came there in the seventeenth century just as a
5:11
Speaker 1: little stop off station. They wanted to set up on
5:14
Speaker 1: the Spice Route Dutch East Indy Company. They're like, we
5:16
Speaker 1: need a place to kick back a little bit and
5:18
Speaker 1: rest on this trip. And so I was about to say,
5:22
Speaker 1: they said, do you mind? They I don't think they asked.
5:24
Speaker 1: They did not. They just sort of set up shop there.
5:26
Speaker 1: And they were not there to colonize um. Initially, it
5:30
Speaker 1: was just just to set up a station and um.
5:35
Speaker 1: But the because they were Europeans, they did bring um
5:39
Speaker 1: along with them. The thought that white people are supreme
5:45
Speaker 1: to black people with them, that's right. Um, So that
5:50
Speaker 1: notion is immediately set up, like, hey, we're better than you.
5:54
Speaker 1: You can't tell us what to do. We have guns,
5:55
Speaker 1: and uh, we're more quote unquote advanced if if you
6:00
Speaker 1: following those European lines of what advanced is. And because
6:04
Speaker 1: they were Europeans during the Age of Exploration, they said,
6:07
Speaker 1: let's colonize anyway, let's do it. So they did, um,
6:11
Speaker 1: and they started setting up settlements that weren't united but
6:15
Speaker 1: we're basically the Dutch and then later on the British
6:19
Speaker 1: into a much lesser extent of French. UM basically saying
6:23
Speaker 1: just undergoing a land grab that involved basically taking land
6:27
Speaker 1: from the indigenous people there and then setting up farms.
6:31
Speaker 1: Sounds like another country. It sounds really familiar, doesn't it. Yeah.
6:34
Speaker 1: They basically would try and negotiate for land and if
6:36
Speaker 1: that broke down, they were like, all right, we're taking it, right,
6:39
Speaker 1: and then they would take the land, turning and turning
6:41
Speaker 1: the land into plantations, start growing stuff for export, and
6:44
Speaker 1: then the people would say, um, we're starving out here,
6:48
Speaker 1: and the Dutch people would say, well, come on in
6:50
Speaker 1: and work for us for like next to nothing at
6:52
Speaker 1: the very least, you'll live long enough to till our fields.
6:56
Speaker 1: And that's how the whole thing began. Yeah, basically they
6:59
Speaker 1: would end up killing the fields that they at one
7:01
Speaker 1: point owned themselves or used themselves as slaves. And this
7:07
Speaker 1: was the Dutch at first until about the mid seventeen hundreds.
7:10
Speaker 1: Then uh, British activity picked up in the region and
7:15
Speaker 1: um they uh you know at the time, it was
7:18
Speaker 1: I think you said, just like various separate societies farming,
7:23
Speaker 1: live in a grarian lifestyle, ranching, hunter gathering, and then
7:26
Speaker 1: the Dutch and then the Brits came down there with
7:29
Speaker 1: their own slaves and took the land and said, you
7:32
Speaker 1: know what, We're gonna battle with each other over this area.
7:35
Speaker 1: And eventually Britain gained control in the early nineteenth century
7:39
Speaker 1: from the Dutch even but the Dutch were still there
7:42
Speaker 1: sort of running things. Is that how it worked. Yeah,
7:44
Speaker 1: there were way more Dutch settlers than British, but the
7:47
Speaker 1: British had managed to gain control of it and know
7:50
Speaker 1: it was a British colony and they said, but slavery
7:52
Speaker 1: is not legal, no, but you can be uh you
7:56
Speaker 1: you are a servant. Basically and we're going to codify this.
7:59
Speaker 1: And now for the first time in this area, UM,
8:02
Speaker 1: blacks were legally subservient to whites. So instead of master slave,
8:06
Speaker 1: that was master servant. But big. And even though the
8:09
Speaker 1: British it was a British colony, it was still basically
8:11
Speaker 1: run and operated by the Dutch. That's right, UM, And
8:16
Speaker 1: some Dutch didn't like that, so they pressed further and
8:18
Speaker 1: further inward and UM ultimately uh, creating more and more
8:24
Speaker 1: of an area for the future South Africa by dominating
8:26
Speaker 1: these tribes with guns, germ, steel, you know that whole thing. UM.
8:32
Speaker 1: And then around about eighteen sixty something really big happened.
