Apartheid

56
conflict and ethnic nationalism after the Cold War, sociologist Anthony Richmond
differentiates two defining social dimensions or ‘elementary processes’ at work:
superordination-subordination and separation-integration. Here, apartheid appears to be the
most extremely antisocial way of handling a multi-ethnic population. Thus, genocide is left
out of the theoretical picture, as opposed to my approach. The ideological justifications of
new legislation in most countries, facing increases in both immigration and internal migration,
are very similar to South African apartheid attitudes, as Richmond points out: “As well as
explicit racism and claims to ‘superiority’, they include an obligation to limit intertribal
conflict, the need to preserve ethnic identity, expressions of religious fanaticism, the defence
of existing cultural and social institutions, state security, the maintenance of law and order,
preservation of economic privilege and the need to regulate and manage population
movements.” 70 Although perhaps implied, there is no explicit continuous spectrum from
apartheid to genocide in this model, as far as I can determine. There is separation, segregation,
and discrimination in Richmond’s account, but not necessarily invasion or downright theft.
Racism is a crime against humanity, but apartheid – in the mainstream, anti-NP meaning of
the term – is always a severe crime against humanity, with aspects that should not be
overlooked.
The cited sources all fail to make a systematic differentiation between ethnicisms or
racisms of different kinds, as I have attempted to do here. Again, there is in their brands of
‘global apartheid’ neither any kind of independence from the motherlands of the invaders (as
in South Africa, Greek-ruled Egypt or modern Israel), or effective state sovereignty (except in
Richmond’s theory, which deals with oppressed non-indigenous minorities, as opposed to
South African, Egyptian, and Israeli apartheid which oppressed the indigenous majorities),
nor direct physical violence or military invasion necessarily involved. Furthermore, as
apartheid is a crime against humanity, the criminals are identifiable (even if they have yet to
be delivered to justice, in almost every single case). But in ‘global apartheid’, lacking a world
state and an effective global rule of law, there are no clear-cut hierarchies of responsibility or
(even potential) accountability.
It is therefore better described as ‘neo-apartheid’, as I argued above, if the Afrikaans
word must be used at all. But if the definition of the phenomenon is stretched back five
centuries, ‘global apartheid’ might indeed be a useful approximate term for white subjugation
of other people. One could say that this process has genocidal, apartheid, colonialist, neocolonialist
and neo-apartheid features, and that, out of all these labels for different kinds of
ethnicist human rights violations, ‘global apartheid’ perhaps sums up the situation in the best
way, since it is ‘in the middle’ of the spectrum of severity from the perspective of the victims.
It is neither as harsh as genocide nor as ‘mild’ as colonialism. Yet, essential features of
apartheid are still missing, as indicated. ‘Global white ethnicism’, ‘global white racism’,
‘global white hegemony’, or even ‘global white supremacy’ would therefore be more accurate
labels. The terms ‘elitism’ and ‘plutocracy’ also come to mind readily, especially since neither
race nor ethnicity are mentioned explicitly by Mbeki or by Booker and Minter, and since there
are indeed exceptions to white dominance, though hardly enough of them from an egalitarian
point of view. White men invented intercontinental warfare, and, to some extent, they are still
practicing it, though the dominant forms of this warfare, especially the neo-colonialist forms,
are infinitely subtler today than when it started, several centuries ago.
Postmodern Racism
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have narrowed and, to some extent, sharpened the
focus on this issue with their concept of a worldwide scourge of ‘postmodern racism’:
[R]acism has not receded but actually progressed in the contemporary
70 Richmond: Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism and the New World Order, 1994: xiff, 206ff.