Apartheid

involvement of strong First World nation-states in furthering and even encouraging this kind
of activity is also colonial or neo-colonial oppression, but not apartheid. The independence of
transnational corporations and corporation networks as opposed to governments, and their
increasing usurpation of traditional governmental practices, especially in the developing
countries, do however exhibit aspects of apartheid, though in an entirely new form. This could
indeed be ‘neo-apartheid’, the structural legacy of apartheid at a new, globalized level of
capitalist, perhaps even historical development, but not apartheid per se, not even in my
proposed wide sense, which presupposes a relatively strong and sovereign state. Once
corporations have become stronger than states – and on some indications this is already the
case on a global scale 66 – politics changes appearance and content radically. For instance,
democracy and human rights are increasingly hollowed and replaced by proprietors’,
investors’, and shareholders’ exclusive rights and privileges.
Under these new conditions, continuity with earlier phenomena should neither be
erased nor over-stretched. ‘Neo-apartheid’ would be a good label for this new kind of
systematic human rights violations, although the term is now already being used to describe
present-day Israel. 67 ‘Neo-apartheid’ would in my opinion be a more apt label for the new
kind of systematic human rights violations, since it presupposes a relatively weak state (on the
receiving end) and strong privately-owned companies, or networks of such companies, in a
way similar to the concept of ‘neo-colonialism’, and also since Israel’s system of apartheid, as
I will try to argue here, is nothing new at all in a structural sense.
Some of the features of ‘environmental apartheid’, however, are not as new as they
appear to be. For example, the Dutch East India Company was in many ways a typical
transnational capitalist enterprise, and it worked so well, in capitalist terms, due to the
existence of a globalized capitalist (though not yet industrial or postindustrial) economy,
already from the 17 th century onwards. On the other hand, the Dutch government might have
been able to rein in the Company if it wished to, something which appears less likely in a
similar situation today. Examples would be the uses of wage-slavery by transnational
corporations based in the North Atlantic zone. The governments of this area seem almost
powerless to do anything against the deeply immoral practices of these companies in
developing countries which would have been criminal and would have caused an outcry if
they had taken place in the home countries. Other examples would include pollution,
sweatshops, or child labor.
At the opening of the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, the second South
African post-apartheid president, Thabo Mbeki, called for an end to ‘global apartheid’, where
a ‘rich minority enjoys unprecedented levels of consumption, comfort and prosperity, while a
poor majority enjoys daily hardship, suffering, dehumanisation…’ Similarly the authors, Salih
Booker and William Minter, argue that “…today’s international political economy – in which
undemocratic institutions systematically generate economic inequality – should be described
as ‘global apartheid’…” although the authors also wisely caution against drawing the parallels
with South Africa too closely. 68
This idea can be traced back to an impassioned plea against ‘global apartheid’ by the
anthropologist, William A. Haviland, who was the first author to my knowledge to use the
expression in pointing out the persistent, extremely unequal distribution of economic,
military, and political power between Whites and non-Whites of the world. The importance of
this issue could hardly be overemphasized. 69
In what is probably the most sophisticated theory of ‘global apartheid’, a somewhat
different conception devised specifically to better understand international migration, racial
66 Ellwood 2001: 55ff.
67 See, for instance, footnote 752, below.
68 Schuettler: Mbeki Slams “Global Apartheid” at Pre-Summit Gala, 2002; Macdonald: End “Global Apartheid”
Call Heralds Earth Summit, 2002; Booker & Minter: Global Apartheid, 2001: 11-17
69 Haviland 5 1987: 405-407.
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