E/CN.4/1999/15/Add.1 page 4 a) The Population Registration Act 1950 categorized people at birth into one of four official racial groups (White, Coloured, Indian, African); b) The Group Areas Act 1950 imposed separate residential environments for each group. In addition, under the Black (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act 1945, Blacks were forbidden to stay beyond a certain time in White-occupied areas and were required to carry a document (Pass) at all times stating their places of residence and work. Since 1913 Blacks had already been confined to 7.3% of South African territory by the Native Land Act 1913; c) The Prohibition of Mixed Marriage Act 1949 and the Immorality Amendment Act 1950 forbade interracial marriages and sexual relations between persons of different race; 5. The system was sustained through oppression and the constant use of violence against Blacks, who suffered the greatest discrimination although they comprised the largest group (over 70 % of the population). The Blacks were relegated to the outskirts of towns, in townships and in bantoustans 2/, where they lived in makeshift constructions without running water, electricity and basic sanitation. They were reduced to a cheap labour force, working as domestic servants, in mining and in agriculture. They received a rudimentary and poor quality education. A study published in 1987 estimated that public spending for each black child was less than a sixth of that for a white child 3/. 6. The new South African authorities thus inherited a country characterised by economic, social, political and cultural imbalance, and by a culture of violence stemming from its past. The partitioning of the territory and of human relations also left the country with the closed mentalities which the government is now trying to change. B. Socio-political survey 7. The new South Africa has arisen after a long struggle by its oppressed peoples, beginning in 1912 with the birth of the African National Congress (ANC) and ending, with active assistance from the United Nations and the OAU, in negotiations with the White authorities that started in 1993 in the context of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). In 1994, a provisional constitution establishing a democratic and non-racist South Africa was adopted and multiparty elections were held. 8. Those elections brought to power the African National Congress (252 of the 400 parliamentary seats), whose political programme underpins the changes that are taking place. The ANC holds power in seven out of the nine provinces (Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, North West, Northern Cape, 2/ Supposedly autonomous territories that were in fact reserves to which a dozen or so ethnic African groups were banished, from 1951, in order to keep them away from urban centres inhabited by Whites. 3/ South African Institute of Race Relations, Social and Economic Update, 8 November 1987.