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On how Apartheid South Africa was “unfairly demonized” — like Israel
STILL IS.
Date Posted: Friday 17-Apr-2009. From
AfricanCrisis.co.za
Submitted by Hennie:
The Afrikaner, or Boer, people of South Africa were internationally
demonized like no other people in history.
The Afrikaners began to settle in South Africa in the 18th century, (1752
onwards) fleeing religious persecution in Europe. They established two
prosperous states which created job opportunities for blacks, who began
pouring in from adjacent areas. The United Kingdom unleashed two devastating
wars on them — the Anglo-Boer wars. The British used scorched-land methods
and invented the concentration camp, in which 15% of Afrikaners from both
republics died.
When Afrikaners finally obtained independence, they understood that only a
strong Afrikaner state would prevent further massacres. The Republic thus
created was not perfect, granted; the blacks, coloreds and Indians were
discriminated against. But the world obsessively focused on the Afrikaners’
errors, leaving no stone unturned in their drive to demonize them.
South Africa was uniquely singled out for criticism. Not a word was said
about the enslavement of the Pygmies in the Central African republics, yet
the public yelled “Apartheid!” every time an Afrikaner showed up at an
international event. The Chinese occupation of Tibet concerned no one, but
the South African treatment of nonwhites –who enjoyed freedoms Tibetans
could never dream of, either then or now– was severely chastised.
Under the Afrikaners, the blacks enjoyed a standard of life far above that
of any other African state. By any measure –infant mortality, literacy, life
expectancy, you name it– South African blacks were better off than their
neighbors — so much so that the latter began to leave their civil-war torn
countries for peaceful South Africa.
But not content with taking advantage of the Afrikaner-created wealth, the
blacks began a terroristic campaign by the African National Congress that
killed thousands. Where was their Gandhi? They bombed public places, mined
roads killing innocent civilians and sabotaged productive infrastructure.
Although the government reacted to this, most deaths were caused by
black-on-black violence. A particularly barbaric murder method was approved
of by the wife of Nelson Mandela — the necklacing, a summary execution
carried out by forcing a rubber tire, filled with gasoline, around a
victim’s chest and arms, and setting it on fire. This was used against
opponents in internecine ANC warfare.
The Afrikaners only wanted peace, which was offered multiple times to the
blacks. After being met with ever more terrorism, Afrikaners diesngaged from
20 areas that were designated as black homelands. Each of these territories
was offered full independence; four of them took it — Transkei, Venda,
Bophuthatswana, and Ciskei. But instead of focusing on building their
nations, the blacks continued to resort to terror.
Meanwhile, the international community shunned South Africa — but not Saudi
Arabia, a theocracy where converts from Islam face capital punishment; or
East Germany, where people who tried to leave the country were shot dead; or
Kampuchea, where Pol Pot perpetrated a genocide of more than 1 million
people. Only South Africa, where less than 2,000 blacks were killed by a
government faced with guerrilla warfare, was subjected to UN sanctions — but
not Angola, where civil war killed hundreds of thousands.
International hypocrisy peaked in the 70s and 80s. When the South African
rugby team (the Springboks) toured Australia in 1971, the leader of the
Labour Party, Gough Whitlam, opposed the tour and declared: “Australians
should never let an afternoon’s entertainment blind them to a lifetime’s
repression for another nation.” This, said by a politician from a country
that dispossessed and mostly exterminated its Aboriginal population. Huge
and widespread protest also occurred in New Zealand in 1981 against a
Springbok tour — that, in a country that committed cultural genocide against
the Maoris, whose language is in a terminal state.
An automatic anti-Afrikaner UN majority recommended several times economic
sanctions against South Africa, and third world countries were quick and
happy to implement them. Even the US disgraced itself by applying economic
sanctions it never imposed on far worse human-rights offenders like
Mozambique or the Congo. Of course, none of those countries stopped using
South African diamonds or gold, which are key to high-tech industries, or
performing heart transplants, an Afrikaner-invented medical procedure.
CONCLUSIONS
After thoroughly analyzing the undemocratic, yes, but relatively benign
Afrikaner rule in South Africa, and the disproportionate international
reaction to it, only one of two conclusions can be drawn. EITHER
1) The world was full of anti-Afrikaner prejudice and even hate, which is
evident in the sanctions imposed by the world’s nations against Apartheid
South Africa, and their silence regarding other atrocities, massacres and
genocides that dwarf it. The only moral thing to do is acknowledge the
injustice done to Afrikaners and revert to the situation of 1991, before the
Apartheid regime was toppled by the pressure of a hypocritical international
community;
OR
2) Apartheid was wrong, even if methods used to fight it were also wrong,
and even if other human-rights violations were even worse. Toppling it was
justified, and there was nothing inherently unfair in singling out the
Afrikaners, even if the Congolese behaved worse; just like there’s nothing
wrong in denouncing the lack of freedom in Cuba, even if Somalia has far
less liberties, or — in criticizing Israel, even if its dispossession of
Palestinians pales beside the genocide in Darfur.
Source URL:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/01/28/on-how-apartheid-south-africa-was-unfairly-demonized-like-israel/
Posted By: JoAn
*AfricanCrisis Volunteer*
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