Guerrilla History - Apartheid (AR&D Ep. 9)

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

The following episode of our African Revolutions and Decolonization series is a massive one, two former episodes on Apartheid edited together into a giant conversation.  Information on each of the episodes below: The first is a crossover episode that we had done in collaboration with our sister podcast RevLeft Radio, we brought on Ashley Fataar to provide a primer into Apartheid in the South African context, and where we also began to explore some of the parallels to the apartheid that the settler-colonial state of Israel is enforcing in occupied Palestine today.  Ashley Fataar is a long time socialist activist and writer based in South Africa.  If you would like to get in touch with Ashley, you can reach him via email at [e-mail].   After that, we have the 2023 Revolutionary Guerrilla Menace get-together, also known as the Rev Left Family Annual Collab (Rev Left+Red Menace+Guerrilla History), where Alyson, Henry, Adnan, and Breht sat down for a deep dive on South African Apartheid. Together they discussed its euro-colonialist origins, explained the significance of the Boer Wars, defined and explicated the origins of apartheid, explored the political economy of apartheid and how brutal racism shaped it, examined the multi-faceted indigenous resistance to apartheid, analyzed the end of formal apartheid as well as its ongoing legacy in post-apartheid South Africa, and tried to extract important lessons from this history to apply to the ongoing struggle in Palestine.   Subscribe to our Substack (free!) to keep up to date with what we are doing.  With so many episodes coming in this series (and beyond), you won't want to miss anything, so get the updates straight to your inbox.  guerrillahistory.substack.com Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember Den Ben-Brew? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, guerrilla history listeners, this is co-host Henry, and today you're going to be hearing a continuation of our series, African Revolutions and Decolonization. The topic for this episode is going to be on apartheid, and if you have clicked on this recording, you will likely already see that this is a extremely long episode.

There is a reason for that. This episode is going to be a little bit different than our other episodes in the African Revolutions and Decolonization series, And there's two main reasons for that. One, this episode is going to be comprised of two recordings. And the other reason is that these recordings are already existing episodes of guerrilla history. On November 17th, 2020, we released an episode, Apartheid, an introduction with Ashley Fattar. And on December 15th, 20203, we released an episode Understanding Apartite, South Africa, Settler colonialism, and Lessons Repettaire.

Palestine, which was our annual revolutionary guerrilla menace get together with myself, Adnan, Brett O'Shea of Rev. Left Radio and the Red Menace and Allison Escalante of the Red Menace podcast. These two episodes are really great episodes, and I think we'll do a very good job of explaining apartheid for you and fits very well within our series on African revolutions and decolonization. Between the two episodes, though, The conversation is going to be about three and a half hours long, so you may want to take this one in in several settings. However, I do think that this is going to be an excellent conversation for you to listen to. I'm aware that many of our listeners are relatively new listeners and perhaps miss these episodes when they first came out well over a year ago at this point.

And even if you already have listened to them, there is so much material here that a refresher on apartheid will be important. The timing of this episode is also important. We're releasing this episode just after our two episodes that we did on the struggle in Swaziland. I want to encourage you, listeners, if you have not already listened to those episodes on the struggles in Swazaland, which are an ongoing communist-led struggle against an absolute monarchy, Africa's last absolute monarchy, and efforts at Cultural Revolution within Swaziland as a result of the monarchy utilizing quote-unquote traditionalist culture to help perpetuate the monarchy, those are struggles that are ongoing in southern Africa. I want to encourage you to go back and listen to those

because we are talking in a very similar region to the episode that you will be hearing now on apartheid, but also unlike many of the other, the majority of the other episodes in our African revolutions and decolonization series, it is an ongoing struggle. I believe that because it is an ongoing struggle in a communist-led ongoing struggle, that it is particularly important for the listeners to be aware of it and to support it, materially if you are able to, and rhetorically if you are not. So do go back and listen to those. I am well aware that the context of Swaziland is going to be more unfamiliar to the majority of our listeners than the historical example of apartheid. And I am aware that cultural revolution in Swaziland does

seem like a very esoteric topic, but I can assure you listeners that it is a very important one, and as I have mentioned, is an ongoing communist-led struggle. And as such, we should be aware of it. We should be supporting it. So just because it is a somewhat esoteric topic does not mean that that is a conversation that you should skip, if anything, that is a topic that you should be well aware of and supporting as a result of its ongoing nature. With that being said, and without further ado, I'm going to get us into the two conversations that I previously mentioned. First, you are going to hear the conversation that Adnan and I carried out with Ashley Fattar, apartheid, an introduction, and immediately at the end of that recording, we will

then jump into understanding apartheid, South Africa, settler colonialism, and lessons for Palestine, the revolutionary guerrilla menace get together with Adnan, Alison, Brett, and myself. So get ready, get your notepads out, be ready to take some notes. There's a lot of material here. And be sure to also listen to those Swazi episodes if you haven't already. So, without further ado, here we go. This episode was helped set up by our friend Leo Zeelig, who is at the review of African political economy. Brett, you reached out to me and said, Henry, I'd like to have an episode of Rev Left that focuses

on this topic of South African apartheid and parallels to Palestinian apartheid. And I said, great topic. Something I've been thinking about as well, but I don't have a guest in mind for that. So fortunately, we are friends with Leo and we're able to reach out and he put us in touch with Ashley. So as I mentioned, our guest for this episode is Ashley Fattar. Hello, Ashley. Can you introduce yourself to the listeners of the shows? Hi, Henry. Hi, Bert. Hello, everyone. Yeah, I'm a long-time activist, a socialist who was in Zimbabwe for a number of years, but I'm now in South Africa, which is where my family is from and where I was born.

Through my late father, I was exposed to what you're called the Toskist traditional socialism, and I'm based in Cape Town in South Africa. Thanks. Wonderful. Well, let's just go ahead and enjoy. jump into it. I think the first place to start, before we get into, you know, differences and similarities between the situation in Palestine, the situation in South Africa, is to sort of help our audience, some of whom might know very little about the history of South Africa, just kind of orient them to the history there. So I'm going to ask a pretty big question, but, you know, you can be very summary oriented and brief, as brief as you want to be. But I'm wondering just to help orient the listeners to the history of South Africa, if you can kind of

to give us a 101 overview of the rise of the apartheid state, how it came to be, and then sort of the chronology of how it passed away before we get into the details. Okay. So beginning about the later half of the 1600s, there were European traders who started by in where I am in Cape Town and began establishing refuting stations for the ships between Europe and Asia. And as time went on, more and more Europeans arrived, and essentially the, what is today, South Africa, had also Zimbabwe, and a few other countries, quite a few other countries in Africa,

then came on in the colonial occupation. And these are European countries that we look at Britain, France, Portugal, and Germany, and also to an extent, Holland as well. So those are the five main and Belgium as well. So what then happened is that the native populations, the African population, is what dispossessed of their land. The cattle, which was also source of income, they were dispossessed of their cattle and forced to work in white-owned, European-owned companies, farms and so forth. The system of apartheid came into effect in South Africa illegally in 1948, but before that the Native Land Act of 1923, specified certain types of land and areas of land that would only be occupied used by white people, by Europeans.

And the less Arab land was allocated to the local African population. So this is a reality that continues inside Africa today. We have essentially what we now, called economic aparthe. And yeah, so this is how very briefly South Africa, the situation in the South Africa was how it came to be. Before Henry jumps in, I just want to say that it's interesting that 1948 is a crucial year in this situation as well.

And it's also very important for people to understand that even though the official end of apartheid occurred, that that legacy continues to live on in South Africa and sort of shape that system, of course, based first and foremost on class and race. race, which we can get into in a little bit here. But I think that's an important note for listeners to take to take home. Absolutely. And just as, as Brett mentioned, apartheid formally ended in 1994, but it has just shifted forms in many ways. It's no longer a legal construct as as a political, sociopolitical construct in that these divisions within society have been entrenched and are very present within the economic sphere,

even though they're not present within the legal sphere. But turning back to 1948, as you mentioned, this is kind of the legal start of apartheid, although the roots of it go obviously much farther back than that. It really started when the National Party won the elections in 1948, and then through various acts that came through, as you mentioned, there was land acts that started actually prior to this, but then in 1950 there was a few.

few more. And I think 53, there was some more. By the end of that, 80% of the land was held by the white minority of the country, whereas the other 20% was held by everybody else in the country. There was laws that came into place that categorized people and classified them into different racial groups. Originally, there was three, the so-called Bantu group, which was just any black African, the colored non-white group and then white, and then eventually they added the Asian group, which was Indians and Pakistanis. But the point that I'm driving at here is that this was like a confluence of many legal acts that came into force.

I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about who the National Party was and how their victory in 1948 kind of set up this enforcement of various legal acts that collectively became known as apartheid, and how these acts then kind of came together to create an entire system of apartheid based on these kind of, you know, piecemeal bits here, bits there that then kind of came together into a hegemonic structure within society. So you first of all had had the native land act. The laws that decided which land Blacks could own and they could not own.

And that was crucial because the African population income, the livelihood, existence was based on the land. So they did that in order to force

the black males, adult black males to go and work in the farms. And this is essentially the crux of a project how it came about

why it came about so in the late 1800s year the discovery of gold and diamonds in what is now the northern part of South Africa and the mining to get at the diamond

and the golds needed labor intensive operations so by forcing the African populations through the very punishing hot attacks that they forced the African population off the land and into the mines then the so that that was essentially the kind of start of the of oppression the start of apartheid where one section of the population is not being forced to stop what it's doing,

been doing for a number of years, for, for, it's not a number of years, but for centuries, and being forced into a new form of economic production. So then they moved towards, so the next step was, okay, fully taking away their land. and then another piece of important piece of our part in legislature is the Group Areas Act. And this then also determined in addition where people could live and a way they could not live. So as urbanization begins, not begins at, they needed a system of an urbanization. system where essentially the back population and the working glass populations didn't live in the same area as those who owned the businesses. So they decided, okay, this area is reserved for blacks, that area is reserved for so far colors, that areas reserved for so-called Indians, and that area is reserved for whites. so that

that then came to is one of the things that came to signify the system of apartheid. In addition to that in public transport people of different colors could not use the same public transport at work

the restrooms were racially segregated facilities were racially segregated and out on the having benches, those were also racially segregated, like what you have in the southern part of the US as well, that's kind of racial segregation. So that then, so the National Party provided essentially the whole legal framework of apartheid. That's, that, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, it's, it's, it's, uh, significance and, uh, drove apart, um, um,

communities, especially working glass communities, into different areas. Yeah, that's that's, yeah. Yeah, so there, I mean, just a couple of things that you mentioned. There's

obviously the taking over and the occupation of land as a crucial element in colonial apartheid. You have the exploitation of cheap labor of the indigenous population by the colonizing force to generate profits. You have a racial

ethnic or religious caste system in this case it was very racially oriented in the case of Palestine it's a little bit more towards ethnicity and religion though of course race of course is incorporated into all of that so we see some of these patterns being that that explicitly and objectively existed in South African apartheid also existing in the context of Palestine and I think we will get more into that in a bit but first I want to continue the history of South Africa and particularly I want to talk about the African National Congress and and the rise of Nelson Mandela in particular. Now, everybody listening probably knows that at the beginning, you know, this group and Mandela in particular was labeled a terrorist.

