This document traces the evolution of mental health care in South Africa, showing how the systemic violence of colonialism and Apartheid shaped a legacy of containment, institutional control, and profound public stigma. Historically, individuals deemed "undesirable", including the mentally ill, lepers, and enslaved populations—were isolated in inhumane conditions at sites like the Cape Town Slave Lodge and Robben Island, where restraint and surveillance took precedence over actual therapeutic care. During the Apartheid era, these oppressive psychiatric practices became deeply racialised; Black patients were subjected to forced physical labor, custodial sedation, and biased psychological assessments based on Eurocentric standards that completely dismissed local cultural values. Although the post-1994 democratic government introduced the Bill of Rights and initiated a policy of deinstitutionalisation to transition patients into community-based care, the shift was severely compromised by a lack of financial planning and resource allocation. This funding deficit triggered devastating public health crises, such as the 144 patient deaths during the 2016 Life Esidimeni tragedy, and leaves modern public clinics in marginalized communities like Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain chronically under-resourced, overcrowded, and struggling to combat deep-seated stigmas surrounding severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia.