Locations and forms of power : Apartheid and Nelson Mandela

The notion I am going to present is locations and forms of power. In the first place I would like to give a definition of locations and forms of power. « Places » could be en important country or institutions which represent a certain form of power. The « power » is the ability or the capacity to exercise control, authority. It can be a person, a group or a nation. There are two types of power, it can be good or bad. I would like to present this notion by focusing on the South Africa. We may wonder how has South Africa been subjected to a bad power and how that affected the population. First of all, I’ll concentrate on Apartheid, then, I’ll talk about Nelson Mandela against Apartheid.

To begin with, let’s take for example the recording we studied about Apartheid. First I’am going to give the definition of Apartheid. Apartheid was a system of legal racial separation in South Africa from nineteen forty eight to the beginning of the nineteenth. Apartheid means « separate » in Afrikaans the language spoken by the Afrikaners who are the white population in South Africa with the English speaking population. At the time of Apartheid, white people and black people had to live in segregated places. White people mainly lived in the city and the black people had to lived in rural areas ans townships. They held different jobs and they were subject to different levels of pay. White people were more pay than Black people even if they were doing the same job. The law of Apartheid weren’t fair but they were legal. Apartheid was not a good system in South Africa, it was unfair and mean.

That’s why I’m going to talk about Nelson Mandela who was an international symbol anti-Apartheid resistance. With the video studied in class we learnt that Nelson Mandela born on the eighteenth of July nineteenth eighteenth and he chose to study law. He joined the ANC in nineteenth forty four which is a left wing political party that wanted freedom to the entire country and helped negotiate the end of Apartheid laws. Nelson Mandela became an enemy of the government and he stayed in prison for twenty seven years. Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa and he tried to reconcile all the country. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in nineteenth ninety-three and after being president he tried to solve solutions to issues like poverty, AIDS and climate change. Nelson Mandela was a symbol of peace in South Africa, he was like a hero for the black population.

To conclude I would tend to think that the system of Apartheid affected the black population and thanks to Nelson Mandela, the republic of South Africa was released from a bad power. Thanks to a long and painful fight for equality, nowadays, people for different cultures can live together in harmony.

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