Apartheid
| The touchy subject of |
| Key concepts |
| Racism and racists |
“”Apartheid is essential to the free world.
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| —Ronald Reagan, freedom-fighter.[1] |
Apartheid was the codified system of racial segregation founded on principles of white supremacy that was in effect in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.
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[edit] Its nature
While similar in spirit to laws that limited the rights of African-Americans until the passing of the Civil Rights Act, apartheid encompassed a far stricter set of rules; it denied non-whites any sort of participation in the democratic process, limited where people could work and live, and went so far as to prohibit sexual liaisons across racial lines. Essentially antebelleum America without the slavery.
Official South African government policy during this time was to racially classify the South African population into four groups: whites, "coloured" (i.e. those of mixed ancestry), Indian, and "Bantu" (a Bantu language word meaning "people," but in apartheid parlance meaning all blacks.) Only whites were allowed participation in South Africa's government, and the four groups were assigned separate neighbourhoods, beaches (and guess whose beaches got the shark nets), and so on. People had to have special permission or passes to enter areas assigned to another racial group, ie. to work there.
As blacks made up 3/4 of South Africa's population, starting in 1951 the government set aside Bantustans, or black homelands. Black people were then granted "citizenship" in their respective Bantustans, and their South African citizenship was revoked, as a way of codifying their lack of voting rights in South Africa. Indians and "coloured" were not assigned any homelands at all. Starting in the 1970s South Africa embarked on a policy which would grant national independence to the Bantustans, leaving the rest of South Africa sans the Bantustans for whites, who were only 10% of the population. They only got as far as declaring four of the Bantustans independent nations, none of which received any international recognition as such, before international pressure and tensions between the South African government and the four independent Bantustans (South Africa kept invading them to restore "order" after their governments had the nerve to actually act as independent nations instead of merely puppet governments) convinced them they really didn't want to continue to go down that route.
During most of the apartheid era, South Africa's neighbors included countries friendly to their apartheid policies such as Mozambique (then a colony of the right-wing Portugese regime), Rhodesia (also ruled by a white minority government), and South-West Africa (a protectorate of South Africa, now Namibia). However, by 1980 both Mozambique and Zimbabwe were independent, followed by Namibia in 1990, and South Africa found itself increasingly isolated and fighting its neighbors, now ruled by post-colonial (in many cases Communist) governments. International pressure to end apartheid became a major issue in the 1980s.
Jerry Falwell's good Christian response to apartheid, in 1985, was to declare Desmond Tutu a "phony," denounce the U.S. Congress' move to enact economic sanctions against South Africa, and encourage people to buy South African Krugerrand coins. This was in keeping with his earlier denunciations of the US Civil Rights movement (starting in the 1950s) and more liberal clergy who supported it (like many others, he did a quick about-face and recalled the newsletters in which he made these statements after the wind had firmly blown the other direction).
Apartheid ended in 1994 thanks in large part to black leaders like Tutu and Nelson Mandela, as well as President F.W. de Klerk[wp] realising that the whole situation was untenable.
[edit] Canadian self-congratulation moment
One of Canada's first big moments as an independent actor on the international stage took place in 1960, when it played a determining role in ousting South Africa from the Commonwealth after the Sharpeville massacre, over the objections of the Aussies (this was at the tail end of the White Australia policy era), the Kiwis and the Brits (who themselves were having serious troubles adapting to an influx of Black folks[wp]).
This was a huge foreign policy coup for Canada, helping to establish it as a middle power that could act independently of Britain (and maybe the U.S.) It was also a stopped clock moment for the Conservative Party of Canada.
A second coup, and a second broken clock for the Tories, came in the 1980s, when Brian Mulroney, Canada's second-worst Prime Minister (the worst being the current one, whenever you read this) was a constant thorn in the side of both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher over apartheid policy.
[edit] Apartheid and the American right
Many prominent conservative and religious right figures supported the apartheid regime to varying degrees, including Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, Jesse Helms, Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell, P-Rob, and Grover Norquist. [2]
Apartheid apologism persists in the American far right to this day, typically based on an argument that it was a just measure to protect the white minority from being overrun by the black majority. One fringe right group, Youth for Western Civilization, claimed that apartheid helped prevent homosexuality and moral decay.[3] Because, you know, seeing black people makes you gay.
[edit] Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Israel's control of the West Bank has been labeled as an example of modern apartheid by anti-apartheid archbishop Desmond Tutu [4], ex-Israeli attorney general Michael Ben-Yair [5], former president Jimmy Carter, and the head of the UNHRC[6]. Arabs in the area live under military rule and law while settlers live under Israeli civil law, and are segregated from the illegal Israeli settlements. Palestinian Arabs are prevented from using certain Israeli-only and settler-only roads, are seriously restricted in their freedom of movement through military checkpoints, have to ride on separate public transportation compared to settlers, have unequal water allocation compared to Israelis and settlers, need permits to enter certain areas of their territory (military zones), and are under threat of eviction because of discriminatory allocation of permits which impedes their development of buildings. As B'tselem notes in its 2002 report Land Grab, "The fundamental truth is that the growth of these settlements is fueled not only by neutral forces of supply and demand, but primarily by a sophisticated governmental system designed to encourage Israeli citizens to live in the settlements. In essence, the process of assimilation blurs the fact that the settlement enterprise in the Occupied Territories has created a system of legally sanctioned separation based on discrimination that has, perhaps, no parallel anywhere in the world since the apartheid regime in South Africa." [7]
South African apartheid and the effects of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands share the same spirit of exclusion, appropriation and marginalization, but there are some notable differences. South Africa relied on black workers to sustain its economy. Israel, on the other hand, does not necessarily need Palestinian workers in great amount as they can rely on foreign nationals thanks to globalization. In South Africa, the apartheid regime at-least tried to improve the lives of blacks living in the Bantustans by subsidizing hospitals, schools, and universities. In Israel, the improvement of the material conditions of Palestinians relies on international donors.
The Palestinian Authority, who exercise control over areas A and B that resemble enclaves, function as a kind of Bantustan government reliant on Israel to suppress political resistance similar to the governments of Transkei and KwaZulu. "One of the meanings of Oslo," former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote, "was that the PLO was . . . Israel’s collaborator in the task of stifling the first intifada and cutting short what was clearly an authentically democratic struggle for Palestinian independence."[8]
These policies have also sparked fears within Israel that Israel is slowly becoming an illiberal democracy or an ethnocracy.[9]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- BBC's archive of South African apartheid
- Apartheid's Useful Idiots, The Atlantic (Here's a few more: Nixon, Kissinger, Thatcher, Cheney, Buckley, Swaggart, Robertson, Helms, Inhofe, Buchanan, Norquist, Abramoff, and the Heritage Foundation.)
- District 9, Hollywood sci-fi's take on the townships.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Can't make this stuff up. (Also, this video.)
- ↑ Brian Tashman, "Remembering The Religious Right's Attacks On Nelson Mandela," Right Wing Watch, 12/5/2013.]
- ↑ Right wing watch: Youth for Western Civilization: Apartheid Apologists
- ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/29/comment
- ↑ http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-attorney-general-urges-eu-to-recognize-palestine/
- ↑ http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/24/us-palestinians-israel-un-falk-idUSBREA1N19I20140224
- ↑ http://www.btselem.org/download/200205_land_grab_eng.pdf
- ↑ Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab trag- edy (New York: 2006), pp. 191, 211.
- ↑ http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.626809