Apartheid

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the creation of Bantustans in South Africa as well as in the territories occupied by Israel,
where the best land and most of the land was reserved for minorities of white and Jewish
settlers, respectively. That is one of the main themes of both sections immediately following
this one. Another possibility is to sterilize the natives or induce birth defects, either directly,
as was the case with the forced contraceptive injections of female factory workers in South
Africa (see below) and the covert programs of the South African ‘Medical Battalion’ (see
previous section), or indirectly, e.g. by targeted exposure of the indigenous to toxic pollution,
as in the occupied Palestinian territories (see below). Yet another, less directly violent, way to
keep the oppressive minority from shrinking – in absolute and/or in relative terms – is by
means of ethnically selective immigration and so-called ‘naturalization’, as well as granting of
visas, residence and work permits (see Chapter 3, below). This is a universal feature of
apartheid societies, and in my view yet another variety of structural violence, at least as long
as those immigrants are receiving privileges that are not extended to the indigenous.
A way of counteracting ethnic mixing, which in the face of faster population growth of
the indigenous majority will lead to a long-term weakening of the minority, is to simply ban
or at least actively discourage interethnic marriage and interethnic sexual relations. This is
another normal state of affairs in apartheid societies. A further reason to do so is of course
ideological. Apartheid rests on a hypostasizing, ethnicist division of society into hierarchically
ranked ethnic groups. If reality does not correspond to the theory of separate and
distinguishable ethnicities (which is never strictly the case), then it is so much worse for
reality. For instance, as we saw in the Mandela quote in the introduction: if two people with
the same two parents display skin colors or hair textures different enough, then they must
belong to different races, although they have the same two parents, and they (brothers and
sisters) will therefore not be allowed to live in the same area. Finally, a presumed, indirect
way of achieving raised birth rates is sexism. The South African government, especially,
encouraged white women not to seek employment but to marry early, stay at home and to
raise future generations of masters. All to no avail. The black population still grew faster. The
white rulers therefore often saw themselves obliged to carry out massive depopulating
activities, i.e. direct or indirect killings, instead. The Israeli elites are currently working
together on very similar schemes, as will become evident below. In this sense, apartheid
repopulation is a continuation of physical violence, of depopulation, by other means. Once
again, as with physical violence, this chapter shows how close and similar apartheid is to
genocide.
Repopulation measures vary significantly, both between societies and at different
points in time. From this perspective, apartheid, ethnicism, and racism are thus more strategies
than positions, more processes than structures. Total repopulation is of course tantamount to
genocide or, at the very least, total ethnic cleansing. As long as repopulation practices are
aimed towards partial removal of the indigenous, they are apartheid policies. In this sense, the
difference between genocide and apartheid is gradual, due to a multitude of reasons, such as
time lag and different kinds of discrepancies between policy and practice. But when apartheid
repopulation policies are perceived to fail, as they seem bound to do in the long run,
authorities will usually revert to violent tactics, often with genocidal aspects, as in the
occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel from the fall of 2000. The only other alternative is
ending apartheid altogether.
2.1. Bringing in the Civilians
Alexander the Great intended the new capital of Egypt, named by himself after
himself, to be the ‘commercial pivot’ of his far-flung empire. It was the first time Egypt had a
capital on its Mediterranean coast. Alexander was mainly interested in tapping into the hugely
profitable Mediterranean trade: ‘[H]e thought that the city would prosper…and would bring
the wealth of Asia to Europe. Whether he also envisaged the exploitation of the land of Egypt,
in the Pharaonic manner that the Ptolemies were to perpetuate and develop, we cannot tell, but