Places And Forms Of Power

Places and forms of power

The power is a right or an authority given or delegated to a person or a body.

The notion of power generally implies a basic division between those who have and exercise power and those who have none or little of it. As a consequence, the exercise of power within a community requires that its members accept or even internalize a complex of system of relations laws, rules and regulations, and respect symbols such as specific places (court, parliament etc.), which helps to create social cohesion on the one hand, and which reveals quite clearly the conflicts and tensions existing within the group on the other hand.

indeed, even when authority seems absolute, there are always counter powers which question it, aim at limiting it excesses and resist it.

Can we say that all people possess the same rights in the world?

I will answer to the question through the problem that was the tensions between blacks and whites in South Africa for the apartheid.

Apartheid means in Afrikaans " Live apart ". It is in fact a segregationist system based on the racist policy of the national Party. In 1948, Afrikaaners decides to set up this system which will allow them to concentrate the power, the mining resources and the wealth of the country. All those who were not considered as "whites" became citizens of second category. This system is based on claimed superiority of the whites compared with the other populations.

In 1950, the government makes vote for the first the segregationist laws. This text, known under the name of Population Registration Act, of which an extract is the first document which I studied, defines four main racial groups with which every individual is systematically connected:

Black, White and Coloured. Indians

This text is going to be of use as basebto about fifty the others that have only one objective: separate communities. So, in 1950, a law obliges every group to live in urban zones of house predefined

In 1959, the country is divided into several zones, geographically different, with which every racial group is connected. Regions reserved for the Blacks, called Bantustan, are supposed to acquire their economic and administrative autonomy. But they cover only 13 % of the territory and are thus overcrowded. Worse, it is the poorest lands, without natural wealth and without industry.

Gradually, the policy of segregation extends in all the domains: geographical, economic, social .

the worst crimes are engendered (murder, rapes) mainly by the whites who detain all the rights until Frederik de Klerk, the Last white president of South Africa, leads the reforms which end the apartheid policy in 1991.

Now, i want to speak to you about the movie invictus made in 2009 by clint eastwood. With morgan freeman and matt damon

Freed after 27 years of confinement to the prison of ROBBEN Island, Nelson Mandela is elected in 1994 at the head of the South African government. It is the first black president of South Africa. The country is still divided between the Afrikaners and the Blacks of South Africa. In spite of a

...