Apartheid wrongfully vilified?

[Gao Bohan]

I think anyone advocating apartheid should be flogged within an inch of their life and then locked away forever in a 2-foot-square windowless cell without a toilet.

So much for human rights.

[Gao Bohan]

And that is ALL you have to say.

That's correct. Supporters of openly racist policies such as apartheid aren't worthy of anything but open hostility. Certainly they aren't the types to be reasoned with, so why bother? Just lock 'em up and throw away the key, I say.

And free speech.

[Gao Bohan]

How many South Africans have you spoken to? I've met quite a few who - although admitting Apartheid was wrong - saw it as a necessary evil. I've spoken to a few ex-military who are proud of their part in stopping Southern Africa from turning commie in the 1970s and 1980s.

Despite being unhappy about the current situation vis-à-vis crime and employment opportunities for young whites, all the white South Africans I've met in person and had any relevant discussion with seemed to be deeply embarrassed at their nation's racist past. None of them admitted thinking that apartheid was a necessary evil.

What is it about "racism" that leads you to generalize across an entire class of people in order to denigrate them?

Racists treat people of other races as subhuman, and are therefore by definition worthy of contempt. No generalization is necessary.

Then you are worthy of contempt, because you treat racists as subhuman. Oh sorry do the rules not apply to you?

[jdsmith]

I would prefer to hear and try to understand why someone feels they are racist than to say, "Hey, you're a racist."

[politbureau]

What is racism? Can anyone clearly define it? I suspect that "racism" means different things to different people.

The odd thing is that, in my experience anyway, those who are most wont to accuse others of racism seem the most reluctant to define exactly what it is.

[TainanCowboy]

Even the word --Discrimination -- is not really a defining term.
Everyone does, and should, discriminate constantly.
I guess its how the parameters of the "discrimination' is/are applied that are under question.

[bismarck]

Hi ImaniOU, that was a really thoughtful post of yours. I'd like to comment and add to a few points there.

It's comparable to having a house with a small backyard and suddenly someone tells you that you have to move out to the yard so someone can live in your house. And then, those people start building extensions which go into the yard (and albeit, do some home improvement). Was it really a surprise that when given the okay to move back into the house, black South Africans went crazy and started taking back more than just what they were given? Here's your house back, but you can only have the guest bathroom.

They (the black folks) never went crazy. Not in South Africa, and not yet, at any rate. Many people feared there would be a civil war, or right wing elements (which really make up such a small percentage of white Afrikaner Saffas as to be negligible) would attempt to destabilise the country etc... And then, my personal favourite, some actually believed the Apartheid propaganda of the 70's and 80's, that once given freedom of movement the "black masses" (known in Afrikaans as die swart gevaar or black peril) would swamp and overwhelm the whites, move into our homes, kill our families and push us all into the sea. Sure, there is an equally racist and idiotic right wing black element who actually said they wanted to do this and are famous for their "one settler, one bullet" phrase. However, this group forms an equally small and negligible percentage of black people.
What really happened was that on election day on April 27, 1994, people of all races in SA formed enormously large lines to cast there vote and went home and did the same thing they always do. Have a braai (bbq) with family and friends, have some beers, watch rugby (or soccer) and talk about sport. The next day, all that was different from the day before was that a new flag was hoisted and our President was no longer a white guy.
The house and backyard analogy may be appropriate for other African ex-colonies, but with South Africa the analogy is more like; they (the Bantu tribes) had a house and yard. There was a neighbouring plot next door with an even older group of tenants (khoi khoi) and some other occupiers who came and went from time to time (Bushmen or San people). Whites came and rented some property from the neighbouring tenants and after awhile started to move further into the neighbouring plot without paying for rent pushing some of the original tenants into the Bantu neighbours backyard. The Bantu neighbour (Xhosa) and whites eventually killed off the original Khoi Khoi. Then the white tenants started moving into the Bantu guys backyard and told him, "ok, we're taking the house, you have to live in the backyard and aren't allowed to come into the house anymore. You can only come into the house if you come to clean it but you must go back to the backyard before dark."
That is a more longwinded but more accurate analogy.

