South African Diary 8

July 5, 2005 by tompoyser

“Apartheid was a good thing?” I was almost dumbstruck. The guy I was talking too was a black Ethiopian who was in town for a few days before a conference started. The conference was about professional exchanges within Africa, for skill sharing. These included Dr's, nurses, lawyers, teachers and a whole range of other occupations. This was because it was felt that African countries faced a whole range of problems, and some countries tackled problems differently, leading to some successes and some failures. A good example of this, he had told me earlier was Uganda’s relatively low AIDS rates. But what he was talking about now was the benefit of an apartheid system.

“It is not that I agree with the systematic persecution of a race, but South Africa created a minority ruling elite. And these guys were able to re-invest money into the countries infrastructure. And now apartheid is ending, and things are changing. OK, they are still bad for some people, but in just 10 years things have got so much better.”

“So the country might be better off now, but what about the human rights of those who lived under the apartheid system?”

“Sure that is tough, and I am not supporting apartheid whole heartedly, just that for economic development their needs to be some sort of system that channels the majority of the countries money into that re-investment. Apartheid was one such system, and although South Africa is left with many problems, it does have a better economy than many of its neighbours.”

“It is a pretty big sacrifice you have to make, to say that your whole life you will be unhappy, just so your grand-kids will have a better life.”

“Yes, but it is better to have an unhappy life with the prospect that in 20 years things might be better, than to have an unhappy life and keep going the way you are.”

Our conversation went on like that for some time. In the end it was decided that maybe the economic justification for apartheid could be seen as logical, if that was the reason for it’s existence, but the institutionalised racism that underpinned so much of the system could not possibly be seen as human and decent.

What was most interesting about the whole discussion was that the person who was almost defending apartheid to me was one of the middle class black South Africans who resisted apartheid most strongly.

P.S. – Our conversation did not happen exactly as written. I have a good memory, but not that good.