Apartheid
Apartheid Apartheid
210 6. Access Accusing everyone of conspiracy Tightening the curfew, charging people with walking …Soweto Blues 466 This chapter reminds me – with a fair degree of horror – of adverbs. I admit it has been put together in an ad hoc manner to account for kinds of ethnicist discrimination that could not be subsumed satisfactorily under the other chapter headings. Access to water, health care, decision-making in public affairs, work and leisure opportunities, obviously do share characteristics that set them aside. Yet I am painfully aware that this is also the least systematic of the chapters defining apartheid. The dominant theory of grammar which throws demonstratives with adverbs that modify verbs or adjectives, ‘sentence adverbs’, temporal and spatial ‘adverbs’, ‘adverb’ particles, interrogative ‘adverbs’, and even interjections into a single basket, is in my view more troublesome for linguistics and related disciplines, from a scientifically theoretical point of view, than this chapter is for the theory of apartheid. And still, elementary school children around the world are required to memorize adverbs as a single word class, on a par with such well-defined grammatical categories as nouns, adjectives, prepositions, articles, pronouns, and conjunctions. Nonetheless, the category of access sometimes, even to myself, seems to serve the function of a waste paper basket for kinds of oppression that do not fit in under my other headings. It is certainly a more abstract noun than any of the other eight used in my definition of apartheid. In the end, though, it is perhaps good to have a miscellaneous category like adverbs which at least attempts to organize left-over data. My understanding of apartheid will hopefully serve some kind of scientific or analytic purpose for someone else than me, but it will in any case eventually be abandoned at some time in the future and replaced by a better theoretical, and no doubt very different, understanding of it. I thus hope to sow the seeds of destruction of my own theory in this chapter, namely, in order to facilitate the analytic understanding of apartheid and perhaps also of other kinds of war and oppression for future and improved attempts at explanation and critique. 6.1. ‘All Egyptians Are by All Manner of Means to Be Expelled, Except…’ We know of land confiscations and forced removals of Egyptians during the Graeco- Roman period, but we have no direct evidence of enforced ethnicist segregation, the displacement of people due to their ethnicity alone. However, it certainly seems as if Alexandria was planned and segregated into different areas for the different ethnic groups. As already noted, fifteen Egyptian villages were ‘cleared’ to make space for the new capital. This kind of phenomenon may also occur in non-apartheid societies, but after the foundation of Alexandria the Egyptians appear to have been confined to live in Rhakotis in the southwest quadrant of the city, the Jews lived in the northeast, the royal palace was in the north, and normal Greeks, Macedonians and others lived in between. Just off the Alexandrian coast, on the island of Pharos – with its famous lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – was an additional, walled village or small town with an Egyptian population. There was also a growing area of increasingly rich Greek suburbs to the east of the city, as far away from Rhakotis as possible without being isolated from the city center. As slums arose and expanded, crime levels climbed, and the rich, i.e. European invaders and descendants of European invaders, moved out of the city to these suburbs, just like in Johannesburg or Cape Town, over 2,000 years later. 467 Urban segregation along ethnic lines is ethnicist, though not 466 Masekela & Todd: Soweto Blues, recorded by Miriam Makeba on the album ‘Welela’, 1989 467 Hellström 1997: 20; Bowman 1996 (1986): 209; Fraser 1972: 17. As the Jewish proportion of the Alexandrian populace grew, Jews moved into some of the other districts. In 38 CE, however, under Roman rule, most of the Jews outside the main Jewish district in Alexandria were murdered indiscriminately by rioting Greek city rabble.
211 in and by itself apartheid in the wide sense. Likewise, large cities are commonly magnets to the poor and destitute. The influx of this group of people creates problems in any class society, but especially in apartheid societies. A small portion of them are needed as slaves or as cheap labor, the rest are dealt with harshly. In 215 CE, the Roman Emperor Caracalla – the same one who made practically everyone in the Roman Empire a Roman citizen (see Chapter II.3.1, above) – issued the following remarkably crude (and rude) decree: All Egyptians in Alexandria, especially countryfolk who have fled from other parts and can easily be detected, are by all manner of means to be expelled, with the exception, however, of pig-dealers and riverboatmen and the men who bring down reeds for heating the baths. But expel all others, as by the numbers of their kind and their uselessness they are disturbing the city...For genuine Egyptians can easily be recognised among the linen-weavers by their speech, which proves them to have assumed the appearance and dress of another class; moreover in their mode of life, their far from civilised manners reveal them to be Egyptian countryfolk. 468 In essence, the motivation behind this decree is no different from that behind the creation of Bantustans by South Africa or, for that matter, the strategic creation of areas under Palestinian Authority by Israel and the USA. Keep all the natives away from us at all times, unless of course through their proximity they can contribute or can be forced to contribute more directly to our profits, our well-being and our comfort! The luxuries and splendors of Alexandria were to be reserved in the first place to Romans and to Greeks. And here we have apartheid: the majority of the people is denied access to important aspects of life, to things that can make or break them, things that can mean a difference between life and death, due to their ethnicity, their being indigenous, alone. The free distribution of wheat, the staple food, through local town councils in Ptolemaic times was made to people of higher standing (most probably only Greeks), whereas the taxpayer-funded entire maintenance of members of the elite ‘Association of Elders’ was certainly for Greeks only. 469 Already in 242 BCE, the only access to civil political privilege for Egyptians except through priesthood was eliminated, as the ‘nomarchs’ were stripped of their titles. Until then, most nomarchs, heads of regional civil administration, had been Egyptians. Since Alexander, however, they had gradually lost power to the strategoí who were originally heads of the regional armed forces and were either Greek or Macedonian. From now on, all formal political power, nationally and regionally, belonged to Europeans, and it was also increasingly militarized. These were probably the main reasons behind one of the first major Egyptian uprisings three years later. Another possible factor was famine. 