Apartheid

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members of the privileged ethnicity have some kind of ethnic duty to keep the numbers of the
indigenous in check by whatever means they have at their disposal, a far from uncommon
disposition among members of the ethnic elite. The ruling ethnic minority cannot expect its
population to keep shrinking in relative terms without expecting qualitative change. In this
sense, there is no smooth or gradual development from full-blown apartheid into colonialism.
The violence is less continuous than, for instance, demographic developments are. Similarly,
there is no gradual loss of formal state sovereignty. Under apartheid, life in general is
overwhelmingly perceived by the members of the self-reified ethnic class as a perpetual zerosum
struggle for survival, although there are, especially in the modern world, more than
enough means for survival available to all.
1.1. Invasions, Uprisings, Clampdowns, Female Infanticide and Genital
Mutilation
The Ptolemies controlled Egypt in the first place by their military
presence, consisting of military settlers on the land, garrisons in key
places, and requisitioning of housing from the indigenous population
for the troops. Greeks took over much of the better land. There was for
a long time no actual use of force, merely its presence and threat, and
the Ptolemaic regime can be described as douce rather than dure. But
it was all the same a regime in which force was the ultimate guarantor
of foreign domination, and actual force had to be used to repress
various rebellions. 191
There were indeed several armed uprisings by the Egyptians, both under Greek and
Roman rule, and they were all eventually suppressed in bloody clampdowns. The most
famous revolt took place in 207 BCE, when most of Upper Egypt (Egypt south of the Nile
delta), and some additional communities in the delta, were liberated until 186 BCE.
Upper Egypt under indigenous rule during the Ptolemaic era should not be compared
to the South African and Israeli ‘Bantustans’, the small and fragmented ‘states’ or ‘state-like
entities’ that were (and are) formed by the oppressive ethnic minorities for the auto-policing
of the oppressed majorities, among other reasons in order to appease international criticism of
apartheid policies and practices, in particular charges of being anti-democratic, but also in
order to lower white and Jewish, respectively, police and security force casualties during
armed confrontations, and, last but not least, in order to deny citizenship and related rights to
large portions of the indigenous population.
No, Upper Egypt was liberated in the real sense of the term, after over 120 years of
apartheid, though apparently only due to a momentary military weakness of the Ptolemaic
state, which was also busy waging war in Asia at the time. There was also support from Nubia
– much like Israel’s or South Africa’s independent neighbors – for the insurgents, who
instated two native Upper Egyptian kings. The second and last ruling king during this 21-year
long intermezzo, Ankhwennefer, was eventually captured yet pardoned by the Ptolemies, an
indication that they realized the importance and potential counter-productivity of
martyrization of leaders of the resistance.
other words, whereas in reality they are often simply unprovoked acts of violence, carried out for reasons of
ethnicist hate or for (perceived) personal or collective Israeli Jewish gain. However, acts of violence perpetrated
by Palestinians, which are in fact almost always essentially retaliations, are only very seldom seen or referred to
as such abroad, but rather as provocations, as ‘attacks’. This gross misrepresentation is mainly due to the
victimization of all of us by apartheid ideology and by frequently coinciding elite interests on a global scale,
which go far beyond merely Israeli and Jewish interests. See further Chapter II.9.3.
191 Bagnall 1997: 236f. In comparison with most other contemporary commentators, Bagnall seems to be rather
sympathetic towards the Greeks and Romans in Egypt. Among other things, one notices this in the quoted
phrase: ‘…force had to be used…’ See also below.