Apartheid organised Black life through a combination of territorial separation and economic dependence. The Transkei illustrates the system’s migrant-labour structure: the number of migrants in the five years before independence doubled from 191,600 in 1971 to 377,800 in 1976, while many Transkeians earning cash incomes worked outside the territory, notably on the Witwatersrand and in the western Cape. Across the Republic, large parts of the African population lived on white-owned farms or in townships, with rural households facing mounting pressure from population growth and changing agricultural production.

Forced removals intensified this dependence. Between 1960 and 1970, approximately half a million people were removed from towns or rural areas designated as undesirable ‘black spots’, while another million or more were moved from white-owned farms where they had lived as tenants. Many were sent to densely populated rural resettlement areas lacking agricultural land and employment opportunities. Families were frequently divided, as women and children remained in the countryside while men migrated to towns for work.

The political endpoint of the policy was the transformation of African inhabitants into foreigners within the Republic. As each Bantustan became independent, beginning with the Transkei in 1976, large numbers of Black people were formally deprived of South African citizenship. Behind the rhetoric of a constellation of states lay a single economy in which most workers were treated as labour units without the right to belong in any other capacity.

The legal order served as an instrument of political domination despite a tradition of judicial independence. Pass laws applied to Africans but not whites, exposing African people to police harassment and mass arrests. Proclamations and departmental circulars that had not been debated in parliament acquired the force of law, especially in determining where Africans could work and which jobs they might perform. Executive power increasingly bypassed parliament and the courts while responding to growing resistance.

Between 1963 and 1976, legislation denying habeas corpus empowered the police to detain people without bringing them before a court, granting access to a lawyer, or informing their families of their whereabouts. Detention could last from several days to more than a year without charges. Reports also alleged widespread torture in Namibia and South Africa. The passage identifies L. Ngudle’s death in 1963 after detention and records that, between his death and Steve Biko’s death in September 1977, at least forty-one people detained without charge died in police custody.

Political prosecutions extended the reach of repression. In December 1956, 156 respected citizens were arrested and charged with high treason in a case centred on the Freedom Charter; the trial lasted more than four years and ended with the acquittal of the remaining defendants. The Terrorism Act of 1967 defined terrorism so broadly that ordinary political activity could be construed as criminal. From 1974 to 1976, nine young Black Consciousness leaders were tried in Pretoria and sentenced to between five and six years’ imprisonment on Robben Island.

State violence was accompanied by expanding military capacity. South Africa’s armed forces grew from just under 10,000 men in 1961 to 110,000 in 1974, supported by white conscription and longer citizen-force training. The Bureau for State Security was established in 1969 to coordinate and complement police security and military intelligence, while a home guard of 75,000 commandos was organised to defend residential and industrial areas against civil disorder.

Armed resistance developed within the wider process of African decolonisation. In 1961, after the African congresses had been banned, several underground groups emerged. Umkhonto we Sizwe, led by Nelson Mandela, pursued political change through selective sabotage against installations and buildings; between December 1961 and the end of 1964, more than 200 acts of sabotage or attempted sabotage were recorded. The security police uncovered much of this underground activity, including the Umkhonto high command captured at Rivonia outside Johannesburg in 1963.

The struggle also crossed South Africa’s borders. In August 1966, SWAPO guerrillas clashed with South African forces in northern Namibia. A year later, a combined ANC/ZAPU force fought Rhodesian troops in the Wankie area, although the insurgents were defeated. After repeated failures to infiltrate South Africa through Rhodesia, the ANC later gained a shorter overland route through Swaziland following FRELIMO’s victory in Mozambique. By 1978, an estimated 4,000 Black South Africans were undergoing military training outside the country.