apartheid, noun

/əˈpɑːtheɪt/
Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Afrikaans, ‘separateness’.
1. In historical contexts.
a. The National Party government’s policy of racial segregation at all levels. Also attributive, and (punning) apart-hate, departheid. See also parallel development (parallel sense 1), separate development.
1944 D.F. Malan in Star 25 Jan.To ensure the safety of the white race and of Christian civilisation by the honest maintenance of the principles of apartheid and guardianship.
1950 H. Gibbs Twilight in S. Afr. 35It is worth noting that the Nationalist Government is pledged to support a policy of apartheid, segregation, under which the native shall have certain areas in which to develop his own community and culture, which will be removed from the European zones.
1952 B. Davidson Report on Sn Afr. 76On the policy of apartheid — the saving of white supremacy in the face of all the facts that it could not be saved without national suicide — the Nationalist came to power.
1952 G. Magwaza in Drum Aug. 11She..was faced with the signs ‘Non-Europeans Only’ and ‘Europeans Only’ on the entrance leading to the platform steps...But it all started looking like departheid when she saw a mass United Nations down the platforms, where passengers of all races rubbed shoulders.
1955 E. de S. Brummer in Pol. Science Quarterly Sept. 372It must be remembered that the Dutch Reformed Church furnishes strong religious support to the apartheid policy.
1960 A. Hepple in H. Spottiswoode S. Afr.: Rd Ahead 81The Nationalists claim that South Africa’s choice is between apartheid (‘separate development’) and integration, describing the former as a policy of opportunity for every man within his own race group in racially reserved areas.
1968 J. Lelyveld in Cole & Flaherty House of Bondage 8Eventually — or so the theory of apartheid, at its most preposterous, holds, the entire urban black population will melt back into tribal reserves.
1970 E. Kahn in Std Encycl. of Sn Afr. I. 472The word ‘apartheid’..came into common use only in 1948, though it had been used by academics and men in public life, especially in National Party circles, from the mid-thirties as a synonym, with a less pejorative tang, for segregation.
1980 S. Jenkins in Rand Daily Mail 19 June 9Apartheid wasn’t being dismantled but was merely undergoing some kind of transformation. This is the new apartheid, which I call neo-apartheid.
1986 P.W. Botha in Cape Times 1 Feb. 19We have outgrown the outdated colonial system of paternalism as well as the outdated concept of apartheid.
1986 M. Tsedu in Sowetan 30 Dec. 4We could swim in the same sea water..but the little shower, where there would be no contact at all, was taboo. That’s apartheid in reformist South Africa.
1987 S. Afr. Digest 10 July 2The abolition of discriminatory legislation and the moves towards political power-sharing have followed the first steps that were taken to dismantle apartheid: the opening of public facilities.
1988 N. Moloto in New Nation 10 Mar. 13Hearken and hurry to the pavements of Soweto the cities of apart-hate.
1990 Daily Dispatch 17 Apr. 1The government..had no intention of summarily scrapping cornerstones of apartheid like the Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act without putting something in their place.
1990 O. Musi in Drum Dec. 18From one corner one blonde matron was saying in a voice which would have done any mezzo-soprano proud..‘I don’t believe in aparthate, but..’.
1990 R. Malan My Traitor’s Heart 6A final solution for the ‘native question’..was apartheid, a gridlock of more than a hundred laws designed to keep blacks and whites forever separate and to ensure, not at all coincidentally, that blacks remained in their God-ordained place, hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever.
1991 G.J. Church in Time 22 July 12Apartheid was always an unworkable as well as immoral system whose breakdown was inevitable.
1991 N. Mandela in Time 5 Aug. 12Apartheid may be mortally wounded but its heart has not yet stopped beating.
b. With defining words denoting various forms of apartheid:
beach apartheid;
big apartheid or grootapartheid/ˈxruət-/ rare [Afrikaans, groot big, probably translation of English grand], grand apartheid;
klein apartheid/ˈkleɪn/ [Afrikaans, klein small], small apartheid, petty apartheid. Also attributive.
1960 Star 8 Aug. 1Members of the Provincial Council’s commission on beach apartheid proposals for the Cape coast left here today for Kleinemond.