The point you mention is still valid however. One would expect someone kicked out of his house, and then reobtaining said house to get a little over zealous. But this is the hallmark of the entire transition period in SA. There was no violence. The only violence occurred before the elections and was primarily between Inkatha Freedom Party (Zulus) supporters and ANC (predominantly Xhosa) supporters. Some would have you believe that crime in SA is directed at whites and is out of control. The truth is, yes, it is out of control. And crime in SA is marked for its violent nature. That is, instead of having for cel phone stolen, you have your cel stolen and a knife in the ribs.
The fallacy, however, is that violent crime is directed at the whites. It isn't. 80% of crime in SA is directed at blacks. Most of the crime takes place in townships. For every white women raped, eight black women are raped. For every white murdered, more than eight blacks are murdered, on any given day. This makes sense in that for every white person in SA there are approximately eight black people. Where it gets "disproportionate" is when items are stolen that are still not equally distributed amongst the population. Car hijacking being a point in case. Most car hijackings are crime syndicate affairs, and they go after certain makes and models. If a BMW is to be hijacked, chances are, the injured party will be white and not black. Another area is violence on farms, however, the farm murders ARE NOT committed by the farm labourers (who are often victims themselves, especially if they are working in or around the farmhouse at the time of the crime). These murders and roberries are usually carried out by young black men not part of the farming community, which is one of the reasons that has given rise to speculation that farm murders are in fact orchestrated and organised by one or another politically radical group.

It also makes me wonder that if they were not oppressed so horribly, especially in education and medicine, would they have developed HIV so quickly or have adhered to antiquated medical beliefs? I mean, the number one tool to ignorance is education, but they were not allowed much of one because of apartheid, were they?

Good point. But in Africa, and I can really only comment with any real credibility on Southern Africa, this is not always a question of education. President Mbeki is of the opinion that AIDS/HIV is a result of poverty. He's very adamant on this point. Here, I agree with you and believe it (or at least the growth and spread of the disease) is a result of education.
Furthermore, I believe they (the Gvt) spend way too much money on crap like changing street names etc (Which incidently, has cost the country billions. Yes, billions.), whereas that money could be much more wisely spent on primary and secondary education. Adult education is another area that needs to be concentrated on, as a great many adults (older than 40) are illiterate.

However, education may not be the Holy Grail we give it credit for.
Pres. Thabo Mbeki: MA Economics, University of Oxford, UK. Sure, he's a smart man, but he's still given to pearls of wisdom such as, "Crime is within normal parameters in South Africa." And "HIV doesn't cause AIDS, poverty does." On the latter quote he got into an argument with medical experts from around the world in an International aids conference in SA in 2002.
Ex-Vice President Zuma: After raping an HIV positive woman, "But I took a hot shower after the act."
Dr Tshabalala-Msimang: Although she's a medical doctor, and the Minister of Health, she still subscribes to her own (she says, proven) home remedy for treating AIDS. It is a concoction of beetroot and tomato juice.
The point is, and we see that everywhere in the world, education is sometimes eclipsed by cultural practices (such as going to a traditional healer - even in Taiwan many folks still swear by Chinese medicine over modern medicine), and plain old ego. Unfortunately, when people in authority and power utter these quips of idiocy, we can hardly blame the masses for following that advice headlong, especially when the vast majority aren't educated beyond a primary level.

But in essence, I fully agree with you on that point. Education is the key, and already in South Africa we have an entire generation of young people that went to school together and have been educated equally. Schools became integrated in 1990 already. So we have an entire group that has had primary, secondary and University education equally and integrated and are now in the second generation. It must be realised, however, that this first integrated generation is now only just entering the job market and as such the positive effects thereof will only become fully evident in another ten years once they start moving into middle and top management.

