UNAPOLOGETIC BLACK OP-ED
Want to Know Why People Are Bringing Up South African Apartheid?
Some see a connection between South African apartheid and the Israeli Occupation of Gaza.
Many nations have, at one point or another, adopted segregationist policies and, when confronted, attempted to whitewash the underlying cruelty. Separating people, whether by race, faith, or caste, creates a social hierarchy of haves and have-nots of those who rule and those deprived of power. In America, after the chattel slavery system ended, Black Codes, or Jim Crow laws, swept the nation. White Americans, particularly in the South, sought to control nearly every facet of Black people’s lives through racist, state-level legislation. For almost a hundred years, this system continued, restricting where Black people could live, work, buy food, attend school, buy property, sit on a bus, or even take a sip from a water fountain. Segregationists fanned the flames of Jim Crow, arguing the Constitution did not explicitly require White and Black school children to attend the same schools.
Many Southerners claimed segregation was a harmless, regional custom. Indeed, Senator Strom Thurmond, a proud segregationist known for holding the longest speaking filibuster to stop civil rights legislation from passing, said, “[A]ll the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.” Mississippi Governor Theodore Bilbo said, “It is essential to the perpetuation of our Anglo-Saxon civilization that white supremacy be maintained, and to maintain our civilization, there is only one solution, and that is either by segregation within the United States or by deportation of the entire Negro race.” Alabama State Senator Sam Engelhardt said, “I have worked Negroes on the plantation for years and have never had a bit of trouble with any of them. I know what is best for them. Our sole purpose is to maintain segregation. That is what we intend to do.” Louisiana State legislator William Rainach said, “I do not believe the two societies should mix.”
During the 1960s, Americans, for the first time since the Reconstruction Era, began to shift culturally and embrace the call for civil rights, at least enough to pass federal legislation addressing the horrors of Jim Crow-era segregation. So, it should come as no surprise that many Black Americans empathized with the struggle of South Africans. From 1948 until 1994, White South Africans, a minority in the country, maintained an apartheid regime, which racially segregated, targeted, and controlled Black people. Interracial relationships were criminalized, public spaces were segregated, and “millions of Black citizens were forcefully removed from their homes, restricted and confined within tribal homelands according to their ethnicity, while whites remained and occupied towns and cities.” As within America’s Jim Crow system, the South African apartheid regime was maintained through violence, constant surveillance, and legislation that maintained and attempted to normalize the racial hierarchy.
Divestment as a resistance strategy
Black Americans protested and contributed to a grassroots movement that challenged South Africa’s Apartheid Regime. For instance, in 1985, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, and their children, Bernice and Martin, were arrested after protesting outside the South African Embassy in Washington. They also demanded the release of political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, who was, at that time, an activist imprisoned for his involvement in an “illegal strike and with leaving the country” without the permission of the South African government, which restricted the travel of Black people. Additionally, American college students, as well as some faculty members, led a divestiture movement, withholding investment from companies “doing business in South Africa.” This strategy also involved selling off stocks and divesting their holdings to pressure companies. “The first school to agree to divest its portfolio of companies doing business in South Africa was Hampshire College. By 1988, a total of 155 colleges had at least partially divested.”
Once you understand the role divestment played in pressuring the South African Apartheid Regime, you will realize why Florida’s ultra-Republican Governor Ron DeSantis banned “the pro-Palestinian student group,” Students for Justice in Palestine, and accused them of aligning themselves with terrorists is raising red-flags for human rights activists. Of course, there is no proof that this student-led organization had any relationship to any international terrorist groups. None of them have been formally accused in court of espionage, charged with a crime, or even officially investigated by law enforcement. And yet, Ron DeSantis is desperately trying to silence these students and refuses to respect their right to speak freely. There’s no way to sugarcoat what this means when a governor or any executive seeks to control which organizations students can create, join, or participate in and treats their First Amendment rights as a privilege and not a right. This is a textbook example of authoritarianism.
If a governor can dismantle a group advocating for Justice in Palestine, then what’s stopping them from banning Black sororities, fraternities, or black student-led organizations, like the Black Student Union I once joined at Loyola University in New Orleans? What’s stopping a sexist President from banning women’s organizations on college campuses or a xenophobic Governor from closing down Latino organizations? Hopefully, Americans wake up and smell the coffee. Whether they agree with the Palestinian cause or not, no one should accept this McCarthyism as normal, this polarization, unreasonable censorship, and demonization of good-faith activism.
In a “Statement of Solidarity,” dated October 26th, Writers Against the War on Gaza, described Israel’s war against Gaza as an attempt to “conduct genocide against the Palestinian people.” “This war did not begin on October 7th,” as many in Western news outlets have suggested, but rather, the violence we have seen, as of late, is the byproduct of the Israeli Occupation, they wrote. “We share the assertions of human rights groups, scholars, and, above all, everyday Palestinians: Israel is an apartheid state designed to privilege Jewish citizens at the expense of Palestinians.” The reason why so many people are drawing a comparison between the South African apartheid regime, Jim Crow in America, and the Israeli Occupation is because each of these systems created a social hierarchy that granted privilege to some at the expense of others.
Separate, but not equal
“Human Rights Watch, alongside other watchdogs, reported on Israel’s continued use of unjustified lethal force against Palestinian demonstrators; systematic torture of suspects; widespread, prolonged detention without charge; punitive home demolitions; other abuses,” Eric Goldstein wrote two years ago. During South Africa’s apartheid, Black people could not travel freely, and many massacres fermented a constant state of terror. Just as the government arrested Mandela for traveling, the majority of Palestinians cannot simply leave Gaza. They are blockaded in what many humanitarian experts refer to as an open-air prison. Israeli forces have a history of targeting Palestinians. However, conditions have worsened this month. On October 14th, a “UN human rights expert warned today that Palestinians are in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing and called on the international community to urgently mediate a ceasefire between warring Hamas and Israeli occupation forces.” A ceasefire is desperately needed in the region, but so far, leaders have not agreed. Nevertheless, there is a humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
While some are calling for a two-state solution, it is unlikely a segregated system would work out well for Israelis or Palestinians because, as America painfully learned, separate is not equal. Indeed, separate societies are the antithesis of equality. When Louisiana State legislator William Rainach said, “I do not believe the two societies should mix,” he was talking about Black and White Americans, but this could have easily been said by those advocating for a two-state system today, who believe that Israelis and Palestinians are incapable of living peacefully together. Instead of ensuring the government’s policies respect the rights of all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, or faith, to live and travel freely, own property, and conduct business, some want to throw in the towel, and accept the current hierarchy, but this is a status that’s untenable for Palestinians, just as it was for Black people living in South Africa during apartheid, or America during Jim Crow. The debates over a two-state system are long and winding, but ultimately, any system, whether bifurcated or unilateral, that does not address the injustices Palestinians have endured, their forced removal and confinement will not bring peace to the region. At this point, people are discussing these events, and the sociopolitical tectonic plates seem to be shifting under our feet.
Not only have many Black, Muslim, and Arab activists and scholars acknowledged the commonality between South Africa’s Apartheid Regime and the Israeli Occupation of Gaza, but they’re also attempting to implement a similar strategy of resistance. In their letter, Writers Against the War on Gaza suggested people join the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which includes a list of organizations “representing the Israeli state or cultural institutions complicit with its apartheid regime,” so that people who want to use their financial power to resist the Israeli Occupation, they may do so. So, if you’re wondering why many people are discussing South Africa, consider the uncanny parallels they’ve found between systems rooted in the segregation of people and the systemic mistreatment, alienation, and dehumanization involved in this colonialism. As President Nelson Mandela said in 1997, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
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