Apartheid

come out but it was probably put in the water. That, again, is
something you produce to use in enemy territory, not on your own
people. And it doesn’t make any sense, if you want to make a dent in
the black population, to poison a couple of hundred people, putting a
strain on your own health services. You need to kill 10 million to
make a difference. 214
123
Odendaal’s afterthought apparently makes it acceptable, even preferable, to kill ten
million Blacks (to make a ‘dent’), rather than just a few hundred. Of course, Odendaal may
also be speaking satirically here. But if he is, then there were other people close to him at the
time who really thought this way. We will deal with the ubiquitous apartheid motivation and
justification by means of ‘demographic necessity’ for mass killings, especially in South Africa
and Israel, in the next section.
The revelations of (some) details about the extensive chemical and biological weapons
program, and indeed of its existence, are due to the TRC and could be considered one of its
greatest victories. Without its amnesty provision the world might never have known anything
at all about ‘Project Coast’ and the ‘Medical Battalion’.
Aside from the TRC cases, there are many other examples that demonstrate the
brutality and often illegality of physical violence practiced or condoned by the South African
ruling minority. Between 1948 and 1954, 104 Africans were killed and more than 240
wounded by the police in cases related to political demonstrations alone. By 1960, the
estimated number had risen to over 300 killed and 500 wounded, mainly by gunfire and
beatings. Compared to the more than 1,000 Palestinians killed by the state of Israel similarly
in 2002 alone, this is not a great number. It is, however, enough to warrant investigations,
especially since victims are still paying the price for these crimes today. In the Soweto
uprising, over 200 unarmed and peacefully demonstrating unarmed children and youths were
killed by police and soldiers on June 17, 1976, the first day of the uprising. The police also
injured hundreds of minors, arrested and imprisoned hundreds more, subjecting many to
brutal torture. 215
In retrospect, it may be the greatest shortcoming of the TRC that it has concentrated so
much on physical violence, and left a great deal of structural violence out of the picture.
Nobody applied for amnesty, because none was needed, for condemning millions to poverty, a
lower quality of life and a shorter life expectancy. This is all the more disturbing since it has
been estimated that more than 1.5 million people were killed directly or indirectly
(particularly in famines that broke out as results of the wars) by the South African apartheid
(in the narrow sense) regime, but ‘only’ around 26,000 in South Africa itself during those 46
years. 216 At least 98 per cent of those killed were thus outside the country, particularly in
Mozambique, Angola and Namibia. Many of these victims were of course South African
freedom fighters in exile, but there were very large numbers of indigenous civilian and noncivilian
victims in these countries as well. Partly because of the continued absence of an
operational International Criminal Court, due to the active resistance from a few rogue states
such as the USA, Israel, China, North Korea and Libya, nearly all of the crimes of South
214 Boateng 2001. Originally quoted by William Finnegan in The New Yorker magazine, January 15, 2001. On
the so-called ‘health services’ for Blacks in South Africa under apartheid, which in fact consisted of twice as
many family planning clinics as health clinics in 1991 and included forced sterilization, see Chapters II.2.2 and
6.2, below.
215 Mandela 3 1990 (1978): 125; Bonner & Segal: Soweto: A History, 1998: 88-93
216 See African National Congress: Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1996, and Further
Submissions and Responses by the African National Congress to Questions Raised by the Commission for Truth
and Reconciliation, 1997. Chomsky puts the figure even higher: ‘During the Reagan years [1981-1989]
alone…US/UK-backed South African attacks against the neighboring countries killed about a million and a half
people and left 60 billion dollars in damage and countries destroyed.’ Chomsky: The New War Against Terror,
2001.