Aneta Pawłowska University of Łódź THE FEMALE ART OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE SECOND WAVE OF NEO-FEMINISM The Republic of South Africa is a world in itself and in essence it is indeed very hermetic. For many decades South Africa has been living entirely on its own rhythm, which was completely different from the European beat. The concept of the separate development of human races, which was introduced in the 19 th century, found its culmination after the end of the Second World War. This concept found its fullest practical expression in the policy of apartheid which was introduced in 1948 in South Africa, which in essence was a doctrine that assumed a policy of racial segregation, connected with political and economic discrimination of black African s and other “colored” races. 1 The idea of the segregation of races resulted in the completely new situation that the principal dividing line in the society of the country did not run any more between men and women (as it was the case in Europe and in the United States of America) but it followed the person‟s skin color. Black women found themselves in the situation which could be described as “doubly disadvantageous” because not only the patriarchal tribal system made them obey the rule of their husbands or fathers, but additionally they were subordinated to the white colonizers. These cruel rules of segregation, which divided the society into two separate groups: the small privileged 1 Starting in 1948, the Nationalist Government in South Africa enacted laws to define and enforce segregation. The main laws were: Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act no. 55 of 1949; Immorality Amendment Act, Act no. 21 of 1950; amended in 1957 (Act 23) – Prohibited adultery, attempted adultery or related immoral acts between white and black people; Popula- tion Registration Act, Act no. 30 of 1950 – led to the creation of a national register in which every person‟s race was recorded and Group Areas Act, Act no. 41 of 1950 – forced physical separation between races by creating different residential areas for different races.