8:35
Speaker 1: A little bit into the interior. They discovered diamonds and
8:39
Speaker 1: gold and said, oh, we're staying. Yeah, and they said,
8:42
Speaker 1: you know, we know you love farming and all that
8:44
Speaker 1: good stuff, but we think you'd be much happier working
8:46
Speaker 1: in a mine for next to nothing. At the very least,
8:49
Speaker 1: it would make us happier if you were working in
8:52
Speaker 1: our minds, that's right. And you know what we're gonna
8:54
Speaker 1: um brutalize you. We're gonna segregate you. Uh, We're gonna
8:58
Speaker 1: give you the most dangerous shot and humiliate you and
9:02
Speaker 1: do cavity searches and you know what, Now you have
9:05
Speaker 1: to have a passbook to go to your job as
9:08
Speaker 1: a minor, and uh, you're gonna be paid a lot less.
9:11
Speaker 1: And the passbooks. The reason we mentioned that is it
9:15
Speaker 1: soon became a staple that you couldn't go anywhere you
9:18
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to go without a passbook. Right. It was
9:20
Speaker 1: initially started as a work thing though in the in
9:23
Speaker 1: the minds of South Africa, that's where apartheid was born.
9:26
Speaker 1: And a lot of the apartheid techniques like like you say,
9:29
Speaker 1: pass books, um, and just the general degradation of blacks
9:36
Speaker 1: in South Africa area. Um, it all began. I mean
9:40
Speaker 1: it was already in place, but just the brutality of it,
9:43
Speaker 1: I take it really picked up in the minds. Um.
9:48
Speaker 1: So that was what the eighteen sixties and that was
9:52
Speaker 1: pretty much the way it was. Um. It was a
9:55
Speaker 1: British colony in South Africa. It was. It wasn't South
9:58
Speaker 1: Africa yet, but it was a British colony, Dutch re
10:00
Speaker 1: ruling it. The blacks, Um, they're the African the indigenous
10:03
Speaker 1: indigenous natives, um were on the losing end. Of all
10:08
Speaker 1: of this in a very brutal fashion. And then in
10:11
Speaker 1: the early nine hundreds and I think nineteen o eight, um,
10:14
Speaker 1: the people who were running this British colony, the Dutch,
10:17
Speaker 1: said hey man, we want a little more authority here. Yeah,
10:22
Speaker 1: And they were at this point they were Afrikaaner. Like
10:25
Speaker 1: in the past century, they had changed a lot. They
10:28
Speaker 1: had this weird hybrid language that developed, and they were
10:32
Speaker 1: not they were Dutch in heritage, but they were starting
10:36
Speaker 1: to become a new people in southern Africa, which is
10:39
Speaker 1: African or they probably felt about as Dutch as like
10:41
Speaker 1: you and I feel British, right, you know, yeah, that's
10:44
Speaker 1: a good point. But yeah, so yeah, they were like
10:46
Speaker 1: a whole new, whole new group. But the basis of
10:48
Speaker 1: this was that they were a whole new group who
10:51
Speaker 1: had grown up in charge of another group and they
10:55
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that they had a free hand
10:57
Speaker 1: in dealing with these other sub classes. Um. And also
11:01
Speaker 1: I want to say, like, any time you hear me
11:03
Speaker 1: say subclasses, I'm making air quotes, everybody. Yeah, and when
11:06
Speaker 1: I say big difference between master slave and master servant,
11:09
Speaker 1: I was being sarcastic. We're anti apartheid, yeah, okay. Um,
11:15
Speaker 1: so the the these Afrikaners running the show sent a
11:19
Speaker 1: new constitution to Britain, and Britain said, okay, go ahead, Um,
11:23
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and grant this. It's going to
11:25
Speaker 1: be called the South Africa Act of nineteen ten. And
11:28
Speaker 1: with that, British decreed that the state of South Africa
11:32
Speaker 1: was born phil British colony, but it was officially under
11:37
Speaker 1: African or control. That's right. And uh, oh yeah, one
11:40
Speaker 1: other thing black people can't hold off as ever. Yeah,
11:43
Speaker 1: that's like the first of what would be many, many,
11:46
Speaker 1: many restrictions. And that's a huge one, because all of
11:49
Speaker 1: a sudden, you have an all white boye made up
11:52
Speaker 1: of white people who feel that this is their white
11:55
Speaker 1: man's burden to keep you from being shiftless and lazy
12:00
Speaker 1: and thieving and just killing yourselves and cutting off your
12:04
Speaker 1: own hands and killing one another. It's up to the
12:06
Speaker 1: white man to make sure you don't do that. And
12:09
Speaker 1: we're going to keep you, keep you safe by subjugating you.
12:12
Speaker 1: And the first way we're gonna do that is to
12:14
Speaker 1: just have an all white government. That's right. And uh
12:17
Speaker 1: and the second thing we're gonna do is we're gonna
12:19
Speaker 1: take your land because even though we only make up
12:24
Speaker 1: of the population as white people, we need the land.
