Apartheid

1. Violence
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The use of physical force fulfils multiple functions in the service of the oppressive
ethnic minority in an apartheid society. It breaks down counter-violence and resistance to
conquest and oppression, it helps clear space for more invaders, and it bullies, threatens,
intimidates, wearies and frightens the remaining conquered people into humiliation,
submission, servitude, cooperation and collaboration with the new elite. In apartheid, the
invaders are the ones collectively responsible Sonia Dabbous for starting the violence, and at
least as long as an apartheid society exists, the violence engendered by it never stops, although
there are vicissitudes.
A second kind of apartheid violence, counter-violence, or ‘reverse’ violence,
perpetrated by the oppressed and their allies, must be seen as legitimate to some extent,
mainly because of the ultimate provocation contained in the invasion, but also since it is
simply not the case that any adult members of an oppressive apartheid minority can be
considered unequivocally as civilians in the war that apartheid is. 186 Almost all of them,
including sometimes their descendants over many generations, profit personally in some way
or other from the gross human rights violations inflicted on the indigenous people. In Israel,
moreover, both (Jewish) men and women are conscripted to military service. Resistance
against apartheid can therefore be interpreted as self-defense. And self-defense, to paraphrase
Malcolm X, is not violence, it is intelligence. 187
Nevertheless, only immediate and direct self-defense could in my opinion ever totally
exonerate someone from killing or maiming a fellow human being. By ‘immediate and direct’,
I mean clear and present danger to human life.
Members of the oppressive apartheid minority, however, should in my view never be
totally exonerated from killing or maiming any member of the oppressed population (or
anyone else opposing apartheid) in an apartheid society, even if there is clear and present
danger, simply because they should not be there under those circumstances. No matter what
other circumstances there are, there can in my view never be any justification for an absolute
moral excuse, a clearing of all guilt, through reference to self-defense for any member of an
invading and oppressive ethnic group for the killing or wounding of a member of the
oppressed one, or of anyone else actively or passively resisting the gross human rights
violations that define apartheid. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South
Africa attempted and to some extent succeeded in putting this tenet into effect by shaming
those who admitted guilt, although they were mostly also granted amnesty for their crimes.
This was done mainly for the purpose of national reconciliation, but perhaps also due to a
186 Manuel Castells points out that, ever since Antonio Gramsci’s original analysis of the concept, ‘civil society’
is best considered to consist of people on the one hand, and extensions of state power on the other. ‘It is precisely
this double character of civil society that makes it a privileged terrain of political change by making it possible to
seize the state without launching a direct, violent assault.’ Castells, Manuel: The Information Age: Economy,
Society and Culture, Volume II, The Power of Identity, 1997: 8f, quote: 9; see also Said: Orientalism, 1979
(1978): 6f. This is true for all societies, but the extension of state power is no doubt exceptionally strong in a
civil society consisting of an oppressive ethnic minority which came to power through a de facto invasion, i.e.
within the oppressive class in an apartheid society. Civil society is therefore comparatively weak in an apartheid
society. As I argued in the previous section, it is a society in a state of war. Of course, this should not be
interpreted in any way so as to diminish the legal and moral responsibilities of individuals belonging to the
oppressive class: on the contrary. They are not just subjects of the state. They are also its most privileged class.
They, or at least some of them, run the state.
187 ‘I don’t even call it violence, when it’s self-defense. I call it intelligence.’ Quoted in the motion picture, Do
the Right Thing, produced, written and directed by Spike Lee, 1989, a Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks
Production. (Concerning the name of Lee’s film production company: Forty acres of land and a mule were
initially promised to each freed slave by members of the US government, but the promise was never fulfilled.
The former US slaves and their descendants, like those of the British Empire and of all other European powers,
have to date received nothing in reparation for what is arguably the greatest crime against humanity in all of
human history. See further, footnote 736.)