Echoes of Apartheid (by Graeme Codrington)
I was conscripted into the South Africa military in the late 1980s. Still in my teens, I was shipped off to do two years of "service" for my country. This included not only military training, but also indoctrination about "the enemy." I was taught about the threat of communism, of the dangers of insurgents and the evil inherent in those who wished to destroy the "freedoms" we held so dear in our land.
South Africa was a country divided. Its history is reasonably well known to the world because of all we have since achieved. But the late 1980s were dark days, at the height of the apartheid regime's attempts to retain power in the face of growing international opposition and internal chaos.
One day, at home on leave, I was reversing my car out of our home's driveway in Randburg, Johannesburg. A knock on my window startled me. A young man, slightly out of breath, motioned for me to roll down the window. Slightly nervous, I lowered it a few centimetres. He asked if I could give him a ride. To this day I don't know why I agreed, as I am not in the habit of picking up hitchhikers. But, that day, I said, "Yes. Get in."
As we drove away, he calmly told me that he had just escaped from the police cells at the nearby magistrate's court. He was a political activist and had been arrested as a member of the ANC. He wanted me to take him to a nearby township where ANC cadres were known to hideout. But, he explained calmly, if I felt otherwise, I could take him up the road and hand him over to the police again.
Not many people are confronted with these sorts of choices. Not only was I under immediate pressure: Were the police coming down the road in hot pursuit? Had they seen me? But I was also being confronted with a mindset shift. Deep down inside I had a vague understanding that apartheid was wrong and that it should be opposed. But as a teenager, what chance had I to process these thoughts, or choose to do something about it? Now, what would I do? Whose side was I on?
It's difficult to explain to someone who hasn't lived in a propaganda state how much can be hidden from the citizens by the government and selective media. And how much apathy there is in those not directly affected by the violence such a state perpetrates.
I wish I had done more to oppose apartheid. I can claim that I was young, and that apartheid was almost dead by the time I came of age. But so many young people gave their lives for justice. There are no excuses. I wish that day I had done more than I did. I drove that young man about five kilometres away, and then dropped him off on the side of a busy road where I knew he would quickly be picked up and taken to safety. I should have done more.
Maybe I should be doing more now.
This may be an overly harsh assessment, but some of what has happened in America under the current administration in the name of a "war on terror" looks and feels remarkably like the workings of that apartheid machine I grew up in. And the most concerning thing is that, just as many South Africans – white and black – were sucked into the apartheid system's mindset, so too the average American does not seem to notice it happening.
In the name of freedom, freedoms are gradually removed. The state spies on its own citizens, and explains that it does not need to explain why. In the name of peace, we declare others to be "the enemy" and wage war on them, crushing them with overwhelming superior force. Worst of all, we declare ourselves outside international agreements and norms. We can torture, because it's not really torture, and besides, the end justifies the means. We can refuse to sign international treaties, because what are others going to do about it anyway?
I hate to point it out, because the memory of that type of state is so fresh in the minds of South Africans like myself. I hate to point it out, because I would like to think that the most powerful country in the world is what it also claims to be: the most free, the most civilized and the most advanced. I hate to point it out. But I must: The so called "war on terror," most obviously evidenced by a 5-year ground war in Iraq, is nothing more or less than apartheid was proclaimed to be: a crime against humanity. It is a dark blot on our human soul.
And all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing about it. How I wish I had done more. But, how proud I am today to be a South African – part of the story of a nation of people who collectively decided that change was possible, and who each did just a little bit to make that dream a reality.
Dr. Graeme Codrington is a researcher, author, presenter and consultant on issues of people strategy. He works internationally from bases in Johannesburg and London, and can be contacted at graeme@graemecodrington.com.
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Comments
Sigh...
Posted by: kevin s. | March 21, 2008 6:29 PM
Wow. I must have missed the part where Muslims were interned by the hundreds of thousands in the US after 9/11. I can't believe I missed my Muslim classmates being dragged out of my high school and thrown into camps or confined to ghettos.
Oh wait, I forgot. It never happened.
There is a slight difference between a black activist on the run from the forces of a police state and a terrorist looking to kill innocent men, women, and children. I would take time to explain it, but I don't think the author would understand.
Posted by: MadHatter07 | March 21, 2008 8:34 PM
There is a slight difference between a black activist on the run from the forces of a police state and a terrorist looking to kill innocent men, women, and children. I would take time to explain it, but I don't think the author would understand.
Oh, I think he would. That black activist he referred to was officially considered a terrorist, especially since he belonged to the ANC, which in those days was an underground organization. Thing is, the ANC had a lot of popular support, while "radical Islam" does not.