12:27
Speaker 1: So we're gonna shuffle seven I'm sorry of the people
12:32
Speaker 1: on to seven percent of the land, really crappy land,
12:36
Speaker 1: really bad land. And UM. That was under the leadership
12:41
Speaker 1: of General Louis or Louis or Louis both a first
12:46
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of South Africa, and the Native Lands Act
12:49
Speaker 1: of nine basically was when they said, you know what,
12:53
Speaker 1: We're gonna move all these communities. If we kill you
12:56
Speaker 1: along the way or you die, no big deal, if
12:59
Speaker 1: your whole life is just didn't no big deal. And
13:01
Speaker 1: we're essentially going to shove you onto these tiny parcels
13:05
Speaker 1: of crappy land. So that began what's called the segregation period.
13:09
Speaker 1: But you can't go here, this is white land. UM.
13:13
Speaker 1: And after during the segregation period between the Nine Lands
13:19
Speaker 1: Act in the fifties or UM, a bunch of other
13:23
Speaker 1: things happened for the UM the blacks who are who
13:27
Speaker 1: came to be called Bantus Indigenous Africans UM. They lost
13:33
Speaker 1: the right to vote in the thirties. In the twenties,
13:36
Speaker 1: they had lost the right to unionize and basically they're
13:40
Speaker 1: just being pushed further and further out of a meaningful
13:43
Speaker 1: participation in society. Yeah. They they they tried to hamper
13:47
Speaker 1: their access to education even early on, and fired them
13:51
Speaker 1: from jobs even if they were totally more skilled than
13:54
Speaker 1: a white worker. Yeah, if you were a skilled craftsman
13:57
Speaker 1: and you had apprenticed, you couldn't you couldn't carry out
14:00
Speaker 1: your craft any longer. But legally they could go in
14:03
Speaker 1: and be like, you know what, there's a white guy
14:05
Speaker 1: who we think is better for this job, so you're fired. Yeah,
14:08
Speaker 1: because that was the government, right. Um, and this was
14:11
Speaker 1: even before the African or Nationalist Party. This is before
14:15
Speaker 1: apartheid officially. That didn't come around until Wayne Again, with
14:20
Speaker 1: an all white government that had been in power for
14:22
Speaker 1: thirty five years. This extreme right wing, basically a fringe movement,
14:29
Speaker 1: the Afrikaan or Nationalist Movement, came to power and they
14:33
Speaker 1: officially instituted what we call apartheid. There are apartheid policy
14:37
Speaker 1: starting in ninety eight, but really kicking off in nineteen
14:40
Speaker 1: fifty with the what the Population Registration Act, right, Yeah,
14:44
Speaker 1: and this was under Prime Minister DF Malin at the time,
14:48
Speaker 1: and with the Population and Registration Act is when they
14:52
Speaker 1: created officially the Bantu like you said, and named the
14:55
Speaker 1: indigenous black population. Uh. There. So there's Bantou, there's white,
14:59
Speaker 1: and and there's colored, which is mixed race, and you
15:03
Speaker 1: have to register yourself and be legally classified as one
15:07
Speaker 1: of these three races. Everyone was everybody. If you're white,
15:11
Speaker 1: goodness for you, Yeah, because you've got of the land. Yeah.
15:15
Speaker 1: If you're Bontu or uh, mixed race, then bad luck
15:18
Speaker 1: for you. Right and then um at first Indians were
15:21
Speaker 1: left out and Indians, I guess because it was a
15:23
Speaker 1: British colony, uh, since India was also a British colony.
15:27
Speaker 1: South Africa was kind of a place to be force
15:30
Speaker 1: for Indians, including Gandhi, who was one of the early
15:33
Speaker 1: protesters of the segregationist idea um and was imprisoned for
15:38
Speaker 1: I think twenty years in South Africa. Yeah, he was,
15:41
Speaker 1: or he was imprisoned while he was there for twenty years.
15:44
Speaker 1: He spent part of it in prison for protesting segregation
15:48
Speaker 1: of course. But then so ultimately Indians were excluded as foreigners.