They took up, you know, non-legal means of resistance, often armed resistance as well. So I was wondering if you can kind of talk about the African National Congress, how it came to be and some of the tactics used by them or other forces of liberation in the area before apartheid ended. Okay. So the African National Congress came about as a means to, initially they didn't go about demanding the return of the land. Because the African National Congress was founded in 1912. And if you look at the People's Charter, which is in 1945, which the African National Congress, which the African National Congress was founded in 1912. Congress watered down, it was this, that's a reflection of the ANC, kind of liberal politics. So in other words, what the ANC demanded was, we want the right to vote, we want the right to live wherever we want to live, and we want to be able to go into business. But let's look at the right to live wherever you want to live. The fact is that,

It's based on how much money you have, how much money you're paid. So the ANC is inherently a liberal kind of black nationalist party. And it's the core of its programs, of its policies, of its politics, has been the black, what was the black, what was the, black petty bourgeois class, the small captists. That is what has driven the ANCC. And yes, it's presented as the main liberating organization in South Africa, but that is not the case. Because it was only, it wasn't until the first half of the 1980s,

it was only then that the ANC was to get some kind of relevance because up until that point it was the more radical black nationalist paraphicalist congresses and then socialist groups which had the political influence in South Africa especially in the working class partnerships and it was

similar to the creation of the United Democratic front in the first half of the 1980s, that the ANC began to become, have some kind of relevance. So it was literally a decade before formal independence in 1994 that the ANC had some kind of relevance. And the ANC deliberated the people of South Africa, but that is not the case. because the one argument which is really not true is that the ANC wage a guerrilla war. It's certainly true that there were a handful, there were some guerrilla action, but it was a handful of guerrilla actions. And what they did was, it really wasn't of any significance.

It was the black working class in the workplaces and in the townships who carried out the struggle. It was that black working class that actually freed Mandela and the other leaders of the ANC from prison is the actions of the black working class that caused the forced the apartheid government to unbanned the ANC, the Saudi Arab and Communist Party and other anti-apartheid parties. is. So it's, it's, it's, it's the, it's the, it's the, um, mass action of, of the black working class in South Africa that led to it being freed from, uh, formal apartheid from legalized apartheid. And that's, that's the important point to bear in mind.

I'm going to hop in here. And I know that we're going to talk more about the parallels between South Africa and apartheid and Palestinian apartheid later in more detail, but there are a couple of points that were brought up that do really parallel what we're seeing now rhetorically with regards to the Palestinian resistance to Israeli apartheid in occupied Palestine. And here's a couple of the points that came up. So one is that we often think of the ANC is kind of like the leading edge of the anti-apartheid movement, or they were the anti-apartheid movement. I mean, of course, they were in many ways the leading edge, but that they kind of became synonymous. What we're seeing right now with regards to the Palestinian

resistance is this totalization of the Palestinian liberation movement to Hamas in the Western media, particularly. As soon as we see, you know, look at what's happening right now in Gaza. It is Israel versus Hamas, not the Palestinian liberation movement. There's no discussion of the fact that there is numerous groups that are active within the Palestinian Liberation movement, all of whom have signed on to the current collaborative efforts to fight actively against Israeli apartheid. But there's this totalization of the resistance being just Hamas within the media. And of course, then we're called on whenever we talk about this, do you condemn Hamas? In much the same way, as you mentioned, when talking about the anti-apartheid movement, it often gets totalized just to the ANC and the efforts of, you know, people like Mandela, rather than thinking about that broader context, thinking about societal movements that are happening outside of parties, working class movements, and also thinking about the fact that, as you mentioned, there was many socialist and communist currents that were operating within the South African.

African anti-apartheid movement as well, just as we see, again, now in Palestine, we have groups like the PFLP and the DFLP that are explicitly socialist groups, but they never get touched on, you know, even though the PFLP is the second largest group of the PLO, for example. They don't get discussed, you know, it's always this totalization to Hamas. So I do see a parallel there, and I also see the parallel that Brett brought up with regard to the fact that Mandela was, you know, kind of, he was thrown in jail under the ground that he was kind of this terrorist actor. And the fact that we have this, again, this framing of somebody who's fighting for liberation of their people as a terrorist and that there's this wholesale taking

up of this term terrorist to describe somebody who is fighting against oppression and for liberation. This is again exactly what we are seeing in the case of the Palestinian liberation movement where the fact of active armed resistance equates you to terrorism without any sort of discussion of that context of it being a liberatory struggle against an oppressive settler colonial regime. So the question that I'm going to bring up here, Ashley, is that you know, we do have these parallels. Can you dive in a little bit deeper into the South African context because I think that the listeners are going to be with it being, you know, current, more familiar with what I'm talking about, the Palestinian side of this context,

but maybe aren't as familiar with the way that these groups were operating in the anti-apartheid movement outside of the ANC, as well as how this rhetoric of terrorism was being utilized against members of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Yeah. So they were label as terrorist because the context then was the Cold War and the aparthe government was pro-West. So the West, which includes at the time Joe Biden, who was a senator, they didn't want South Africa post-apartheid to fall into the hands of what was then. the Soviet Union. So the ANC and the PACE who label has been terrorists

in order to try to sway influence not even support away from the anti-aparid movements. But let's just look at the anti-aparid movement or what's broadly referred to as the anti-aparctic movement. So you had I'm just going to sort of look at the different streams.

So you had the ANC there, which was a kind of, how you can call it, almost a neoliberal black nationalist movement, seeking the rights to have to vote and for people to live and work where they want to. And then slightly to the left with them, the more radical, but so. Nationalist, Left Nationalist Anti-Ferrorist Congress, which demanded not just the rights, but also black people had to become the owners of the means of production.

And it didn't specify which social class. But it was nevertheless for the petty bourgeoisie. So the PASC was kind of a more radical section of black 30 bourgeoisie in South Africa with a handful

kind of saying yes we are Marxists but in reality not really then you had the Stalinist trend which is that of the South African Communist part and the SACB essentially was just

provided a red cover for the ANC as somebody put it it was the SACP has never been politically independent. It's always being at the side of or behind the ANC and accepted the leadership of the ANC.

And then you have the other current is the toxicist others would say workerist organizations. So that was kind of your unity movement, the Workers League of South Africa, the

Workers International Land Guard League at the time. So those were the four political currents and all broadly lumped into the anti-partate movement fighting for the same ideal, the same objectives, but which is not the case.

Because the trustists recognize that getting rid of apartheid without getting rid of capitalism was not going to improve the lot of the black working class. So it was about more than fighting against just an evil, you know, racial segregation, racial separation, but also a position, a situation where the workers had the significant

to the majority say in what goes on in the workplace. And any of that kind of answers your question? yeah i have one uh brief comment about joe biden before brett asks the next question just since you mentioned biden this is kind of just a humorous aside but in february 2020 some listeners might remember that uh Biden was campaigning for president at the time and on the campaign trail in at least three different uh campaign appearances he mentioned that he was on a trip to south Africa and got arrested in Soweto when he was going to visit Nelson Mandela. And I have one of the specific quotes. It's just funny. He says this day 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and

entered into discussions about apartheid. I had the great honor of meeting him. I had the great honor of being arrested with our UN ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robbins Island. But of course, when looking at the actual record, there was no record of him ever being arrested in South Africa and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 77 to 79, Andrew Young, who also was a previous congressman and also mayor of Atlanta, he's still alive. They called, at least at the time that, you know, the story was out there. He was still alive. I don't know if he's alive today. But they called him up and said, hey, you know, Andrew Young. Do you recall Biden never being arrested in South Africa during your visit there? And he goes, no.

I don't think that that happened, and I don't think that that would have been allowed to happen for an active U.S. Congressperson to be arrested in South Africa. And if it was, it certainly would be in the news at the time. But, you know, it was never mentioned prior to this campaigning in 2020. And it also wasn't even in Biden's autobiography when he was talking about South Africa. So, you know, just a kind of humorous aside about Biden and his, you know, senility or whatever. In addition to which the streets of Soweto and Robben Island are at two different ends of the country. So, yeah, there's no way you're walking through the streets of Soweto to get to an island on the other side of the country.

Yeah. Yeah, absurd. I want to ask a little bit about the armed struggle aspect of the anti-apartheid movement. Of course, we've seen, you know, with the Palestinian resistance, has never made any qualms about using violence to, to, obtain their national liberation and of course Israel makes no qualms about using mass murder campaigns against the Palestinians as is happening right now. But of course, anytime an oppressed people pick up the gun, they are labeled terrorists by the dominant hegemonic power. We see that in almost every instance. And we never see a, I mean almost never, a fully peaceful national

liberation struggle because those who have imposed these conditions on oppressed people do not give up their power and their luxury and their wealth and their control very easily. So they're forced in a lot of circumstances to engage in violent resistance. So with all of that in the background here, can you kind of talk about, in particular, the armed struggle aspects of the anti-apartheid movement and how they were labeled terrorism by the dominant powers? Okay. So the African National Congress and the P.C. had what they called that, in camps in currents like Angola, Zambia and Tanzania, possibly Mozambique as well.

But the thing is that neither of them had, neither of them received any significant military hardware, guns, that sort of thing, in order to wage an effective guerrilla struggle. The ANC never got anything from Russia, the PACC didn't get anything from China. or from any of the other, and they certainly didn't receive anything significant from countries like Angola, Zimbabwe, and so forth. Russia said at the time that it was not interested in a full-fledged war in South Africa. It wasn't prepared to go to that extent in the Cold War.

because they realized that South Africa, with its high level of industrialization, it had a population that was very urbanized. So they didn't want a situation. Russia did not want a situation where guns ended up in the hands of the working class, which then takes over the means of production. That is what they, that is what they, that is what they were scared of.

The second thing is to wage a guerrilla struggle in South Africa is a daydream because it's not like, say, Vietnam in the 70s or 60s, Cuba in the 50s, where you have a significant part of the population in the countryside

that can give you support, that can hide you, that can shelter you. In South Africa by the 1980s, three quarters of the Lackbogne nation was urbanized. So they couldn't really have any kind of significant military force

within the townships without being discovered. So it's important to restate that the guerrilla stogun in South Africa was not significant. It wasn't anywhere near the levels of what took place in Mozambique or Zimbabwe or

Angona for that matter. it was it really wasn't anything significant that needs that you know that's that's an important point that should be understood the struggle was waged by the workers the working class in the hardships of South Africa and in the weather places that's that is where they made struggle to place in South Africa as a follow-up you mentioned Namibia you mentioned Angola I know this is a one aspect of this struggle was of course Cuban assistance in the area at the time. Can you touch on Cuba's role in these historical events? The Cuba's were in Angola. So what happened was as Portuguese imperialism collapsed,

Portugal found that it could not continue to wage, it couldn't continue to occupy Angola. So they kind of said, okay, well, we're going to leave it between, and the two main proposals at the time was Unita, which had some kind of Western backing, and the NPRLA, the popular movement for the liberation of Angola, which had Russian and Chinese peace backing. So, in order to help Unita, the Salafir apartheid regime sent in soldiers' military into Angola from, what is now Namibia, in order to help Unita. And what the Cubans did is that they then supplied soldiers on hardware to NPRLA and the new government of Angola to fight the South Africans. And through that intervention, the Cubans helped the Angolans to deal a decisive defeat to both the South Africans and Unita, led at that time by Jonas Savinbi. So it prevented the fall in Angola into the hands of a Western-backed army led by Savimbi. So that was the significance of the Cubans in Angola. Also worth mentioning that in talking about the battles that took place between Unita and the MPLA and with the Cubans actually taking a very active role in this, we had the famous battle of Quito Carnivali, which was one of the biggest tank battles after World War II, and I believe it was the biggest battle in the African continent after World War II, at that point at least.

very significant and without Cuban support, that battle would have gone completely differently and the struggle likely also would have gone completely differently. But the question I'm going to be hopping in with is actually kind of the inverse of Brett. So Brett was asking about the role of Cuba in the anti-apartheid movement and in various of these other anti-colonial movements in Africa, the inverse of that would be the role of the West in propagating and perpetuating and supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa. And again, this parallels what we're seeing today in Israel, Palestine. We are seeing an absolute unconditional support for the settler colonial regime in Israel in much the same way that

the apartheid regime was being to the hilt propped up by Western backers. So if you could talk a little bit about how that Western backing actually propagated itself in the South African context, and perhaps that'll also allow them the listeners to think about the parallels between what was happening in South Africa during the apartheid regime in the way that the U.S. and its other Western allies were supporting the apartheid regime with the exact same sort of backing that we're seeing for the settler colonial regime in Israel today. So with South Africa, there was a company called Arms Corps, which was owned by the government, and its purpose was to acquire military hardware, hardware for the southern

military. It wasn't a situation where military jets tanks would be assembled in the West and then brought to South Africa. It was a situation. situation where the for lack of a better word, the blueprints, the plans for these aircraft and tanks and so forth, other weaponry, was given to South Africa.