But I think his point is that we look at certain people who don't think the way we do and believe it's then OK to mistreat them -- right after 9/11 I interviewed a number of Muslims who certainly felt less safe afterwards, especially with the way white Americans were looking at them.
Posted by: Rick Nowlin | March 21, 2008 10:58 PM
Kevin and Madhatter, while it's easy to say that Dr Codrington overstated his case, it's just as easy to overlook the legitimate parallels he draws.
D
Posted by: Don | March 22, 2008 6:48 AM
Perhaps a closer parallel would be our country's treatment of undocumented immigrants...the government policy of picking teenagers up on their way home from school, adults traveling to and from church, confining them for an indeterminate length of time and then deporting them, with the intention of supplying the labor they once provided through 'guest workers' who can never become citizens and are forced to remain with one employer; the commercial practice of exploiting their labor for low wages and in unsafe conditions, knowing they are too frightened to protest effectively; the increase of hate crimes; and the use of words like 'aliens' to deny their common humanity.
Yes, I know, those people have broken the law. So did black South Africans who stood up to apartheid.
What matters is not to compare the severity of our nation's harmdoing with that of South Africa or Germany, but to learn how easy it is for citizens to comply with evil, and to take care that we do not do this.
Posted by: Pelerin | March 22, 2008 7:16 AM
Thank you for this great post!
"Kevin and Madhatter, while it's easy to say that Dr Codrington overstated his case, it's just as easy to overlook the legitimate parallels he draws."
Posted by: Don |
Right, Don. Codington prefaces his comments but that point is ignored. As Simon and Garfunkel say, "still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest." Makes you kind of wish that Kevin would go sigh on somebody else's blog.
"Oh wait, I forgot. It never happened." Madhatter
Well something DID happen, it was called Special Registration. Men from predominantly Muslim countries who were here on non-immigrant visas were all summoned to appear at the Immigration Service- some of them having to wait for 12 hours to register their presence here. Not one terrorist was caught. Brilliant idea, Ashcroft!
I represented a guy snagged in that. He was married to a US citizen. Still the government wasn't going to let him stay until a decent, law-abiding immigration judge put a stop to it and let the guy stay. His "crime"- being a Muslim and complying with the special registration law.
So much blindness, so much ignorance, so much intolerance.
Posted by: JamesMartin | March 22, 2008 7:58 AM
I believe when someone who has been through something so evil, and then enters another circumstance that feels painfully familiar, it is right to raise flags. X might equal Y. And it might not. He will need to be cautious in overly equating the two. We will need to be cautious not to consider his warning.
Especially the part about the capacity of a government and culture to deceive.
When the enemy is 'hidden,'
and the needed strategies to combat the 'hidden global enemy that operates anywhere and everywhere' are clandestine/covert operations, and the covert actions presume the need to not submit to either national or international laws (since the hidden enemy is not law-abiding),
and the battle is built on the need to obtain intelligence on every soul on the planet-------
If that does not lay the basis for self-deception (say as opposed to Hitler's explicit hate machine)--we are self-deceived. i.e. I did not assert (although I could) we have crossed the line but assert we would be fools to miss that the framework we created is a powerful foundation for deception/lies/abuse.
It has had a very corrosive effect in Washington DC. Congress simply does not trust the administration. The administration simply does not trust the Congress to see/fight the invisible foe. If those few hundred blue suits, who are responsible to govern and work transparently, have not proceeded in ways that they all feel are truthful--how in the world can those of us at such a distance trust the 'behind-closed-doors-secret-war-against-boogeyman.' (and I do appreciate the fact that if Boogeyman has a nuclear bomb we have a problem)
But when we unleash a hidden government and half the world's military might (US) against Boogeyman we have a whole lot of issues.
The troops should ship out of Iraq tomorrow, and a whole lot of other WOT should cease. Not because they are not needed (in my mind). Not because I am sure it is good for anyone. But because the President has not come close to convincing Congress. There might be grave consequences.
By not building consensus the Congress is let off the hook. All they have to do is act helpless, whine and oppose. And all the President has to do is ignore them.
And this severely damages any capacity to have a trust in this WOT. We simply cannot move on this WOT without transparent and responsible governance that has broad international support.
Posted by: letjusticerolldown | March 22, 2008 9:00 AM
"Kevin and Madhatter, while it's easy to say that Dr Codrington overstated his case, it's just as easy to overlook the legitimate parallels he draws."
Correct. Because he overstated his case (which, ironically, is understating it).
