The system of institutionalized racial segregation and white minority rule in South Africa, formally in force from 1948 to 1994, which classified every person by race, organized every aspect of social and economic life accordingly, suppressed Black political resistance with systematic violence, and ended through negotiated transition after decades of struggle.
Apartheid was not an accident or an aberration. It was a system — precisely designed, legislatively constructed, and violently enforced for nearly fifty years. Understanding it means understanding how racial domination is organized as a state project, and how it was ultimately undone.