What would the ANC/SACP alliance do without apartheid? This word has saved their bacon on thousands of occasions. It is their comfort blanket, to be dragged into every facet of their lives as an excuse for their huge inferiority complexes, their highly corrupt DNA and their conspicuous inability to govern a functioning country.

A recent statement by former president FW de Klerk that apartheid wasn’t necessarily a crime against humanity spawned outrage within the ruling ANC, the liberal white community and, in particular, a politically-correct, self-declared Afrikaans intellectual clique and its one-trick pony media, in the main supporters of the eventual accession to power of the terrorist African National Congress organisation.  

A cursory scrutiny of the Afrikaans media at the time of the previous regime’s “crossing of the Rubicon” reveals a propaganda campaign crafted to demonise apartheid and to convince Afrikaners in particular that a new multi-party power-sharing democracy would deliver the peace and prosperity they craved. The world would be South Africa’s oyster. But nowhere in the pre-ANC government period did this dedicated media inform white South Africa of the destructive chaos that would emerge in the aftermath of the abolition of apartheid.

As a result of the sanctimonious barrage of disgust at Mr. de Klerk’s heretical remarks, the former president capitulated and apologised for his pronouncements. However he was right: apartheid was not a “crime against humanity”. The ANC’s parrot-style mantra that “the world” has condemned apartheid is false.  In a refreshing letter to the Afrikaans media, Dr. J.H. van der Merwe pointed out that the “crime against humanity” decision was made by a 1973 “Convention on Apartheid as a Crime against Humanity” proposal by UN member the Soviet Union and its twenty or so communist vassal countries, plus some rag tag African states and a few Islamic nations. None of these signatories even resembled a democracy. Ironically, the originator of the Convention – the Soviet Union – was responsible for millions of deaths in wars, purges and starvation.

By contrast, democracies such as Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the USA did not support the decision. America in fact rejected the decision outright, stating that “We cannot accept that apartheid can in this manner be made a crime against humanity” This “Convention” decision was thus not a Security Council resolution (the Security Council consists of fifteen members, five of which are permanent, and ten of which rotate on a regular basis). It was a Soviet concoction to support and give credibility to the violence of the ANC revolutionaries, and to demonise white South Africa so they would capitulate to what the Soviets hoped would be a state under USSR control. South Africa’s minerals and its strategic geography were a prize the Soviets had always coveted. Declared Dr. Van der Merwe: “This ‘Convention’ decision, by its very nature, carried no international legal weight or authority, which former president Thabo Mbeki declared was the case.” The Convention decision had thus no moral or legal backing whatsoever: one had only to look at the signatories’ human rights records! But the concoction worked and South Africa was laid bare, a whipping boy to be castigated forever by the do-nothings of this world and a gleeful ANC who couldn’t grow a potato, never mind head a responsible government.

WHAT WAS THE ALTERNATIVE?

In all the noise and chatter, nobody has asked: what was apartheid’s alternative? Has anyone put the question to the chorus of agonistas and hair-shirt hand wringers apologising for apartheid ad nauseum? The reasons for apartheid’s creation as a modus vivendi for South Africa’s disparate races to try and live together became submerged in the waves of propaganda directed against white South Africa for their “treatment of their black fellow citizens”. In fact, were it not for apartheid, black South Africans would today be in the same boat as their compatriots north of the Limpopo, some crushed by dictatorships, others living  on a few dollars a day. There is no empirical evidence to show that black South Africa would have advanced any further than their compatriots on the African continent who obtained independence from Europe. That such empirical facts are pointedly ignored by the cognoscenti is odd.

What system of government was on the table during the twentieth century’s mid forties when millions of unlettered tribal people with no modern skills streamed into South Africa’s cities looking for work? Three options existed at the time of the 1948 election – the National Party’s apartheid policy of separate development which planned to allow the country’s five different races to develop at their own pace and in their own space;  the United Party’s “qualified franchise” policy where nobody actually specified who would do the qualifying; and a third alternative mooted by some contemporary black political parties – a one man, one vote election and (black) majority rule.

Those who now see with daunting clarity where this third option has now landed us will have to acknowledge that apartheid was really the only option at the time - whether it offended some delicate attitudes or not. Sometimes the best option is not the most popular one, or the most moral one, but it’s the only one! Imagine a Jacob Zuma /Kwame Nkrumah government in South Africa fifty years earlier!

Apartheid gave the white 1948 government the breathing space to create one of the world’s most prosperous countries. Modern infrastructure such as Eskom, Iscor, Denel, Transnet, Sasol, nuclear facilities and the world’s most sophisticated mining technology was established. Roads, schools, hospitals, universities, a huge industrial complex and an efficient commercial farming sector all mushroomed during the peak years of apartheid.

CURRENT DEBATE

In a country which boasts a purported free press, the current apartheid debate has been quite a phenomenon. In order to appear “objective”, a few letters were printed outlining some measured explanations of why apartheid was introduced, with some letters casting aspersions on the status of the UN as a moral arbiter of national behaviour. These opinions were met with an even greater barrage of apartheid detractors ranging from the breast beaters to the guilty moralists and those who believe that a destroyed South Africa under the ANC must be endured rather than admit there may have been a very good reason for the introduction of apartheid. 

In fact, apartheid gave the black people of South Africa everything they have now. The ANC gave South Africa nothing except violence, corruption and destruction. Why not focus one’s moral disgust on them? Media emphasis is virtually always on the “horrors” of apartheid. What about the ANC’s revolutionary horrors? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission had a field day demonising and castigating white policemen and others who tried to contain ANC and UDF killings, intimidation and human burnings in the streets of South Africa.  Not a word is said by the anti-apartheid folks about the violence that increased four times after the release of Mandela who declared on June 3, 1990 that “the only type of violence we accept is organised violence in the form of armed action which is properly controlled and where the targets have been carefully selected”.

If it difficult to understand how self-proclaimed moralists can prefer the killings, corruption,  incompetence and venality of today’s ANC to the days of apartheid. This is a similar attitude to the British government’s preference for Zimbabwe’s 90% unemployment and wholesale hunger to the days of Smith’s government. What matters most – a populace with jobs and food and peace, or a Mugabe dictatorship/Zuma kleptocracy and infrastructure destroyer? For those who believe in justice and fairness, what about a word of appreciation for the achievements of SA’s whites and others who made the country what it is today? Where are the thank you’s?

For those who maybe feel oppressed and denigrated and disadvantaged by apartheid, there were of course excesses. It certainly wasn’t perfect. But what of today’s ANC excesses?  More than 1,2 million people have fled South Africa since Mr. Mandela’s release. This doesn’t include those who quietly departed our shores, never to return. They left a so-called apartheid-free South Africa. What does that tell us?