South Africa then modified and tweaked them and produced its own versions, so-called own versions of these various tanks and jets. So the West poured that in and then of course in addition to that it was other things

where the sanctions were violated which the West knew about but did nothing to stop. So South Africa was using a passenger aircraft and loading weaponry into the cargo hold on its regular international flights. In addition to that you had secret cargo flights as well in and out of the country. So that is how the West propped up South Africa and also companies like IBM supplied computer hardware and software in order to keep the, to help things run as well.

The supply of oil as well and the oil refining technology was provided by the West. nuclear weapons technology was also provided by the West in order to prop up the apartheid regime. Really quick follow-up question. Those nuclear weapons, when the apartheid ended, if I'm not mistaken, that weapons program was sort of dismantled and those nukes were taken elsewhere or ended. Can you talk about that and the reasons behind that?

Because I think that's particularly interesting. Yes, once the apartheid ended, then the post-aparid government ended the entire nuclear weapons program. What happened to the weapons, I can't recall offhand. But yes, that nuclear weapons program was completely dismantled. So I think if I'm not mistaken, the only country that was a nuclear power, that is Nodalga nuclear power, yeah. One quick note to mention about in 2010, there was a report that came out from the Guardian that mentioned that there was some apartheid era papers that had been released and declassified that showed that Israel offered to sell South Africa, the apartheid South African regime nuclear weapons. Now, keep in mind, listeners. that Israel still denies having nuclear weapons.

This despite the fact that I think yesterday or the day before at the time of recording, we're recording November 6th, the Minister of Heritage of Israel said that they should nuke Gaza. Now, keep in mind, this is a regime that says, hey, everybody, we don't have nuclear weapons, despite the fact that everybody for decades has known that they have. But they still claim that they don't. The Minister of Heritage, again, yesterday or the day before, at the time of recording, said we should nuke Gaza. Okay, if that's not a, you know, saying that we have nuclear weapons, I don't know what is. But another example would have been in 1975, again, that's when these, you can find the article on the Guardian's website still.

This report came out that in 1975, there was documents that drafted where Israel offered to. to apartheid South Africa's defense minister, P.W. Both of that they would offer to sell nuclear weapons at that time. I mean, this is how many years ago now? So Israel has been a nuclear power for a long time, and I just wanted to bring that up, Brett, since you did mention about, you know, the nuclear program that was within South Africa and the fact that this was being offered to the apartheid regime by Israel, kind of tying these two threads together. Yeah, definitely very important to note. All of the external socials, support that apartheid South Africa got. And a lot of that support came from the U.S., the UK and Israel. But let's go ahead and sort of shift towards the end of apartheid. And then we can

kind of discuss some of the differences and similarities between what's happening in Palestine and what happened in South Africa. I'm particularly interested in the sort of shift in global opinion, the public pressure put on the South African apartheid regime. Because you know, today we have like the BDS movement. We have now with this latest sort of flare up of slaughter that Israel's imposing on Gaza and on Palestinians more broadly, you have a huge shift in world opinion, even in places like the West, where, you know, there hasn't been that level of Palestinian support in the past. And, of course, Western governments are trying to crack down on it.

Zionists across the world are very insecure at this sort of explosion of support for Palestinian liberation, et cetera. And I know that public perception shifts and public pressure, had something to do with the end of apartheid in South Africa. So can you kind of talk about how the tide turned with regards to global opinion and some of the external pressure put on the apartheid regime by the rest of the world?

I guess the sort of initial event that brought attention to apartheid South Africa was a 1976 years ago that started in Soweto. and the brutality of the response by the Southern African government, much like what you see happening in Gaza today, is what shocked quite a few people.

And the subsequent, despite the attempts by the Southern African government to keep the press out of it like you have in Gaza, to stop press reporting on the brutality, that they couldn't prevent that from happening. And this continued brutality, this excessive response, is what drew more and more people to the view that a party is wrong. And where it began to, what helped to turn public opinion,

was in the early, in the first half of the 1980s, 804, 85, When the disinvestment movement exploded in Europe and North America, students in Britain, for instance, demanded that our place stopped disinvest from South Africa. So, African fruit was people in Ireland didn't want South African fruit in the Singapore. Charles of Ireland. In the U.S. where I was at the time 84, students were demanding that universities sell their shares in companies with subsidiaries in South Africa. So it was that, those protests in 83, 84, 85, which those protests, those actions is what, and the exposure of what was going on in South Africa is what turned the attention to South Africa and also turned the public opinion

against a part eight in South Africa. So when talking about BDS, I also want to mention listeners, if you're a listener of Rev. Left but not guerrilla history, we've already recorded an episode, which will be released sometime in the near future. It depends on one of these two episodes will come out first. but an episode on BDS specifically, so in the Palestinian context. So if you're interested in that, we have a really great episode coming up. So make sure you look on the guerrilla history feed wherever you get your podcasts.

But, you know, when we look in the U.S., it's really interesting in the case of BDS. We have this example of peaceful, nonviolent resistance against apartheid in the case of you know, Palestine and in South Africa. And we saw, as you mentioned, Ashley, that in the South African context, BDS kind of, you know, tactics were very successful in turning public opinion and in many ways kind of soften the bulkhead for the actual changes that came into, you know, dismantling the legal apartheid regime that was in place. In the United States today, with regards to BDS, measures against the,

the so-called state of Israel, we have incredible pushback against BDS. Even when I was in university during my undergrad, there was constantly proposals to ban BDS on campus. And fortunately, while I was there, those never went through. And we had our, you know, pretty vibrant BDS community on our campus where we were completely, you know, boycotting any Israeli products as well as companies that had investments within Israel. But we now have,

this has only ramped up in more recent years to the point where entire states in the U.S. make employees, public employees, sign loyalty oaths that they will not subscribe or ascribe to

BDS tactics in their capacity or in their private life while they're employed as a public official. They have school teachers in various states that are required to sign these oaths that they will not carry out BDS tactics in their private life. You know, we're not talking about like using their institution as a mechanism for BDS. We're talking about this individual cannot be a proponent of BDS and their private life while

they are a teacher, for example, in various states. And some people actually were fired for that. We have other instances where even coming out in support of BDS is being threatened to be criminalized in various states like Florida, you know, because everything always starts off in Florida these days. But we have this incredible pushback to utilizing BDS as a tactic to fight against apartheid in the case of the so-called state of Israel and occupied Palestine. I'm curious because I wasn't alive back.

You know, I was born after apartheid legally fell. So I'm curious of if, and I know Brett, you're also older than me. So you might be able to answer a little bit in the U.S. context. And Ashley, you might be able to answer. more in kind of the, you know, the South African, and I know you were in Zimbabwe for quite quite some time at this point as well. What the kind of pushback was to utilizing BDS against South Africa was, because in the case of Israel, we see incredible pushback by Israel's Western backers. There was also pushback against the movement to boycott apartheid South

Africa. And that came in the form of the argument that, look, these investments are needed in order to, one, they provide jobs for Africans, blacks in South Africa. Two, it's, the investments are provide progress and development for South Africa. And of course, then came the next argument, which is the racist one. if you compare South Africa to the rest of Africa, South Africa is really well developed. So if we remove these investments in South Africa and the blacks, especially the blacks who are living there,

are going to go and end up living like the blacks in the rest of Africa, which meant road infrastructure or collapsed, economy or collapse, production will collapse. So that was the kind of idealized. and your ideological push plaque that occurred. It wasn't at this stage where people in government offices or anywhere else were told or made to sign any kind of oath or agreement that you cannot, you're not going to engage in activity to against the part in South Africa.

And I'm talking about being in Zimbabwe. But being in South Africa meant that, you know, those who did were usually those who were employed. See, employees at the time found some kind of an exclusive reason to end their employment. That was the punishment that they faced within South Africa. Yeah, so one thing I want to discuss, I want to make sure that we touch on. are some of the interesting differences between apartheid South Africa and the current situation in Palestine. We've touched on many of the similarities. We've shown how apartheid exists in both.

We've talked about the importance of land, the exploitation of labor, the history of European colonialism, and how all these things are present in one way or another in both of these examples. We've even talked about the public pressure. It's something that is still trying to be generated against the Israeli occupation and is making great strides. but there's also important differences. And, you know, one of the differences that jumps to my mind off the top is the percentage differences of the colonizing force and the indigenous peoples. In Palestine right now, all things considered, it's pretty equal, the amount of, you know, it's like 50, 50 more or less. And in South Africa, it was a little bit different.

And perhaps this might also contribute, and I could be wrong on this one. but that might also contribute to the relative lack of armed struggle and violence as well, given that there was this really meaningful percentage differences between the two opposing camps, whereas in the context of Israel and Palestine, it's pretty equalized. But I'm sure there are some other differences as well, and maybe you can correct me if I said anything wrong about the percentages as well. But yeah, if you could just talk about the important differences between apartheid, South Africa, and what's happening in Palestine.

In terms of like a guerrilla sovereign mean. In terms of anything at all, just any of the differences that you see? We've talked about the similarities. I'm just wondering, do you see any serious differences between the two? For me, yes, they are. So if you look at what happened on the 7th of October, that was quite a spectacular operation carried out by Hamas. and the important

is that in South Africa at the time there were not ever during a party there were never that kind of military operation at that level at that scale

there was however in Zimbabwe the successful spectacular military operations but South Africa no not at all so that's the first

difference. The second is if you look at what they call the homelands, the bundles, so those were the areas where the black African population was relegated to. So if they weren't working, they would have to go and live

in those areas, which is in the countryside. They could only be in the township if they had employment. So if you take care for instance, you have Kyletcher, you have Gugnetu, you have

Philippi area. So in these areas, they are within Cape Town. So if you work saying, for instance, in the central business district or in one of the industrial areas, it's simply matter getting on public transport

in Kailetshire or Philippi wherever and taking a bus to work. After work, you take a bus by home. but it's different in so you have the working class that lives in the same geographical area

as in the same city that they work in whereas in Gaza it's I suspect is different you live in Gaza you then have to go through security checkpoints to come out of Gaza

into another area which is Zionist occupied palisines on board called Israel and you're going to work there and then when you go back home it's the same thing you go through that security checkpoint

so it's in a part of South Africa didn't have those kind of security checkpoints loud again yes the roadblocks but nothing that you see in Gaza and probably the West Bank as well so there

you have the working class of Israel, the Arab Working Club asks that does not live in Israel but it's either in the West Bank or in Gaza. So it lives in a different area and has to walk or commute to get to work and go back home. So that is another important difference.

