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Apartheid in South Africa

Tell Me What You Remember presents works by two contemporary South African artists that confront the histories and prevailing legacies of the apartheid regime.

Apartheid is an Afrikaans term that literally translates to “separateness.” From 1948 to 1994, apartheid was a system of legal segregation and social hierarchies in South Africa based on pseudoscientific and religious beliefs of racialized difference. Before colonization, the land now known as South Africa was inhabited by various African peoples, such as the Zulu, Swazi, and Khoi. The Dutch established a slave colony there in 1652—an expansion of the Dutch East India Company. By 1852, the English had taken control of the colony and the company. It wasn’t until 1934 that South Africa became a sovereign nation within the British commonwealth.

The newly established country was controlled politically, socially, and economically by its minority white population—a direct result of Dutch and English colonialism. Modeled after 20th-century Jim Crow laws developed in the United States, apartheid created a system of vast inequity that ensured that Black South Africans would not receive full citizenship.

Apartheid laws restricted where Black South Africans could live and work and who they could marry. The 1952 Pass Laws Act established the passbook, an internal passport system for Black people over the age of 16, which sought to limit their movement under the threat of arrest and possible brutality by police.

Other examples of apartheid laws include:

  • 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act: Instituted an internal passport system designed to segregate the population, manage urbanization, and allocate migrant labor. Also known as the natives’ law, this early passbook act severely limited the movements of not only Black Africans but also other nonwhite people.
  • 1950 Population Registration Act: Codified a strict racial hierarchy that divided the population into categories of White, Indian (South Asian), Coloured (mixed race), and Black.
  • 1953 Bantu Education Act: Created a separate, inferior education system for Black students.

These laws were challenged by South Africans through various forms of protest and refusal. For example, the 1956 Women’s March in Pretoria featured a multiracial group of 20,000 women protesting the 1952 passbook law. The 1957 Alexandra bus boycott in Johannesburg, at its height, involved 70,000 people refusing to use the bus system. Organizations created to resist apartheid included the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats, and the Trade Union Council of South Africa. In addition to organized resistance, many individuals were harassed, jailed, exiled, or killed for their efforts against the apartheid regime.

In the early 1990s, apartheid was dismantled through a series of political negotiations, culminating in the country’s 1994 general election, South Africa’s first that allowed for universal suffrage. The election established democracy in the nation and resulted in Nelson Mandela becoming South Africa’s first Black president. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established in 1995 and led by Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu. This court-like body was convened to uncover the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid in the hopes of promoting healing and reconciliation among South African citizens. Although the TRC demonstrated a government effort to address crimes committed by the apartheid regime, it did not offer justice to the victims—or provide accountability for the perpetrators. Today, many South Africans look back at the TRC trials as a farce that did little to change systemic inequities.

Throughout Tell Me What You Remember, apartheid is approached from two very different points of view. Sue Williamson (b. 1941) emigrated from England to Cape Town, South Africa, at the age of seven and witnessed the ill effects of racial segregation as a white person. Her experiences led to activism and artmaking in the 1970s. Five decades later, she is still making work that contends with apartheid. Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990) came of age in Katlehong, South Africa, after the establishment of democracy and is part of a generation contentiously labeled “born free.” As a Black South African, Kganye illuminates the overt and covert ways that apartheid has impacted her family through her multimedia practice.