Apartheid

under Byzantine rule was a continuation of West Roman policy. Egypt remained the richest
province of the Byzantine Empire, as well. During this time and also during the previous late
West Roman period, religious divisions and interfaith violence became as acute as the ethnic
divisions and violence (see Chapter II.1.1, below), and the religious and ethnic groups still
largely coincided.
Yet, it took a while for this situation to evolve. The Egyptians were the first to adopt
Christianity on a large scale, starting already in the first century CE, and they were initially
punished for it severely by the Romans, who often saw Christianity as a threat during the first
centuries. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptian Christians were killed. After the tables had
turned, however, people of Egyptian ethnicity, the oppressed majority, were vindicated to
some extent, as Christianity became the Roman state religion. This happened after over 600
years of apartheid and is unique for a society of this kind. Already by this time, it was most
likely the oldest apartheid society the world has ever seen, before or since. But this
‘vindication’ of the Egyptians was only on one spiritual level. On other spiritual levels, not to
mention material oppression, the Egyptians’ own culture had been completely or nearly
annihilated, e.g. their own language, religion and philosophy. Constantinople then split its
form of Christianity, Greek-Orthodox, from the Egyptian ‘Coptic’ form and persecuted, killed
and tortured many of the Coptic – i.e. ethnic Egyptian – Christians for doctrinal as well as
political reasons. The Copts still start their calendar with the year 284 CE, the ‘Era of the
Martyrs’, or the climax of persecution of Egyptian Christians, rather than the birth of Christ,
in remembrance and deep resentment of the brutal persecution by West as well as East Rome.
Religious persecution and discriminative taxation pressures on Copts resulted in the
Europeans remaining much disliked in Egypt, and the indigenous population finally offered
little or no resistance to the Muslim Arabian conquest in 639-642 CE. Some Egyptians even
joined the Arabians in overthrowing Byzantine rule, although the remaining Greeks tried hard
to rally the Egyptians to do more to uphold the regime of their European oppressors. After
nearly a thousand years of oppression by the Europeans, after which the ethnicist ethnic
dividing lines were as obvious as ever, it was hardly astonishing that Egyptians would be
happier with Muslim Asian rule, although all Egyptians were Christian at this time, like their
Greek oppressors. In the end, ethnicity in Egypt under European rule had remained more
important than religious confession.
2. South Africa
With their apartheid system in the narrow sense, the white minority of South Africa
dominated the Blacks and the non-White and non-Black population (the Coloureds and
Asians) with a set of legalized inequalities, racist ideologies, and brute force. This included
the restriction of non-Whites from entering certain areas unless they possessed a certain
document permitting them into these areas, for reasons such as work. The concept of
‘separateness’, although it no longer sufficiently defines apartheid, is still a key notion
describing this system, since racial segregation, of both public and private facilities, played a
vital role in the white practice of oppression to the extent that many public benches, toilets
and other facilities, such as voting and running for public office, were restricted to ‘Whites
only’. Sexual relations, marriage and even ‘intimacy’ between the races were also banned. 120
Apartheid in South Africa can be traced back to the 17th century, when the Dutch East
India Company, VOC (Vereenigde Nederlandsche Ge-Octroyeerde Oost Indische
Compagnie), actively separated the Cape settlers from the local Khoisan (pastoralist Khoikhoi
and hunter-gatherer San) peoples. The system of slavery that was practised for the next two
120 During the first period of Roman rule in Egypt, and at least in some areas under Greek rule, the authorities
similarly restricted or prohibited marriage between Egyptians and Europeans. See Lewis, N. 1983: 32f, and
Chapter II.2.2, below. In Israel today, the state does not offer citizens (or others) the possibility of civil marriage,
and the religious authorities, who are the only ones able to pronounce people married, refuse to do so for
individuals of different faiths.
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