Texte Histoire de l'Afrique du Sud Leonard Thompson

I’m going to talk about places and forms of power. First of all, I’d like to give a definition of this notion. Power implies a basic division between those who have and exercise power and those who have none or little of it. Even when authority seems absolute, there are always counter-powers which question it, aim at limiting its excesses and resist it. I would like to illustrate this notion through the theme of the Apartheid. We can wonder how can people from different cultures live together in harmony? First of all, I will concentrate on the past oppression with establishment of colonies, then I will analyse the resistance and the repression with the massacre of Sharpeville and Soweto, before finally focusing on the Reconciliation with news constitution and black president. To my mind, the documents that best illustrate the notion are :

- A text A history of south Africa Leonard Thompson

- An article in the new : “Law & Order in South Africa”

- A text Building Democracy After Apartheid

Initially, South Africa is a multic-ethnic nation, which has diverse cultures and languages. In 1948 a new legislation in SA was passed, it was called the Apartheid. Leonard Thompson draws our attention on the main ideas of this political separation. Population of SA comprised four “racial groups”, white, coloured, Indian and African. Other laws was established to restrict non-whites freedom and ban mixed marriages. The narrator’s point of view is neutral, he reveals that whites have absolute control over the state. The government enacted an even law that required all Africans males over the age of 16 to carry a reference book and you could be arrested to not carrying your passbook. I disagree with this political separation because these categories was based on appearance. Each humans should have the same rights and duties.

Secondly, in the article leaders of the black people have been imprisoned, forced into exile. That’s why a lot of whites peoples and the majority of the population rebels against apartheid. For example, Breyten Breytenbach was a writer who denounces apartheid. He explains that some groups burned passbook to give the thumbs up signal of the ANC. And the Sharpeville massacre is a turning point in the struggle against the legal repression because ANC banned and Nelson Mandela created an armed branch to it. He was arrested in 1963 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Finally, the Soweto Uprising was a series of protest led by high school because African’s had become the language study in schools. I admire the courage they have shown to protest against the government which kill those manifest

To finish, after a long period of repression, Nelson Mandela in 1990 was released from Robben Island prison. Then he abolished apartheid and pronote reconciliation between black and whites. In the text about the rainbow nation, narrator said Nelson Mandela became the first black president a new constitution had been signed, The Truth and the Reconciliation commission was established in SA after the end of the Apartheid. “Rainbow nation” is an expression to describe the post-apartheid SA nation that wanted to live at peace with itself and the world.

To conclude, SA has experienced many changes in the way power was distributed and re-distributed

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