by Andres Buenaventura

Life isn't fair. For more than 50 years, South Africa's apartheid government provided proof to this statement time and time again.

This apartheid policy created a method of economic, social and political dominance by white Afrikaners over black Africans, said Hunt Davis, a University of Florida professor emeritus of history who specializes in South African history.

The 1948 elections in South Africa essentially sparked the creation of apartheid because of the victory of the exclusively-Afrikaner National Party, Davis said.

"Part of that 1948 election was basically out of fear of the growing strength of the African majority," Davis said. "As more and more Africans were moving into the urban areas, apartheid was designed to perpetuate white control, white dominance."

Discrimination in South Africa eventually extended to the point where Africans could not vote, live in white-designated areas, go to white-designated schools or even marry or have sexual relations with people of other races, according to the allRefer Reference and Encyclopedia Web site.

To add to the oppression, resistance by Africans to the apartheid regime was answered with murder during the 1960 and 1976 Sharpeville and Soweto uprisings. Davis said police reacted violently to a simple protest in Sharpeville.

"The police got nervous. Some policemen panicked, shot and then they all started to shoot," Davis said. "About 70 people were killed, and most were shot in the back while they were trying to flee."

Police again used deadly force to quell the Soweto revolts as well as others that started in other areas, eventually causing the deaths of about 500 Africans through February 1977, according to the allRefer Web site.

The oppression of blacks in all aspects of life in South Africa continued until South African President F. W. de Clerk's release of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990, Davis said.

De Clerk legalized the African National Congress as well as all other African political organizations in 1990, which essentially broke apart the foundations of apartheid. In 1994, Mandela won South Africa's first democratic presidential election. With the victory, the apartheid regime in South Africa officially ended, Davis said.

"In 1980 nobody could have imagined the head of the South African government releasing Mandela and allowing the African National Congress and all the other political organizations to become legal again," Davis said. "It was a very remarkable moment."