1991: the end of Apartheid: South Africa's brutal system of racial segregation was abolished 20 years ago, making way for democratic rule.

• Author: Wines, Michael
• Position: TIMES PAST

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When hundreds of thousands of tourists poured into South Africa last summer to watch the World Cup, the entire nation basked in its moment of international glory.

Children and adults waved the country's flag and donned the South African soccer team's green and yellow jersey. And the collective hum from those piercing African horns called vuvuzelas reverberated throughout the country, from luxury estates in Johannesburg to dirt-poor shantytowns in Capetown.

"The World Cup was this opportunity where all kinds of South Africans came together behind soccer," says Sue Cook, who works as a policy adviser to one of South Africa's many black ethnic communities.

Hosting an event watched by 260 million people around the world marked an important milestone for a nation that just two decades ago was an international pariah: For years, South Africa was cut off from international trade, sanctioned by the United Nations, and excluded from global sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup because of apartheid, a brutal system of racial segregation that was abolished 20 years ago this June.

The roots of apartheid--which means "separateness" in Afrikaans, a Dutch-based language--go back to the late 1600s and 1700s, when first Dutch, then British, settlers arrived and began dominating and segregating South Africa's native black population (see timeline, p. 18). Beginning in the 18th century, a system of "pass laws" segregated and strictly limited the movement of nonwhites, who had to carry passes to enter white areas.

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Prisoners in Their Own Land

But apartheid began to take on an especially pernicious form in 1950, when the ruling Afrikaners, descendants of the original Dutch settlers, began enacting laws that forced blacks and "coloreds" (people of mixed race) to live and work in restricted areas, and barred them from owning land outside those areas.

Nonwhites soon found themselves prisoners in their own land. They were educated only enough to perform basic labor in white-run industries. They could not socialize with whites, have a voice in government, or even travel outside their designated areas without government permission. All blacks--who made up 70 percent of the population--had to carry pass books that recorded their movements, and they could be arrested for inviting whites to their homes without approval.

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Secret police spied on black activists, and arrests, beatings, and even murders of dissidents were commonplace. Nelson Mandela, who led the military wing of the leading anti-apartheid group, the African National Congress (A.N.C.), was arrested and sent to jail with a life sentence in 1964. Stephen Biko, the 30-year-old leader of the South African Students' Organization, was beaten to death by government agents in 1977.

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One of the most notorious cases of brutality took place on June 16, 1976. Black students were angry over a government order requiring that all major courses be taught not in English, but in Afrikaans, the primary language of South Africa's white rulers.

After months of classes they couldn't understand, more than 10,000 students staged a protest march on the streets of Soweto, a sprawling black ghetto near Johannesburg. Less than an hour...