The Apartheid Era: Difference between revisions

{{tropeUseful Notes}}

--|''[[Spitting Image]]'', "I've Never Met a Nice South African"| (because apparently [[Unfortunate Implications|racism is funny]] if you have [[Acceptable Targets|the right target]])}}

During this'''The timeApartheid Era''', legalized ethnic segregation occurred, with South African black people stripped of citizenship by South African white people (who were/are mainly English and Afrikaners, the latter being Dutch/Afrikaans for "Africans") in South Africa proper and given citizenship of one of ten "homelands", four of which were nominally independent but still totally reliant on the rest of the country to survive. Officially, the motive was "de-colonization"; unofficially, the "homelands" (a.k.a. "Bantustans") quickly became a source of cheap labor for the mines.

Within South Africa, political opponents could be "banned" -- barred—barred from communicating with more than one person at any one time when not at home, from visiting certain areas and from having anything they said quoted in the media (a legal measure which is still on the books today). Indefinite detention without charge or trial was allowed for those suspected of "terrorism" -- defined—defined so broadly, like "communism", that it meant "whatever the government says". Up to 1993, South Africa had the greatest percentage of its own population in prison globally, when it was surpassed by... the US (on account of mandatory minimum sentencing laws). Hundreds of people were tortured in jail and killed with explanations such as "fell down the stairs" -- [[The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much]] indeed, to the point of public inquests backing such findings. Additionally, the security and intelligence services assassinated numerous people outright, both in South Africa and abroad, usually making use of 'care packages', better known as a bomb in the mail ([[Incredibly Lame Pun|care packages ... they take care of you]]). The shift from non-violence to violence is thought of as beginning in 1960 with the Sharpeville Massacre, when frightened police (including Black officers) fired on an unruly protesting crowd throwing stones, killing dozens, most shot in the back while fleeing. It went downhill in the aftermath, with armed resistance and terrorism beginning.

Apartheid is pronounced "apart-hate" (but only if you over-enunciate it), which may seem appropriate [[Your Mileage May Vary|if]] [[In My Language, That Sounds Like...|your primary language is English]].<ref>because since "-heid" means "-ness", you also have words like "vriendelikheid" ("friendliness") which have nothing to do with "hate" at all.</ref>. The word's current political meaning was coined in Afrikaans. It exists in Dutch as well, but it had no political connotations in either language before it was used to name the now-infamous government policy. It translates simply as "apart-ness." What is rather ironic about it is that the term was used because the word "segregation" was considered to have too many negative connotations, and "apartheid" was considered a more neutral term for the policy. Although similar policies existed before then, even before the formation of the Union of South Africa (being known as the "Shepstonian System" in the British Empire's Natal Colony, which joined the Union in 1910), it was only officially and nationally entrenched in law in 1948. If you're in America, this is kind of like the difference between it being a States' Rights or Federal issue: before apartheid, some provinces were less segregationist than others.

South Africa was subjected for much of this period to a large-scale international economic and military boycott -- theboycott—the [[South Africans With Surface to Air Missiles]] developed weapons indigenously with Israeli help (that's right, Israel helped [[Those Wacky Nazis|the National Party]] segregate blacks. Why? Probably so they could get uranium to build [[Israelis With Infrared Missiles|their own nukes]]), including working on a shared nuclear weapons program. The so-called "Vela Incident", an explosion out in the ocean near Antarctica which was picked up by US surveillance satellites, was probably a South African nuclear test.

* ''Eagle in the Sky'', a novel by Wilbur Smith about a South African pilot in the Israeli Air Force during the Yom Kippur War.

* ''[[District 9]]'', an [[Alien Among Us]] story set in Johannesburg, never explicitly mentions apartheid -- butapartheid—but [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|you can't help thinking about it anyway]].

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