Apartheid: South Africa's Darkest Evil

Hey guys, because we read Ms. Godimer's "The Train From Rhodesia", I am inspired to give you all a little insight on what apartheid truly was. To begin with, the racial discrimination and brutality experienced by Blacks in 1960s America, is nothing compared to what atrocities black South Africans faced from the Apartheid system: it was like that, but worse. Black South Africans were often times evicted and had no choice but to move into shantytowns and townships where living conditions were worse than the ghettos that we see in central Phoenix. Because there was an abundance of gold and diamonds in South Africa, Afrikaaners (Euro-Africans and Europeans) forced 'native' men eligible for labor, to work in mines, thus destabilizing the family unit. Men,women and children were often times searched, beaten, jailed, and even killed for something as petty as walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk or listening to music that was said to corrupt the minds of "natives". Often times, what started as a peaceful protest, ended in a massacre of  police gunfire and severe club beatings. Anyone captured was beaten and tortured, sometimes to the point of death. Police ransacked homes belonging to natives almost for fun. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to police knocking at your door, forcing themselves in, and 'searching' and destroying the things that you hold dear to you. Blacks were put against blacks resulting in disunity and violence in the Black South African community. This form of segregation lasted for the 1950s all the way up to the early 1990s.
If you guys would like more insight, look up Miriam Makeba. She was a South African musician who protested apartheid through her music, and was exiled for life as a result, and her records were banned in all of South Africa. One of her famous songs is 'Soweto Blues'.