Apartheid

histories of the political systems in these countries, but making a systematic inquiry into
physical and structural violence. I do not consider my writing political, since I am not writing
in the interest of any government or political party, nor in the interest of any
intergovernmental or nongovernmental organization, nor of any other legal or illegal
organization. Instead, I am writing in the interest of human rights.
In this investigation, it is true, I go beyond merely condemning racism. With George
Fredrickson, I believe scientific knowledge about racism should be used to treat racism. In
other words, we should try to understand it in order to find ways to treat it as a disease. Still,
this text is far from being uncritical towards the most victimized groups in apartheid societies.
It is in my opinion important to see both the active and the passive sides of people, although
members of the indigenous ethnic majority in an apartheid society severely lack options
compared to members of the oppressive minority. There are victims (mainly) and perpetrators
on both sides, even though apartheid is neither a symmetrical nor a reflective relationship, and
the perpetrators are fewer in both relative and absolute numbers within the oppressed
indigenous majority. It is my hope that my work might therefore also serve as a corrective
instance against a great deal of literature and discourse that tends to play down or even deny
the oppressive aspects of apartheid and represents the most privileged ethnic minority
perspective, in South Africa, which was after all still being defended by the Reagan and
Thatcher regimes during the 1980s, as well as in Israel, which is still defended by even
mightier powers at present.
* * *
During the long time it has taken me to finish this investigation – it started in 1998 – I
received support, aid, and assistance from many people and institutions. I would especially
like to thank my wife, Kim Cooper, for her patience, love, steadfast assistance, and support,
and all that I have learned from her about racism, sexism, and resistance against oppression in
general, and for inspiration and help with countless aspects of this project throughout its long
period of becoming.
Rickard Löwstedt, my brother, has also aided me in many ways, as has my mother,
Patricia Löwstedt. She, in particular, took great care in reading and improving the text and
helped me with many of the details. My debt to my entire family is unfathomable, and I wish
to thank all members of it, for helping, supporting, and enduring this research project. My
father, Robert Löwstedt, passed away during the time I was working on it. His passing and
absence have left a gaping hole in my life. His love, patience, tolerance and wise guidance, his
care for precision and detail, and his adventurous sense of curiosity, all contributed to make it
possible, and so this book is dedicated to his memory.
My elder sister, Debbie Löwstedt, who died previously, played a different but equally
enabling role in my development. Her personality, her moral sense, her voice of reason,
balance and fairness, and her dedication to the Vietnamese people during the 1970s, and to
black South Africans during the 1980s, have served this project and me both as inspiration
and as role model.
This investigation started its existence in Vienna, Austria, to which I had emigrated
from my native Sweden in 1984 in search of academic philosophy that would be relevant and
interesting to me. At first it was merely meant to be a chapter on South African apartheid’s
many parallels with the Greek and Roman structures and practices of domination in Egypt.
That chapter first came into being in the mid-1990s and was intended to be part of a book on
ancient Egyptian philosophical thought and its historical, political, and social contexts, which
I hope to finish in the near future.
I was teaching a Webster University course in Vienna, which included study trips to
South Africa, on apartheid in 1998, while I was working on that book project, and I advised
one of my students, Nisreen Bathish, to write a term paper on parallels between apartheid
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