Those are probably the two, yeah. So those two are the probably and the two important differences between part of South Africa and Partite Israel. One thing that I want to make sure that we touch on is the sentiment towards Palestine and apartheid Israel in South Africa, because South Africa does have this experience that we've been discussing throughout this episode. And we've seen that relations between South Africa and Israel at times in recent years have been relatively strained. For example, in South Africa,

sorry, South Africa, recalled its ambassador to Israel in 2018, and now, I believe just today, again, November 6th at the time of recording, just recalled all of their diplomats from Israel. That was just in the news this morning, my time anyway. It might have been last night for you, Brett. So we have seen strained tensions. And I'm wondering more about not the governmental relations, which we can kind of see, you know, they have to tow the law. line. But at the other hand, they do have this kind of strained relationship and have to kind of bow to popular sentiment at times. I'm curious of what the popular sentiment actually is within South Africa, like on the ground, because the people in South Africa have this experience of living under apartheid and seeing the structures of apartheid and also can see with their own eyes what is going on in Palestine. And as we said, it's not exactly the same

situation. There are differences in the context of Palestine and South Africa, but you can certainly see reminiscences of the apartheid experience in South Africa. And I'm wondering if that in any way is coloring the perception of people in South Africa and driving it towards any particular direction or not. I don't know. So, you know, what is your perception of the feeling on the ground in South Africa towards Palestine and Israel? Generally, the feeling is in favor of Palestine. Because of the similarities in the land dispositions, the similarities of apartheid,

what's happening in Palestine is close to the hearts of many South Africa. If you look at Cape Town, I think I must have been about 2015, 2016. I can't remember there exactly now. If you look at the protests that have occurred in Kempton and the numbers at each in each protest, the protests in favor of Palestine against what was happening in Gaza, that history was the largest march that Kentan has seen,

if not then certainly in the top three. So that gives you an idea as to the sentiments that South Africa has for Palestine. You stated what the government has just done, which is a bit, it's hypocrisy given that the very same government, while recalling the ambassadors, sells weapons to the Israeli regime. and but the South Africa is outside the government with the when it's the word I'm looking for Central Society has a very strong

connection with Pernestai and they would have been able to interview people in or from Pannistide at meetings and so forth and just a couple of days ago the main government-controlled broadcasting company interviews one of the officials from Hamas on South African television,

which of course horrified local Zionist supporters here in South Africa. So, yes, and so in South Africa, there's this ongoing photos that are taking place at local levels every single week in favor of Palestine and against what is going on in in in in in Gaza so yes and and and and we yeah yeah so we have just a couple two more questions to close out this this discussion you've been very generous with your time and we deeply appreciate that one of the questions I have to to wrap up this conversation and then Henry can ask one, is about the, we mentioned it earlier, you sort of alluded to the legacy of apartheid still living on. And there is some sort of, sometimes this naive sense that, you know,

since apartheid fell, that something like, you know, justice or something like equality has sort of been achieved in South Africa when in some instances that may be true. And in many other instances, that certainly is not the case. So can you talk about the continued legacy of apartheid in South Africa and how it shapes ongoing injustices in the country to this day? Okay. So let's start off with what has been achieved. I mean, it's not true to say that nothing was achieved. So what was achieved is you can live wherever you want to live,

you can pursue the kind of job in the career that you want to pursue. You have the rights to vote. So those are the achievers. In terms of those living in the townships, you have had those who've had houses built for them. That is an achievement. But what has not been achieved, what has not changed is the social apartheid. So those who live in the townships are experiencing poverty, levels of deprivation worse than under apartheid. During the lockdown because of COVID in 2020, 2021, there were people who, because they weren't working, because they didn't have a social grant, had no access to income, people literally starved to death.

That hasn't changed. The fact that when people protest against a lack of houses in the area, when they protested, against not having a running water or electricity or a stable, consistent spy. When they protested that they met with the head of the police, policing armored vehicles with ride gear, that hasn't changed. We have a situation where the schools in the townships, particularly the blood townships, are still the same. a situation where

three quarters of high schools and South Africa don't have a library. That hasn't changed. So, on the one hand, you have this change, on the other hand, things are the same or worse

than what they were under apartheid. And this is why South Africa, now after 1994, had the title of the protest cabroa of the world, and rightly so, because of the worsening social and living conditions of the black majority of South Africa, the working class majority of South Africa.

Yeah, so to close out this conversation, when looking at this kind of analysis that you've provided in that last answer, and also accounts of other people who have analyzed South Africa and how many of the vestiges and structures of apartheid have perpetuated themselves and today or have slightly changed form and have perpetuated themselves into the present day even long after, 29 years after, the formal end to legal apartheid in South Africa. Many, many scholars have called it an unfinished revolution, you know, not that it was really a true revolutionary struggle, but in terms of being, you know, anything like a socialist revolutionary struggle or anything along those lines. But in terms of when apartheid legally

fell, many of the struggles just ended at that point. And that allowed for the entrenchment of these apartheid-like structures into the current day. And so using that knowledge of this kind of unfinished project of the dismantling of apartheid, what can you take from that experience and try to apply to thinking about the Palestinian example. Of course, we have to be slightly optimistic because otherwise, you know, we look at the news all of the time and we get very depressed about what's happening at all times. But let's let's be optimistic and, you know, think about the day in which apartheid and the settler colonial state falls because inevitably, you know,

justice will be achieved and liberation for the Palestinian people will be achieved in time. is, of course, you know, us being optimistic and always trying to keep that revolutionary optimism. So upon the day for Palestinian liberation, what are the lessons that they should take of this experience from South Africa of this kind of unfinished dismantling of apartheid when they go about ensuring that the apartheid-like structures that are in place within Occupied Palestine today are not perpetuated into the future. Okay. Just a couple of quick answers, almost step answers.

So number one is don't disband your organization because they think you've been liberated. Number two, don't trust the government. Say it's going to do things. Number three, keep on fighting as though you haven't been doing. deliberate. Keep on fighting so that you have a decent, acceptable standard of living, acceptable decent living conditions and working conditions. Once you have those, then you can say, okay, this is what we've achieved. Can we do anything extra in addition to that? Yeah, that's just my sort of very brief answer. Yeah. Yeah, wise words. Thank you so much, Ashley, for coming on,

for sharing your knowledge with us. We deeply, deeply appreciate it, being so generous with your time. I know it's pretty late where you are, so thank you again. Before we let you go, though, can you let listeners know where they can maybe find you,

your work online, and any other recommendations or last words you would like to offer anybody listening? Well, I haven't really set up anything online, but anyone who wants to contact me by email is welcome to do so. Can I give you my email online now or okay, so it's H-A-S-H and then F-O-F-F-F-R-A-R at g-M-L-A-R-G-M-E-Mel.

And are you welcome to email me and ask me anything that you like? And I will answer you or try to help you any way that I can. Wonderful. And we will link to that in the show notes so people can easily reach out to you. Henry, before we go, do you want to let listeners know where they can find you in your work online. Of course, listeners, you can find me on Twitter or what used to be called Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-K-1995. And of course, I would like to recommend everybody subscribe to Gorilla History, wherever you get your podcasts. Obviously, like listening to Brett because you're

listening to either Gorilla History or Revolutionary Left Radio right now. So if you're on the if you're on the Revolutionary Left Radio feed and you're not on the guerrilla history feed, Brett is one of the three co-hosts of the show, so you might as well subscribe to it over there. Yeah, and I'll link to that in the show notes as well. All right. Thank you again, Ashley. Talk to you soon.

Thank you to everybody that listens. Love and solidarity. Thanks, Henry, tights, much. Thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the annual. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the annual. I guess at this point, event in which the whole Rev Left family comes

together. Last year we came together to answer a series of questions and this year we're coming together to do a bit of a deeper dive on South African apartheid. Of course this whole concept and this whole history is becoming increasingly relevant in the face of what's going on

in Palestine currently. And so we figured that having a sort of deep dive on South African apartheid could clarify some similarities, some differences with the case in Israel, as well as other, you know, related phenomena like segregation after failed reconstruction in the American South. In a lot of ways, and maybe there'll be some disagreement on this going forward, but I see South African apartheid as sort of this mix of what,

you know, sort of Israeli settler colonialism and impression with some fundamental differences and with, you know, Jim Crow in the South. And there's lots of sort of parallels between both and some interesting differences that perhaps we can get into. I guess for lack of a better term, we call episodes like this revolutionary guerrilla menace episodes, a sort of mixture of everything. So this is really fun, and we don't get to do this as much as I think all of us would like.

So it's always a pleasure to have Allison, Henry, and Adnan together in the same place. I want to say up top as well that over on guerrilla history, we did have a sort of introduction to South African apartheid. It's sort of a 101, you know, bird's eye view of some of the base. that help people that with little to no knowledge of this historical, phenomenal, historical process, at least sort of get there beak wet with regards to some of the main things on the table with an eye towards this episode where we go a little deeper.

So if you have some background knowledge on South African apartheid, you can jump right into this conversation, even if you have little to none, I'm sure you'll find many things in this conversation helpful, but if you really want a nice 101, go check it out on guerrilla history. But let's go ahead to quickly introduce everybody. I think it's something that we should do. Starting from my left to the right, Henry, would you like to introduce yourself?

Sure. I'm Henry Hachamaki, one of the co-hosts of guerrilla history alongside Bruton. I'm an educator and activist, and I also co-translated and edited the new English edition of Stalin History and critique of a black legend by Domenico Lassorto.

I'm sure if you listen to guerrilla history, you're sick of my voice already. Impossible. Allison, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, my name is Allison. I am a co-host with Brett on Red Minus podcast, where we tend to focus on theoretical texts, try to do some summarization of them. I've had the pleasure a few times of joining Henry and Ondan for some recordings as well, which is always fantastic. And yeah, super excited to be here and dive into this. It's great to get all four of us together. Wonderful. Adnan. Yeah, I'm Adnan Hussein and I teach history at Queens University. I'm one of the co-hosts of

guerrilla history. And I also do a lot on religion and the study of religion historically and conceptually. And it's always really fun to have these crossover episodes. So I'm really looking forward to this. Yeah. And we decided against having a hyperstructured conversation. We're going to let this conversation be a little bit more organic. But we're going to try to have the general chronological thrust be from, you know, the basic history of the colonization of South Africa, up to, you know, 1948, the rise of formalized apartheid, all the way to the ending of formalized apartheid and the ongoing legacy of apartheid in South Africa, which certainly still, you know, shapes that entire society, much like the end of Jim Crow and the American South wasn't the end of all

racial segregation or, you know, racism. It ended a certain sort of formalized oppression, but the informal oppression continued, and in many ways continues to this day. And we see something very similar in the case of South Africa. I guess the best place to start might be with the history of the colonial endeavor that began this entire problem, as it were. And then we'll get into apartheid in a bit. But I'm wondering if odd nonsense, your sort of specialty is centered around some of this stuff. If you could talk about a little bit about the process of settler colonialism in South Africa. Yes. Well, it's surprising actually how far back. the history of European settler colonialism on the African continent goes. I mean, usually,

you know, from our position in the Americas, we think of the Spanish and Portuguese, and then later the British principally, and maybe if we're really up on our Canadian history, we also, you know, are aware of the French settler colonial project in North America. But we think of Africa as colonized in a big wave in the 19th century, in the Scramble for Africa, the Berlin conference, and tend not to recognize and realize that already in the 17th century, there are Dutch colonial settlers working for the Dutch East India Company, which is very parallel in many ways to the famous British, you know, East India Company. But the Dutch were very involved in trade and colonialism in the Far East, in what is today Indonesia and the archipelago of

islands. And they needed to control the roots like other imperial powers that were established through these kind of trading networks and monopolizing trade. needed to control the trade routes and guard and protect those. And this is, of course, before the Suez Canal was dug in a major project in the 19th, middle of the 19th century, they had to round the coast of the southern coast of Africa, the, you know, the Cape. And so they established a settlement already by, I believe it was 16, 52 was the first kind of trading post that they established and further settlement followed over the

course of subsequent decades. And what listeners should recognize and realize is that during this period, really the Dutch Republic was probably the world maritime power. I mean, it was the most important naval force. It had the biggest and richest trading network, bringing, you know, goods, spices, et cetera, from the far east, Indonesia all the way to Europe. And this is what led to a huge economic and cultural efflorescence. I mean, you don't get Rembrandt, you don't get all of the Dutch masters and so on, really without the ferment that happens through the Dutch trading and colonial empire that during the 17th. And during the 17th and into the 18th centuries was really the strongest in the world for a certain period before the British supplanted.

