It was during 1948 that the apartheid system was introduced in South Africa. Prior to that there was segregation, practiced world-wide. Countries that have removed the segregation factor from their system, are considered fully democratic, integrated societies with no racism or perhaps far less outburst of racism than in South Africa. The word Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning separation or keep apart, and it is the word itself that causes so much propaganda.
Under the apartheid regime, Indians, Blacks, and Colored people were the most disadvantaged and totally separated from white areas. They were the people who had to deal with the injustices that forced them to live in townships and carry identification passes. Yes, the Indians, Blacks, and Colored people were victims of oppression and were forced to live in fear.
Apartheid as seen through the eyes of Blacks, Indians, and Colored people was a structure to ensure the white minority lived in luxury while the majority remained oppressed and lived in poverty. The white minority was seen as a controlling force who would continue to execute their power to maintain control of the black majority.
There remains one group of people who suffered under the Apartheid regime, totally ignored and likened as the oppressor. The Indian, Colored, and Black communities after twenty years of independence fail to recognize the oppression of a white minority group who suffered under apartheid, perhaps not as drastically as they had but they were a victim.
White, English speaking South Africans, endured segregation, isolation, and intimidation by the popular dominant Afrikaans speaking people. They had to attend different schools, churches, sports facilities, and universities. There was the constant belittling of white children by the Afrikaans. The English speaking were often referred to as “Rooi Nek”, (red neck) and even though they had better privileges than the other races, all white people were brainwashed by the older generations into believing they were also superior to other races. Other civilized white groups like the Jewish community, the Portuguese, or Italian communities had to endure the dominant Afrikaner during the years under apartheid. This indicates that, during apartheid, there was certainly a division among white people.
Today after twenty years of freedom, the white population has learned to adapt and has extended their hospitality to the Black, Colored, and Indians communities. There are vast numbers of the different ethnic races who have also extended their compassion toward all the different cultures. It is simply a rainbow nation and we are all learning to live in a peaceful environment.
As a rainbow nation, we should move forward into a democratic nation, but there is a small group of people who would rather continue to vent their anger. Many intelligent Black, Indian, and Colored people will keep blaming their shortcomings on the apartheid era. It is so much easier to have apartheid as the scapegoat. After twenty years, if the nation still holds onto hatred for the white people then we will never have the benefit of a truly democratic society. English speaking South Africans still find it difficult to integrate into an Afrikaans society, and it was Zuma who said there was only one white group of people who were actually South Africans, the Afrikaans. English speaking people are an element of apartheid and still considered the ones to blame for the traumatic past.
People of all races continue to remain brainwashed by the government factors; it is always an element of conversation to refer to the apartheid era for the wrong doings instead of focusing on the most important issues of life. After twenty years, the majority of South Africans are still holding onto a past that will never come back. All cultures of South African people need to move away from the past and look toward a future of unity and democracy.
The different ethnic groups of South Africa keep crying to the world on how disadvantaged, how traumatized, or victimized they were because of apartheid, but we should not forget the suffering of the slaves in America, the forceful child labor around the world, and the fear of young soldiers who died defending their country. The genocide of the Jewish people is far worse than the apartheid victims of South Africa.
Until people let go of the past they will not move forward. Apartheid is gone forever, and it will not come back.
Written by Laura Oneale
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8 Responses
Gaz: I understood the Author to say that English people were also disadvantaged by Apartheid. Maybe you should read the article again more carefully.
Afrikaners, not English people, are blamed for Apartheid and rightly so. Look at the Afrikaans comments blaming the English it’s farcical, there’s a reason the world doesn’t take these people seriously.
Where do you get the idea that English people were the ones to blame? Bizarre article from a bizarre author.
The situation in South Africa is so much more complex than any single person can understand. And delving into the detail can be satisfying just as an excuse to point fingers at one another for the sins of the past, and this exercise can go on forever – I have learnt that as enjoyable as it may be to blame each other, the solution is in not looking at the detail but rather in shifting away from it and instead looking at what to do going forward.
This then highlights the failings of the current crop of leadership as they partake in finger-pointing as well as the next guy instead of forging a path that South Africans, together, can take to build this country into a great one.
That process needs understanding from all parties. Black people need to stop their entitlement mentality and need to take much more responsibility for their own success (and it is great to know that a great deal actually do), white people need to understand that resources that used to mostly serve 10-15% of the population now have to serve everyone. These resources have to be built up to handle the load of the entire population. In the meantime, there will be a perceived loss of a quality of life for most white people (considering how resources were allocated during Apartheid) but for black people, their perceived quality of life, generally, will grow from what it used to be in Apartheid as more of the countries resources are furnished on them.
The end goal should be for our resources to serve the entire population as well as it used to serve the odd 15% during Apartheid and then to grow it from then on. All in all, a little less focus on the past and a lot more focus on the future is needed to make this country great, we can point fingers till the world ends, or the sun explodes or whatever comes first but that will not help anything but to feed our anger.
Bob
Apartheid affected blacks the most, it affected a generation of blacks. Blacks suffered under British rule & worse still under Afrikaner rule. The effects of this are still with us today. no amount of rationalization will do away with these facts.
Somethings are never talked about, for instance during the Boer War between the Britsh (comming to colonise the then Transvaal and Orange Free State) and the Boere. This war was also referred to as the Freedom War by the Boere. During this war when the Boer men were out at war the Britsh soldiers captured Boer women and children from their homesteads burnt down the homestead and kept the women and children in concentration camps (A camp where women and children were detained and confined under harsh conditions by the Britsh). In these camps more than 27000 Boer woman and children died, almost every town in the old Orange Free State and Transvaal till today has a concentration camp cemetery. When visiting the Women’s Monument in Bloemfontein you can view the conentration camp towns and number of deaths at each. And in this article the white Afrikaans speaking Boer are made out as the oppressor and the white english speaking Britsh as the victim. Apartheid was wrong, the Jewish Holocaust was wrong, but so also was concentration camps by Britsh during the Boer War responsible for the death of more than 27000 Boer woman and children. Never was this event thrown around as an excuse for not achieving a certain goal. Not even talked about in afrikaner homes, like the one I grew up in.
A typical liberal article. The only rainbow in South Africa’s Rainbow Nation is in Julius Malema’s clothing. People in South Africa are anything but united; they are pulling in different directions. There is no sense of common purpose and until that happens South Africa will continue to be a country with people with different cultures.
There is another truth as well
Who had the upper hand in managerial posts during the late 50’s middle sixties? English speaking people.
In government intuitions in the late 50’s Afrikaans speaking men where kept back by and overlooked for promotions by English managers and supervisors for higher posts. This went on in the early seventies as well.
If you where Afrikaans the English would benefit there own for higher post. It was an exclusive club that ruled government establishments
Do you remember the time when all correspondence had to be in English for one month and then the next mount Afrikaans?
Not discriminating against Afrikaners?
I definitely agree, Apartheid is long gone. I have many Black, Coloured and Indian friends and we all get along very well…People are still brainwashed and hopefully they will wake one day and realize that there is no more Apartheid and use it as an excuse.