Episode
Frontline: Apartheid Part I: 1652-1948
Overview
Many white South Africans claim that the entire country is theirs by right. No black man, they say, occupied South Africa before the first tiny Dutch settlement in 1652. Part 1 refutes this claim and traces the country’s colonial history, the emergence early in the 20th century of the African National Congress, the rise to power of Afrikaner nationalists, and the formal policy of apartheid.
Details
- Series
- Frontline
- Season
- Season 6
- Episode
- Episode 1
- Air date
- 1987-12-14
Episode context
Apartheid Part I: 1652-1948 is Episode 1 in Season 6 of Frontline. It aired on 1987-12-14.
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More episodes from this season
Episode 3: Apartheid Part 3: 1963-1977
Independent homelands' for blacks was the centerpiece of Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd's vision of apartheid. Part 3 focuses on how the white government found African leaders to collaborate with them in a plan to make foreigners of black South African citizens by deporting them to independent homelands in rural areas of the country. The program looks at the increased resistance to the homeland policy as seen through the first nationwide attack by young black South Africans in the Soweto ghetto in 1976.
Episode 4: Apartheid Part 4: 1978-1986
When PW Botha became prime minister of South Africa two years after the Soweto uprising in 1976, he realized that apartheid must ‘adapt or die.’ Part 4 explores the reforms undertaken by Botha to maintain white supremacy, changes that have deeply divided Afrikaners and have provoked explosive reactions from many blacks.
Episode 5: Apartheid Part 5: 1987
Part 5 looks at an unprecedented meeting in the struggle for South Africa’s future. Two years before the release of Nelson Mandela, dissident white Afrikaners met with black leaders from the outlawed African National Congress in Dakar, Senagal, to discuss strategies for change in South Africa, presaging the reforms that would come later.
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