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Apartheid was a system of racial segregation that was enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. South Africa had long been ruled by whites and apartheid was designed to form a legal framework for continued economic and political dominance by people of European descent/

Under apartheid, people were legally classified into a racial group - the main ones being White, Black, Indian and Coloured - and were geographically, and forcibly, separated from each other on the basis of the legal classification.

In practice, this prevented non-white people — even if actually resident in white South Africa — from having a vote or influence, restricting their rights to faraway homelands that they may never have visited.

Non-whites were not allowed to run businesses or professional practices in those areas designated as 'white South Africa' (i.e. all economically significant towns and commercial areas) without a permit. They were supposed to move to the black "homelands" and set up businesses and practices there.

Transport and civil facilities were segregated.
Blacks were excluded from living or working in white areas, unless they had a pass -

A pass was issued only to a black person with approved work. Spouses and children had to be left behind in non-white areas

Being without a valid pass made a person subject to immediate arrest and summary trial, often followed by deportation to the person's homeland and prosecution of the employer.

Police vans patrolled the "white" areas to round up the "illegal" blacks, causing enormous harm to the economy by removing willing workers from employers who were chronically short of labour.
Black areas rarely had plumbing or electricity.

Hospitals and ambulances were segregated: the white hospitals were generally of a very good standard with well-educated staff and ample funds, while black hospitals were seriously understaffed and under funded, with many black areas without a hospital at all.

In the 1970s each black child's education cost the state only a tenth of each white child's. The Bantu Education Act specifically aimed to teach blacks only the basic skills they would need in working for whites.

Higher education was provided in separate universities and colleges after 1959. Very few places were provided for blacks and all the existing and reputable universities remained white
Trains and buses were segregated

Public beaches were racially segregated, with the best ones reserved for whites. Public swimming pools and libraries were also segregated.
There were practically no pools nor libraries for blacks
Sex and marriage between the races was prohibited.

A white driver was not allowed to have a black in the front of the car if that person was of a different sex.

Black people were not allowed to employ white people.

Black police were not allowed to arrest whites.

Black Africans were prohibited from attending "white" churches under the Churches Native Laws Amendment Act (1957). This was never rigidly enforced, and churches were one of the few places races could mix without the interference of the law.

Most blacks were stripped of their South African citizenship when the "homelands" were declared "independent". They thus were no longer able to apply for South African passports. A passport was a privilege, not a right, and the government saw fit not to grant many applications by blacks

On 21 March 1960, black people congregated in Sharpeville, a township near Vereeniging, to demonstrate against the requirement for blacks to carry identity cards (under the Pass Law). Estimates of the size of the crowd vary wildly, from as low as 300 to as high as 20,000. The crowd converged on the local police station, singing and offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their pass books. A group of about 300 police opened fire on the demonstrators, killing 69 and injuring 186. All the victims were black, and most of them had been shot in the back. The event became known as the Sharpeville Massacre. In its aftermath the government banned the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).

The South African Students' Organisation under the charismatic leadership of Steve Biko. Biko, a medical student, was the main force behind the growth of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement, which stressed the need for psychological liberation, black pride, and non-violent opposition to apartheid. In September 1977, Steve Biko was arrested. unidentified security police beat him until he lapsed into a coma; he went without medical treatment for three days and finally died in Pretoria. At the subsequent inquest, the magistrate ruled that no one was to blame, although the South African Medical Association eventually took action against the doctors who had failed to treat Biko. South Africa was never to be the same again.

Many of the inequalities created and maintained by apartheid still remain in South Africa. The country has one of the most unequal income distribution patterns in the world: approximately 60% of the population earns less than R42,000 per annum (about US$7,000), whereas 2.2% of the population has an income exceeding R360,000 per annum (about US$50,000). Poverty in South Africa is still largely defined by skin colour, with black people making up around 90% of the country's poor.

Subsequently, the government has implemented a policy of Black Economic Empowerment. Eighty percent of farming land still remains in the hands of white farmers; the requirement that claimants for restoration of land seized during the apartheid era make a contribution towards the cost of the land "excludes the poorest layers of the population altogether", while a large number of white farmers have been murdered since 1994 in what campaign groups claim is a campaign of genocide.

The government has passed affirmative action laws and what they call employment equity targets. In terms of this, companies are assessed on the government's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy. Government contracts and a few in the private sector are also preferentially awarded to companies with good BEE ratings. Appointments in local, provincial and national government are frequently dictated by affirmative action