Key Elements of a Democratic Government Test 1

Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa between 1948 and 1991 when it was abolished. The country's first multiracial elections under a universal franchise were held three years later in 1994.

• South Africa became independent from Great Britain on December 11, 1931, but the British monarch remained head of state. On May 31, 1961, the country became a republic, severing all formal ties with Great Britain. 
  
• After 1961, South Africa was independent of the European powers that had colonized it, but the colonizers, in the form of the white elites that dominated politics and economics in the new country, were still in charge. The country's black majority did not participate in the 1961 referendum, and they had few rights under South Africa's racist apartheid regime. True independence for the majority of the country came only in 1994 when Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress came into power following a multiracial, multiparty election.
  

Since the Dutch began to colonize South Africa in the 17th century, they pushed aside the native population to consolidate power in the hands of whites, whom they believed to be superior.

The new apartheid laws would maintain white supremacy by forcing all South Africans to identify as European, Indian, colored, or African, and segregating these races from each other as much as possible. Non-whites were forcibly relocated to isolated, not visit churches or locality of white areas, poverty-stricken areas, made to obtain permission to travel, blocked from voting and participation in government, not allowed to marry whites, and were largely barred from owning land.

South Africa is called the Rainbow Nation. This is because of its multicultural diversity, after different groups came here in previous centuries. The country's more recent history of apartheid is better known. Now people can live anywhere if they have the right opportunities, such as a good education. Rainbow nation is a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe post-apartheid South Africa, after South Africa's first fully democratic election in 1994.

• The goodness of all was the basic feature of the belief of the framers of the Constitution.
• The framers of the Constitution resolved not to repeat the racist, brutal and repressive past.
• The Constitution was framed by both the whites and the blacks who lived in the country.