1948 — The Election That Brought Apartheid

On May 26, 1948, South Africa's National Party, running on a platform of apartheid, won the general election against Jan Smuts's United Party. Though Smuts won the popular vote, the rural-weighted system handed D. F. Malan the seats, and Smuts lost his own, a result that turned on geography as much as on ballots.

Within two years Malan's government legislated apartheid into law, locking South Africa into 46 years of white rule, undone only by the 1994 elections. One narrow victory at the polls thus became a system that governed where people could live, learn, work, and love for nearly half a century thereafter.