bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1986) — Winter 1986 // Hiver 1986, p. 14
Before we Canadians become too self-satisfied about the manner in which we are planning to teach the South Africans how to deal with their native peoples by creating Bantustans, let us just reflect on the manner in which we have been treating our own native peoples over the past years by settling them on Indian Reservations, and, generally speaking, isolating them from the general flow of Canadian life and development.
I abhor apartheid as much as anyone, but I’m afraid, sitting here in the relative comfort of Canada, that I don’t know how to get rid of it in South Africa. A lot of other people seem to have the answer, but I don’t despite having lived there for a couple of years.
Let us not overlook, even from this distance, some of the facts of South African life when we so roundly condemn the Pretoria Government for failing to extend majority rule to the Blacks. First of all, where does “the majority” lie when there are about five and a half million Zulus, four and a half million Whites, more than two and a half million Xhosas, two and a half million Coloreds, almost the same number of North Sothos, a few more South Sothos, and just over one and a quarter million Tswanas, not counting the million-odd made up of smaller tribal-linguistic groupings?
And if from the foregoing can be drawn the inevitable conclusion that the Blacks outnumber the Whites in the Republic itself by more than 3 to 1, let us recall that intertribal mini-war that occurred a few months back near Durban, when Zulus and Pondos had at one another with machetes – over water rights, incidentally – causing a fair number of ugly deaths. Each tribe in South Africa has deeply engrained fears and animosities about all other tribes.
This, of course, is not peculiar to South Africa. Just cast your mind back a few years and recall:
a) that a bully-ogre calling himself Emperor
Bokassa ran riot in C.A.R., generating tribal warfare to his ultimate undoing; b) that another bully named Nkrumah was deposed (while visiting China) for trying to impose the rule of his tribe over others;
c) that Nigeria was torn by civil inter-tribal conflict – remember Biafra?
d) that the Sudan exploded in an internally generated revolution based on tribal animosities and personal ambitions; e) that Uganda suffered at least four tribally-based tyrannies under three
Heads of State.
f) that UN troops had to be sent to the Congo to prevent Katanga from breaking away from the central government in Kinshasa;
9) that Rwanda and Burundi, now two small states, had to be granted separate existence because the pygmy Bantus of the one refused to go on being the slaves of the nilotic giants of the other, as had been the case for centuries;
h) that Kikuyu and Masai were at one anothers’ throats savagely until Jomo Kenyatta emerged triumphant; i) that Tanzania may enjoy one man-one vote elections, but it is for a one-Party government.
j) that Mugabe’s northern Shonas have effectively prevented Nkomo’s southern Matabeles from sharing either the responsibilities or the fruits of governing Zimbabwe.
With such a long and recent record of tribal troubles in other African states, is it any wonder that the South Africans are proceeding cautiously?
And if you are looking for an outstanding example of separateness (i.e. apartheid), just consider what happened in 1948 when India and Pakistan subdivided the Indian subcontinent, and where we now find a Bangladesh; with talk now of a Kalestan emerging through bloody strife. And who can forget the tragedy in human life and displacement that occurred when India and Pakistan went their separate ways? And can we overlook Sri Lanka entirely with so many seeking refuge here in Canada.
And if you’re uptight about South Africa attacking terrorist installations in Zimbabwe and Botswana, just remember that Israel is doing it all the time from a land base that they succeeded in occupying, with UN support, by dispossessing those who had lived there amicably with Jews and Christians ever since the Crusades had become a thing of the past. The USSR is doing its share of bombing too, in Afghanistan. The UN seems unable to stop them, although it does seem to have ostracised the South Africans – largely, it would seem, because of the huge Black majority in the General Assembly. And now it’s occurred most improperly, in the Red Cross Context. What folly will be committed next with Soviet help?
And sanctions? What will they accomplish? The non-South African Blacks (about one and a half million of them) will probably be the first to have to return, as unemployed, to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Botswana and Mozambique. The native Blacks of South Africa are going to be more deeply embittered by being denied the opportunity to earn the means of acquiring a bride and settling down. Embitterment can lead to bloody retaliation. Necklacing of their fellow Blacks has already shown what savagery is still possible.
But the leaders of the Front-Line States know from experience that the Developed Countries of the West can be counted on to maintain, and even, if necessary increase, the flow of “aid” fund to those areas where sanctions have bitten most deeply.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1986) — Winter 1986 // Hiver 1986, p. 14. Read the rest of this issue →
