Apartheid

closer to each other in an overall manner.
The reader might at times feel tempted to demand a systematic account of the
differences between my three main instances of apartheid. I am afraid that such an account
will not be provided by this investigation. Although it seems close at hand sometimes, I do not
believe that it exists. Aside from my loose distinctions between more and less important
differences, only the similarities between apartheid societies are systematic, as far as I have
been able to establish.
South Africa’s apartheid system is of course historically unique, but in this
investigation I will point to strong indications suggesting that it is not structurally unique. The
introductory comparisons with the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Nazi Germany, Rhodesia,
Guatemala, Outremer, Ireland, Hong Kong, the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, and the whole
modern and post-modern world(s) should have brought that point home already. In numerous
regards they display direct parallels to the systematic gross human rights violations that
existed in South Africa. In some instances they are correlated with the latter. My three main
examples will provide even closer parallels than these introductory parallels. The same
structural constraints – including apartheid invasion, concomitant ethnicist immigration
practices and indigenous as well as invader patriarchy – will for example make similar
demographic wars develop within apartheid societies, wars in which huge numbers of
indigenous men (and others) get killed. This in turn leads to or amplifies large-scale femicide,
killings of independence-minded indigenous women (and others) by indigenous people.
Occasionally, I will use the word apartheid in the narrow sense of the explicit political
programs or the officially admitted practices of South Africa’s National Party from 1948
onwards. Mainly, however, I will use apartheid in the wide, and now more commonly used
sense of ‘oppressive, ethnicist segregation and exploitation by a de facto invading ethnic
minority and its descendants’. Except where indicated, the context will make it obvious which
meaning of the word ‘apartheid’ is intended.
7. Definition of Apartheid in the Wide Sense
My understanding and definition of apartheid alongside the empirical evidence
presented to support the accuracy of that definition constitute the main part of this book.
Apartheid can be summed up as a structured process of gross human rights violations,
perpetrated against a conquered ethnic majority by a state and society largely under the
control of an originally invading ethnic minority and its descendants, as well as other
individuals, mainly immigrants, deemed part of the ethnic elite, with the following nine
categories, which together make up the necessary and sufficient, i.e. defining characteristics
of apartheid:
1. Violence: Apartheid is a state of war initiated by a de facto invading ethnic minority, which
at least in the short term originates from a non-neighboring locality. In all main instances of
apartheid most if not all members of the invading group originate from a different continent.
The invading ethnic minority and its self-defined descendants then continue to dominate the
indigenous majority by means of their military superiority and by their continuous threats and
uses of violence. The oppressed majority also commits violent acts, which in some, though far
from all, cases may be described as self-defense. On the other hand, I believe that the
privileged minority in an apartheid society, or members of it, should never be able to be
totally exonerated for committing violent acts on the grounds of self-defense. There could,
however, be some mitigating circumstances, though mostly there do not seem to be any such
circumstances at all. Such circumstances may even be considered for amnesty (granted to
individuals only) in the service of truth and reconciliation, but on the other hand justice must
also be served in the resolution of apartheid in order for true peace to take hold. The resistance
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