1978 P. Lange in E. Prov. Herald 7 Mar. 1The Administrator of the Cape, Dr Munnik, is to be invited to inspect Port Elizabeth’s beaches in the light of a request to do away with beach apartheid.
1988 B. Streek in Cape Times 20 Jan. 2The Progressive Federal Party yesterday backed the call by the leader of the Labour Party, Mr Allan Hendrickse, for a boycott of the Dias Festival unless all beach apartheid was lifted.
1970 M. Tyack S. Afr.: Land of Challenge 135The Government’s idealistically motivated desire to ‘unscramble’ the South African ethnic ‘omelette’, into a constellation of nation-states for the White and the main Bantu peoples...This ‘grand design’ (popularly referred to as ‘Big Apartheid’).
1972 Sunday Times 22 Oct. 16Addressing a meeting in Stellenbosch, Mr Vorster repeated that he did not know ‘what petty or big apartheid is — for me there is just apartheid and nothing else.’
1989 W. Swing in Sunday Times 3 Dec. 27While the main pillars of Verwoerdian grootapartheid remain, there is daily erosion which varies widely from place to place.
1968 W.K. Hancock Smuts II. 512The pinpricks which some people called ‘klein apartheid’..job-reservation for whites, the shutting down of artisan training for blacks, the imposition upon Cape Town of separate racial railway carriages and post office queues.
1972 Sunday Times 5 Nov. 17Mr. Vorster is convinced that there is no such thing as petty or klein apartheid.
1982 Rand Daily Mail 25 Feb. 11As he said in his book, ‘Credo van ’n Afrikaner’: ‘If small apartheid is completely eliminated, big apartheid becomes superfluous, stupid and unnecessary.’
2. transferred sense. Any system, policy, or action which segregates people, whether based on caste, religion, gender, class, or any other social category.
[1955 Times (U.K.) 5 July 6The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Fisher, drew a parallel yesterday between the political apartheid which he has seen in South Africa, separating the nation, and ecclesiastical apartheid which prevented unity among the churches.]
1984 Drum Sept. 20The innocent Ndebele tribe is being intimidated by the majority Shona tribe to welcome a one party state in Zimbabwe. It is ‘pure apartheid’ to leave a Shona in the driver’s seat and shooting [sic] an Ndebele in the back seat.
1987 G. Silber in Style Nov. 52Apartheid: System of institutionalised discrimination applied to South African citizens wishing to visit Australia.
1989 Cape Times 10 July 6Religious fundamentalism and ‘ecclesiastical apartheid’ were behind much of the strife in the modern world, whether it be Islamic or Jewish in the Middle East, or Christian in Ulster, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie said.
1990 Sunday Times 11 Nov. 24Caste system is India’s apartheid.
The National Party government’s policy of racial segregation at all levels. Also attributive, and (punning) apart-hate, departheid.
Any system, policy, or action which segregates people, whether based on caste, religion, gender, class, or any other social category.
Derivatives:
Hence (nonce) apartheid  verb intransitive, to blame apartheid for every misfortune; apartheid  adjective; apartheidish  adjective; apartheidist  noun; apartheiditis  noun.
1952 L.E. Neame White Man’s Afr. 54At heart all South Africans are Apartheidists.
1956 A. Sampson Drum 33Over there, there’s a cemetery for non-Europeans. Of course, it’s very apartheid, even when you’re dead!
1982 Voice 30 May 4He is a protegé of apartheidists who has surprised even the proponents of this rotten ideology of apartheid.
1989 Informant, Grahamstown (now Makhanda, Eastern Cape)It sounds like he’s going to take an apartheidish view of language, but it’s not so.
1989 Argus 14 Aug. 7Afrikaans railway employee..has an acute illness called ‘apartheiditis’...He said he could not go to work because his co-workers’ racism..had sickened him.
1991 D. Beckett in Sunday Star 3 Feb. (Review) 2It boils down to blaming apartheid for every ill under the sun or moon. He’s down there now, apartheiding away.
Entry Navigation
anyswortel, nounn.Apdusa, nounn.
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary Unit for South African English