The apartheid era in South African history refers to the time that the National Party led the country’s white minority government, from 1948 to 1994. Apartheid (Afrikaans: “apartness”) was the name that the party gave to its racial segregation policies, which built upon the country’s history of racial segregation between the ruling white minority and the nonwhite majority. During this time, apartheid policy determined where South Africans, on the basis of their race, could live and work, the type of education they could receive, whether they could vote, who they could associate with, and which segregated public facilities they could use.