ABSTRACT
Few countries attract such sustained interest as South Africa. The racial discrimination formalized in the policy of apartheid is a focus of constant media attention, both in its own right and in association with other events ranging from sports boycotts to riots. Despite many predictions to the contrary, the general framework of the policy of apartheid, introduced when the Nationalists first came to power in 1948, has now survived for a third of a century. But the impressions of stability and strength themselves obscure the inevitability of change and its potential threat to the political and economic status quo. A difficulty in adopting the accepted terminology is the possibility of indirectly bestowing legitimacy on the social reality that has generated them, namely apartheid itself. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
