The Betrayal of Mandela’s Apartheid Liberation Movement

—Nelson Mandela

Orchestrated by the National Party upon their electoral victory in 1948, the system of apartheid, through authoritarian domination and extensive economic exploitation, not only forged social division but also breathed potent life into the myth of race. Legally enshrined racial identification and racist discrimination permeated daily life and seemed to determine one’s destiny in South Africa. For most branded as non-white, apartheid condemned them to poverty and ceaseless hard labour. Millions were displaced from the land of their ancestors to be squished into the suffocating squalor of townships or left to wither in the bleak terrains of Bantustans (native reservations).