Editing History of South Africa (section)

===Apartheid legislation===
[[File:ApartheidSignEnglishAfrikaans.jpg|thumb|left|"For use by white persons"&nbsp;– sign from the apartheid era]]
The [[Racial segregation|segregationist]] policies of apartheid stemmed from colonial legislation introduced during the [[Dutch Cape Colony|period of Dutch rule]] in the 17th century, which was continued and expanded upon during the [[Cape Colony|British colonial era]], and reached its apogee during the Boer-dominated [[Union of South Africa]].<ref>SA History.org [http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/segregationist-legislation-timeline-1856-1913 Segregationist legislation 1856–1913] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180907103959/http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/segregationist-legislation-timeline-1856-1913 |date=7 September 2018 }} Accessed 4 May 2015</ref>

From 1948, successive [[National Party (South Africa)|National Party]] administrations formalised and extended the existing system of racial discrimination and denial of human rights into the legal system of ''apartheid'',<ref>Brian Bunting, ''Rise of the South African Reich'', Chapter Nine, "South Africa's Nuremberg Laws"</ref> which lasted until 1991. A key act of legislation during this time was the Homeland Citizens Act of 1970. This act augmented the Native Land Act of 1913 through the establishment of so-called "homelands" or "reserves". It authorised the forced evictions of thousands of African people from urban centres in South Africa and South West Africa (now [[Namibia]]) to what became described colloquially as "[[Bantustans]]" or the  "original homes", as they were officially referred to, of the black ethnic groups of South Africa. The same legislation applied also to [[South West Africa]] over which South Africa had continued after World War I to exercise a disputed League of Nations mandate. Pro-apartheid South Africans attempted to justify the Bantustan policy by citing the [[Government of the United Kingdom|British government]]'s 1947 [[partition of India]], which they claimed was a similar situation that did not arouse international condemnation.<ref>Susan Mathieson and David Atwell, "Between Ethnicity and Nationhood: Shaka Day and the Struggle over Zuluness in post-Apartheid South Africa" in ''Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity'' edited by David Bennett {{ISBN|0-415-12159-0}} (Routledge UK, 1998) p.122</ref>

[[File:Bantustans in South Africa.svg|thumb|300px|right|Map of the black homelands in South Africa at the end of apartheid in 1994]]

Although many important events occurred during this period, apartheid remained the central pivot around which most of the historical issues of this period revolved, including violent conflict and the militarisation of South African society. By 1987, total military expenditure amounted to about 28% of the national budget.<ref>Mark Swilling & Mark Phillips, "State power in the 1980s: from total strategy to counter revolutionary warfare", in Jacklyn Cock & Laurie Nathan (eds) ''War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa'', Cape Town: David Philip, pp. 5, 145–8 {{ISBN|0-86486-115-X}}.</ref>

In the aftermath of the 1976 [[Soweto uprising]] and the security clampdown that accompanied it, Joint Management Centres (JMCs) operating in at least 34 State-designated "high-risk" areas became the key element in a National Security Management System. The police and military who controlled the JMCs by the mid-1980s were endowed with influence in decision-making at every level, from the Cabinet down to local government.<ref>Desiree Hansson, "Changes in counter-revolutionary state strategy in the decade 1979–89", in Desiree Hansson and Dirk van Zyl Smit (eds.), ''Towards Justice?: Crime and state control in South Africa'', Cape Town: Oxford University Press 1990, pp.45–50 {{ISBN|0 19 570579 3}}</ref>