Should apartheid be capitalised?

Solution 1:

I would not capitalize "apartheid". None of the dictionaries I have checked capitalize it as a headword (MW, AHD, Collins, Oxford).

Capitalization, like punctuation, is one of the less settled areas of English orthography. I somewhat doubt that there is any definite answer about whether it is "correct" or "incorrect" to capitalize this word, so I won't attempt to answer that part of the question.

The Google Ngram Viewer shows lowercase as more frequent than uppercase:

This holds also for "during apartheid/Apartheid":

The Oxford English Dictionary does not capitalize it as a headword, and only includes, as far as I can see, one quotation where it is capitalized in a non-sentence-initial position (it is also enclosed in quotation marks in this context):

1949   Manch. Guardian 13 July 4/6   Thus Dr. Malan's policy of ‘Apartheid’ for the non-Europeans, which is only the Dutch word for Field Marshal Smuts's policy of ‘segregation’, which in turn is only a pretty word for repression, is achieving a position of ‘Apartheid’, in the literal sense of isolation, for the nation as a whole.

Compared to this, the OED gives about 10 examples of lowercase apartheid from the late 1940s to the 1960s, which are mostly italicized.

There may be arguments for capitalizing the first letter (at least in some contexts), but the preferred usage seems to be to write "apartheid" with a lowercase letter.

Solution 2:

In the context you have, I would capitalize it, because it refers to a specific period in history.

However, if you were to use the word not as the name of a period, but to refer to the phenomenon, as in the sentences below, it shouldn’t be capitalized.

1. He hated apartheid as a policy.

2. A certain class reaped the benefits of apartheid without ever acknowledging them.

And even

3. South Africa wasn’t better run when apartheid was practiced.

See item 3.31 of the capitalization rules from the US government publishing office. Question 2 from here addresses both cases as does item 20 here.

Solution 3:

If you’re using apartheid to denote an event, a period of time or era, then it makes sense to (https://www.grammarly.com/blog/capitalization-periods-and-events/). However, the only actual instances I’ve seen the word capitalized is at the beginning of the sentence.

If you’re using apartheid in the same way you would use the phrase “racial segregation”, then no. Although apartheid describes a specific system, it’s still a description.

I would argue both are correct in this instance because you’re referring to an event / period of time AND a specific system.