Apartheid

Apartheid was a system of racial segregation in South Africa during the 20th century.

Nelson Mandela was a prominent politician who fought against apartheid, (PROSE: Secret of the Black Planet, The Mandela Effect, for Monsters on the Streets of London, The Also People) along with the ANC. (PROSE: White Man's Burden ^[+]Loading...["White Man's Burden (short story)"], The Also People ^[+]Loading...["The Also People (novel)"]) In 1963, ANC members were sentenced to life imprisonment for their efforts, (PROSE: White Man's Burden ^[+]Loading...["White Man's Burden (short story)"]) and Mandela was imprisoned on Robbin Island. (PROSE: The Also People ^[+]Loading...["The Also People (novel)"])

In 1997, the Brigadier recalled that he had always known apartheid to be wrong, "but that didn't make everyone who opposed it right," as he confided to the Eighth Doctor that he had believed Mandela to be a communist terrorist. (PROSE: The Dying Days)

By the 28th century, the IT corporation Panafrica had rewritten history to portray Mandela as the founder of apartheid. (PROSE: Secret of the Black Planet)

When the Transvaal failed to be annexed into the British Empire in 1877, the Fifth Doctor wondered how the alteration to history would affect apartheid. (PROSE: White Man's Burden)

Behind the scenes

Apartheid, officially known as "separate development", was a system gradually created by the ruling National Party from 1948 to its eventual dismantling in the early 1990s.

The short story Secret of the Black Planet depicts the Panafrica corporation falsely rewriting history to portray Nelson Mandela as the architect of apartheid. In the real world, the architect of apartheid was Hendrik Verwoerd.

The television stories The Savages and The Mutants were written as deliberate analogies to apartheid in South Africa.