Describe the apartheid regime adn the struggle for equality in South Africa?

Apartheid refers to the policy of racial segregation in South Africa from 1948 to 1991, in which the country's population was divided into white, black, Indian and colored (which were mainly descendants of imported Malay slaves and blacks).

The ideological roots of apartheid in South Africa were in racial papers developed in the late 19th century. Racial segregation was also intended to preserve the privileged social and economic status of whites and to ensure the availability of cheap black labor for the country’s mining industry.

In South Africa, whites were in many ways in a privileged position as early as the 19th century. However, the actual apartheid system was not developed until the 1950s by enacting numerous different laws. These laws were usually related to some acute situation threatening white supremacy, and their combined effects had not been considered. As a result, the laws caused a number of undesirable effects and contradictions that began to manifest themselves progressively during the 1960s. Bantu education, for example, was intended to produce obedient African workers who had been taught to believe that they earned only the role of servant in society. Instead, it produced young activists who realized they had nothing to lose in opposing the government violently.