Posted by: kevin s. | March 22, 2008 1:19 PM
Kevin, I love how you completely ignore my main point, which obviously wasn't overstatement but rather legitimate parallels. James Martin's Simon and Garfunkel quote is certainly appropriate.
D
Posted by: Don | March 22, 2008 3:46 PM
“On January 12, 2004, according to David Stout of the New York Times, the Supreme Court refused to reconsider a lower court’s ruling ‘that the Justice Department was within its rights in refusing to identify more than 700 people, most of those Arabs or Muslims, arrested for immigration violations in connection with the attacks’ of September 11, 2001. Mr. Stout usefully reduced the case to its gist by writing that it ‘pitted two fundamental values against each other—the right of the public to know details of how its government operates and the government’s need to keep some information secret to protect national security.’
“The Supreme court thus decided, in effect, to support the Justice Department’s policy of holding prisoners in secret for the sake of national security…
“The first thing we notice, of course, is that secret imprisonment necessarily denies to the prisoner any semblance of due process. But more is involved than that, and I want to try to say what more is involved.
“The rights of the people are openly declared (not granted, but affirmed) in the founding documents of our nation. These rights were not understood as given, and therefore retractable, by the government at its discretion; they were understood, rather, as entitlements originating in ‘the laws of nature and of nature’s God.’ The government’s need for secrecy, by contrast, is a need that can be defined only by the government, and only in secret.
“A government’s wish to rule in secret on its own initiative and authority is perfectly understandable; this is a merely human weakness. Of course government officials would like to keep some information secret for reasons of national security, as well as for many other reasons that may readily be imagined. It is nevertheless true that a government’s wish to govern in secret is the same as the wish to govern tyrannically, as we are shown by the secret imprisonments of the seven hundred…
“There is no reason, now or ever, to make light of what we are now calling ‘national security.’ People want, naturally enough, ‘to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ not only against ‘unreasonable searches and seizures,’ but also against violence, whether domestic or foreign in origin…
“We may say then that national security has been our concern from the beginning, and that from the beginning the designated purpose of the nation was to secure the rights to which its citizens individually were entitled by the laws of nature and of nature’s God…If the security of the nation ceases to imply the security of all its inhabitants in their God-given rights, then, according to the Declaration of Independence, that nation’s government will have deligitimized itself and should be replaced. This is not the wild idea of somebody in the current crop of left-wingers or right-wingers, but merely what the Declaration says…
“People’s wish to be safe is undoubtedly one of the paramount concerns of politics and government. We want to be safe because we have perceived accurately that we live under threat of many dangers. We expect, rightly, that the government should give us reasonable protections against at least some of those dangers…And we might have to reckon with the likelihood of circumstances in which these protections may be supplied only selectively and incompletely.
“The Bill of Rights was written in anticipation both of the tendency of government to usurp the rights of individuals and of circumstances in which those rights will be hard to preserve…
“However, the Bill of Rights insists that the rights of individual persons must be unfailingly respected in all circumstances excepting only one, which is set forth in Article V: ‘No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger…’ This exception is made, apparently, to validate military courts. But Article V expressly disdains to limit its application merely to citizens; it says ‘No person,’ not ‘No citizen.’ And having stated the exception, it returns promptly to the inclusive language it began with: ‘nor shall any person…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…’
“It is clear, then, that the secret imprisonment by the government of any person, citizen or immigrant or alien or enemy, is necessarily a denial of due process of law, insofar as no person can at the same time be secretly imprisoned and publicly tried. (We now have only the government’s word that the number of prisoners is, or was, seven hundred.)
“A further point is somewhat harder to state, but I think it is no less obvious. Terrorism, against which the government without formally declaring war says we are ‘at war,’ at the same time that it seeks to circumvent the legal conventions of war, has certainly precipitated a time of public danger. How badly frightened the general public may be by this state of affairs is a question hard to answer. But the federal government and the courts have given evidence that they, as the terrorists intended, are badly frightened. They are so badly frightened as to believe that they have no choice but to sacrifice the rights of persons in deference to the government’s need for secrecy. But it is an error to believe that these two ‘fundamental values; can somehow be justly ‘balanced’ by the government or the courts, or that the people can judge responsibly between their rights, which they can easily know, and a proclaimed ‘need,’ which the government so far forbids them to know. The Constitution, anyhow, does not provide for its own suspension by the fearful in a time of war and public danger.”
—Wendell Berry, “Secrecy vs. Rights.” In The Way of Ignorance. Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005. Italics were in the original.
Posted by: Don | March 22, 2008 4:19 PM
"Kevin, I love how you completely ignore my main point, which obviously wasn't overstatement but rather legitimate parallels."
