Apartheid: In South Africa, the Group Areas Act is passed, formally segregating races.

Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. Under this minoritarian system, white citizens held the highest status, followed by Indians, Coloureds and black Africans, in that order. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.

Group Areas Act was the title of three acts of the Parliament of South Africa enacted under the apartheid government of South Africa. The acts assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections in urban areas in a system of urban apartheid. An effect of the law was to exclude people of colour from living in the most developed areas, which were restricted to Whites. It required many people of colour to commute large distances from their homes to be able to work. The law led to people of colour being forcibly removed from living in the "wrong areas" where they were settled in their family, extended family cultural and / or religious groups. Despite numbering in the majority at the time, people of colour were forced into smaller lands to live in, than compared to the white minority. Pass Laws required people of colour to carry pass books and later "reference books", similar to passports, to enter the "white" parts of the country.