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70 free Apartheid trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This apartheid trivia quiz covers South Africa's system of legalised racial segregation from the National Party's 1948 victory to the first free election on 27 April 1994. It starts with the machinery of the state: the Population Registration Act and the pencil test, the Group Areas Act and forced removals from Sophiatown and District Six, the dompas, Bantu Education, and the ten homelands the government tried to turn into foreign countries. It then follows the resistance and the reckoning: the Defiance Campaign and the Freedom Charter, Sharpeville, the Rivonia Trial, the Soweto uprising, Steve Biko, sanctions and sporting boycotts, protest songs from Britain and America, F.W. de Klerk's February 1990 speech, Mandela's walk out of Victor Verster, CODESA, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Roughly a third of the questions suit a school history class; the rest will test anyone who has read Long Walk to Freedom. Our South Africa and Nelson Mandela quizzes cover the wider country and the man. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on apartheid, its laws, its people and its events, and each explanation adds one more detail.
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Q 01The word 'apartheid' comes from which language?
Afrikaans
It literally means 'apart-ness' or 'separateness', from the suffix -heid.
Q 02In which year did the apartheid system officially begin, following the National Party's election victory?
1948
It lasted until 1994 and also applied to South West Africa, now Namibia.
Q 03Which was the first apartheid law, passed in 1949?
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act
The Immorality Amendment Act of 1950 followed, criminalising sexual relationships across racial lines.
Q 04How many racial groups did the Population Registration Act of 1950 sort South Africans into?
Four
The categories were Black, White, Coloured and Indian, and the last two contained several sub-classifications.
Q 05Apartheid officials sometimes classified race by pushing which object into a person's hair and telling them to shake?
A pencil
If it stayed put, the person could be classified as Coloured or Black; if it fell out, White.
Q 06Which 1950 law carved cities into zones where only one race could own property or live?
Group Areas Act
Along with the Population Registration Act it was one of the two founding laws of 'grand apartheid'.
Q 07Which of these was part of the 'grand' tier of the system rather than the 'petty' one?
Segregated housing and employment
Petty apartheid produced the 'whites only' benches and beaches; grand apartheid produced forced removals and homelands.
Q 08How many 'tribal homelands', or bantustans, was the black population meant to be confined to?
Ten
Four of them were declared nominally independent, though no foreign government ever recognised them.
Q 09Which homeland was the first to be declared 'independent' by South Africa, in 1976?
Transkei
Together the four were called the TBVC states; not one country in the world recognised them.
Q 10Roughly how many black South Africans were forcibly removed from their homes between 1960 and 1983?
3.5 million
It ranks among the largest mass evictions in modern history.
Q 11The name of the Johannesburg township Soweto is an abbreviation of what?
South Western Townships
Around 60,000 people were moved there in the 1950s in the best-publicised forced removals of the decade.
Q 12After Sophiatown was bulldozed, the government rebuilt it as a segregated white suburb under what name?
Triomf
The Afrikaans word means 'Triumph'; the original name was officially restored in 2006.
Q 13Which Cape Town neighbourhood was declared a white group area in 1966, forcing out over 60,000 residents?
District Six
Most were resettled on the Cape Flats, and the area was renamed Zonnebloem in 1970.
Q 21The town of Verwoerdburg was renamed after 1994 to what?
Centurion
Pretoria's Verwoerd Academic Hospital was likewise renamed after Steve Biko.
Q 22On 21 March 1960, police opened fire on pass-law protesters in which township, killing 69 people?
Sharpeville
A crowd of about 5,000 had gathered outside the police station after the Pan-Africanist Congress urged people to leave their passbooks at home.
Q 2321 March, the anniversary of the 1960 massacre, is marked as which South African public holiday?
Human Rights Day
It has been observed as a public holiday since 1994.
Q 14What did black South Africans derisively call the passbook they had to carry at all times in white areas?
Dompas
The Afrikaans nickname means 'stupid pass'.
Q 15From what age did the 1952 Pass Laws Act make black South Africans carry passbooks in white areas?
16
The Act replaced many regional pass laws with a single nationwide one.
Q 16In which year were the pass laws finally repealed?
1986
They had been a cornerstone of the system for more than three decades.
Q 17The 1953 law creating a separate, inferior school system for black children was named for what word?
Bantu
It defunded most mission schools and put black schooling under the Ministry of Native Affairs.
Q 18Which post did Verwoerd hold from 1950 while crafting the laws that made him 'Architect of Apartheid'?
Minister of native affairs
He crafted many of the key laws as minister of native affairs from 1950 before becoming prime minister in 1958.
Q 19In which country was the prime minister assassinated in 1966, Hendrik Verwoerd, born?
The Netherlands
He was born in Amsterdam in 1901 and moved to South Africa as a child.
Q 20Who fatally stabbed Verwoerd inside Parliament House in September 1966?
A parliamentary messenger
Dimitri Tsafendas was ruled insane and held until his death in 1999; Verwoerd had already survived being shot in 1960.
Q 24Which British prime minister delivered the 'Wind of Change' speech in Cape Town in 1960?
Harold Macmillan
The speech signalled Britain's acceptance of African independence and left pro-British white South Africans feeling abandoned.
Q 25On 31 May 1961, the day it became a republic, South Africa withdrew from which organisation?
The Commonwealth
It would have needed to reapply for membership as a republic and chose not to.
Q 26The 1955 Charter opening with the demand 'The People Shall Govern!', was adopted at a Congress of the People held where?
Kliptown
About 3,000 people gathered, after ANC volunteers had collected 'freedom demands' across the country.
Q 27The Black Sash, formed in 1955, was an anti-apartheid organisation made up of whom?
White women
It began in opposition to removing Coloured voters from the Cape voters' roll.
Q 28Nelson Mandela co-founded which armed wing of the ANC in 1961?
Umkhonto we Sizwe
Its name means 'Spear of the Nation'; the founders were inspired by Castro's 26th of July Movement.
Q 29The Rivonia Trial followed a 1963 police raid on which hideout?
Liliesleaf Farm
The farm, owned by Arthur Goldreich, had been used by the ANC and the Communist Party.
Q 30What sentence did Judge Quartus de Wet give Mandela at the end of the Rivonia Trial in 1964?
Life imprisonment
The prosecution had asked for the death penalty; Mandela's speech from the dock ended with 'an ideal for which I am prepared to die'.