And so that's interesting also to understand in the early period that by the end of the 18th century, the British are, you know, really involved, of course, starting to get expand in India. the Indian subcontinent, and they have an interest also in these routes and in contesting control over trading posts and so on, on the coast of Africa as well during this period. Of course, they'd established themselves already in earlier in the 18th century for the transatlantic slave trade, but to connect their trading network on the Indian subcontinent, they had to go further down the, you know, African coast. And this led to conflicts with the Dutch settlers who were already there. And it kind of led in the early 19th century to some, to the Dutch settlers who called Afrikaners or come to be called Afrikaners, but first called themselves these free burgers. That is their true bourgeois, right? They're this mercantile trading company. And the very word, the bourgeoisie comes, you know, from this the same word, these free burgers. That is, people who are not part of any aristocratic elite, but were dedicated to trade and commerce outside of the feudal social system, they are establishing their own kind of independent policies on the African continent. And they come into conflict with the British and have

to move off the coast in many cases. And they have this, what they call a very traumatic and very important episode in the Afrikaner's historical self-consciousness. which is this great trek where they had to move into the hinterland in order to establish more agricultural style settlements and move away from the primarily mercantile orientation of these communities in their initial phases as part of the Dutch trading network. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to stop there because I think there's a lot other things we could pick up and maybe people want to point out other aspects of this early history.

Well, a very impressive summary. Yeah, that was really well done. just to get some other just kind of bouncing off of what Adnan said there. You know, I believe New York City even was originally colonized by the Dutch, and it was only later where it was even there was supplanted by British colonialists. So something sort of similar happened here. And what you mentioned here about, you know, the Boers, the descendants of largely Dutch, but also some German and French settlers that had settled that region coming into conflict with British colonialism. and sort of through that conflict, forging what they see as a sort of national identity, right? So then these Europeans who are there are now fighting British colonists, right? And now they're sort of forming a national identity that would come to be known, the Afrikaners.

And then that sort of sets us up, which we might discuss later, for this sort of victim mentality, where they use the wordage of self-determination, where they sort of see themselves as, you know, fighters against the British colonial empire. But, of course, this entire time, there's native Africans that are being oppressed, displaced, caught up in the middle of this European inter-colonialist war, broadly from the Bantu ethnic group, Zulu, Swazi, et cetera, that are present this entire time will become known as the Black South Africans eventually, but are the native indigenous population that are being colonized. And through this period of time, through the 17th, 18th centuries, you see, you know, straight up slavery, hardcore racial oppression. you know as as the economies develop you see the the indigenous black south africans being forced into really precarious mining work and the sort of exploitation of indigenous labor is a core feature of this entire thing which you know maybe we'll get into a bit later does anybody else

have anything to say about this early colonial period before we move into the period of apartheid the rise of the national party etc yeah one small thing to add is that i think uh what Adnan touched on about the displacement of the Dutch communities in particular is a legacy that's really important for understanding kind of this next historical moment and the rise of the National Party. The movement of Dutch people into rural South Africa really sets up actually the voting base that will support the National Party, where as we see in a lot of countries, you get this contradiction kind of between rural areas and cities where there are different types of support. And even among white South Africans, there's this contradiction that also does in a lot of ways

map onto British versus Dutch white South Africans that leads to having cities where the National Party has a difficulty kind of establishing control, but rural areas that have overwhelming massive support for the National Party and its apartheid system. So I think as we go into this, it is worth kind of thinking about how that displacement creates this internal contradiction, I would say sort of a contradiction between town and city in a way that sets the stage and really creates room for the rise of this new political force that then is able to enact everything we're going to talk about kind of moving forward. Yeah. Well said. So that's kind of the colonialist settler colonial background that sets up a formal apartheid. So I know, Henry,

you've remained quiet so far. Now we're getting into the period of this history that you've sort of focused on here. So can you talk about this period starting in the early 20th century and sort of culminating in 1948 a year, which comes up again and again in discussions such as this and kind of talk about the rise of the national party and the rise of formalized apartheid? Sure. I'll actually start a little bit before that. So it's worth noting that in the 1860s and then in the 1880s, diamonds and gold were found on in South Africa, what's now South Africa. And this led the British to become interested in becoming the colonizers of what is now South Africa. You know, find diamonds, find gold. Of course, the British are going to be coming. And at that time, the Afrikaners. were you know not exactly well supported at that point much of the support from the netherlands had completely eroded and they were essentially autonomous at that point you know of course they're still colonizers and they were still oppressing the you know native african communities there

but it's not like this was a highly mechanized highly industrialized society that would have had the might to to repeatedly expel british incursion which we will see so that the British, of course, here, diamonds and gold. They come. This leads to the two Boer Wars. The first Boer War actually is a boar victory. Again, the boar is a boar meaning farmer. This is the rural Afrikaner population. And, you know, really it was like farmers versus, you know, the British Navy and British Marines that were coming in from the sea. So a very interesting, very interesting, you know, period of history, these boar wars. And the first one, like I said, the boars actually end up pushing the British back and maintaining British supremacy on the coastlines, but the interior

regions were still held in boar possession. That leads us to 1899, 1900, the second Boer War, when again, the British come knocking and this time they weren't going to be held out. There were some spectacular defeats of the British. I know we talked in one episode of Burla history in the past about the Battle of Spoy and Cop, which was an absolutely cataclysmic defeat of the British due to many, many just laughable failures that took place during that battle and to spare you the time of listening to me, you know, go on this. Explanation again, listeners, if you want to hear about the Battle of Spoy and Cobb, kind of within the broader context of the Second Boer War, find that episode on the guerrilla history feed.

But suffice it to say, while that battle and several others led to bore victories, the war very much was controlled by the overwhelming British superiority in both manpower and in weaponry. But what this led to, actually, interestingly, was the first usage of widespread concentration camps in human history, a concentration camps that sprung up all across what is now South Africa that were being used to hold bores that were prisoners of war. in the Boer Wars, but then also more broadly. And the British also at this time went around and practiced literally scorched earth tactics. They burn the boar farms, which led to many boars fleeing the rural areas and becoming core whites within more urban areas where they had previously not been, or the ones who stayed in those rural areas and had to kind of rebuild their agricultural base from scratch because it had been literally burnt by the British, they started to harbor very, very intense anti-British sentiment,

kind of understandably so. And that's something that's going to come up again many times later. So what we have now is we have the British are now the, you know, supreme rulers of what is now South Africa, the land that is now South Africa. And the Boers are still present, but they don't have any sort of autonomy, you know, they have some kind of Boer Republics and whatnot through throughout time, but, you know, how independent were they really? That's a kind of question for a different date. The interesting thing then is that what we have is we have, as I think Allison you had previously touched on, we have these poor, poor white workers within the cities, mostly boars that had been kind of flushed out from the farms after the British burnt them.

And we also have the rise of the Dutch Reformed Church, the DRC, which was professing this very, very racist, white supremacist rhetoric in terms of the Afrikaners were actually like God's chosen people to rule over this land. And of course, keep in mind, the Boers are not controlling this land at that period of time. And so what there started to be is almost an Afri-Connor nationalist movement, not just a white nationalist movement, but an Afri-Connor-specific nationalist movement. So as Brett mentioned in 1948, we have the rise of the National Party, but prior to that, we actually had a different party that was a kind of racist white party called the United Party. And this was called the United Party because it was supposed to unite English speakers in, again, what is now South Africa, and Afrikaners in South Africa in this kind of white supremacist project that even this is well before apartheid was a word, far before apartheid was legally codified formally, you know, far before 1948, laws were already going into place that. were segregationist, were white supremacist, and really laid the basis for what was coming with apartheid. Interestingly, the United Party, in trying to unite English speakers and Afrikaners, it led to even more division between not only the English speakers and Afrikaners, but also the

white community and the black community within South Africa. And specifically, the combination of this white supremacist rhetoric that was coming out from the Dutch Reformed Church, as well as splits in terms of anti-British sentiment that was still very deeply held within the Afrikaner community. We see that this alliance is quite fraught. And as World War II comes around, this comes to a head very interestingly with the fact that the English-speaking Afrikaners, which were the ones that were the ones that were were running the United Party of South Africa, they sided with the British in World War II.

The Afrikaners, in part because this was a far-right, you know, white supremacist movement, and in part because they had deeply held anti-British sentiments, were very upset that the United Party was siding with the British and World War II and actually had very deeply held fascist sympathies. So this led to more divisions within the party, and it led to the rise of the National Party. Again, Afri-Connor Nationalist Party. Nobody really thought that they were going to be winning elections in the late 1940s. Everybody thought, okay, well, you know, the United Party, they're run by General Smootist War, you know, general. And there's a lot of division there, but, hey, they're still running it. The Nationalist Party,

the National Party, they came to power on the back of anti-communism, which was on the rise within the white community of South Africa, particularly the bourgeoisie in South Africa. Keep in mind that this is, you know, as the Soviet Union is vanquishing fascism from Europe, we also have this deeply held anti-British sentiment. And we also have the idea that the United Party was not being harsh enough in enacting segregationist policies and white supremacist policies.