15:52
Speaker 1: But then just to keep problems from happenings, to keep
15:57
Speaker 1: the bureaucracy going, they were added as a fourth race. Um,
16:02
Speaker 1: you could not get married between races. If you were
16:05
Speaker 1: Bantu and loved with someone of mixed race, you couldn't
16:08
Speaker 1: even marry them. Very restrictive. And then next came another
16:12
Speaker 1: act called the Group Areas Act, and this really escalated
16:16
Speaker 1: the segregation um because now you needed past books essentially
16:21
Speaker 1: passports to go from one area to another. Some you
16:25
Speaker 1: weren't even allowed in. And um that even went further
16:30
Speaker 1: in the Bantu Homelands Homelands Act of ninety one, which
16:34
Speaker 1: basically said, you know what, wherever your your area is
16:39
Speaker 1: in South Africa, that is now your homeland. And you're
16:41
Speaker 1: not even South African anymore. Yeah, if you're if you're
16:44
Speaker 1: bannt to you live in this area. If you're a
16:46
Speaker 1: banned too married to a colored person, the your colored
16:50
Speaker 1: spouse lives in a different area. Yeah, your family's just
16:53
Speaker 1: ripped apart. Now, well they took away. Basically they said,
16:55
Speaker 1: you're not in South Africa. You're and we're allowing you
16:58
Speaker 1: to stay here. Basically if you stay in this one
17:00
Speaker 1: area that your past book says that you can stay in, right,
17:03
Speaker 1: because you can't stay here because you're not alone, you're
17:05
Speaker 1: no longer a member of this country. Believable, Like I
17:09
Speaker 1: drew exclamation points next to that one, just because like
17:12
Speaker 1: they literally moved in, took over these people and then said,
17:17
Speaker 1: you're not even a part of this country right that
17:19
Speaker 1: we have established. So they have they've been pushed out
17:23
Speaker 1: of participation in society. The um. Anybody who's not white,
17:28
Speaker 1: Um is now forced onto a reservation essentially. Um. And
17:33
Speaker 1: then they really kind of started indoctrinating the next generation
17:38
Speaker 1: with the Ban to Education Act of nineteen fifty three.
17:41
Speaker 1: And basically if you were banned too, you would be
17:43
Speaker 1: put into a school where the student teacher ratio was
17:45
Speaker 1: about fifty six to one on average. You went to
17:48
Speaker 1: school three hours a day. Um they did in two shifts.
17:51
Speaker 1: A teacher would see two different classes, Um, three hours
17:55
Speaker 1: for one and three hours for another, and you would
17:57
Speaker 1: be taught basically how um they the history of your
18:00
Speaker 1: people was that you were you were kind of dumb
18:04
Speaker 1: and meandering, and you hadn't really done anything with the
18:06
Speaker 1: land before and um, how you were reliant on the
18:10
Speaker 1: white people who came to rescue you and your people. Um.
18:14
Speaker 1: You were taught how you could work in a factory.
18:17
Speaker 1: And that's about as good as it got for you. Um.
18:19
Speaker 1: And basically they were taught to be servile and better
18:23
Speaker 1: servants to the the white um afrikanners. Yeah. Well that
18:28
Speaker 1: was the plan at least, but it backfired because in
18:32
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties, instead of becoming more docile,
18:37
Speaker 1: they rallied and became uh more upset uh and basically
18:44
Speaker 1: he raged against the machine. In the nineteen fifties and sixties,
18:47
Speaker 1: at the same time that the U s Civil rights
18:51
Speaker 1: movement was going on, the same thing was kind of
18:53
Speaker 1: starting to happen in South Africa, and it was the
18:56
Speaker 1: beginning of what would be you know, thirty years end
19:00
Speaker 1: of apartheid. Yeah, I guess you could say, yeah, um
19:04
Speaker 1: people got mad, yeah, and rightly so. Yeah. And this
19:08
Speaker 1: wasn't just uh indigenous people. There were also white liberals
19:12
Speaker 1: at the time, just like here in the US, that
19:15
Speaker 1: were very much against apartheid and also you know suppressed
19:20
Speaker 1: when they tried to like you know, raise awareness or
19:23
Speaker 1: fight back. Right because one of the things about um,
19:26
Speaker 1: the apartheid government, it wasn't just racial segregation. Um. They were,
19:31
Speaker 1: like I said, extremely right wing and they were very
19:34
Speaker 1: much into isolationism. They kept a very tight control over
19:40
Speaker 1: what their their population, white or non white, UM had
19:45
Speaker 1: access to as far as the news went music music.
