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Comment by alienthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Take it from this insider - gp is correct. Author is super tone-deaf and completely underselling Apartheid. The is a reason why Apartheid stood apart from garden-variety colonization; and that's because it was way, way worse, and in no way an improvement (except for the National Party, of course).

There is a tendency for the ruling party to maximise the damage caused by Apartheid - there is also a corresponding impulse to minimise it by those who benefited from it (I'm including author here) who claim that it was brief (2 generations!), or a long time ago (1 generation!). To that, I present my own life story - I was born, and started my education during apartheid, which for people like me, meant going to poorer schools and having a limited curriculum suited to the modest career decided for me by the government based on the colour of my skin - such as in a mine or on the factory floor. I am in my mid-30s.

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Exactly this, as another person who grew up in South Africa the constant minimisation of apartheid's long-term effects is a frustrating problem.

One of apartheid's most awful and lingering consequences is spatial apartheid, the creation of isolated racially-segregated communities far outside city centres, poorly-served by transport options, in areas marginal for local business and industry.

The ANC owns its fair share of blame for our present state, particular during the Zuma administration. The electricity crisis, worsening of police ineffectiveness and corruption, and collapse of local services are all failings of the ANC first and foremost.

But what's most important to understand is that fixing South Africa after 1994 was always going to be hard because of the huge amount of damage performed by apartheid. We were all far too sanguine about how easy it would be to move ahead, and coasted on a few years of goodwill and optimism without addressing the deep structural issues that caused social ruptures later on.

Indeed, the ANC maximises claims around apartheid, specifically as a scapegoat for their own corruption, incompetence and inaction.

My apologies if this came across as tone deaf. I in no way mean to minimise the damage caused by apartheid, which was one of the great evils of the 20th century.

One of the challenges in writing is realising that no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to please every one. I spent a lot of time on this post, and it went through several revisions. In some versions I was harsher on the ruling party; in others I went into more detail about the brutality of colonialism and apartheid.

As I acknowledged in the post, I have my own biases, and therefore encourage people to do their own research. I also provided a very short list of some of the terrible things associated with, or directly caused, by apartheid. I could certainly have expanded upon that, but then the post would have been about apartheid, and not the current state of the country. I could also have expressed more empathy for the suffering of the millions of people in the country who lack access to basic services, decent jobs, access to educational opportunities, etc. I have however become increasingly disillusioned by that type of writing, as it does not seem to have helped improve the situation. It is rather a style that I think helps to salve the conscience, at the expense of avoiding true self-reflection.

A child comment to this points out that spatial apartheid is still very much a thing; I agree completely. I could have written about that; but that is not what I wanted to write about. I am more concerned by the fact that spatial apartheid still exists, and that little to no progress has been made in addressing it, than in the fact that a certain group of terrible people situated at a specific point in history were responsible for it.

An unfortunate situation has arisen where any criticism of the current situation in the country is construed as 'minimising the damage of apartheid' or something similar, with the subtext that the critic is probably racist in some way (or just too privileged to understand). South Africans need to wake up to this - it is one of the primary ways that the ruling party has entrenched itself, and shuts down any criticism of itself.

> An unfortunate situation has arisen where any criticism of the current situation in the country is construed as 'minimising the damage of apartheid' or something similar, with the subtext that the critic is probably racist in some way (or just too privileged to understand).

I would suggest you meditate on an alternative reality where all the people who make the criticisms are in actual fact both racist and privileged.

What would that look like? How could you tell? What if in other parallel worlds 25%, 50%, 75% of the people, or the things they say could be categorised as racist and/or privileged?

In which of these worlds would complaining about how everyone complains about racism and privilege be a good look and a constructive contribution? In which of these worlds would the person saying it actually be saying something privileged and racist?

I don't think 100% of white south Africans are privileged and racist 100% of the time when they have opinions on the running of their country, but 0% isn't my estimate either. I can see a range of answers that individuals have to that question being reasonable given their different life experiences.

I think I sort of agree with you?

Yeah, I got that from the post that's what prompted my original comment.

It felt like you were falling into the common trap of seeming angrier about "people complaining about X" than "X" even as you mentioned that X was bad.

The mentions of great crimes all seemed a bit remote and dry, whereas the accusations of people being overdefensive and deflecting using it as an excuse seemed a bit more heartfelt.

I think from the inside it can be hard to judge that balance and put yourself in the position of someone who might weight things differently. A problem of "privilege" which you bring up, but don't seem to be swayed by, though I've never met anyone who thinks it doesn't apply to other people.

> One of the challenges in writing is realising that no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to please every one. I spent a lot of time on this post, and it went through several revisions.

Yours was one of the better takes, and I mostly agree with what you have to say - I especially appreciate your self-awareness around biases (I have my own). I should clarify that didn't take issue with the entire article, I was mostly reacting to the sentences that implied, as I read it, that the period of formal Apartheid was brief, and an improvement over the previous colonial period (as quoted by gp) - those ideas sound absolutely tone deaf to me.

edit:

> An unfortunate situation has arisen where any criticism of the current situation in the country is construed as 'minimising the damage of apartheid' or something similar

You misunderstand me, I think, and possibly doing a great disservice to your article and the discussion it spawned if you're reducing my criticism to just that. I tried to clearly state why I thought you minimized specific aspects; and it's not because I wanted you to adopt a tone of atonement, or for something I wished you had written. I took issue with 2 specific ideas, which in all suggest that Apartheid wasn't a big deal. Perhaps we should discuss the specific criticism rather than be pulled into a generic race-relations meta-discussion?

What I disagreed with, in point form:

1) The idea that Apartheid was brief. 50 years is a long time in politics; Apartheid spanned >90% of both my granddads' productive years, 100% of my dad's education (including college) as well as his early and mid-career, and a small part of my early education. I count 3 generations directly impacted.

2) The idea that Apartheid was a long time ago. As you can imagine based off what I said in (1), the effects are still very present to me, and I'd like to think I'm not that old. This doesn't absolve the government, but it is true nonetheless.

Politicians deflect blame everywhere, but just because politicians like to ham-up Apartheid's effect doesn't mean we cannot have a nuanced, honest take.

That said, South Africa was built on the foundation extractive industries and cheap labor. The end of Apartheid did not change that; the only thing that changed was the introduction of the black ruling elite, and a modest increase in the size of the non-white middle class. The levels of inequality are dangerously high, and people seem concerned about it, until you ask them how much they pay the help (this goes across all races, BTW). The TRC was fine and all, equal attention should have been given to national cohesion, people are unwilling to look out for each other, even for their own sake, in the long term.

Thanks for a thoughtful response :). I agree with most of what you say. You are right that 50 years is a long time - that was poor phrasing on my part.

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