In some ways, while keeping them separate might not be to blame, their oppressive treatment is. And without an education to teach them to do much more than menial work while not dealing with crime properly, is it any surprise that the ending of the apartheid was the powder keg it was?

Once again, it wasn't quite the powder keg reactionary bitter Saffa expats would have you believe it was. Education takes time. Correcting an imbalance that was entrenched for more than 40 years takes time. Things have gone relatively smoothly, although there have been hiccups.
On this point, I'd also like to mention that things could not possibly go the way of Zimbabwe in South Africa. There are numerous reasons for this.
1. The white population is huge in South Africa. In fact, when broken into ethnic groups the tope three are:
a. Zulu
b. Xhosa
c. Afrikaner (that is not including English, Portuguese, Greek, Italian or Lebanese Saffas)
I mention this in order to indicate that the white SA population is by no means a negligible part of the national population that can be dispensed with at will. It is a very large (24% of the total) extremely economically active part of the populace, that although they still control 70% of the wealth, also provide 70% of the jobs. It should also be mentioned, then, that within the scope of providing jobs, more and more black executives are being admitted to upper echelons of management and into shareholder roles within companies.
2. The South African economy is huge.
3. Reallocation of farms is being conducted on a willing buyer, willing seller model. Apart from that, the farming sector only makes up 2.6% of the GDP, so even Zimabawe style land grabs (which wont happen, as it is unconstitutional, and there are numerous other checks and balances in place) wont really hurt the economy much. Zimbabwe was reliant on commercial farming which provided close to 60% of their GDP and supplied almost 100% of their own food needs.
4. South Africa's economy is still growing rapidly, at more than 2.5% annually (although it is actually needed to perform at nearer 5 to 7%).
5. Average Saffas (even poor ones) are financially much wealthier than ten years ago, and the country as a whole is phenomenally more wealthy than 15 years ago. Due largely to being re-admitted into the international economy, free trade and the steady flow of foreign investment.

I am not condoning the actions of either, just trying to find a metaphor to empathize how they might have felt and what went so wrong.

Apartheid was an awful business. I remember being on a military course with members of other arms of service. My room mate was a black lieutenant from the medics. For some reason we clicked and had these long conversations at bed time. One night, out of interest, I asked him if he was an ex-Mkhonto we Sizwe (military arm of the ANC) member. He replied he had been in APLA, the right wing extreme armed wing of the PAC. I was shocked and asked him why them, why not MK?
He then related the story of when he was a young boy in the early eighties, his brother had run away to join APLA. As a result his house (more of a rusty tin shack actually) was watched by security personnel of the time.
He told me of how when he was about ten, police kicked their door in and demanded to know where his brother was. Surely, even if they knew (which there was no way they would have) they wouldn't have said anything. Who would? So they hit his mother in the face with the butt of a rifle and continued to question them. All this played out in front of him and his younger sister. He said, it was the anger that he felt that led him to join APLA.
Lying in bed in the dark, I was very happy the lights were off. Sure I didn't do that to his mom, but how can anyone help but feel utterly ashamed. Then try to place yourself in his shoes. How would you feel if someone came into your home and smashed your mom in the face with a rifle butt?

This was his story, but there must be thousands or even millions of similiar ones out there in SA. It is with that backdrop that makes the peaceful transition to democracy in SA even more wondrous and awe inspiring.

[sandman]

Your posts are fantastic, Bismark. Fascinating, perceptive stuff eloquently put. Apart from that ridiculous final signature line, that is.

[bismarck]

Your posts are fantastic, Bismark. Fascinating, perceptive stuff eloquently put. Apart from that ridiculous final signature line, that is.

What part of my signature don't you like? I feel hurt. I'm going to pout and cheer myself up by watching a rugby match now....

[urodacus]

+1 bismarck.