19:48
Speaker 1: Have you seen searching for sugar Man. It's a good one, UM,
19:52
Speaker 1: and it was you saw what they did with like
19:55
Speaker 1: there was a record on there was a song on
19:57
Speaker 1: his record Rodriguez yea and m. He scratched the song
20:01
Speaker 1: the vinyl so they couldn't be played. They did stuff
20:04
Speaker 1: like that. UM just won the Academy Award. And we
20:09
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil anything though, because it unfolds in
20:11
Speaker 1: a really great, mysterious way. It's good. It's a good documents,
20:14
Speaker 1: great documentary, and that's what inspired this decision to do this. Actually, right, UM,
20:18
Speaker 1: So the government was fairly close to total terrian, Like
20:22
Speaker 1: if you descended against the government, white, black, otherwise you
20:27
Speaker 1: would go to jail. UM. But despite this, and despite
20:31
Speaker 1: the brutality that the police were engaged in, like UM
20:36
Speaker 1: there was a for example, there was a strike in
20:39
Speaker 1: v Unarmed black miners went on strike, peaceful protest. A
20:44
Speaker 1: thousand people were killed by the police. Yeah, they would
20:47
Speaker 1: just open fire on crowds. Yeah. So this is right,
20:52
Speaker 1: and this is one of the reasons why UM, I
20:54
Speaker 1: think people were so so resistant to being indoctrinated into
20:59
Speaker 1: apartheid mentality. Um because of the in part because of
21:04
Speaker 1: the brutality of the police tactics. But so let's talk
21:07
Speaker 1: about this UM. In the sixties, Uh, like you were saying,
21:11
Speaker 1: when the U s Civil rights movement was was really
21:13
Speaker 1: starting to brew and and take shape, UM, Nelson Mandela
21:18
Speaker 1: emerged as a member of the African National Congress, huge organization,
21:24
Speaker 1: and then there was also the Pan African Pan Africanist Congress,
21:28
Speaker 1: and they were basically peaceful protest groups that were set
21:32
Speaker 1: up to counter the apartheid philosophy. Yeah, and like we said,
21:36
Speaker 1: even though it was peaceful, it didn't matter. The Sharps
21:39
Speaker 1: Sharpville massacre in nineteen sixty thousand black Africans left their
21:44
Speaker 1: pass books at home and said, you know what, We're
21:46
Speaker 1: just gonna go to the police station and turn ourselves
21:48
Speaker 1: in because we don't have our pass books. What are
21:50
Speaker 1: you gonna do processes all. No, they're gonna open fire
21:53
Speaker 1: on the crowd, killed sixty nine people, uh, wounded hundreds apparently.
22:00
Speaker 1: And then they said, you know what, We're going to
22:01
Speaker 1: ban public gatherings then, and they also banned the African
22:05
Speaker 1: National Congress in the Pan Africans like, you're all illegitimate
22:08
Speaker 1: now and Nelson Mandela, you're going to jail, not yet
22:12
Speaker 1: now yet they drove the Pan Africanist Congress in the
22:15
Speaker 1: African he went to jail, right, but in nineteen sixty
22:18
Speaker 1: they drove him underground. And as a result, these groups
22:23
Speaker 1: went from being peaceful to becoming actually they formed paramilitary
22:27
Speaker 1: wings and Mandela um led the African National Congresses guerilla wing.
22:34
Speaker 1: And he actually later on said, yeah, we were we
22:38
Speaker 1: were guerillas and possibly terrorists, and like there were human
22:41
Speaker 1: rights violations by my group and I regret that. Yeah,
22:44
Speaker 1: but they were good theroists right. Um, but he was
22:47
Speaker 1: jailed for for uh, we'll send it to a life
22:50
Speaker 1: in prison and remain in prison for thirty years. And
22:52
Speaker 1: most people, unless you're super young, remember Nelson Mandela for
22:56
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela being a rallying cry up until like freaking eighties,
23:01
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous that this is still going on then,
23:04
Speaker 1: but um, that's the way it went. There. Um another protest,
23:09
Speaker 1: peaceful Soweto. Um. This time it was students and it
23:13
Speaker 1: was because they were trying to make Afrikaans the primary
23:17
Speaker 1: language in Black upper schools, even though not many of
23:20
Speaker 1: them even spoke it. So what good is that? So
23:24
Speaker 1: they went to protest this and against open fire. Two
23:27
Speaker 1: children were killed this time and it started a bunch
23:30
Speaker 1: of riots and in the end three thousand people up
23:34
Speaker 1: to three thousand says between five seventy five and three thousand,
23:37
Speaker 1: probably depends on who you're asking. Uh, we're killed by
23:41
Speaker 1: the police. Um. And again just following the same script
23:45
Speaker 1: that they did with sharp Ville in nineteen sixty, the
23:47
Speaker 1: government said all right, all any distent groups are completely banned,
23:52
Speaker 1: you know, outright um, and then included the South African
23:55
Speaker 1: Students Organization led by a guy named Steve Ico. And
23:58
Speaker 1: Steve Ico had he was medical student. He was like thirty,
24:01
Speaker 1: I think when he died. UM. He had found what
24:04
Speaker 1: was called the Black Consciousness movement and it was basically like, uh,
24:07
Speaker 1: it was teaching African self worth, countering everything that was
24:12
Speaker 1: taught through the Bantu Education Act and everything you learned
24:15
Speaker 1: in school, UM, African self reliance, economic self reliance, UM.
24:19
Speaker 1: And it had spread outside of Africa. He was a
24:21
Speaker 1: pretty big figure and he was pulled over with the
24:24
Speaker 1: Buddy and a bunch of um Anti apartheid UH pamphlets,
24:29
Speaker 1: and the police arrested him. They beat him, they left
24:33
Speaker 1: him with the head wound, and he died of his injuries.
