Apartheid

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Interlude: The Other Gross Human Rights Violations in Apartheid
The Pervasiveness of Apartheid
Any theoretical treatment of gross human rights violations must include more than just
the occurrence of physical violence, although the latter tends to dominate headlines and mass
media reports with regard to recent apartheid societies. Section II.9 will deal with one of the
reasons why the mass media are often subtly made to focus on physical violence (minus
femicide) and to marginalize or even to eliminate all other aspects of the oppression, or the
war, in their coverage of apartheid. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) was exemplary by pointing out the inadequacy of understanding apartheid as merely a
kind of physical violence through its inclusion of hearings on business, labor, judiciary,
health, faith community, prisons, compulsory military service, children and youth, women,
and the mass media under apartheid.
Yet these hearings barely scratched the surface of a massive problem and never led to
any grants or denials of amnesty – only to a few limited, mumbled apologies by apartheid
perpetrators with elaborate qualifications and extremely careful maneuvering and
safeguarding against potential legal precedence effects. 298 Powerful white South African civil
institutions, especially business organizations, and individual civilians, apparently made sure
that any blame of Whites for apartheid would be shouldered by the state alone. And the state,
in its turn, made sure that amnesty provisions would leave all, or nearly all, individual stateemployed
perpetrators judicially blameless, as well. Only a few lower echelon individuals
(some of them black policemen) with plenty of blood on their hands would suffice as pars pro
toto objects of blame, hate, and retribution for the majority population and the world.
By not having punished or even sanctioned any of those ultimately responsible, South
Africa – as opposed to the United Nations – still does not really consider apartheid to be a
crime against humanity, not even a crime, but as a number of ‘mistakes’. In a response to
TRC questions about widespread torture sanctioned, organized, and perpetrated by South
African state employees, the last apartheid president of the country, F.W. de Klerk, stated:
I’m not saying we were perfect…I’m not saying we didn’t make
mistakes. Detailed operationalisation (of security policy) takes place
at a much lower level…that is where, either through over-zealousness
or a male fide approach, where things get out of hand. History has
subsequently shown that, as far as the policy of apartheid was
concerned, they were deeply mistaken. None of these unconventional
projects was intended to lead to any gross violations of human
rights…but…they did create an atmosphere conducive to abuses. 299
In spite of itself, the TRC perpetuated the focus on violence and ‘security’ as more
than just the main issue, namely, as the only issue that really counts. 300 At least in practice,
‘gross human rights violations’ were limited to ones that involved actual, physical violence,
and ones perpetrated by the government and its allies were in official terms largely, or even
fully, ‘unintended’, except, of course, sometimes on the lower levels, when things got ‘out of
298 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report, 1998: Volume 4; Saunders: Business Apology for
South Africa Apartheid, 1997; Phahlane: South Africa Media Denies Collusion with Apartheid State, 1997
299 Quoted in the TRC Final Report, 1998, Volume 5, Chapter 7, Causes, Motives and Perspectives of
Perpetrators. It should be added that de Klerk took several initiatives in the dismantling of apartheid laws and in
paving the way for a transition to democracy, and, also, that he subsequently made several further statements
expressing regrets about apartheid, and also an apology to God for apartheid, an unaddressed apology for pain
and suffering caused, but no apology in an unqualified way to the victims of South African apartheid. See,
further, N.N.: How South Africa Avoided a Bloodbath, no date; Speed: FW Pleads Innocence: The National
Party Has Refused to Acknowledge Its Role in Apartheid Atrocities, 1996.
300 See, for a typical example, Scheer: Israel’s Sharon Says Security Top Budget Priority, 2001.