These policies were on the book. I know we talked about the Native Land Act in our guerrilla history episode, which over time set aside 87% of the land in South Africa for the white community, even though the white community was only 20% of the population of South Africa and only set aside 20% for the black community, which was, if you combined the black community and the mixed race community, 78% of the population of South Africa. These acts were already enacted, but the enforcement of the acts that were on the books and the kind of, quote unquote, slow pace by which further segregationist policies were coming into play

led to this groundswell of support for the Nationalist Party, and they swept in in elections in 1948. Just as a brief aside, the black community of South Africa actually have the right to vote for about 100 years, which maybe a lot of people didn't know. But it was so while the voting restrictions were relatively liberal, in terms of, you know, it was a liberal constitution. There was actually some, some people in the black community that were able to vote, actually quite a few. There were restrictions on it being men and land ownership. So, you know, it did necessarily reduce. And then over time, this is still before 1948, voting restrictions were put in piece by piece by piece by piece until eventually, essentially the black community was not able to vote at all. So the National Party comes in in the elections in 1948 and puts in this sweep of legislation that is very segregationist, very exclusionary white supremacist. And eventually this set of legislation becomes known as apartheid, which is the Afrikan word for separateness or separatedness or apartness. um i think i've been talking for a really long time so i'm going to pause here in case anybody

else has something that they want to say i know there's a lot more that i left out but i'll leave it there for now yeah yeah no i think um so apartheid is this word that really literally comes out of this south african situation and then is applied elsewhere um you know apartness apart hood it's the basic idea is is very clear it's segregation it's segregation along racial lines. Another thing just to sort of summarize some of the things that Henry put on the table and looking forward to some of the comparisons we might make later on in this episode, you know, you have this interesting parallel between the boers or these farmers and eventually they would become these Afrikaners with, you know, the Jewish people in Europe where, you know,

in both cases, obviously the Jewish people have much more of a case in this regard, but to some extent it can be, it can be fair to say that, you know, there's like sort of these legitimate claims on some level to victimhood at the hands of another European power. In the case of the Boers, which would eventually become the Afrikaners, you know, this hyper-militarized, much more wealthy and powerful British colonial force that they have to contend with. So you have this situation where there is this victimization, but then that victimization is used to justify the further brutal victimization of a separate indigenous native population. So there's inter-European conflicts, right? In both cases,

get imposed on the other, get imposed on this third party that had nothing to do with this inter-European conflict to begin with, and they're the ones who suffer the most. So then you have... Just to hop in one second, there's one important thing that I forgot to mention earlier, and I think that it'll also be important for understanding the dynamics that were at play here. There was two other really important factors in terms of why the National Party came to power when it did, one of which was that in the 19th teens and through the 20s and early 30s, particularly, there was a great urbanization of the black population in South Africa and of many black South Africans taking jobs alongside whites. Remember, this is before the apartheid policies that segregated workplaces as well. And in many ways, you know, we see some of the same things that are talked about today in terms of immigration.

communities coming in, being low-wage laborers and undercutting wages of, you know, insert native, you know, native group here, uh, in terms of like, you know, we have immigrants coming in from Latin America working in the agricultural fields and then it's undercutting the wages of white workers in the United States. Oh, no. Uh, this same kind of rhetoric was happening in South Africa and this time. And also, we have to remember that the Depression was at the same period of time when there was urbanization of the black community in South Africa happening. And the Great Depression, I know that when we talk about the Great Depression, we often

focus on the American context of the Great Depression, but it really was a worldwide phenomenon. And it hit South Africa as well. And the combination between the influx of the black population into urban settings, as well as the Great Depression really wreaking havoc on the South African community, just led to this spiraling tension between the racial communities within South Africa and this increasing rhetoric of, well, the black community coming in and taking our jobs and undercutting our wages is the thing that is tearing us down as a society, tearing us down economically. And this is what needs to be combated, which then led to the feeling that, again, the United Party wasn't

doing enough to protect the white community of South Africa. So that was one of the points that forgot to mention before. Yeah, important context. And so in 1948, you see the rise and the instantiation into power of the national party. And then over the next couple of years, you have these list of specific laws that basically together form formalized apartheid in South Africa. One of them, just reading off a list, a couple of them, I'm not going to read them all. There are many. The Population Registration Act of 1950 requiring every South African to be classified into one of a number of racial population groups. So you set, you, you, you, you you have like four groups of, you know, races, white, I think the racist term colored, mixed,

et cetera. And this act provided the foundation upon which the whole edifice of a part that would be constructed. You have the reservation of separate amenities act, 1953. Henry, do you have something to say about the previous one? Just a quick note on in terms of categorizing the people into different racial groups, like it really is as crude as it sounds and even more so, they had census takers that were not trained in identifying which racial group people were, like they didn't have any specialized training, but they would have these census takers that would go around and then categorize every person

that they would see just visually into one of four groups, white, Bantu, which is just black. You know, they weren't actually Bantu speakers, but they were the black community of South Africa, mixed race, and Asian or Indian, the term for that last group kind of changed over the years. but like literally they had untrained people going around with a clipboard and a list of names. They would look at them, you know, squint and say, what racial group does this person fall into and then check a box based on what they thought? And in fact, it's even more crude than that. There's a specific example called the pencil test.

I don't know if any of you came across this in your research. If the census takers were unsure of whether somebody would be classified as Bantu, again, the black community of South Africa or white, and you know they knew that this person wasn't in the mixed race they would literally take a pencil and push it into the person's hair and if the person's hair was coarse enough to not let the pencil fall they would classify that person as in the Bantu community whereas if the hair was thin enough or you know fine enough

that the pencil would fall out of their hair they would be classified into the white community of South Africa just shows the the literal pathology and insanity of colonialist Europe and the race science and the ideological superstructure built around their colonial enterprise. Just a couple extra is the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, 1953. Obviously, this is the public premises, vehicles, services, everything in society is now segregated by race. Literally, you know, black and white, just like in Jim Crow America. You know, you're able to use some things based solely on your racial description,

which again, you know, Henry points out how crude and absurd these. categories were then you have the you know the immorality act this is going back to 1927 it forbade extramarital sex between white people and black people the prohibition of mixed marriages a bunch of other things regarded to education where you can live the imposition of what are called bantustans or little areas where you know indigenous black south Africans would be forced by this new national party so you're now living in these sort of you know ghettoized areas segregated from the white areas who own obviously a lot more land

something we see in Israel with the West Bank and cutting that up, chopping that up, and then over here you have Ghazi, you know, these little areas where you force the indigenous populations into and of course this is also in the middle of the Cold War. So you have something like the suppression of Communism Act

and any opposition to apartheid was almost always inexorably tied to the threat of communism. Of course, white dominated South Africa as an ally to the West in the Cold War, anti-communist to the core. And just as we saw in the U.S. figures like MLK, anybody standing up for black justice and liberation getting labeled with the communist label, it's the same exact thing as happening here. Any opposition to apartheid is labeled as communism. And you could literally be jailed under this

act for public vociferous support of communism or vociferous opposition to apartheid. So this is just some of the scaffolding upon which apartheid was built. Allison, Adnan, do either of you have anything to add about the nature of apartheid in South Africa throughout these years? One quick thing to add that kind of ties into the contributing factors to this that I think helps us understand how so many of these laws got passed so quickly. Because it really is a staggering amount of legislation that immediately gets passed by the National Party. But I think another thing to consider too, and something that Americans, I think, might see some parallels with is the economic. impact of World War II leading into this and the sociopolitical impact of that as well. So Henry mentioned in the early teens this influx of black workers into the cities, but we also

saw something very interesting that happened to the U.S. as well, which is that white men were deployed to World War II. South Africa didn't see the highest level of service, but it did see about 300,000 people volunteer for their forces, which obviously cleared out a workforce. In the United States, we often talk about how this led to immigrant movement in into the workforce and also women's movement into the workforce. And in the United States, what we saw immediately in the post-war period was this massive reactionary period of reactionary ideology in the 1950s that pushes back against this almost progressivizing industrialization, which occurs as a result of World War II. And I think that has to be taken into account

in the context of South Africa as well. These jobs are being cleared up because of the war, which is leading to this immigration of black South Africans into the city. And we can understand this rapid succession of apartheid laws, I think in terms of reactionary backlash as well to that. And this, I think, will be interesting later when we think about the relationship between apartheid and capital, because this is one instance where these apartheid laws actually are kind of pushing back against the progressivizing nature of capitalist development that occurs as a result of the war. And these contradictions between capital as a freeing up of workforces and free labor and apartheid as a system of constraining labor, I think, are really important to take into account

there. So I want to highlight that because I think that bubbles up later on down the line. Those are really, I think, excellent suggestions and analysis about the very conservative reactionary dimension of this and the context of panic, really. It's a period of extreme transition, you know, in global history. So much change as a result of World War II. And you see, you know, blacks in the intellectuals. in the Caribbean talking about, you know, for example, people have read, I'm sure, and have come across Cesar, Phenon, and some of their writings, they talk about how important World War II, the mobilization, the social transformations, the economic transformations, and also the fracturing of the colonial imperial system that, you know, this war facing fascism and on multiple fronts. the rise of a kind of Asian political power, the Japanese, and what that did to British colonialism and a European colonialism in general in the Far East, in Indonesia, in British India, and so on,

that it really changed people's horizons of imagination because their social experiences. There was a lot more mixing. I mean, you see that in the United States even with, you know, you know, soul. coming back, African-American soldiers coming back after World War II and saying, you know, we've experienced a different kind of world. We fought for freedom. We fought against fascism. And now we're coming back to segregated lunch counters, abuse and second-class citizenship. That was unacceptable. And you can see the roots of struggle and resistance taking place. And likewise, backlash as a result of this. So why is there a huge massacre in 19, you know, of 45 in Algeria and Seteef with returning soldiers coming back to Algeria, the colonial settler population is threatened by the military mobilization of Algerians who fought for France against, you know, the Nazis and now are demanding, you know, respect for that and full citizenship. So I think there's something very important happening during this period that helps

explain how this regressive kind of reaction tries to formalize what had been possible through just colonial domination, racial sort of and class segregation that happened just under the system. But now things are changing. And you see that, you know, the Boers, for example, like they oppose progressive developments, we might call progressive developments even under British colonialism earlier on. I mean, Henry pointed out to the brutality of, you know, the British prosecution of this war against the Boers. But how did the Boers even kind of leave and go into the countryside?

Part of it was after the 1833, you know, ending of slavery in the British Empire. It doesn't mean, of course, there wasn't racism. There wasn't, you know, hierarchies and exploitation. It's just that it was going to be organized. under a different mode and not through a kind of slave, you know, mode of production, but, you know, through capitalist modes of production, a liberalizing of these social relations in order to advance capital exploitation. Well, they didn't want to live in this regime of racial egalitarianism. So they, you know, left. And so this is, this is, this should be very sort

of understandable for Americans who, you know, you have to understand like the kind of anti-federal government politics, you know, that emerges. I mean, it comes early on, is partly, and in fact, even the American Revolution, as we've talked about, is in some ways, we want to hang on to our system of racial segregation, of plantation slavery, and so on. And we don't want the meddling of the imperial core. Well, likewise, this is a reaction to British colonial developments and a resistance to being, you know, integrate. into some of the legal reforms that start to take place in the British Empire, you know, in the early middle 19th century. That's where the Boers become. That's their distinctive culture is, you know,

being victims in the same way that, you know, you might say the South was a victim of northern aggression, you know, right? This is, you know, this is, I think, a kind of similar analogy we have to think about. And likewise, things are changing in this other great important global transformation in World War II that impels this attempt to formalize in law, a kind of system that might have existed, you know, in similar outlines because of class, politics and social hierarchies under, you know, the British colonial rule. So I think that's something to, you know, think about is that this period of transition is very important. both for resistance to colonialism, but also attempts to reestablish racial hierarchies and different kind of, you know, basically things are up for grabs. How is the society going to go? And so you have these influential kind of constituency being able to establish itself. Similarly, if you think about like, you know, what happens over the course of the next few decades,

in what used to be, you know, Rhodesia is similarly, you know, this kind of breakaway republic. You know, we think of republics as this, you know, historical move to, you know, a kind of progressive or democratic politics. But oftentimes, just like you could say perhaps the U.S. Republic, I mean, it's breaking. And even some of the republics in the Bolivarian, you know, kind of revolution. that take place in Latin America, sometimes you have a settler colonial class that wants to protect its particular system. And so they break away from, you know, imperial rule, the monarchy, and they want to establish their own republic that instantiates the racial and class hierarchies of a settler colonial society. Yeah. Incredibly well said. It reminds me of that quote from an

English essayist Samuel Johnson talking about the American colonists wanting liberty and this you know the sons of liberty and all of this he says how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of slaves right pointing at this fundamental contradiction that that follows american racism and especially in the south all through american history up to today where the advent of modern american libertarianism of this fetishization of states rights comes from this constant attempt to quell the federal government coming in stopping slavery you know desegregating their schools etc and they frame it in terms of liberty and to some extent they probably, you know, sincerely feel that

way. Like if you think of slaves as your genuine property, the federal government coming in and taking them away is like coming and taking away your house to these people. But again, it talks, it speaks to the pathology and the dehumanization inherent in the project of colonialism and then all of the other phenomena that that flow from it, including segregation, apartheid, structural racism, etc. Henry, now I know we've been jumping around chronologically a little bit that the general thrust is there, but we are hopping around. Did you have anything else to say about the Bantustans or anything else chronologically that we might have skipped over already? Yeah, before I do that, you know, you brought up a really good point about how people think about how the defenders of liberty were all slaveholders and things like this. listeners, if you haven't read Domenico Lassardo's liberalism, a counter-history, I urge you to do so.

