This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Back in the 1980s, when Louis Smuts was growing up in Johannesburg, South Africa,

his family couldn't go outside together without breaking the law.

My father would never walk next to my mother.

My mother would always walk behind him wherever they went.

Louis was too young to understand why his parents couldn't be seen together in Johannesburg,

or as everyone calls it, Joe Burke. Louis just saw a world that treated them differently.

You know, if your mother got sick and didn't have a medical age,

she'd go to a hospital out of the city.

Whereas, when you're dead, you'd go to what is the Joe Burke Gen,

which was around the corner from where we stayed.

Healthcare, like almost everything else in South Africa, was decided by race.

Louis's father was white. His mother was colored, a local term for people of mixed race.

They'd gotten married in neighboring Swatzeland, but back home, their marriage was against the law.

When Louis was a kid, only white people could move freely in cities here,

live in the nicest neighborhoods, or access the best hospitals, schools, and jobs.

This is Dashaan Mudley. He's a South African journalist.

Black people, on the other hand, lived in the crowded outskirts,

which were far from just about everything you'd want in the city.

The country's ruling white minority called this system a part-aid,

which literally translated to separateness.

Our policy is one which is called by an African's word a part-aid.

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