I'm not ignoring your point, I disagree that the parallels are legitimate. Simply drawing a comparison does not make the comparison apt.
Posted by: kevin s. | March 23, 2008 12:18 AM
I'm not ignoring your point, I disagree that the parallels are legitimate.
Of course you do. But that's not what you said. Besides, if you disagree that the parallels are legitimate, tell us why, don't just blast Dr. Codrington. And then give us facts that support your reasoning.
Tell us why you don't believe our freedoms are being usurped by our government, giving examples and facts that tell those of us who think our freedoms have been compromised are wrong. Tell us why you don't think we're ignoring international treaties that we gave our word to uphold, and give us facts that support why you don't think keeping our word is important anymore. Tell us why you don't think we have compromised our moral position in the world by the things we have done. And give us support that position as well.
My guess is that you can't do that. My guess is that you only have an ideologically-based certainty that Codrington and the rest of us are wrong; you don't have any real facts that you can use to demonstrate our erroneous thinking.
D
Posted by: Don | March 23, 2008 6:23 AM
I am more than willing to have a discussion about what freedoms ought be compromised in exchange for safety. I think the exchange has been more than reasonable under the circumstances.
The occassional search of library records (which didn't even occur) and wiretapping of international calls to suspected terrorists do not constitute a crisis in my view, and certainly do not parallel apartheid.
I have been over the international treaties argument numerous times. We haven't broken them, if you examine what they are, what they say, and to whom they apply.
But the point of this post is not to recite facts. The point is to find echoes of apartheid. He does not make the case that such echoes are manifest, which renders his argument hysterical.
Posted by: kevin s. | March 23, 2008 4:45 PM
"It's difficult to explain to someone who hasn't lived in a propaganda state how much can be hidden from the citizens by the government and selective media. And how much apathy there is in those not directly affected by the violence such a state perpetrates."
Dr. Codrington, you should try living in the United States of America. Hollywood morality spreads the propaganda that "anything goes" from porn to even worse perversion, and all that is heard about it is propaganda and cover-up from the selective media. Millions and millions of Americans are being led to their destruction by a permissive and progressive ideology and when someone speaks up about that, they are called phobics and bigots. It's bad here for truth to get out.
Posted by: another name | March 23, 2008 10:59 PM
"It's difficult to explain to someone who hasn't lived in a propaganda state how much can be hidden from the citizens by the government and selective media. And how much apathy there is in those not directly affected by the violence such a state perpetrates."
Try being Donny and oppose progressives. You get silenced.
Posted by: blurb | March 23, 2008 11:02 PM
Millions and millions of Americans are being led to their destruction by a permissive and progressive ideology and when someone speaks up about that, they are called phobics and bigots.
Dr. Codrington was specifically referring to the government, which in his country controlled some of the media.
Try being Donny and oppose progressives.
Donny's being silenced had nothing to do with his views and everything to do with his personal attacks on Sojo and people he didn't agree with.
Posted by: Rick Nowlin | March 23, 2008 11:21 PM
"Hollywood morality spreads the propaganda that "anything goes" from porn to even worse perversion, and all that is heard about it is propaganda and cover-up from the selective media."
I disagree. The movie screen is a mirror of the viewer. People attend movies to feel validated. I can count on one hand the number of films that have really challenged the viewer to contemplate their own paradigm, and Christians have been depressingly unwilling to view them.
Christians really ought to have seen "Brokeback Mountain" because it presented a nuanced idea of what confused masculinity is like. But did they? No. Why not? It wasn't an agenda movie. It made me no more likely to perceive the homosexual lifestyle as a positive.
Honest films don't find an audience. Christian movie-goers ought to stand athwart this progression toward ignorance. But they don't, so I have no interest in hearing banal complaints about how "HOLLYWOOD" has ruined everything.
Posted by: kevin s. | March 24, 2008 12:02 AM
I'm glad the author shared his insights. Sometimes, in order to really "see" a situation for what it truly is (past the appearances) you have to have seen something LIKE that BEFORE in order to "recognize" the similarities and the warning signs. It has to be "not new" to you. Something known. The radar tells you..."Been there. Done that. We know what THIS is!"
It's late and almost time for me to head to sleep, so maybe I'm wrong here. But it seemed the author is warning more of a general mindset that he recognizes back from the days of Apartheid. A mindset of "Don't ask questions. Just go along. Or you're not patriotic. Or you're a troublemaker." To quote Buffalo-Springfield lyrics "Paranoia strikes deep. Into your lives it will creep. Starts when you're always afraid. Step out of line, a man come and take you away."
