Account for the increasing elaboration of the system of racial segregation in South Africa from 1910 to 1939.
Racial segregation is the practice of keeping racial groups separate from each other especially by the use of separate schools, transportation, housing and other facilities. The multi-racial atmosphere of South Africa had made this quite possible in that region. According to Norman Lowe, in 1910 after the formation of the Union of South Africa, seventy percent of the population were black Africans known as Bantus, eighteen percent were whites of European origin, of these about sixty percent were Dutch and the rest British, nine percent were a mixed race known as coloureds and three percent were Asians. White Domination had existed from the earliest days of the Dutch settlement in the Cape of Good Hope in the middle of the seventeenth century but the area was lightly populated and the full impact was not felt. The process was intensified when the Dutch settlers migrated in the north to escape British rule and entered the Orange Free State and Transvaal. The practice was known as Baaska. In Transvaal the whites had proclaimed that, “There shall be no equality in state or church between whites and blacks.” This had been institutionalized and formed part of the constitution of both Transvaal and the Orange state. The vote was extended to any male in the Cape who possessed a seventy five pound property qualification and a pass in a literacy test which made only 4.7% of the blacks in Africa eligible. This system of racial segregation was defined by the round table on apartheid as “A term used to describe a type of domination and exploitation that is especially South African, and racial ideology is the best way of reinforcing and justifying the system.” As the exploitation intensified racial segregation evolved into something more profound from 1910 to 1939 due to political, economic and social factors.
Political factors had a key role to...