South Africa
The apartheid system was designed to maintain white domination in South Africa, and the associated immigration laws implemented during white rule reflected that ideology. However the groundwork was laid well before the apartheid system was officially put in place.
In 1820 the British authorities persuaded about 5,000 middle-class British immigrants to leave Great Britain and settle on tracts of land that were being violently disputed by the Zulus and the Boers. The idea was they were supposed to provide a buffer zone, but the plan was unsuccessful because within three years almost half of the settlers had retreated to the towns to pursue the kind of jobs they had in Britain.
From 1870 onward, there was large-scale immigration to South Africa following the discovery of gold and diamonds. In the Transvaal, the site of the gold discoveries, the white population expanded eight-fold.
In 1948, while European South Africa was facing food and housing shortages, rampant inflation, and unemployment, the government ramped up state-assisted immigration from Europe in what Prime Minister Smut said was an effort to ensure South Africa’s economic and industrial expansion, and to ensure the maintenance of Western civilization.
Following the implementation of the apartheid regime’s immigration program, Europeans, primarily from Britain, arrived at three times the rate as they previously did. Meanwhile, native Africans were being murdered and forcibly removed from their land, and immigration laws were being used to arrest those who were found in “white-designated” areas for more than 72 hours.
Although the Europeans declared South Africa a white man’s country during apartheid, immigrants from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan were considered honorary whites in the country. They were granted the same privileges as white people for the sake of maintaining diplomatic relations with their respective nations.
