Al Jazeera
It has a right to exist.
Did Apartheid South Africa have a right to exist?
Are you asking about the country or the policy of apartheid?
Edit to add more detail
Are you asking if I think that the country had a right to exist or if it should have been dissolved entirely and started from scratch?
Are you asking if I think all of the Afrikaners should have left and left only natives? Are you asking if the policy should have been permitted?
It’s pretty obvious if you think about it for more than one second.
I can answer that. Apartheid south africa had no fucking right to exist; the policies and the country. It should have been dissolved entirely long before it eventually was.
South Africa did start from scratch after the end of the Apartheid, if you know anything about how much the Apartheid government looted the state coffers bare before democracy.
Talking about Afrikaaners leaving and natives staying is disingenuous. Everyone wanted Apartheid sympathisers gone, and to coexist as equal citizens in the new democratic country.
I can draw so many parallels between Apartheid south africa and israel.
See. You obviously weren’t actually interested in my answer. You just wanted to spew overly simplified nonsense. You didn’t answer a single question I asked so that I could answer your question appropriately. SA didn’t start over entirely. They didn’t dissolved the state and then just decide on things like the border after apartheid. Apartheid was a policy. An awful one. South Africa is a place. So what the fuck are you even asking as you talk to yourself.
I mean, you can draw parallels with events from any 2 random countries. That doesn’t make it the same. If anything a closer comparison would be the events with South West Africa. But that would have more to do with the territorial aspects than the apartheid aspects.
Oh i answered every one of your questions.
Borders absolutely did change internally in south africa, despite you claiming that borders did not. And i want to point out that israel is the occupying force in gaza and west bank, so if they go for a one state solution then borders would be internally changed. If they go for a two state solution borders would still be internally affected, so i don’t know what you are complaining about.
South africa did start over from scratch, did you read about the new constitution drawn up, the overhaul of the apartheid laws set in place, the putting in place of a government of national unity, the democratic elections, the overhauling of the judicial system, etc. There was a whole fucking lot of change. And, let me repeat this from my previous reply, the apartheid government stealing the state coffers dry, so the new government started from scratch.
Apartheid wasn’t just a policy, it was an ideology, a state of being for the racist minority, a hellish state of being for the majority. So fuck you for being reductive about Apartheid. This is the reason why so many south africans could and can always absolutely relate to the hell that palestinians are living through.
Israel is practicing a worse form of Apartheid, that is absolutely clear for any south african to see, so the comparison between israel and Apartheid south africa is more valid than many other comparisons.
Lastly, i was answering your questions because i have some knowledge on the subject. And fuck me for engaging with people on a social media platform all about engagement, right?
Jesus fuck. I wasn’t reductive of apartheid. I was pointing out that apartheid was the policy and south Africa was the nation state. You are reductive of apartheid by trying to simplify it enough that Israel fits your definition of it.
And again, it did not start from scratch. There was a lot of things that were done and existed during the change. A constitution is only one part of a nation state. They already had international recognition. No one was disputing the borders of south Africa. Changing internal borders is an entirely different thing to changing international borders. Literally right next door was south West Africa. Which, if you really want to shoehorn this comparison is a clearly better comparison. But they had an entire civil war forming national and international boundaries. Seriously. It is clear you’ve just read a few lefty articles about how some people from SA say that Israel is an apartheid state.
But let me show you. SWA was a territory controlled by Germany until WWI (check), British gain control (check), UN defines it as mandatory swa governed by SA governed by great Britain (check), great Britain makes plan for SA to be independent and swa to be independent, but (now this is where things differ) SA is like nah and takes control, doesn’t give it up, and institutes apartheid there as well. Eventually the whole region falls into a border war and closely intertwined civil war in Angola. And then we got Namibia.
There are a lot of parallels. But that doesn’t mean it is the same. And when you try to make it the same it is reductive for both sides. The apartheid of SA and SWA is orders of magnitude above the restrictions in the west bank and Gaza. It ignores the backgrounds and why some of those things exist. It was made to have essentially an entire slave class in SA and SWA. Palestinians are not slaves. Arab Israelis certainly experience systemic racism in Israel. But not something that can be classified as apartheid.
Like what things specifically do you think qualifies it as apartheid.