Apartheid South Africa
The paradigm case (1948–1994)
From 1948 to 1994 the National Party government enforced apartheid (“apartness”), a legislated system that classified people by race and systematically subordinated the Black African majority. It is the case against which all other “apartheid” claims are measured.
What happened
After the National Party’s 1948 election victory, Parliament built the legal architecture of apartheid. The Population Registration Act required every resident to be classified by race, which then determined where they could live, work, study, and whom they could marry — the foundation on which pass laws, the Group Areas Act, and the rest of apartheid law depended.
Every person whose name is included in the register shall be classified by the Director as a white person, a coloured person or a native, as the case may be… (Population Registration Act, 1950, s. 5(1))
Under each definition
This is the practice the 1973 Convention was written to name (“as practised in southern Africa”).
A textbook institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.
This is the South African system; the analogy is identity.
The ordinary meaning of the word derives from this case.
The case that the label applies
Race classification was mandated by statute and used to allocate rights, movement, residence and political voice by racial group — the textbook mechanism of “domination by one racial group over any other.”
The case against
None of substance as to the label: even the apartheid government did not deny the racial basis of the system, defending it as “separate development” — a justification, not a denial.
In their words
I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
Condemns the policies of apartheid practised by the Government of South Africa as a crime against humanity
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Only South Africa is beyond dispute; every other legal characterization is attributed to the body that made it. The lenses diverge most on the treaties’ phrase “racial group” and on the difference between a legal finding and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.