24:36
Speaker 1: Um and when Steve Ico died that was that changed everything. Yeah,
24:41
Speaker 1: he was detained under the Terrorism Act nineteen sixty seven,
24:45
Speaker 1: which basically said, if we suspect you being a terrorist,
24:49
Speaker 1: we can detain you for up to sixty days, and
24:53
Speaker 1: then we can renew that sixty days, by the way,
24:55
Speaker 1: indefinitely without telling anyone, without releasing who's there. And it
25:00
Speaker 1: was basically a way to make the people disappear. Usually
25:03
Speaker 1: if you were detained under this act, you were never
25:05
Speaker 1: heard from again. And Ico eventually found himself in a
25:09
Speaker 1: coma and UH because of torture. And then eventually they said,
25:14
Speaker 1: after about three weeks, you know, we should probably take
25:15
Speaker 1: the guy to a prison with a hospital at least.
25:19
Speaker 1: So they threw his naked body in the back of
25:20
Speaker 1: a truck to take him to a hospital and he died.
25:24
Speaker 1: They said it was a hunger strike. It was actually
25:26
Speaker 1: brain hemorrhage from being beaten upside the head. And years
25:31
Speaker 1: later Denzel Washington would play him and cry freedom, and
25:35
Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel wrote the awesome song Ko and Um Tribe
25:39
Speaker 1: called quest has Um Steve Beco song. Yeah, stir it up. Yeah. Um,
25:45
Speaker 1: so the Souto uprising, the and the police killings of
25:51
Speaker 1: those two children, UH was followed right on the heels
25:54
Speaker 1: by Steve Beco's death, which was a big deal, like
25:58
Speaker 1: around the world. Yeah, it was the UM the US
26:00
Speaker 1: ambassadors South Africa, I think and probably was a huge
26:04
Speaker 1: protest move went to Steve Beco's funeral. Um there was Yeah,
26:10
Speaker 1: Steve Beco dying was that was a big deal. Yeah,
26:12
Speaker 1: and we should shout out to Helen Susman, shout out.
26:15
Speaker 1: She was the one voice of reason uh in South
26:19
Speaker 1: Africa's all white parliament. She was the one voice anti
26:22
Speaker 1: apartheid voice. And she was like if you look her
26:25
Speaker 1: up today, mean, she's an amazing, amazing woman. She just
26:27
Speaker 1: died a few years ago, but she was at the
26:30
Speaker 1: funeral and um, yeah, this is when it became like
26:34
Speaker 1: a thing around the world like hate. You know what,
26:37
Speaker 1: We're gonna start pulling our embassies out of South Africa,
26:41
Speaker 1: We're gonna start boycotting UH sanctions against South Africa economic sanctions.
26:47
Speaker 1: And this was happening with the United States Great Britain,
26:50
Speaker 1: other Western nations, and basically South Africa became you know,
26:56
Speaker 1: the evil Empire, like exposed. It was pretty cool by
26:59
Speaker 1: the by. Finally, in nine six the US Congress got
27:03
Speaker 1: its act together enough to pass the Comprehensive Anti Apartheid Act,
27:07
Speaker 1: and it banned any new investment, UM, any new business
27:11
Speaker 1: setting up and dealing in trade with South Africa. Um.
27:15
Speaker 1: South Africa was banned from doing business here in the
27:18
Speaker 1: U S. So South African airlines couldn't land at any
27:20
Speaker 1: US airport. Um. Yeah, big time. The rand fell in
27:25
Speaker 1: value is a big deal. Um. And Reagan vetoed it actually,
27:28
Speaker 1: and his veto was overridden by Congress. That's how that's
27:31
Speaker 1: how much, that's how badly they wanted to do it. Um.
27:34
Speaker 1: And it was a very important thing. This was right
27:36
Speaker 1: in the middle of Um. This is like when we
27:39
Speaker 1: were kids. You remember that, like that that Keith Hearing
27:42
Speaker 1: um poster from South Africa. Um. There was like the
27:46
Speaker 1: income place, Sun City, remember that one. Yeah, it was
27:50
Speaker 1: a there was a it was a big deal. The
27:52
Speaker 1: whole world was opposed to South Africa. UM. There was
27:56
Speaker 1: this great thing called divestment that actually may have really
27:59
Speaker 1: been a thing that killed apartheid in South Africa was
28:03
Speaker 1: the deal. So divestment is and it's going on now.
