Apartheid

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Moreover, it often bred a lavish and parasitic way of life as well as a bitterness that was often
taken out on their own employees.
White women were excluded from most types of formal employment
except secretarial and clerical work. While this exclusion was not
legislated, many White women were denied access to employment by
conservative ideas within Afrikaans and English communities about
women’s place in society. Thus, White women’s employment patterns
mirrored their role in the family.
Furthermore, White women’s aspirations and opportunities were
limited by the policies of banks that would not let married women
take out loans or open accounts without the permission of their
husbands; employers who fired women when they got pregnant; and
an educational system that encouraged women to take courses in
nursing or teaching rather than dentistry or higher education. This
varied depending on class, and began to shift towards the 1980s as
university enrolment evened out for White women and men, and as
career opportunities began to open up in a number of non-traditional
disciplines. However, broadly speaking, White women are still
economically and politically disadvantaged in relation to White men...
Black women participated in the workforce in significantly higher
numbers than White women did. The most common employment of
Black women was in the domestic sphere. Black female domestic
workers subsidised the life-styles of White women under extremely
exploitative conditions. 474
Not only is sexism a divide-and-rule strategy in apartheid societies. Racism is a divideand-rule
strategy in patriarchal societies, as well.
6.3. Pass Laws, Closures, Bypass Roads, Water Theft and the Apartheid Wall
On June 16, 2002, one day short of the 26 th anniversary of the beginning of the Soweto
massacre, Israel ‘inaugurated’ work on a ‘security fence’ along its border with the occupied
West Bank. The ‘fence’, which also includes systems of trenches, razor wire and electronic
early warning and surveillance devices, is officially being erected in order to stop Palestinian
suicide bombers from infiltrating Israel. The ‘fence’ – along vast stretches in fact a wall, three
times as long as the Berlin Wall and twice as high – is largely being built on Palestinian land,
at some stages going at least six kilometers into Palestinian territory. When finished, it will
lead to Israel’s annexing approximately 10% of the West Bank, 57 Israeli settlements illegally
built on seized Palestinian lands, 303,000 Israeli settlers and almost 290,000 Palestinians. It
will cost US$ 220 million to build. It already stretched over 110 km in its first phase, which
was finished in a year. A second phase of a 50 km long system of fences and barriers around
Jerusalem was begun on June 30, 2002. By November 2003, due to the fence, 70,000
Palestinians had already become separated from markets, fields, schools, hospitals and other
public services in the West Bank, where they still hoped to be allowed a Palestinian state by
Israel and the USA. 65,000 Palestinian-owned olive trees had been uprooted by the Israeli
occupiers to make way for the wall at this point. This fact and the restrictions on access to the
fields led to estimates that the 2003 olive harvest, of immense importance to the crumbling
Palestinian economy, would be halved due to the wall alone. The Israeli Defense Ministry
said that 50 claims for losses had been made by this time, and that compensation had been
granted for each one. Israel built 29 gates, through which Palestinians would sometimes be
allowed to pass, along the first 150 km of the wall, but the gates are open only for brief
474
Msimang, Sisonke: Affirmative Action in the New South Africa: The Politics of Representation, Law and
Equity, 2000