The struggle of the black majority of the South African population to eliminate the system of racism and racial discrimination, which began in its modern forms 100 years ago with the creation of the South African Indigenous National Congress (renamed the South African National Congress in 1925 - ANC) on January 8, 1912, ended in success only 82 years later. On April 27, 1994, the Union of Democratic Forces led by the ANC won the first general election in the country's history. This meant the end of the apartheid system.

Keywords: apartheid, African National Congress, South Africa, Bantustan, Pan-Africanist Congress.

What changes in the social structure of the black population of South Africa occurred in the twentieth century and to what extent did these changes contribute to the success of the struggle against the white minority regime? Before answering these questions, it is necessary to understand what the apartheid system was like.

THE ESSENCE OF APARTHEID AS A SPECIAL FORM OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

Apartheid became particularly notorious, perhaps, after the shooting of a peaceful demonstration of Africans in the village of Sharpeville on March 21, 1960. However, the inhumane nature of apartheid as a form of slavery was revealed much earlier. In everyday consciousness, apartheid was usually perceived through its external manifestations in the form of a ban on black South Africans living in "white" cities and areas, a ban on marriages between representatives of different ethnic groups, as well as the presence of cinemas, hospitals, buses, benches in parks "only for whites". It was this external side that attracted everyone's attention. But apartheid is a more complex phenomenon. This is not just a system of racial discrimination. In the world were (and still are) countries where, despite the equality of all citizens enshrined in the Constitution, there is still tacit discrimination against certain groups of the population on ethnic and religious grounds. Apartheid is an institutionalized system of racial discrimination that has been made legal.

It was in South Africa that the racial classification of people was legalized for the first time after the defeat of Hitler's Germany. The main feature by which South Africans were classified as a particular group (white, colored, Indian, African) was skin color. The word "apartheid" 1 literally means "separation". In South Africa, this meant separate economic, social, and cultural development for different countries.

1 In Afrikaans - the language of descendants of white settlers from Holland - "Apartheid".

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ethnic groups of South Africa. The idea of apartheid was that different groups of the population, being on the same territory, simultaneously live and develop in different zones and, as it were, in different realities. Apartheid was based on the Law on Ethnic Settlement and the Law on Racial Classification. In political terms, apartheid meant that the black population of the country was deprived of political rights on a national scale.2 It could not elect members of the legislative bodies of South Africa and be elected to these bodies. Thus, blacks, who made up the overwhelming majority of the population, were deprived of the opportunity to influence domestic and foreign policy, development and decision-making that directly affected their interests. Of course, the creation of such a complex system was primarily driven by economic goals - to preserve the full control of the white minority over the natural and human resources of South Africa for their use in the interests of the white population. All territories with the most fertile land, with any significant mineral reserves, developed industry and transport infrastructure fell under the category of "white" areas.

Meanwhile, the white minority government could not pretend that the black population simply did not exist. Under these circumstances, it was necessary to find a form of coexistence in which blacks received some basis for their own state structure and could develop separately from the "white" state. However, for the apartheid regime, the emergence of a single "black" state, which would inevitably unite all Africans, Indians and people of color, was dangerous. And the survival of the white minority regime was largely determined by its ability to preserve the fragmentation of the black majority. To this end, a system of "nation states" was invented for Bantustan Africans (from the word "bantu" - a generalized name in "white" South Africa for all Africans, regardless of the specific ethnic group to which they belonged). Moreover, each bantustan was a pseudo-state, on the territory of which one of the ethnic groups of Africans dominated. Ten such" bantustan states " were created-according to the number of major ethnic groups of Africans. Indians and people of color were not given "states", but separate areas to live in. In these pseudo-states, Africans had some kind of self-government, could elect representative bodies of power (parliaments) and the president. Those, in turn, could create governments and adopt a budget. State symbols (flags and anthems) were created. Bantustans could develop a national culture. That is, all the external attributes of state sovereignty were created there. Of course, true independence was out of the question. Elections, like virtually all aspects of Bantustan economic, political, and social life, were tightly controlled by the central "white" government. For this purpose, there was an institution of government representatives who actually managed the bantustans. The repressive bodies and armed forces of these pseudo-states were completely controlled by white officers. And in economic terms, the bantustans were practically unviable, because their territories were allocated to the poorest areas, with scanty soils, devoid of minerals and modern industry.

