Apartheid's Long Slow Death - Part 3
The Winds of Change
At around this time, I was living in South Africa with my family, having left the British disaster in Kenya several years before, a long saga of colonial failure you can read about here. In August of 1984, the Government had introduced what was called the tricameral parliament, where separate ‘Parliaments’ were elected for the Indian and ‘Coloured’ communities.
I’m very aware that the term ‘coloured’ is offensive to many, but I use it here as it was an official legal designation of race used in South Africa. The vast majority of those designated as ‘coloured’ were the result of mixed race couples – who were technically illegal – as well as migrants to South Africa. This included Chinese immigrants as well as some predominantly Muslim and Jewish communities, many of whom had been in the country for many generations. In South Africa at the time, and to a large extent to this day, the ‘coloured’ community has its own culture that is essentially Afrikaner.
This tricameral system mapped onto an earlier scheme to push non-white people, especially native and immigrant black Africans, into so-called ‘Homelands’. I have personally visited every single one of these ‘Homelands’, and they were exactly the kind of joke you might expect. Many of them were poorly serviced and unconnected tracts of land, such as Bophutswana and Zululand, and they were all, without exception, overcrowded dustbowls where no human on earth could be expected to thrive.
The majority of the black population lived and still lives in townships next to major cities such as Soweto and Johannesburg. Under the increasing pressure of their dire living conditions, continual violence, harassment, and discrimination, and now with this new and utterly inadequate attempt at political reform, the black population understandably blew up and rioted. The government’s response was to deploy the military, especially white eighteen year old armed National Servicemen, who would stand at 100 meter intervals around these townships, trying to keep order.
As the parents of three sons, we were determined not to see them put in harm’s way to prop up the remnant power of a racist and, to our minds, tottering regime. Not to mention the very real possibility that they might be forced to choose between unconscionable acts or criminal charges should the situation spin even further out of control. As far as we were concerned, this was the last straw. Within weeks, we had paid a visit to the Australian Embassy in Pretoria and inside a year we had permission to move to Australia. We arrived on January the18th, 1986.
In the meantime, the South African government continued with its halting attempts at a resolution. President Botha was in a bind, being inclined to release Mandela but concerned that such a gesture would be seen as a sign of weakness, a potentially fatal issue for a government under as much pressure as they were. Somewhat typically, the government made a half hearted attempt at a divide and rule strategy, hoping to drive a wedge between Mandela and the rest of the ANC leadership. This could have paid dividends if handled properly, given that Mandela had been imprisoned for decades and had, while at large, been the founder of the Umkonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), a group dedicated to armed resistance.
Mandela’s previous close association with the communists, disagreements over the use of violence, and all the typical fractures and jealousies inseparable from activist politics, could very well have handed the government a way to atomise the resistance. Unfortunately for the hardline elements of the government, but fortunately for everyone else, Nelson Mandela and his inner circle were well prepared for this attempt.
Join me for the next instalment, where I detail the tortuous negotiations between the ANC and the South African Government.