The history of South Africa is usually divided into five eras: the pre-colonial era, the colonial era, the post-colonial and apartheid era, and the post-apartheid era. My Children! My Africa! takes place in 1985, which places it near the end of the apartheid era.
The pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras of South African history saw the Dutch and the British vie for years over South Africa's natural supply of diamonds and gold, which they discovered in the 19th century. The Boers, descendants of Dutch-speaking settlers in South Africa in the 18th century, ruled until their defeat in the Anglo-Boer War in 1902, which established South Africa as a dominion of the British Empire. The country became a self-governing nation state in 1934, between the two world wars, and apartheid began in 1948 following South Africa's participation against the Axis in World War II.
Segregationist and discriminatory laws existed in South Africa under Boer and British rule, but apartheid itself took place during the period in which South Africa was a self-governing nation state. Apartheid was driven by the rise of Afrikaner nationalism, a political ideology that opposed involvement in the war against Nazi Germany in World War II, which allowed the National Party to take power through the election of 1948. The National Party government was all white, though the population of South Africa was less than 20% white at the time. Upon being elected, National Party officials immediately began the era of racist legislation known as apartheid, which means "separateness" in Afrikaans. Under apartheid, non-white South Africans were forced to live in separate areas from whites and use separate facilities. One of the most important legislative acts of the era, the Homeland Citizens Act of 1970, moved thousands of African people from South Africa to areas where black tribes once lived; the land they were moved off of was often redistributed to white citizens. For those who were allowed to remain in urban centers, mixing between whites and non-whites was discouraged and "pass laws" were established which required non-whites to carry documents authorizing their presence in certain areas.
Opposition to apartheid built during the 1950's and 60's, but the government and police used arrests and violence to break up activist groups. One prominent activist who was arrested for his participation in opposition to apartheid was Nelson Mandela, who was jailed from 1963 to 1990. Other nations began to take action against South Africa to spur an end to apartheid in the 1970's and 1980's; The United Nations General Assembly denounced apartheid in 1973 and the United Kingdom and United States imposed sanctions on South Africa in 1985. Due to this international pressure, the National Party began to overturn the laws of apartheid beginning in 1989, and a new constitution which enfranchised non-whites took effect in 1994.