In fact, bantustans performed two main functions: in political terms, they demonstrated the existence of independent states in which Africans could supposedly develop separately from whites, in economic terms, they were reservoirs of cheap labor for the "white" economy and "sump tanks" for working families - from the "white" economy to the "white" economy.-

2 Hereafter, the " black population "refers to Africans, Indians, and people of color - South-East Asians who were once imported to work on the plantations of the Cape Colony, and descendants of intermarriages with them, as well as with the native inhabitants of South Africa -" Bushmen "and"Hottentots".

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workers who have given their strength and health to the mines and factories of "white" South Africa.

Bantustans were the main supporting structure of the apartheid system. They formed the basis of the so - called big apartheid, while the outward signs of racial discrimination - buses, beaches, white-only benches, and other similar forms of discrimination-were called "little apartheid." Nor is it necessary to say that such an unfair state structure, which turned the bulk of the population into second-class people deprived of political, economic and social rights, could exist only in conditions of severe suppression of all forms of resistance. To this end, the apartheid regime created a powerful military-police apparatus that ensured both the suppression of protest forces within the country and the" neutralization " of neighboring African countries that could in one way or another pose a threat to the existence of the apartheid system.

The apartheid system received its ideological justification from the Dutch Reformed Church, which justified the fundamental differences between the "God-chosen" white and black residents of South Africa. Its adherents were mostly Afrikaners. For the same purpose, a powerful information and propaganda apparatus functioned, which extolled the virtues of the system of separate development, and also intimidated white South Africans with the" black "danger and the absurd imaginary threat of a "communist takeover" of South Africa (according to South African laws, any manifestation of resistance to the apartheid system was qualified as "complicity in communism" and was punishable by imprisonment). Strict control over the media was brought to such an extent that the press was forbidden to publish photos of Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders who were in prison for life. This political structure of South Africa was defined as "special type of colonialism". In the" classical " scheme of colonialism, the oppressing nation lives on a separate territory from the oppressed nation, usually on another continent - in Europe. Examples of "classical colonialism" were the empires created by Great Britain, France, and Portugal, as well as smaller colonial powers: Belgium, Holland, and Italy. The peculiarity of South Africa was that both the dominant and the oppressed nation lived on the same territory.

After 1960, the apartheid regime began to tighten dramatically. This was caused by the beginning of the process of decolonization of Africa under the influence of the defeat of fascism and the associated strengthening of the resistance movement inside South Africa. As British Prime Minister Macmillan put it, a "wind of change" has begun to blow over Africa. This forced the leaders of the apartheid regime to take additional, more vigorous measures to preserve the dominance of the white minority. However, the intensified repressions produced only a short-term result from a historical point of view. They were able to freeze the anti-apartheid struggle for about a decade. But it was the apartheid regime itself, with its harsh economic, political, social, and cultural discrimination against the bulk of the country's population, that inevitably gave rise to the desire of blacks to eliminate the system that condemned them to the status of second - class people.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIETY

The nature and forms of the political struggle of the democratic forces were largely determined by changes in the social structure of South African society. The features of the social structure of the South African population, the nature of its changes and the reasons that caused these changes are quite well covered in the Soviet/Russian and foreign scientific literature. Important assessments of the socio-economic foundations of South African society are contained in the works of A. B. Davidson, V. P. Gorodnov, and A. A. Makarov [Gorodnov, 1983; p. 213. Gorodnov, 1969, p. 153; Davidson, 1984, p. 357; 3 Vostok, N 5

