Apartheid

44
brokered peace agreement. Between 2000 and 2002, in events marred by controversy and by
violence (yet very little of it compared to violence accompanying the initial white land grab),
the Zimbabwean government took back 11 million hectares of land from white farmers,
without any compensation paid. The land restitution issues that now (superficially) seem to
divide white and black Zimbabweans more than ever are issues that are also widely expected
to rise to prominence in South African domestic politics soon. 44
Independent Rhodesia was an apartheid society. But it was short-lived, and during its
15-year life span it never achieved the degree of forced separation between ethnic groups and
entrenched discrimination of the indigenous majority that South Africa did. Furthermore,
Rhodesia had a very small invading ethnic group, never even attaining four per cent of the
total population. In this sense, it remained more of a colony in its style of oppression, even
after ‘independence’, which was basically a buffer zone role for South Africa’s apartheid
elites, and thus less independent than most other apartheid societies. Finally, the Rhodesian
state never became a world political, economic or military power, as did all three of the main
examples of apartheid in this investigation.
Spanish Mayhem in Guatemala
The Mayan civilization, older than Spain’s, can still be found in southern Mexico,
Belize and Guatemala, where the Mayans are still the majority. Guatemala was created from
the invasion and conquest by Spanish adventurers 500 years ago, and has been suffering
severely from theirs and their descendants’ presence ever since. Not many immigrants have
added to the foreign presence of the privileged minority of Spaniards, whose independence
from Spain and then from Mexico led to a society that has also been compared to apartheid in
South Africa. In the 1940s, some democratic reforms for the benefit of the indigenous were
introduced, but they were withdrawn after a coup by Guatemalan military officers with US
assistance in 1954. A bloody civil conflict ensued and did not end until the late 1990s. An
estimated 200,000 people were killed in Guatemala between 1960 and 1996, and the killing
still goes on, in particular political assassinations of human rights workers attempting to
clarify facts about atrocities committed before 1996. Human rights groups seeking to bring
military officials to justice are still being targeted by a slew of death threats and lethal attacks,
which many attribute to elements within the army. Young indigenous women are also being
raped and murdered, apparently by members of the country’s armed forces, in what may be
attributable to an apartheid legacy (see Section II.1, below.)
In numerous ways similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South
Africa, the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification noted in its 1999 final report
that 93 per cent of human rights violations during that conflict had been perpetrated by the
ethnic European-dominated armed forces and state paramilitaries, i.e. by the oppressive ethnic
minority. The report also stated that the counter-insurgency of 1981-1983 amounted to
‘genocide’ of the indigenous Mayans and that the USA had financed, trained, equipped and
encouraged some of the Guatemalan forces responsible for the atrocities. The commission
recommended reparations for families of victims, and this is slowly being implemented by the
new Guatemalan government. But the US government has so far ignored or refused to act
upon this recommendation, although President Bill Clinton in 1999 did admit that the USA
had wronged Guatemala. Today, still, the indigenous life expectancy is 45, whereas nonnatives
(ethnic Europeans) can expect to live for an average of 61 years. The infant mortality
rate of indigenous people is still twice that of non-natives. The UN says Guatemala still has
one of the most skewed land ownership percentages in the world; an estimated 65 per cent of
44 Iliffe 1995: 54f, 101ff, 191ff; N.N.: Political History: Zimbabwe, 1998; Martin & Johnson: The Struggle for
Zimbabwe, 1981; Reader: Africa: A Biography of the Continent, 1998 (1997): 468ff; Esipisu: S.Africa Urges
UK to Help Zimbabwe White Farmers, 2002. On the land restitution issues in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and
elsewhere in southern Africa, see also Chapter II.4.2, below.