A look at apartheid
by Ato Imbeah
The South-African Government, determined to stem the tide of protests against the apartheid system introduced emergency measures recently to clamp down on the people. Over 1,200 have been arrested.The South African emergency measures, which have already seen 16 blacks dead and over 1,200 more imprisoned, has stirred international revulsion against the apartheid system and many organizations and governments are calling for mandatory sanctions against the Pretoria regime. France, one of the leading investor- countries in South Africa has decided in the wake of these repressive measures, to stop new investments in the country and has recalled its ambassador, thus being the first Western government to have taken some form of economic sanction against South Africa.
At the United Nations Security Council debate on the issue, the United States and British representatives rejected the use of economic sanctions against the Pretoria regime, and Sir Geoffrey Howe, Britain's Foreign Secretary, in a major policy speech to the Royal Commonwealth Society, said sanctions cannot pressurise the Botha regime to dismantle the apartheid system, but rather endorsed the Reagan concept of constructive engagement with South Africa to find a solution to the apartheid dilemma.
Such pussy-footing attitude of most Western governments from time immemorial has only succeeded in giving a solid foundation to the apartheid system of South Africa. The best measure they had taken of late was occasional support of sporting sanctions against the regime.
Western interests in Africa are centred in South Africa, and despite the verbal recognition by most governments and states in the western industrialized countries that the apartheid system is barbaric and inhuman, foreign investment continues to grow. And in the name of 'peaceful change' and resistance to "communist expansion", these western powers provide the means for resistance to African rule.
Dr Daniel F. Malan, leader of the Nationalist opposition party, in his first use of the term apartheid in Parliament on 24th June 1944, spoke of a policy "to ensure the safety of the white race and of christian civilization by the honest maintenance of the principles of apartheid and guardianship", and that policy has now become so entrenched in the country that South Africa has become a "very strange society" even to itself.
The country is a racially stratified society, marked by inequalities of power and wealth more extreme than in almost any other country. 70% of the population who are Africans receive 20%c of the total income and 17% of the population who are whites receive nearly 70% of the income. The simple but unalterable fact of colour dominates every facet of life.
Each individual in the Republic of South Africa must carry an identity card on which he or she is classified as "European" "Bantu" "Coloured" or "Asian". And their classification determines where they live, what education they receive and what work they are able to do, how much money they earn, whom they marry, where their dependents live, whether they have any political rights and where they may exercise them. The racial classification even determines which ambulance picks them up when they are ill, to which hospital they will be taken, and where they will be buried when they die.
South African claims of gradual internal change is a myth. The central institution of the apartheid state should be dismantled, as black population not only suffer injustices that recall the situation as were in "classical colonies", but also denied the right to citizenship
Apartheid is nothing but a system of extreme socio-economic and political exploitation in the interests of a minority of just 4 million whites over about 27 million blacks. This is the society which Dan Burton, a US congressman defending the Reagan stand of constructive engagements, said he rather preferred sanctions imposed on Nicaragua to bring on changes there to seeing sanctions imposed on it to… Mr Denis Healey on 25th July Newsnight.
Inequality of this magnitude is made possible through the operation of a highly authoritarian state which exercises massive control over the lives of the majority of its inhabitants. South Africa needed leaders utterly amoral nihilism of a Hitler to implement a policy of this kind, such leadership they found in J. M Hertzog, the founder of the Nation Party and the true father of apartheid and Malan, during whose tenure office the Germans resident in Natal became his allies in spreading racial doctrines, and Vorster who is known to resemble Hitler in plastic surgery.
Central to the contempo functioning of apartheid is a migrant labour system based on the division of South Africa into two sectors. There are the so-called white areas comprising about 87% of the land including all the major industrial mining centres, and the so-called Black homelands or Bantustans, formerly known as native reserves, comprising 13% of the land. Thus the black relegated to the most squalid concentrations where death and disease are the order of the day.
At work, the black labourer is not only super exploited but treated as the lowest underdog who has no hope of advancing beyond certain types of lives designated for him.
The opposition of blacks to apartheid culminating in the passive resistance led by Albert Luthuli of the ANC, active resistance by the African Congress and the Sharpe shooting, made the UNO, in expressing world opinion, placed arms embargo on South Africa in 1963, yet Britain France and the United States continue to send arms and provide strategic assistance and paramilitary aid to South Africa.
It was a year after the 1976 Soweto riot that Canada stopped its official trade promotion services and Denmark and Norway withdrew their government guarantees, with Sweden banning new investment
The question is who do these Western democratic governments support a political system that is abhorrent to many of their citizens? The answer is not far-fetched.
Britain's total investment in South Africa is estimated at £12 billion, rising by £300 million every year and the total United States investment is £10 billion and rising even probably faster. There is no pension fund, unit trust, building society or insurance company in Britain which does not invest in South Africa, and the reason is simply a matter of profit.
These Western countries' attraction to South Africa is by its mineral wealth, and South Africa's vast and diverse mineral wealth is the foundation stone, of the apartheid economy. Gold is still by far South Africa's most important mineral, and foreign investment in the gold mines came chiefly through the London Stock Exchange and the money markets of London, New York and Europe, and profits made in these mines by the adequate supply of cheap labour, the blacks, with skilled and semi-skilled work in all sectors reserved for whites in order to maintain their 'standards' above that of the African population. And so the apartheid system was fuelled from strength to strength by these foreign investments.
The South African claim of gradual internal change is a myth. The central institution of the apartheid state should be dismantled, as the black population not only suffer injustices that recall the situation as were in "classical colonies", but also denied the right to participate in the democratic process and even denied the very right to citizenship.
Most of the countries that have opted for either persuasion or constructive engagement, thus rejecting economic disengagement, selective sanctions and comprehensive mandatory economic sanctions which is supported by the African block at the UNO argue that such actions have failed to yield results, citing Southern Rhodesia as a typical example. When economic sanctions were imposed on Rhodesia during Smith's rule in 1965 many conditions made it favourable to weather the storm. Mozambique supplied it with oil till it became independent and South Africa went to its aid.
Sanctions have been imposed in Poland and in Iran it yielded when the hostages were released when honestly undertaken, comprehensive mandatory economic sanction would work in South Af where the unnecessary military expeditions in neighbouring countries has alienated it, and the expansion of its military and police forces claiming one-fifth of its deficit budget.
The price of gold has fallen and inflation is rising. The Botha regime knows what devastating effect economic sanctions would have on the South African economy, that is what has made it an act of terror punishable by death the call withdrawal of foreign investment.
The black majority are ready to put up with the additional suffering such mandatory sanctions would bring, if their hope is dashed by any Western country through the veto power, to the hopeless can always afford to be brave.
