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    Apartheid: It's Also An Individual Reality
    Apartheid: It's Also An Individual Reality
    Apartheid: It's Also An Individual Reality
    Ebook63 pages54 minutes

    Apartheid: It's Also An Individual Reality

    By Mark Howard

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    About this ebook

    Apartheid.

    It’s not a bygone political ideology. It’s something within a lot of us.

    In this book Mark Howard takes a very personal look at the political system he grew up in.

    He links that to later experiences, post apartheid and outside of South Africa, and concludes that an inhumane system associated with a single period and place in history is in fact more than that.

    Apartheid is as much a personal preference as it is a political system.

    His personal experiences and his reflection on history combine to provide a compelling argument which suggests we all carry the risk of being somewhat guilty of what made a country the pariah of the world for his generation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMark Howard
    Release dateMar 8, 2011
    ISBN9781458183255
    Apartheid: It's Also An Individual Reality

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      Book preview

      Apartheid - Mark Howard

      Apartheid: It’s Also an Individual Reality

      By Mark Howard

      Copyright 2011 Mark Howard

      Smashwords Edition

      Apartheid

      It’s not a bygone political ideology. It’s something within a lot of us.

      In this book Mark Howard takes a very personal look at the political system he grew up in. He links that to later experiences, post apartheid and outside of South Africa, and concludes that an inhumane system associated with a single period and place in history is in fact more than that. Apartheid is as much a personal preference as it is a political system.

      His personal experiences and his reflection on history combine to provide a compelling argument which suggests we all carry the risk of being somewhat guilty of what made a country the pariah of the world for his generation.

      Chapter 1: Come visit any time

      In the early ‘80s Clare and I were living in Pretoria, the center of the apartheid system. We can talk about some of the details of that system later. In the meantime let me share something with you which describes what a ridiculous system that was, not at a political level, but at a social and personal level.

      Clare was in the administrative department of Daan Retief Uitgewers, Daan Retief Publishers, a well established publishing house catering mostly to the conservative Afrikaans market. She was one of the few English speaking people in the otherwise Afrikaans dominated business.

      One of the prominent publishers in the company was Eric, a dapper little Afrikaner who was very well connected in the political circles. It was rumored that he was a nephew of the incumbent Prime Minister, P. W. Botha. Commonly known as P. W. or die groot krokodil, the big crocodile, Botha was the prime minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984. He was an advocate of the apartheid system, but he made some concessions towards human rights while in power. F.W. de Klerk took the reins after P.W. and became the last prime minister of the white regime. Nelson Mandela took over from him.

      Getting back to Eric, we never knew if he was in fact related to P.W., but the rumor was enough to give him a status of significance.

      In the middle of ’81 he went overseas to promote a book on South African wines, with a particular focus on the American market. Washington DC was on his itinerary. The American market was more interested in the South African political situation than its viticulture. Eric found himself in the middle of debates about the legitimacy of apartheid, and the efforts to free Mandela and end the oppression of the black people.

      Eric had a stock response to the people who challenged the legitimacy of the apartheid system. He would simply invite the people to come to visit South Africa.

      It’s not what it looks like in the media. South Africa has developed the independent homelands, and it’s a good system for everyone.

      The Apartheid regime had established a series of homelands which were purported to be independent countries governed by their own people. It was referred to mostly as a policy of separate development. Homelands were aligned with tribal or ethnic groups. The Transkei was for the Xhosa, the Tswana people were given Bophutatswana, and there was Venda, understandably for the Venda people. The rest of this farcical system was made up of Ciskei (also Xhosa), Gazankulu (Tsonga), KaNgwane (Swazi), KwaNdebele (Ndebele), KwaZulu (Zulu), Lebowa (North Sotho), and lastly QwaQwa, for the South Sotho speaking people.

      The rest of the country, 87% of the land area, was to be run by the Nationalist government, the representative structure of the white people. The democratic system did not include the black people, known as non-whites, non-Europeans, or natives, or bantus.

      No one ever extended the homeland concept to the differentiation between the various ethnic equivalents in the white population. By extension there should have been a homeland for the English speaking people, and one for the Afrikaans speaking people. But this never happened. There was a futile attempt by Betsie Verwoerd, wife of the late prime minister, to create an independent white homeland for the Afrikaner volk, nation, but it was never a part of the apartheid policy. It was more a last gasp of a dying philosophy, clinging on to the image of one its main proponents.

      Over time the Nationalists had to continually repackage their philosophy, mostly to

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