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Davidson, 1972, p. 614; Makarov, 1981, p. 205]. These issues are discussed in detail in L. A. Demkina's book "The Social Structure of South African Society" (Demkina, 1986, p. 237). Interesting material on this topic is contained in the book "The Struggle for South Africa" by R. Davies, D. O'Meara and S. Dlamini (Davies, O'Meara and Dlamini, 1986). A great help in understanding the problems that emerged in South African society by the end of the 1970s was the book "The Whirlwind before the Storm" by well-known figures of the democratic movement A. Brooks and J. Brickhill (Brooks and Brickhill, 1980). The political positions of the middle urban strata, which formed an important part of the democratic movement, were also analyzed by the leaders of the liberation movement. This problem was given serious attention by the leaders of the liberation struggle in South Africa, J. R. R. Tolkien. Slovo [Slovo, 1985], H. Wolpe [Wolpe, 1988], P. Jordan [Jordan, 1984]. In the works of these scientists, it was noted that South Africa did not go through the process of successive change of formations. Industrial relations typical of the developed countries of Europe were transferred to South Africa and established simultaneously with the rapid destruction of the traditional African way of life.

This was facilitated by the discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa in the second half of the 19th century. The development of the mining industry has given rise to capitalist relations of production in this country. It was in the mining industry that South African-specific forms and institutions of exploitation and racial oppression were created: a system of waste houses, compound dormitories, black movement controls and passes, which were then transferred to all sectors of the economy and spheres of public life.

The Second World War and the resulting restrictions on the supply of various goods to South Africa from traditional sources in England and from other countries of the British Empire caused a reduction in imports and the development of its own manufacturing industry. This led to the rapid growth of the African proletariat, which was accompanied by an increase in the level of its skills and organization. By 1945, 40% of African industrial workers were unionized. The largest trade union association, the Council of Non - European Trade Unions, consisted of 119 trade unions with a total of 158 thousand workers. Their persistent strike struggle led to a 50% increase in wages between 1938 and 1948 (Brooks and Brickhill, 1980, p. 17). These same processes also led to an increase in the politicization of black workers. In the same period, the ruin of the black peasantry accelerated. In 1936, 51% of the able-bodied African population was in the category of peasants; by 1946, this figure had fallen to 17%, and in 1951, the number of working-age people in Africa was 17%. it dropped to 8%. The relatively small African petty bourgeoisie (approximately 60,000 people in 1939).3) was socially and politically in the same position as the black working class (Brooks and Brickhill, 1980, p. 16-17).

The basis of white prosperity in South Africa (and, consequently, their insistence on defending the system of racial discrimination) was that in the first half of the twentieth century, this system provided a high rate of profit at the expense of the overexploitation of the black population. In the 1960s, the ban of the ANC and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and other repressive measures helped the government to suppress the growing black resistance and create the conditions for an economic boom that lasted from 1963 to 1973. During these years, a record annual GDP growth of 6-8% was achieved. Suppressed by repression, wage growth for black workers also allowed for record profit margins of 11-12% [Davies, O'Meara, Dlamini, 1986, p. 28].

However, in the 1970s, due to the rapid modernization of the economy, the requirements for the professional level of workers sharply increased, and there was a need to increase the professional level of workers.-

3 Which was about 0.6% of the total population.

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increased mobility of the working class. Under these circumstances, apartheid, with its policy of reserving jobs for white workers, restricting the flow of black South Africans to "white" South Africa, and controlling their movement, became a brake on the development of capitalist relations. South African capital, which was striving to enter world markets, began to experience serious difficulties in the struggle to sell products even in its traditional "patrimony" - in southern Africa.

Until the mid-20th century. South Africa's economic characteristics were more like those of developing countries that exported agricultural products and raw materials and imported manufactured goods and equipment. In the 1970s, South African capital made serious efforts to transform itself from an importer to an exporter of manufactured goods. All these factors contributed to the emergence of a new class structure of the black population of South Africa and the formation of the social base of anti-apartheid organizations. This base was the urban proletariat, together with the rural working class and the middle urban strata that gravitated towards the proletariat.