That's kind of the theme of the majority of the book, is that liberalism as a tradition has its own history that it tells about itself, but this book provides not only a telling of their history and allows them to tell their history, but also provides a counter-history that shows that, again, the people that are upholding these values of liberty are. slaveholders or you know doing these other terrible things so if you haven't read the book you should do so it's a very it's like all of losirto's work it's excellent really quick henry before you move on i just wanted to say this is kind of silly and as an aside but it might be amusing to some listeners is that i saw um one of these pat sock folks on uh twitter talking about how um and during the american revolution that it's you know they're arguing that it's it's a super progressive event etc um saying that the black people and the indigenous people united with the colonists to fight the british and i'm taking this a high level graduate course right now just focused just on the american revolutionary war

and i cannot tell you how wrong that is the majority of indigenous and enslaved Africans fought for the british because they just sort of weighed the they weighed the options here and they figured that cost benefit analysis going with the british was probably a safer bet than going with the colonists because they sort of saw what the colonists were trying to do. There were some laws British were imposing on the U.S., like you can't go west of the Appalachians, stuff like that. And so some really interesting indigenous leaders, you know, black people revolting against slavery, sort of setting up tiny militias to fight the colonists themselves on behalf of the British.

It's a very interesting historical reality. But just the framing of it, you know, trying to bolster this idea, contra somebody like Gerald Horn bolster this idea that America, the American Revolution was very progressive in this way. I think it should be seen with a lot of skepticism and we should really wrestle with that idea of whether or not it actually was progressive. There's a progressive element in breaking formally away from monarchy, but there's a lot of reactionary and counter-revolutionary elements in that entire thing. If it's a revolution at all, it's a very conservative one. You could be sort of, you could be sort of cynical about it and say

that it was just a separatist movement. I think the formal break from monarchy is sort of progressive, but you have to get deeper into the details to really wrestle with that question. But again, that's just an aside. I hand it back to you, Henry, to pick up wherever you were going. No, I like that you brought that up. And, you know, you mentioned Gerald Horn,

of course, to mention that we have several episodes of guerrilla history with Gerald Horn, and then also mentioning that since I said that you should read Lassurdo, reading Lacerdo and Gerald Horn side by side, or, you know, co-consecutively or anything like that is really enriching as well. And actually, Lsorto, and I'm speaking as somebody who's translated some of Lassardo's work, he cites Gerald Horn in some of his work, which is really interesting. I haven't seen where, if or where Gerald Horn cites Lacerdo in his work.

So, listeners, if you know of anywhere that Gerald Horn cites Lacerdo, let me know. But, you know, I can point to several instances where Horn is cited in Lassurdo's work. Anyway, moving back towards the discussion of Bantustan, I'm sure a lot of people have heard the term Bantustan. It's kind of used as a fill in for any kind of like puppet regime that, you know, is kind of carved out in this so-called autonomous area. But like it's not really autonomous and it's, you know, subsumed politically by the greater power that kind of enacted its, it's kind of authority, so-called authority. but this is the actual term that was used in the context of South Africa. These developed over time, and it's worth understanding that the Bantu stands did not just happen overnight. This was a series of acts that took place, and it was a result of some kind of debates that were happening within the National Party, particularly in the 1950s, that eventually led to the formal creation of the Bantu Stans, which was 10.

kind of finally enacted in 1970. So we can go back to the roots of the Batustan, starting back in 1913 with the Natives Land Act, which we already kind of touched on in terms of setting certain parts of land aside for the black community, a very small percentage of the land, of course, for, you know, the overwhelming majority of the population. But that's kind of where you can trace the origins of many of the ideas of putting a Batustan in place. But then after the National Party was elected in 1948, one of the things that they did is they put in a series of area acts, and particularly the Natives Resettlement Act of 1954, which really set up the framework for the resettlement of the quote-unquote natives, the black community within South Africa, into different parts.

Now, before I talk about what actually happened, I want to talk a little bit about the debate that was happening within the National Party within the 1950s. So there was kind of, and of course there was a lot of contradictions within the National Party. But up until this point, there was really two main strands of the National Party, one side of which said, okay, of course we need the segregationist, white supremacist policies, but we also need cheap black labor in order to develop economically South Africa to benefit the white minority of the country. So while they were still in favor of apartheid, generally speaking, they did see a role for the integration of some black labor alongside white labor in various parts of the economy in terms of developing it. The other strand within the national party said, no, we don't need, nor do we want black labor working alongside white labor. We need a complete separation of these two racial groups where the black community were. in one place or in one set of industries and the white community works in a separate set of industries. There's various reasons for this. One is just explicitly, you know, white supremacy

wanting to keep them apart from each other. But also in terms of keeping a division between working class people was obviously on the minds of the people that were in this tendency as well. You know, even if you are indoctrinating, and of course, it's not really indoctrinating when the people want to believe that they're superior to the other people like you're just reinforcing their prior notion that they're that they're superior and especially talking about the religious component you know they're the chosen people to blah blah blah we've already discussed this but you know that there was this discussion that was taking place within the national party that hey if we have the black workers and the white workers working alongside each other uh oh we might

have some kind of cross racial solidarity as a working class we can't have that so these debates went on for a few years in terms of should we have the black community working alongside the white community to develop the industry or should we have this complete separation. And eventually the complete separation site ended up winning out. And there was this total separation of there was white industries, there was black industries, companies that, you know, would have 100% white workers or 100% black workers. There was no intermingling of the races within work. Also at the same time, there was policies enacted where entire cities were then being segregated. And at first, again, this is with some of those debates that were taking place in

the 1950s, it was originally thought that, okay, well, and this is obviously false and highly racist, the white community of South Africa are inherently urban people, whereas the black community of South Africa are inherently rural people so that by separating these people so that the black community is now in rural areas and the white community is in urban areas, we're just allowing the human nature of these two kinds of people to then be enacted within our society. There were some exceptions, at least at the beginning. So if a black South African was born in a city and was working in that city for 10 years, uninterrupted. They were allowed to remain in that city. But that only lasted for a few years

before, again, this kind of hardline faction within the National Party said, no, why are we having exceptions? We want apartheid. We want segregation. We're going to have apartheid and segregation. We're going to expel them. One of the things that was then done, which, as I said, was more or less formalized in 1970 was the creation of these so-called Bantustans or black

homelands. This came in with the 1970 Homeland Citizenship Act, which created a series of these Bantustan republics. It's worth mentioning that, of course, these were led by

individuals that were wholly subservient to the white South African regimes. But the idea here was that by creating separate places that would be black homelands, they were able to put some legitimacy to the separation of the black community and the white community. But also by stripping the black community of South African citizenship, it thereby made it legal to deport black South Africans from South Africa and expel them to these Bantu stands as their

homeland in much the same way that we see where, again, immigrants who are not citizens of the country, if they commit any sort of infraction, they would then be sent back. They'd be deported to their country of origin or in some places a third country. South Africa is essentially doing this, but the transgression was just being in South Africa at that point. And then they would be deported to these these black homelands, which then, of course, would then also formalize the white domination of South Africa. So it was a kind of a process of, you know, debates within the National Party that then became present within broader society.

And one other thing that I think that we forgot to mention, unless anybody wants to talk about Bantu stands, is the anti-misogination laws. Yeah, I have nothing to say about the Bantu stands. You can move on. Go for it. Okay, so anti-misagination laws, these date back earlier than the Batustan, so kind of we should have talked about them earlier chronologically, but, you know, whatever, you're going to hear it now. There was very draconian anti-misagination laws that took place, and this was taking place in coordination with, again, looking back to the Natives Land Act, which said 87% of the land in South Africa is for the white community and 13% is for the black community. even though, you know, if you look at the racial makeup, it's almost the inverse, almost,

not quite. But also codified within law is that, one, these lands, that kind of percentage was not allowed to be changed. And two, there was these anti-missagination laws where if individuals from South Africa of different races had been married abroad, those marriages were annulled. If they were married in South Africa, again, those marriages were annulled. And if they tried to do something quote to procreate with one another, that was punishable by jail time. And people that are officiating weddings, they would be subject to heavy, heavy fines, extremely heavy. And these people, officiants at weddings don't exactly get a huge amount of money for these sorts of things. So like a heavy fine on that person is going to be absolutely devastating. But they would

even have raids on people's houses and see if there was any sort of sexual relations that were taking place. And if there were, they would immediately cuff the people and bring them to jail. Because again, you're breaking these anti-missagination loss. It's not only interracial marriage, but they wanted to completely eliminate a change, any sort of change in the racial makeup of the country. They wanted to enforce that the land was majority white land. And they wanted to ensure the racial purity, quote unquote, of the white ruling minority of the country. So when you combine this with the Bantustan, you know, creation and enforcement of these policies, what you have is that the majority of the land is enshrined white.

The population has enshrined, you know, divisions between white and black in terms of not only physical separatedness, but also in extreme restriction on their ability to have normal human relations with each other, any sorts of changes within the racial makeup of society, and then eventually they just ended up removing much of the black community. Obviously, they weren't able to fully enforce this policy, but they removed large swaths of the black community to these Bantu stands in order to, again, exert the white minority rule. within South Africa, quote unquote, proper at that point. Yeah, well said, and it just speaks again to the absolutely fundamental nature of land

in these colonial and settler colonial projects launched out of Europe. Does anybody else have anything to say about the capitalist exploitation taking place under apartheid, anything else about the apartheid era, anything like that before we move into particularly the resistance on behalf of the colonized and then how apartheid officially fell before we get into a more reflective period, trying to draw parallels between other phenomena around the world. Does anybody have anything else to say before we move on to resistance and whatnot? Okay. Of course, there's a much more to say about apartheid, of course. We're covering decades and decades of history here. So, you know, I urge people to, you know,

continue to look into it if you're interested in finding more of the details about this. But let's move towards the fall of apartheid. Now, of course, this is a long process. It happens over many, many years. Many different strategies of resistance are employed. And so I'll just leave it an open question. Anybody can sort of pick this up. How does the resistance take shape to apartheid and then start moving in the direction of how apartheid eventually falls apart in South Africa? Just very briefly before the other people hop in, because I'm sure they'll have much more to say about this than I will.

