What long-standing South African policy was discontinued in 1990?

The long-standing South African policy discontinued through reforms beginning in 1990 was apartheid, the system of legally enforced racial segregation and white-minority rule.

Apartheid became the official state system after the National Party won power in 1948. Laws classified people by race, restricted where different groups could live and work, controlled movement, and separated public facilities. Black South Africans were denied meaningful political power, while the government used policing, detention, and forced removals to preserve the system.

On February 2, 1990, President F. W. de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress and other organizations, reforms that opened negotiations with Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement. The dismantling was a process, not a single switch: major discriminatory laws were repealed in 1990 and 1991, and South Africa’s first fully inclusive national election took place in 1994, bringing Mandela to the presidency.

A common date mix-up is to call 1990 the complete legal end of apartheid. It is better understood as the decisive beginning of its negotiated dismantling; 1994 marked the transition to democratic government.