POLITICAL ROLE OF THE BLACK URBAN POPULATION

Since the mid-20th century, South Africa has experienced a rapid growth of the African urban population. Between 1946 and 1960, its population increased from 1.9 million (or 24.3% of the total African population) to 3.5 million (31.8%). In the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s, annual economic growth of 8% led to a further increase in the urban African population to 4.4 million in 1970 and 5.6 million in 1970. in 1980 [Brooks and Brickhill, 1980, p. 167].

The growth of the black urban population was driven by objective economic demands. The transition from a labor-intensive to a capital-intensive economy has increased the need for a stable, highly skilled workforce. The white population could no longer meet the demand for skilled workers, not only because of demographic reasons, but also because of major changes in its social structure. With the modernization of the economy and the strengthening of the apartheid regime, the demand for administrative staff has increased. Whites began to move from the sphere of direct production to managerial positions. The vertical mobility of whites created a vacuum that could not be satisfied by the influx of whites into South Africa alone. This created prerequisites for an increase in the share of black skilled labor. At the same time, another important process was taking place: an increase in the share of manufacturing in the structure of the South African economy led to an increase in the domestic consumer market. As industrial exports were restricted by competition from Western countries and economic boycotts, the importance of the domestic market increased. This led to the recognition of the role of black buyers in the structure of consumption, since the purchasing potential of whites was mostly exhausted. All these phenomena created a need for stable and highly qualified, and therefore highly paid black workers, and contributed to a qualitative change in their numbers, organization and activity. If the number of the leading professional association of KOSATU at the time of its creation on December 1, 1985 was 450 thousand people, then by the time of the 3rd Congress of KOSATU in July 1989, it already included 950 thousand people [UDF News, 22.7.1989].

However, the apartheid doctrine demanded the opposite: maximum reduction of the number of Africans in the "white" areas, which included all industrial centers. The formula of the apartheid ideologues was that blacks are in white areas temporarily, no matter how long they actually live there. The concept of" permanent transience "meant that the authorities did not consider it necessary to take care of providing housing for workers' families, providing public transport organizations and commu-

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public services. The attempt to shift all the costs of maintaining social infrastructure in the villages onto the shoulders of Africans has led to a rapid increase in social tensions.

It should be noted that simultaneously with the growth of the black urban population, there was a change in its qualitative composition and an increase in its role in the political struggle. In the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of the urban black population was made up of recent immigrants from rural areas who still retained a peasant mentality. But by the mid-1970s, their children - the second generation of urban blacks-were beginning to enter the political scene. According to D. Sickings, " the growth of the urban population between 1960 and 1980 was almost entirely the result of natural growth - the excess of the birth rate over mortality. The proportion of "urban" Africans born after 1950 was one-third in 1960, half in 1970, and two-thirds in 1980. These second-generation city dwellers had a completely different life experience than their parents. It was this generation that in the 1980s put forward most of the leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle at the provincial and national levels" [Seekers, 2000, p. 10]. This process was accompanied by a gradual expansion of the number of primary and secondary schools for blacks in urban areas, and an increase in the number of Africans who completed secondary education. So, according to K. Bundy, in the largest "black" suburb of Johannesburg-Soweto in 1962, there were 8 secondary schools. By 1972, there were already 20 of them. And the number of students has tripled since 1962. By the end of 1984, there were 55 secondary schools in Soweto.

Thus, black urban youth differed from their parents not only in their life experience, but also in a significantly higher general education level. Secondary schools, according to the South African scholar K. Glaser, played a very important role in the development of the liberation struggle. In his opinion, "by the mid-1970s, secondary schools had a unique opportunity to lead the political movement in Soweto. Educated young people with similar life experiences and problems gathered there in large numbers... Schoolchildren with energy and independence, filled with the confidence instilled in them by the black consciousness movement, filled the political vacuum created after the ban on congresses "[Seekers, 2000, p. 111].

