The word “apartheid” literally means separateness, this Afrikaans word served as the rigid framework for the enforcement of policies of racial segregation and white Supremacy in South Africa. The South African National Party, having gained political power in 1948, passed various laws that promoted the minority rule by white South Africans over the back majority. With the goal to limit integration between whites and blacks, this rigid system of discrimination prohibited marriages and sexual relations between whites and non-whites, forced people of colour to live in separate areas, as well as use separate public facilities such as schools, hospitals, and restaurants. This also meant that many families were often tragically split up as parents and children were not always classified as being of the “same race”. A common test, used for identifying whites from coloureds and blacks, was known as the pencil test, the test was simple, a pencil was pushed through a persons head and the ease of removing it determined if that person had either “passed” or “failed” the test. By 1959 more than 3.5 million people were forcibly removed from their homes, and pushed into poverty and hopelessness as the government forcibly removed black South Africans from designated “white” areas.