Apartheid

108
look-out for ‘surfaces of footpaths that might have been disturbed’. Lists of
banned publications were provided to assist women in their quest for the safety
of their kinfolk. 180
Although the paranoia appears to be real enough, apartheid psychoses do not seem to
make their main carriers ill in quite the same way that an individual psychosis does. On the
contrary, the carriers, i.e. the oppressors, enrich themselves and flourish, even after apartheid
(in a political sense) is long gone. They do, however, also seem to harden emotionally and
lose much of their humanity. Their fertility and birth-rates plummet, and so the question
whether they really are happy or not is well worth asking. In the next section we will look at
the comparatively high rates of suicide and mental disorders within the oppressive minority
ethnic group. In my opinion the individuals who are not prone to guilt feelings and bad
conscience lead lives full of options and opportunities aside from all the material wealth
which their unfortunate compatriots of differing ethnicities lack; but even aside from the
moral dimension these lives will still exhibit uninspired and uninspiring emptiness and
meaninglessness. Furthermore, the single common denominator of all varieties of
schizophrenia, the occurrence of hallucinations, is omnipresent in apartheid.
In his last book, Edward Said dealt with Sigmund Freud’s last book, his interpretation
of the origins of Judaism. According to Freud’s original and partly compelling arguments,
Moses, the legendary founder of Judaism, was not a Jew (how could he have been?), but an
ancient Egyptian. The collective identity of Jews as a people, however, denies and represses
the (normal and healthy) open system character and the ultimate indefinability of ethnic
groups, at present especially through the modern state of Israel. It treats ethnicity as a closed
system, despite the obvious facts of human coexistence and the co-mingling of all groups,
represented by ‘Moses, the Egyptian’, in Freud’s reading. In his foreword to Said’s book,
Christopher Bollas describes how this repression is correlated with hallucinations; ‘positive’
ones, for instance, Jews projecting their own violence into the Palestinians, or, one might add,
hallucinations (or more gently: conspiracy theories) about always being victimized or
persecuted, or about the divine selection or chosenness of Jews, as well as ‘negative’
hallucinations about people (Palestinians) who are not perceived (as people) at all. According
to psychoanalysis, in Bollas’ reading, this object relation is not only ‘toxic’ but ‘psychotic’. 181
Many of the perpetrators are therefore driven insane by the system; and so are many of
the victims. Palestinian nationalism is not as destructive as Israeli nationalism is, but the
former does not have the tools of destruction that the latter does. As Jacqueline Rose points
out, however, in her afterword to Said’s thesis on Freud: ‘the most historically attested
response to trauma is to repeat it.’ 182 This should not be interpreted as putting Israeli and
Palestinian nationalism on the same moral level. One is a perpetrator, the other a reaction.
One is overwhelmingly exclusive, the other (mostly) inclusive. But in individual cases the
effects can be the same, especially in cases involving physical violence. Nationalism kills,
180 Norval: Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, 1996: 203ff. Further on the psychopathology of apartheid:
Abashiya-Malepe: Apartheid und was sie bedeutet: Die psychologischen Effekte der Apartheid auf ihre Opfer
und die Änderung der verschiedenen Einstellungen ihr gegenüber, 1977.
181 Bollas: Introducing Edward Said, 2003: 5f. Bollas points out that the idea goes back to Said: The Question of
Palestine, 1992 (1979); see for example p. 82: “...all the constitutive energies of Zionism were premised on the
excluded presence, that is, the functional absence of ‘native people’ in Palestine...”, see also 85f. Of course, Jews
are far from being completely deluded about being persecuted and victimized. Thus judeophobia, especially
European anti-Jewish acts and attitudes, must also be held responsible for the Israeli apartheid psychosis. It must
be reiterated in this context that, although massive structural pressures amount to help cause mental illness in
apartheid societies, there must still be a measure of personal responsibility in killers. In fact, there is strong
evidence that suggests that neither state terrorists nor non-governmental terrorists are usually (any more) insane
(than anyone else). See N.N.: Terrorists Are Not Crazy, Says UK Psychiatrist, July 9, 2004. See also footnote
653, below.
182 Rose, Jacqueline: Response to Edward Said, 2003: 77