Apartheid: The Tyranny of Racism Made Law

In white-ruled South Africa, black people are denied their basic human and political rights; their labour is exploited, their lives segregated, precarious and fearful. In 1982 almost one million of them were to be transferred to another country - Swaziland - without their having any say in the matter whatsoever. That is the tyranny of apartheid, of racism made law, of a system under which a small white minority holds all economic and political power, and dictates in the minutest detail how and where the large black majority will live, work and die. It is this system of institutionalized racial discrimination which defies the principles of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that has set South Africa on a collision course with the rest of the world. It must be brought to an end before it erupts into a racial war between "whites" and "blacks" that would have tragic consequences for the whole world.

Auto workers in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, waiting to be paid at the factory gates during a labour dispute. South Africa's work force is about 70 per cent black. But blacks earn many times less than whites, are excluded from most skilled jobs and, despite recent proposals to the contrary, are still denied full trade union rights. [Exact date unknown]

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