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**The apartheid government ruled over South Africa from 1948 to early 1994. South Africa under apartheid rule was not a nice scene most races were discriminated because of their skin color but the main racial differences were between whites and blacks. Whites were the superior race under apartheid rule and they did not want anybody to have the same wealth and/or knowledge as they had. So the whites made sure that other races had to suffer frome poverty and they could not get high paying jobs. Because most of the jobs they could get were working for the white people and they did not want to pay them what they actually deserved they payed them less so they could not become wealthy. And also most blacks could not go to school because they could not afford or they just did not want to. And in some cases school would be cut out because of the riots there would be for blacks to have the same education the whites had because the blacks got an inferior education compared to the whites. And some blacks were beggining to see the unfairness of that and that the reality they were living needed to change immediatley and some of those unhappy people began to go underground and create organizations to put a stop to all the unfairness and cruelty. These people were called** **Freedom Fighters. Freedom Fighters were brave men and women who stood up for equal rights in South Africa. There were many different organizations in South Africa that fought for equal rights here are just two man organizations African National Congress(ANC) and the Umkhonto We Sizwe mainly know as the MK. The African National Congress was created by tribal chiefs and heads of religious groups and is currently the ruling party in South Africa. At first these groups thought peacful protesting would work but the whites did not respond nicely to that they started to gun down people who protested and put them in jail. So these groups began to take action the groups offered an armed alternative to the peaceful, political protesting that it thought had not done enough to end apartheid. The people in these groups needed help training new members. So they started to secretly cross people over the border line to train them with the military tactics they would need. They did not just train them in that they also allowed them to go to school in hopes that when they were to take over the country they would know what political changes needed to be made other then the end of apartheid. And in some occasions some of the people were sent overseas to the United States to study. But it was not always easy for those people who went there sometimes when they came back they would not be themselves. You may think these freedom fighters were all about violence but they were not they did not all like having to hurt other people but they were just doing what they needed to do to survive. Because without these organizations South Africa may still be under apartheid laws and whites may still be the superior race. After apartheid some of the ex-freedom fighters did not know what to do with theres lives after apartheid. Some would go into politics but they just could not fit in because even though they were at acess to the school training some of them did not take advantage of it and just wanted the military training. So once apartheid was over they did not have the knowledge to get those high paying jobs because they did not know what to do. They also suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and struggle with alcohol abuse. They live in extreme poverty, like many South Africans, struggling to eat every day, to send their children to school and to pay for health care. It is sad to see a people like that after they have fought so much for there rights in their youth now that they are older they still live in poverty and can not keep jobs. **
 * [[file:untitled.bmp]]Freedom Fighters**​


 * Nelson Mandela Elected president of South Africa in 1994**

Sharpville 1960

Bibliography

[] [|**http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/091012/many-south-africas-former-fighters-now-languish**]