Answer:
Apartheid was a historical period of state-determined and organized racial segregation in South Africa. It was characterized above all by the authoritarian, self-declared predominance of the “white” population group of European descent over all others. It began at the beginning of the 20th century, had its high phase from the 1940s to the 1980s and ended in 1994 after a phase of mutual understanding with a democratic change of government in which Nelson Mandela became the country's first black president.
Thus, during Apartheid there was a clear racial differentiation, which was reflected in services of different categories for whites and blacks, segregating public services, limiting the right to vote of black people and, in general, relegating black people to a kind of second-class citizenship with respect to whites, which led to the emergence of revolutionary movements such as the one led by Nelson Mandela.
In essence, this South African Apartheid was a replica of the racial segregation that occurred in the southern United States after 1877, with the fundamental difference that in the South African case this segregation was federal, that is, accepted by the government of the nation, while in the case of the southern states this segregation was imposed by the state governments.