Apartheid

Western Hemisphere, or the import of Asian slaves and laborers into the (Dutch) Cape Colony
and the (British) Natal Colony in South Africa.
All three of these practices – colonialism, apartheid and genocide – are ethnicist
crimes against humanity, in effect as well as in intent. They do not happen by accident, they
are not originally well-meant with regard to the indigenous populations, and they are not
‘mistakes’, which, as we shall see, is often claimed by the perpetrators, their descendants and
apologists.
With this in mind, I will attempt to reach out beyond contemporary postcolonial theory
in order to analyze and describe apartheid more accurately. In the Conclusions of this
investigation, I will also reflect on possible outlines for future Truth and Reconciliation
Commissions (TRCs) and the chances for justice being served in societies that have
experienced traumatic conflict brought about by such human rights violations, especially with
regard to present-day Israel.
3. Apartheid in the Narrow Sense (South Africa 1948-1994)
In one of the most consulted histories of South Africa, Leonard Thompson summed up
apartheid in that country from 1948 onwards, as follows:
The National party government applied apartheid in a plethora of laws
and executive actions. At the heart of the apartheid system were four
ideas. First, the population of South Africa comprised four ‘racial
groups’ – White, Coloured, Indian, and African – each with its own
inherent culture. Second, Whites, as the civilized race, were entitled to
have absolute control over the state. Third, white interests should
prevail over black interests; the state was not obliged to provide equal
facilities for the subordinate races. [Fourth, t]he white racial group
formed a single nation, with Afrikaans- and English-speaking
components, while Africans belonged to several (eventually ten)
distinct nations or potential nations – a formula that made the white
nation the largest in the country. 21
Nearly all of these features are present in practice in each of my other two main
examples of apartheid in the wide sense, albeit with different contingent factors, i.e. races or
ethnic groups and numbers. Exchange ‘White’ for ‘Greek’ (and later ‘Roman’) and ‘Jew’,
respectively; exchange ‘Black’ for ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Palestinian’ respectively; exchange
‘Coloured’ and ‘Indian’ for the intermediate ethnicities who were originally brought in for
both unpaid and underpaid manual work in both Egypt and Israel, and you have summed up
apartheid there, too. One could even go one step further, and exchange ‘Afrikaner’ for ‘Greek’
and ‘British’ for ‘Roman’ in Egypt. On this second level of comparative analysis, however,
there is no counterpart in Israel, not yet at least.
Only Thompson’s fourth feature is a 20 th and 21 st century one. There is no parallel that
I am aware of to that in Graeco-Roman Egypt, simply because there was no international law
demanding, or international lip service being paid to, the idea and the trappings of
‘democracy’ at that time. With modern Israel, however, a hypocritical and seeming
21 Thompson, L.: A History of South Africa, 1990: 190. In fact, both Zulu and Xhosa are mother languages of
many more people in South Africa than are either Afrikaans or English. There is a direct parallel from the South
African attempt to make the white race appear the most populous race to Israeli and complicit western denials
that UN-registered Palestinian refugees outside Historic Palestine, who are in fact the majority of Palestinians,
are Palestinians at all. This is denied because Palestinians are thus objectively shown to be vastly superior to
Israeli Jews in numbers, and that explains why Israeli elites are vehemently opposed to true democracy. See
footnote 267.
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