470 It is unclear if any of the guilty were Egyptians, see Alston 2002: 158f, though it seems clear that the Romans are squarely to blame for having caused resentment between the Jews and the Greeks, see Lewis, N. 1983: 29; Clauss 2003: 146. In a second massacre of Jewish Alexandrians by Greeks in 60 CE, the Romans also joined in against the Jews. Ibid: 160. Finally, during a Jewish uprising in Alexandria from 115-117 CE, all Jews appear to have been killed, murdered or expelled from the city. There is no sign of Jews in the city again until nearly 200 years later. Throughout this time of oppression and violence against Jews in Egypt under Roman rule, the Romans appear to have favored the Greeks, although Jews had certain unique privileges related to their religion. For instance, they were exempt from having to worship the Emperors and other deified elite Romans due to their staunch monotheism. Ibid: 160-164. 468 Quoted in Bowman 1996 (1986): 126 469 Bowman 1996 (1986): 72 470 Huß 2001: 374ff. After having crushed an indigenous revolt in Thebes, however, an Egyptian named Paos was made strategos of that city in 129 BCE. He also received the highest court rank. ‘Egyptians thus finally succeeded for the first time [after two hundred years of Greek ethnicist minority rule] in becoming members of
- Page 159 and 160: 159 suffering from dementia. 305 Th
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211<br />
in and by itself apartheid in the wide sense.<br />
Likewise, large cities are commonly magnets to the poor and destitute. The influx of<br />
this group of people creates problems in any class society, but especially in apartheid<br />
societies. A small portion of them are needed as slaves or as cheap labor, the rest are dealt<br />
with harshly. In 215 CE, the Roman Emperor Caracalla – the same one who made practically<br />
everyone in the Roman Empire a Roman citizen (see Chapter II.3.1, above) – issued the<br />
following remarkably crude (and rude) decree:<br />
All Egyptians in Alexandria, especially countryfolk who have fled<br />
from other parts and can easily be detected, are by all manner of<br />
means to be expelled, with the exception, however, of pig-dealers and<br />
riverboatmen and the men who bring down reeds for heating the baths.<br />
But expel all others, as by the numbers of their kind and their<br />
uselessness they are disturbing the city...For genuine Egyptians can<br />
easily be recognised among the linen-weavers by their speech, which<br />
proves them to have assumed the appearance and dress of another<br />
class; moreover in their mode of life, their far from civilised manners<br />
reveal them to be Egyptian countryfolk. 468<br />
In essence, the motivation behind this decree is no different from that behind the<br />
creation of Bantustans by South Africa or, for that matter, the strategic creation of areas under<br />
Palestinian Authority by Israel and the USA. Keep all the natives away from us at all times,<br />
unless of course through their proximity they can contribute or can be forced to contribute<br />
more directly to our profits, our well-being and our comfort! The luxuries and splendors of<br />
Alexandria were to be reserved in the first place to Romans and to Greeks.<br />
And here we have apartheid: the majority of the people is denied access to important<br />
aspects of life, to things that can make or break them, things that can mean a difference<br />
between life and death, due to their ethnicity, their being indigenous, alone.<br />
The free distribution of wheat, the staple food, through local town councils in<br />
Ptolemaic times was made to people of higher standing (most probably only Greeks), whereas<br />
the taxpayer-funded entire maintenance of members of the elite ‘Association of Elders’ was<br />
certainly for Greeks only. 469<br />
Already in 242 BCE, the only access to civil political privilege for Egyptians except<br />
through priesthood was eliminated, as the ‘nomarchs’ were stripped of their titles. Until then,<br />
most nomarchs, heads of regional civil administration, had been Egyptians. Since Alexander,<br />
however, they had gradually lost power to the strategoí who were originally heads of the<br />
regional armed forces and were either Greek or Macedonian. From now on, all formal<br />
political power, nationally and regionally, belonged to Europeans, and it was also increasingly<br />
militarized. These were probably the main reasons behind one of the first major Egyptian<br />
uprisings three years later. Another possible factor was famine. 470<br />
It is unclear if any of the guilty were Egyptians, see Alston 2002: 158f, though it seems clear that the Romans are<br />
squarely to blame for having caused resentment between the Jews and the Greeks, see Lewis, N. 1983: 29;<br />
Clauss 2003: 146. In a second massacre of Jewish Alexandrians by Greeks in 60 CE, the Romans also joined in<br />
against the Jews. Ibid: 160. Finally, during a Jewish uprising in Alexandria from 115-117 CE, all Jews appear to<br />
have been killed, murdered or expelled from the city. There is no sign of Jews in the city again until nearly 200<br />
years later. Throughout this time of oppression and violence against Jews in Egypt under Roman rule, the<br />
Romans appear to have favored the Greeks, although Jews had certain unique privileges related to their religion.<br />
For instance, they were exempt from having to worship the Emperors and other deified elite Romans due to their<br />
staunch monotheism. Ibid: 160-164.<br />
468<br />
Quoted in Bowman 1996 (1986): 126<br />
469<br />
Bowman 1996 (1986): 72<br />
470<br />
Huß 2001: 374ff. After having crushed an indigenous revolt in Thebes, however, an Egyptian named Paos<br />
was made strategos of that city in 129 BCE. He also received the highest court rank. ‘Egyptians thus finally<br />
succeeded for the first time [after two hundred years of Greek ethnicist minority rule] in becoming members of