28:06
Speaker 1: But um, with apartheid, it was basically where people like
28:11
Speaker 1: it started with colleges. Colleges have huge endowments that are
28:14
Speaker 1: heavily invested in all sorts of stuff. And they said,
28:17
Speaker 1: you know what, we're not going to invest in anything
28:20
Speaker 1: that has anything to do with South Africa anymore. Coca Cola,
28:22
Speaker 1: if you're doing business in South Africa, we're not gonna
28:25
Speaker 1: invest in any whoever. Um. And so they divested rather
28:29
Speaker 1: than invested. They got all their money out and a
28:32
Speaker 1: lot of university a lot of universities did this, and
28:35
Speaker 1: they did it at the prompting and some of their students,
28:37
Speaker 1: like in Harvard, they the students erected a shaneytown to
28:42
Speaker 1: show what the people who lived in the towns in
28:44
Speaker 1: South Africa were living like. And and got all these
28:47
Speaker 1: endowments to to start divesting. And I think uh CAL
28:52
Speaker 1: had the biggest one. They divested three billion dollars from
28:55
Speaker 1: the South African economy. And um, they think that that
28:58
Speaker 1: was the thing that really like like open the bleeding
29:02
Speaker 1: go bears. Yeah, So, um, this divestment combined with this
29:06
Speaker 1: international political pressure all over the world, and South Africa
29:11
Speaker 1: still says, go to hell, we're not getting rid of
29:14
Speaker 1: apartheime for years still and yeah, and then finally it
29:19
Speaker 1: was what, uh, well, nineteen eighty nine is when the
29:22
Speaker 1: big turning point came. That's when F. W. De Clerk
29:26
Speaker 1: became president of apartheid South Africa. And between eighty nine
29:30
Speaker 1: and ninety three is when he basically repealed everything on
29:33
Speaker 1: the books and said this is going in a different direction.
29:36
Speaker 1: Now let's release Nelson Mandela. And in fact, when we
29:41
Speaker 1: have our first democratic election in nineteen Nelson Mandela wins.
29:46
Speaker 1: So what a great ending to that story. And uh,
29:51
Speaker 1: despite being in prison for thirty years. Uh. On May tenth,
29:57
Speaker 1: when Mandela was giving his his speech, he's closed by
30:02
Speaker 1: speaking in Afrikaans. This isn't his inaugurations. Yeah, which is
30:06
Speaker 1: like the fact that even spoken that tongue. To me,
30:08
Speaker 1: it says a lot about the man. And he said,
30:11
Speaker 1: what what has past has past? And here's a Nobel
30:15
Speaker 1: Peace prize. Mr Mandela and Mr di Clerk, like you
30:18
Speaker 1: both get it in and I like the article pointed
30:22
Speaker 1: out it was a shockingly peaceful transition. Uh. And I'm
30:26
Speaker 1: sure there are still many many more years that are
30:30
Speaker 1: needed for the healing. Uh. You don't get over or
30:33
Speaker 1: something like that overnight if it's been hundreds of years.
30:36
Speaker 1: But um, I think things are definitely headed in the
30:38
Speaker 1: right direction now. Yeah. Well, one of the things that
30:40
Speaker 1: they did was they set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
30:42
Speaker 1: which is like basically a tribunal that heard um stories
30:46
Speaker 1: of human rights violations that gave victims a voice to
30:49
Speaker 1: say it in public, like this happened to me. Um.
30:52
Speaker 1: In some instances, people who perpetrated these could be prosecuted.
30:56
Speaker 1: They could also be forgiven publicly by this court, this tribunal. Um.
31:00
Speaker 1: It was a really good move to like kind of
31:02
Speaker 1: help this national healing because yeah, all of a sudden,
31:05
Speaker 1: Apartheid's gone over a four year period. But I mean
31:09
Speaker 1: there was a lot of people who were kind of
31:11
Speaker 1: into that and they did a lot of stuff and
31:13
Speaker 1: they're not protected by the government anymore, and like a
31:15
Speaker 1: lot of bad things happened to a lot of people
31:17
Speaker 1: are still alive, Like what do you do? Uh? And
31:20
Speaker 1: I think that was a really good move to to
31:23
Speaker 1: move not just the government but also the society to
31:26
Speaker 1: post apartheid um life. Yeah, I'd like to hear from
31:30
Speaker 1: people in South Africa about the state of things today.
31:33
Speaker 1: And watch Searching for Sugar Man. People. It's really like,
31:37
Speaker 1: through this great story of music encapsulates this whole time
31:41
Speaker 1: period really really well. Right and then, uh, I guess
31:44
Speaker 1: ever since the Aliens landed over Johannesburg, that's kind of
31:48
Speaker 1: taken up a lot of their a lot of their attention.
