verte76 said:
Thanks TG. That's an excellent history of apartheid. I agree, you can't exactly credit Reagan with ending apartheid. Credit goes to de Klerk and Mandela, who earned that Nobel Peace Prize.
Good article, interesting details about South Africa.
South Africa?s first known inhabitants were the "Bushmen" and "Hottentots", who left fine stone drawings. They were chased to desert by Dutch settlers, who clashed with Bantu tribes arriving at about the same time. In the 19th century, Boer "treks" (which had started in the 18th century) went inland to seek freedom from British rule, which also meant freedom to treat their slaves as harshly as they thought fit, whereas the British tried to preserve internal peace by protecting the natives. This opposition between the colonial government, whose function was to secure profits for the merchants residing in the European home-country, and the white settlers in the colony had existed before between the (Dutch) Boers and the Dutch East India Co., and later, the Dutch government. Yet, the British ensured victory for the Boers fighting against Blacks when the latter were becoming too powerful.
Later, South Africa ceased to be a member of the Commonwealth, because the white population did not want to give up "Apartheid". In 1994, after the abolition of the Apartheid system and the implementation of Black majority rule, South Africa rejoined the Commonwealth of Nations.
Apartheid meant a state of "apartness" or separateness existing in the Republic of South Africa. Racial discrimination has always been a fact in South Africa, though it was legally established only by the Boer (Dutch) government, when the English lost their influence after World War II. The English part of the white population has always been less racialist than the Afrikaner, or Boer, part, because they were in trade rather than in farming, i.e., they were less interested in keeping most of the (good) land. South Africa is no longer ruled by its white minority. Apartheid was in fact a means to maintain white rule. Under Apartheid rule, Blacks and Whites were not allowed to marry, and they lived in different areas. After work in the white areas the Blacks returned to their slum-like townships. The Whites could afford luxury, because they paid low wages to the Blacks. Black areas, so-called independent "Bantustans", were too small to support the Black population. Family life among Blacks was destroyed by the necessity for fathers to work very far from their homes. Their continuous absence was forced on them
by a conservative Christian regime.
Reforms were introduced by the last white government, intending to change the constitution in co-operation with the Blacks (ANC) and the Indians and "Coloureds". Black majority rule came about in 1994 without Blacks taking revenge after decades of oppression; Whites were largely kept in the country by anti-apartheid hero Mandela, but there still are violent incidents: tribal rivalries cause bloodshed, but most crimes are now committed by uprooted Blacks whose hopes to escape poverty have been disappointed. The Black middle class, re-emerging after apartheid, now moves away from the masses of their former comrades (since their former common enemy, the White man, is now less frightening than the Black robber). The black government?s privatization policy seems to corroborate the view that the anti-Apartheid campaign waged by Western governments otherwise indifferent to human rights violations served only to give Western business a South African counterpart that was easier to deal with.
South Africa has more violence against whites now as only little part of the land has so far been re-distributed by its black government. After expelling 3.5 millions of Blacks from their lands between 1913 and 1970, Whites still own about 69% of the land.