Blacks also had greater access to higher education. In 1960, there were only 800 black students in South African universities. By 1983, their number had increased to 20 thousand. To this we must add 12,700 Africans who studied in absentia at the University of South Africa [Study of the South African Institute of Race Relations, 1972; Dit., 1983]. Black South Africans who went to university were intensely absorbed in the ideology of liberation. In the mid-1970s, this was the ideology of "black identity". Since the early 1980s, as the ANC's activity grew and its influence strengthened, the "charterist" ideology (i.e., the ideology of supporters of the "Charter of Freedom" adopted in 1955 by the Congress of Peoples, in which the ANC played a leading role) began to prevail. After completing their studies, many black university graduates became school teachers, spreading liberation propaganda there. Similar processes of rapid growth of educational and professional levels took place among the working class. While in the 1960s virtually all black workers were classified as unskilled, by the 1980s in the industrial area of Johannesburg, between half and two-thirds of Africans were skilled or semi-skilled workers.

An analysis of the social structure of South Africa will be incomplete if we do not mention another social stratum - the Lumpen proletariat. Under the conditions of social instability of the black population caused by the impact of such elements of apartheid as the otkhodnichestvo system, bantustans, and forced relocations, the number of marginal people was very high. High unemployment rate, Doha-

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According to some estimates, up to 37% of the total working-age black population also contributed to an increase in the number of "declassified" elements [Race Relations Survey..., 1988, p. 293]. There are no exact statistics on this, but the number of unemployed and the crime rate in the country led to the conclusion that we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people. It was from this stratum of poorly educated, declassified elements that the South African police created groups of the so-called vigilantes and political formations that split the democratic movement.

SOME FEATURES OF THE FORMATION OF THE BLACK PETTY BOURGEOISIE

Analyzing the position of average urban strata presents a certain complexity. In South Africa, the formation of the middle class had its own characteristics. The African petty bourgeoisie did not arise as a social stratum during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, but appeared in South Africa after capitalist relations became predominant in that country. It was formed almost entirely "from below", at the expense of those elements of the proletariat and peasantry that were rising up. The process of "lowering" representatives of the middle and large bourgeoisie into the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie, which is so characteristic of Europe, was practically absent in South Africa. The African petty bourgeoisie emerged as a product of British politics in the Cape Province and Natal in the 19th century. The British authorities encouraged the development of small-scale agricultural production in order to create a market for English goods. This was perhaps the only opportunity for the primary accumulation of capital by Africans.

The destruction of the black peasantry in the interests of the mining industry and white farmers led to its proletarianization. The Land Act of 1913 eliminated the possibility of the emergence of a black small commodity producer as a class. Thus, the middle class that could have formed the social basis for the reforms of the 1980s (forced by the apartheid regime) was nipped in the bud. According to the assessment of a member of the ANC Executive Committee P. Jordan, " banished from earth and industry... The African petty bourgeoisie survived by acquiring professional knowledge. It was from this stratum of professionally trained Africans that the commercial bourgeoisie emerged after World War II ... In order to thrive, this petty bourgeoisie had to find and exploit areas that white commercial capital was either unable or unwilling to exploit... The irony of history is that it was precisely racist legislation that allowed this stratum to have a long-term, albeit fragile, base in segregated African settlements for capital accumulation" [Jordan, 1984, p. 4].

The growth of this social stratum was particularly rapid in the 1950s. By 1960, 6,202 small business owners were registered. However, this has begun to pose a serious threat to the Afrikaner petty-bourgeois sector. Black business was again suppressed by the Nationalist Party government in the interests of Afrikaner small businesses.

A decisive change in the situation of the black petty bourgeoisie was brought in June 1976 by the uprising of Soweto schoolchildren protesting against the replacement of English with Afrikaans as the main language of the education system. The pressure of events in Soweto and big business forced the government to recognize that the most promising strategy would be to cooperate with the black bourgeoisie in order to create a buffer between the white community and the liberation movement. The number of small businesses in Soweto alone increased from 1,233 in 1977 to 1,585 in 1980 (Jordan, 1984, p. 13).