31:51
Speaker 1: District nine, Yeah, which was really based on apartheid pretty
31:55
Speaker 1: much wasn't What was that the inspiration for them? That
32:00
Speaker 1: was a good movie. Yeah, so watch that, watch District nine,
32:03
Speaker 1: Searching for Sugarman, and watch Cry Freedom and go listen
32:07
Speaker 1: to Tribe called Quest. Peter Gabriel, I haven't even I
32:10
Speaker 1: have not listened or seen the Rugby movie yet. Morgan
32:15
Speaker 1: Freeman place Mandela with Damon. Yeah, what is it? Invictus? Yeah? Yeah,
32:22
Speaker 1: I need I need to see now. Uh, okay, let's
32:25
Speaker 1: sit for apartheid hunt goodness? Uh do you want to do?
32:29
Speaker 1: H A word from our sponsor? Yeah, we got listener
32:31
Speaker 1: mail coming up, but work from our sponsor first. So
32:35
Speaker 1: now it's time for listener mail, right, that's right, Josh,
32:40
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this surfs up. I just listened to
32:44
Speaker 1: how surfing works as someone who serves three hundred days
32:47
Speaker 1: a year all over the world and teaches surfing for
32:50
Speaker 1: a living. I just wanted to say that you guys
32:52
Speaker 1: did an excellent job for two guys who don't surf
32:54
Speaker 1: in a very limited experience with it. Your definitions and
32:57
Speaker 1: descriptions were pretty much spot on, and I would have
32:59
Speaker 1: to agree with you Chuck that it is very difficult
33:02
Speaker 1: to learn. It has one of the slowest, most miserable
33:05
Speaker 1: learning curves of any sport. I always tell people that
33:07
Speaker 1: if you don't enjoy sucking at it, then you won't
33:10
Speaker 1: enjoy surfing. So quickly. Did you surf on your vacation? Yeah?
33:16
Speaker 1: I did? Then how did you Dot waiting to ask
33:19
Speaker 1: I got up? You me was watching from the shore
33:21
Speaker 1: and she agrees, um that I did get up at
33:24
Speaker 1: least once possible. She says, possibly twice, But I, um,
33:28
Speaker 1: I only stand by one, and by by get up,
33:32
Speaker 1: I mean I was virtually crouching and then fell off
33:36
Speaker 1: after like five seconds. And how many days did you
33:38
Speaker 1: try it? I just one and I didn't even I
33:41
Speaker 1: didn't even take a lesson. Okay, you just went out there,
33:43
Speaker 1: do you know how well? Our podcast exactly. Yeah, that's
33:47
Speaker 1: how I figured out how to do it. I did
33:48
Speaker 1: kind of, but um, I remember we were talking about
33:51
Speaker 1: how it's very easy to like get on your hands
33:53
Speaker 1: and knees and then get up, but you don't want
33:55
Speaker 1: to learn that technique. That's that's what I learned. Yeah,
33:59
Speaker 1: you gotta call before you can walk exactly. Also I
34:01
Speaker 1: should clear up that in general, learning to surf on
34:03
Speaker 1: a longboard is usually preferred, as he catch waves easier
34:06
Speaker 1: and you're easier to stand up on them a short board.
34:09
Speaker 1: But being that catching a wave is the hardest part
34:12
Speaker 1: for beginners, you're usually better off learning that way. Did
34:15
Speaker 1: you have a short board? Uh? Yeah, it was shortish shortage. Yeah,
34:19
Speaker 1: it definitely wasn't a long board. They turn easier, but
34:22
Speaker 1: turning his pointless if you can't catch the wave in
34:24
Speaker 1: the first first place. So yeah, there was no turning
34:27
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, it was surf riding. Surf riding anyway.
34:31
Speaker 1: I just want to say, good job guys. I'll be
34:32
Speaker 1: teaching surfing all summer in Southampton, New York. If you're
34:35
Speaker 1: up in New York this summer, hit me up. I'll
34:37
Speaker 1: take you out for surf and that is Miles from
34:40
Speaker 1: Santa Cruz. PS. Big Wednesday is the best movie ever.
34:44
Speaker 1: Of course you think that because that's what surf first did. Um,
34:49
Speaker 1: that's nice, Miles three days a year. Can you believe
34:52
Speaker 1: that he's sounds like Miles has got a pretty decent
34:55
Speaker 1: life if he's living in Santa Cruz and then teaching
34:57
Speaker 1: in New York in the summers. Yeah. Um, thank for
35:00
Speaker 1: running in, Miles. If you are an expert or you
35:02
Speaker 1: do something that we've talked about three d days a year,
35:05
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you because that pretty much
35:07
Speaker 1: makes you an expert. Um. You can tweet to us
35:10
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can join us
35:14
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
35:16
Speaker 1: can send us a an email right in to Stuff
35:22
Speaker 1: Podcasts at Discovery dot com and check out our website
35:26
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
35:35
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does It how stuff Works
35:38
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