Social inequality in South Africa

Students' Health and Welfare Centres Organisation (SHAWCO) is a student led agency at the University of Cape Town. Its primary aim is to improve the quality of life of people in developing communities in the Cape metropolitan area. This is to tackle three centuries of social inequity experienced bynon-white people in South Africa. Racial discrimination was partly a legacy of British colonialism, which led to the Pass Laws in the Cape Colony, in the 19th century. This controlled where black people could live and work and forced them to carry a pass stating their race at all times.

Many years later these notions were enforced with apartheid, which legally declared that white people were superior to black people. Apartheid ensured the continued suppression of human rights to all non-white people in South Africa from 1948 to 1991. What makes this different to racial segregation and inequality in other countries is the methodical way in which the National Party, which came into power in 1948, formalised it through the law. Nelson Mandela said, “The white man used …