There were also new opportunities for the growth of the black petty bourgeoisie, determined primarily by the significant growth of the market among blacks themselves in the 1960s and

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1970-ies as a result of the rapid development of the manufacturing industry. By the end of 1983, the purchasing power of blacks in the Johannesburg area alone (with its surrounding villages) was estimated at 650 million rand (The Citizen, 1983). A study conducted by Stellenbosch University in 1983 showed that the total purchasing power of the black population in 1985 should have been equal to the purchasing power of whites [Jordan, 1984, p. 14].

conclusion

So, by the mid-1970s, the social structure of the black population was determined by the parameters listed below.

1) The rapid growth of the industrial and agricultural proletariat. In 1976, about 4,800 thousand Africans, Indians, and people of color were employed in various sectors of the country's economy. Moreover, in 1977, the number of skilled and semi-skilled black workers was already more than 1 million 700 thousand people (excluding agriculture). [South African Republic..., 1982, p. 280].

The share of blacks in the structure of the working-age population in 1976 was 82.1%. Thus, the black working class became the leading force of social production. This was crucial for changing the balance of power in the country in the 1980s.

2) A sharp decline in the number of black peasants, and consequently a decline in the political potential of the peasantry as a class of small proprietors.

3) The accelerating growth of the black urban small and middle bourgeoisie (mainly in the commercial sector), which was subject to strong state restrictions aimed at protecting the interests of the white small bourgeoisie, and the same racial oppression that other black social groups were subjected to.

The social structure of South Africa has increasingly acquired a character consistent with modern industrial society. However, the persistence of racial oppression came into such deep conflict with the place of blacks in the country's economy that there was a powerful potential for a social explosion. The discontent of the masses with the deterioration of their living conditions led to the activation of the resistance movement. The growing political instability, in turn, led to the reluctance of Western investors to make new investments. Thus, by the mid-1980s, South Africa began to enter a period of multi-pronged economic, political and ideological crisis. Changes in the social structure of the black population of South Africa significantly contributed to the acceleration of political processes. Objective prerequisites for change have matured, and transformations have become inevitable. The activities of underground political and military structures of the ANC have significantly intensified in the country. The rapid growth of trade unions began, and the factors that were destined to have a decisive influence on the outcome of the political struggle began to crystallize.

list of literature

Gorodnov V. P. Chernye zhizni "belogo" goroda: zhizn i borba afrikanskogo ghetto [Black residents of the "White" City: Life and Struggle of the African ghetto].
Gorodnov V. P. South African working class in the fight against reaction and racism (50-60 - ies of the XX century). Moscow, 1969.

Davidson A. B. Cecil Rhodes and his Time, Moscow, 1984.
Davidson A. B. South Africa. Formation of Protest Forces, Moscow, 1972.
Demkina D. A. Social structure of the South African society and the main directions of its transformation. Moscow, 1986.

A study by the South African Institute of Race Relations. 1972, 1983

Makarov A. A. The struggle of the African population of South Africa (the 70s of the XX century). Moscow, 1981.

South Africa. Ekonomicheskiy spravochnik [Economic Handbook], Moscow, 1982.
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Brooks A., Brickhill J. Whirlwind Before the Storm // International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa. L., 1980.

Davies R., O'Meara D., Dlamini S. The Struggle for South Africa. L., 1986.

Jordan P. The African Petty Bourgeoisie: a Case Study of NAFCOC 1964-1984. Lusaka, 1984.

Race Relations Survey 1987/1988. Johannesburg, 1988.

Seekings J. The UDF. Cape Town, 2000.

Slovo J. "Reforms" and Revolution in South Africa. Sechaba, 1985.

The Citizen. Johannesburg.

UDF News. National Newsletter of the United Democratic Front. Johannesburg.

Wolpe H. Aspects of the Present Situation in South Africa // Seminar at St Antonv s College, Oxford. September 24-25, 1988.

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