In other words, he isn't saying that terrorists aren't dangerous.
But more like he's saying that when our RESPONSE to dangerous terrorism becames to stop asking questions and start bottling up inside out of fear of making somebody in the Oval Office mad - THIS starts ringing memory bells inside his mind. He's been there. Done that. He's saying, "You don't want to take that road. Don't go there."
Posted by: Amazon Creek | March 24, 2008 3:41 AM
Christian movie-goers ought to stand athwart this progression toward ignorance.
Kevin, you and I may disagree about Dr Codrington's warning--and a host of other things--but I am certainly in agreement with you here! We could spend a lot of time discussing the problem of anti-intellectualism in American Christianity.
I didn't see 'Brokeback Mtn.' though. But not because I wouldn't watch such a film. I just don't have a lot of time to watch movies.
D
Posted by: Don | March 24, 2008 8:05 AM
kevin s: "The movie screen is a mirror of the viewer. People attend movies to feel validated. I can count on one hand the number of films that have really challenged the viewer to contemplate their own paradigm, and Christians have been depressingly unwilling to view them . . .
Honest films don't find an audience. Christian movie-goers ought to stand athwart this progression toward ignorance. But they don't . . ."
don: "Kevin . . . I am certainly in agreement with you here! We could spend a lot of time discussing the problem of anti-intellectualism in American Christianity."
Yes, kevin s nails it here. Would love to see Sojo begin a conversation on this topic.
(Back after a week of vacation which entailed a hiatus from Sojo. But read Henri Nouwen, Chesterton, and Anne Rice's new fictional work on Jesus, "Road to Cana")
Posted by: carl copas | March 24, 2008 2:26 PM
"Christians really ought to have seen "Brokeback Mountain" because it presented a nuanced idea of what confused masculinity is like. But did they? No. Why not? It wasn't an agenda movie. It made me no more likely to perceive the homosexual lifestyle as a positive.
Honest films don't find an audience. Christian movie-goers ought to stand athwart this progression toward ignorance. But they don't, so I have no interest in hearing banal complaints about how "HOLLYWOOD" has ruined everything."
Posted by: kevin s. | March 24, 2008 12:02 AM
Bang on, Kevin! Very true, IMHO. Let the record show that on this day, Don, Carl and I AGREED WITH KEVIN!!!
I feel a group hug coming on!
Posted by: canucklehead | March 24, 2008 6:21 PM
"I feel a group hug coming on!"
And who says miracles don't occur in the modern age?
Posted by: carl copas | March 24, 2008 8:16 PM
"And the most concerning thing is that, just as many South Africans – white and black – were sucked into the apartheid system's mindset, so too the average American does not seem to notice it happening."
I spent my high-school years in Mississippi, from 1958 to 1962; in a way I was more fortunate than Graeme Codrington, in that my folks were teaching at Tougaloo College, a Black liberal-arts college founded by the Congregational Church after the War. (Not the second world war, THE War.) and like my folks I was committed to the destruction of segregation. So I couldn't hide from the good ol' boys on the playground.
But, yes, I too have lived in a racist totalitarian police state. Racist police states are no fun to live in, as we're going to learn in our new Augustan republic.
Graeme, be forgiven; God has forgiven you. Forgive yourself. That was then and this is now. There's still plenty to be done for the Kingdom.
Posted by: Ted Voth Jr | March 24, 2008 11:21 PM
Excellent Article!! Sometimes another is apt to show us our culturally inherited myopia.
Thank you,
Posted by: Shaun Mazurek | March 27, 2008 3:48 PM
I think you Americans may have forgotten you used to have rights that have been erased by the Patriot Act,that your government sees no reason not to torture prisoners (as long as they are not citizens on US soil), and as long as records can be erased. Do you not realize there is a slippery slope where anyone could be somehow connected with financing "terrorists" somehow? Once it is acceptable for "them" to be deprived of human rights, you may be next. This article is a gem!
Posted by: Arachne | March 28, 2008 3:42 PM
I must say that I had very similar feelings to Graeme after watching the movie "Rendition". I know it's fiction but c'mon we all know it's not all fiction. As a white South African I thought to myself, "Wow, this is what we did to people we considered terrorists".
Since when can anyone label an entire ethnic group "terrorists" simply because a few ppl within that group happen to be "terrorists". And, "terrorists" are only fighting for what they believe to be "right" (in the end who is really right?) Of course, I do not believe that anyone is justified in taking life (even if they think they're right).
Posted by: Steven | April 24, 2008 8:33 AM
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