What is apartheid? New book for young readers explains South Africa’s racist system

A new book, Together Apart: The Story of Living in Apartheid, has just been published in South Africa. Intended for young people but speaking to readers of all ages, the book explores what it was like living through this dark and racist period of segregation.

It’s laden with graphics, illustrations and comic book-styled information. We asked its authors – literacies scholar Xolisa Guzula and historian Athambile Masola – more about their project.

What is apartheid and how did it fit into the country’s history?

Apartheid (an Afrikaans word which means “setting apart”) was a set of laws introduced by a white-minority government. It was formalised in 1948. South Africa was divided into four races (white, Indian, coloured and African) and people were separated according to racial groups.

Apartheid entrenched a system of racism that was based on the idea that white people were the superior race. People who were “non-white” were inferior and didn’t deserve the same rights.

This racism has a foundation in colonialism, where Europeans travelled to other parts of the world and took over land and resources by force and by war because they believed they were superior.

So, apartheid and colonialism are systems of superiority. They are also systems of violence, as the laws made it possible for people who were not European to be killed and enslaved in order to create new lands where Europeans could live.

In separating people by race, apartheid created so called independent self-governing states known as Bantustans or homelands for African people and then the Republic of South Africa for the white people in order to prevent them from mixing.

In cities, the system also created different living places for different groups of people. After that, everything – like education and schools, sports facilities and competitions – was divided by race. So there could be no mixing in schools and sports, arts and cultural events. This included places like train stations and beaches.

Apartheid spurred protests and a liberation movement made of various political organisations which actively fought against it. It ended formally in 1994 with democratic elections that saw Nelson Mandela become president, though its legacy is still experienced on a daily basis by many. Apartheid is still experienced more harshly in other parts of the world, for example Palestine.

Why did you choose to highlight personal stories?

Most people think of history as being the story of nations and big historical moments. But history is in the everyday, it’s all around us. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the homes we live in are all influenced by history.

By paying attention to personal stories we can see that history is not boring if it is in the everyday. Personal stories are also passed on from generation to generation. This means history is about who we are as people rather than facts to remember from a textbook. While facts are important, sometimes they remove us from the reality that history is all around us.

This book is told through the voice of a grandmother, Makhulu, who shares some of her own stories as well as historical facts. When we introduce the section about how apartheid influenced the work people did, Makhulu shares that when she was growing up she did not have many choices about the career she could choose because apartheid had laws about where people could go to school and which professions people could follow.

Pass laws also prevented women like Makhulu from coming to urban areas to look for jobs or to move to suburbs within cities. This led to a huge women’s march in 1956 protesting these laws.

The book uses personal stories of friendships, where people were not allowed to be friends or marry across race. It tells of families where children born out of mixed marriages were alienated. It contains stories of sportsmen and women who were not allowed to compete across race. The book tells these stories to show how people’s daily lives were affected by apartheid.

How did you approach reaching a broad range of readers?

This was very challenging. By having the voice of an elder talking to children we were able to bridge the gap. Both of us have a background in teaching across all grades and into university, so that experience has been helpful.

We also wrote the book with the hope that it will be a book adults can share with children and have conversations about.

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We also include a range of sources like poetry, pictures and questions in the comic strips to prompt discussions. People can use the images to have conversations about how a photograph can tell a story. This is known as visual literacy and all readers use the skill to make sense of the world.

Finally, we have smaller bites of text at times to help the reader to digest just a paragraph, and at other times, we challenge the reader to develop stamina for a longer text.

Why is it important young people know about apartheid?

We end the book saying that while apartheid laws are over, the effects of apartheid are still with us. There is an adage which says, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

Also, in this moment of the return to fascism in the world, it’s important for young people to never forget history. Past events shape our present and our future. Young people need to ensure that it never happens again.

In 2024 students at a high school in Cape Town played a prank on their peers by pretending they were slaves and auctioning them. In a place like Cape Town where slave memory is all over the city, this was not just an innocent prank. These young people need to better understand history so that they don’t make jokes about a painful past.

The book tells stories of student protests during apartheid, and also of more recent post-apartheid students in the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements – precisely to show how apartheid has not ended, linking past and present.

These continuing legacies of apartheid are just two of the examples in the book of how colonial thinking, doing and valuing lives on.

How do you deal with painful stories that are still difficult to talk about?

Most of world history in general is full of terrible stories about wars and violence. But this is not the only story, because people have survived to tell what happened.

People still sang and made art and played sport despite the tragedy of apartheid. This is a wonderful thing about being human. Survival is also about remaking the world through creativity.

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As a result, people’s resilience during apartheid encourages us to never give up on our dreams and to have hope that things can change.

But we also ask adults to use the book to fill in the gaps as there are tragic stories which cannot be told because of the sensitivity towards children’s ability to process dark and difficult stories.

Xolisa Guzula was commissioned to write the book, Together Apart: The story of living in apartheid, which has been funded by the National Lotteries Commission to be translated into isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi and Afrikaans.

Athambile Masola was commissioned to write the book, Together Apart: The story of living in apartheid, which has been funded by the National Lotteries Commission to be translated into isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi and Afrikaans.