But it's important also to understand that in as we said in many ways, the structures of apartheid were actually enacted before apartheid became a formalized policy and they were just enshrined legally within law upon the adoption of these policies by as a, you know, a slate of policies by the national party after their election in 1948. Resistance to apartheid also had sprung up prior to the formal enactment of apartheid because many of these segregationist policies. and white supremacist policies as we have been laying out. We're present far before 1948, which is when, again, apartheid formally comes into power. So we know if you're looking at what is apartheid and you're starting at 1948, that's a profoundly undial historical materialist standpoint to take. Because as we've been talking about, this has been a process of colonialism for centuries. and the enforcement of white supremacist laws had been taking place for the duration of that time,

and particularly in the decades leading up to the formal enactment of apartheid. So if we're talking about just using one example, the African National Congress, the ANC, which is going to come up many, many more times. They were founded not after apartheid was enacted, but I believe in 1912, if I'm remembering the year correctly. So decades before apartheid had been founded, This is before not only the National Party had taken power, but before even the United Party had taken power. Again, it's the structures that are in place in society,

not the fact that there is this formal name for this phenomenon that's taking place. And so when we're talking about resistance to apartheid, it's important to understand that well, that edge sharpens obviously as the repression becomes more extreme, as formal apartheid becomes more entrenched within society, these structures of resistance actually were existing for decades, prior yeah resistance always comes simultaneous with any form of oppression um which we have to understand and then i think apartheid whether it's formalized whether the concept and the semantics

of it were forged in this process is probably always a feature of settler colonialism right there's always this the segregation in some form it takes different shapes you know it took a different shape in algeria compared to british india compared to the north american continent compared to south africa but this basic idea of separating people into hierarchies of and then often even separating them from land and from one another, whether it's informed through a formalized process of laws or it's just brutal violence that does it. This is a feature of settler colonialism sort of inherently, and maybe we can put a little pressure on even that argument the later when we get into Max Isles' criticism of apartheid

being used in the Israeli context, but we will get there. Alison Adnan, either of you want to begin talking about the resistance, ANC, you know, civil disobedience, arms struggle, anything like that? Yeah, I can give us some kind of historical overview of the development of resistance over the course of apartheid. So I think, like Henry said, it's very important to recognize that the African National Congress is a much older organization than people tend to think. So Henry pointed out correctly, 1912 was the beginning and the foundation of the ANC. And even into the 20s and the 30s, the ANC was already starting to theorize what resistance to the existing laws looked like. And really importantly, and this is something we will see come up time and time again, especially as the ANC moves towards violence struggle later on, the ANC started to form some overlap and cooperation with communist groups in South Africa well before the formalization of apartheid, which would create the basis for further resistance.

When the formal apartheid laws are passed in 1948, the ANC really refocuses this political efforts to solely really focusing on opposition to apartheid and segregation. This is, in a lot of ways, spurred by the Youth League of the AMC, with people like Nelson Mandela coming from the Youth League, pushing in a very strong direction here, which eventually leads to early on some kind of unorganized protest, but a formal protest that develops in the 1950s with the defiance campaign, where the ANC actually intentionally mobilizes masses of people in civil disobedience, strikes, and various forms of protest blatantly breaking the law. that are imposed as part of apartheid as a way of pushing back. And this has mixed results pretty immediately. By the early 1950s, we are already seeing police violence happening against this with massacres happening in 1952, against some of the protesters participating in the Defiance Act. And eventually, this kind of leads to a really intense state crackdown that is important for us to understand in terms of how resistance develops over time. The defiance movement really was a peaceful, nonviolent resistance campaign that then faces massive violent state

crackdown in the form of extrajudicial killing by police, but also through the passing of the Public Safety Act, which creates a legal pretense for the South African government to criminalize the organizations involved. One thing that we've touched on already that I think is very important here is that the overwhelming ideological justification for this crackdown is anti-communism. Not everyone participating. in the defiance campaign is a communist in any way, even though communist support for it was very clearly existing and a relationship between the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa did exist. But this gets used to justify it in the context of a broader Cold War scare

that is happening domestically in the United States already and globally as a need to push back against communist influence. And the Public Safety Act eventually leads to the 1956 treason trials that are used against the African Nationalist Congress and its leaders, including Nelson Mandela. Obviously, throughout this time, struggle is continuing to occur in various forms, again, primarily in a nonviolent form. A really important transformative moment that happens is the Sharpeville massacre, which actually occurs before the treason trials can conclude. And in the Sharpeville massacre, thousands of black protesters end up descending on a police station and the police opened fire on them. The death toll in this is actually highly

contested. The official numbers put it in the hundreds, but there are a lot of contested numbers that put it much higher, even approaching the thousands. Regardless of what the actual death toll is, this is this massive transformation period within the struggle for two reasons. In the wake of the Sharfville massacre, the government actually decides to step up its crackdown even more, just mass arrests, even more leaders of various civil organizations, not just the ANC. but also the ANC is forced to go partially into exile, and this leads to some interesting political developments that shape the beginning of a kind of transformation here. So it's at this period of time in 1960 going into 1961 that we also see the development of the MK, which is the armed

wing of the ANC, and the MK forms specifically to engage in armed struggle against the South African government. And here we also see some actual formalization of the relationships between the South African Communist Party and the ANC, because the South African Communist Party uses their connections to be able to get training for cadre within the MK in the Soviet Union, in Algeria, and in other states that have this recent revolutions going on. So we see this shift to violent struggle emerging here. An interesting thing is although the MK has formed very early on in this time period, it actually doesn't step up most of its violent activities in South Africa until the 70s and 80s.

Much of the 60s is spent in this training period where it also gets dragged into civil wars in a number of southern African states that border South Africa. But this development towards violent resistance begins to occur there. Eventually, the MK does engage in a number of bombing campaigns

within South Africa, and these are, in a lot of ways, simultaneous with continued nonviolent resistance, which is going on. That nonviolent resistance eventually really culminates into the foundation of the United Democratic. Front in 1983, one of whose leaders that many people would be familiar with, Desmond Tutu,

becomes a very important figure in the process of the UDF resistance and later in the negotiations that lead to the fall of apartheid. But the UDF really works as a united front of labor unions, other civil society groups engaging again in nonviolent resistance. And all of this, again, is kind of complemented with violent opposition going on because of the ANC in exile and the MK. So we can obviously trace this a little further to when the national party is forced to negotiations, but I think that's kind of a separate question. But this is a broad outline of what the resistance and the various forms of resistance that look like that eventually bring the national party to the point of being forced into negotiations.

There's one last thing I do you want to mention, which is also a high level of international pressure, which occurs. Resistance is not just domestic or from the exile community. we actually see the United Nations pass several condemnations that occur at various points. In particular, in 1962, Resolution 1761, makes this kind of non-binding condemnation of apartheid, but more importantly, in 1977, Resolution 418, and the Security Council actually creates a meaningful arms embargo on South Africa, which has a massive impact as well. In addition to the United Nations actions, there was a broader anti-apartheid.

movement internationally that used a focus on boycotting, divestments, and pushing for sanctioning, a term we should all be familiar with, for creating pressure on South Africa as well. So all of these forces really come together as a form of resistance to apartheid. And if we want to understand why apartheid falls, I think we do have to think about this multiplicity of tactics that exist domestically and internationally attacking the apartheid system from different angles and really kind of setting the stage for forcing the national party to cave on this issue. Yeah, very well said. You know, there's this really important dialectic between militant and nonviolent forms of resistance that are often presented to us as fundamentally separate approaches. But everywhere and always, they sort of are, you know, sort of bolstering, mutually bolstering movements. We see that in the U.S. Black liberation movement. You know, broadly we can see like the MLK nonviolent approach versus the more militant approach of the nation of Islam, Malcolm X, eventually the Black Panther Party. These things are often, again,

presented as two separate things, pick one, but you can see how they actually reinforce one another. And then there's the dialectic between internal pressure and external pressure, this relationship that is really important to put a sort of, as Allison said, multifaceted pressure on these states, these apartheid regimes. And that's something that we've got to keep in mind going forward with regards to Palestine as well. Often liberals will chastise Palestinian resistance for not being peaceful enough or not trying nonviolence. You know, why don't you be like MLK and like Gandhi? Of course they have. The Great March of Return is a classic and very recent example of an attempt to be peaceful and they got met with brutal Israeli violence, snipers, you know, onslaught of all sorts.

And so these things cannot be separated that they're deeply intermeshed. And we have to understand that. The international pressure on South Africa was, you know, a core feature of this. The U.S., the U.K., Israel, these are the last countries that abandoned South Africa, as we should expect. But the forcing of the U.S. and the U.K. to eventually abandon South Africa also had large credit to internal anti-apartheid movements, right? Black people in the U.S. and in the U.K. forming these anti-apartheid movements that put internal pressure on these external states, right, U.S., U.K., from South Africa. So they had the external pressure of the UN and the rest of the world coming around on it. And then you had this internal pressure.

So if we look at the situation in Palestine today, our role as people in the belly of the beast is to continue to try to put this organized and relentless pressure internally on our government. And while we have the Biden administration who is fully on board with Netanyahu's fascist regime and the bloodletting going on, there is still some pressure being exerted on him that comes from these grassroots movements, making the Biden administration sort of take a pause, take a step back here and there, put out things like we know. The two-state solution is our ultimate goal in direct contradiction to what the Israeli state and Netanyahu actually want. So we can get kind of cynical about this. We can get kind of cynical about the Biden administration's

approach and we absolutely fucking should. If there was no grassroots pressure, he would be just like, yeah, more blood, more guns, more money. The fact that there's any pressure at all and that they have to even just change their rhetoric a little bit is sort of a testament to that pressure and the need for us to keep it up. So I think that's interesting. And also another thing to note is the Cuban assistance here in a place like Angola in particular. Does anybody, I don't know too much of the details here. I know it's an important part of this multifaceted pressure campaign on South African apartheid. Does anybody have anything more to say about Cuba's role in this? I don't know a lot of details about Cuba's role other than that, of course, you know, it's rather famous that they did, you know, aid and assist the, you know, struggle against apartheid. They stood in solidarity. And that they were involved, of course, also in some of the other, as you're saying, Brett, kind of zones of conflict around South Africa because it's important really to understand.

I think during this period that South Africa was not just a kind of island of a peculiar kind of colonial society that had survived decolonization during the 1960s, you know, during this period. It was a real Cold War ally and a kind of expansionist and interventionist regional power foiling, you know, liberation struggles and movements in the southern part of Africa. And so, you know, they were involved, I think, in, you know, quite a few, you know, their military and their South African mercenaries all over, southern Africa, working with, you know, conservative regime, supposedly fighting, you know, communist, you know, liberation. movements and so on. And so they were really a kind of very crucial part of the U.S.

's Cold War policy and the kind of furtherance and extension, you might say, of an imperialist system. In a period where Africa was undergoing a wave of decolonization struggles, some of which were more radical than others. And you could see that. the effect of South African intervention was to make sure that even if these other regimes, you know, broke away from colonialism, particularly, you know, from the Portuguese who hung on to their colonial possessions in Africa longer than, you know, say the British or the French or, you know, the Spanish, that, you know, they would try and make sure these were not radical kinds of movements that tried to implement socialism. So I think, you know, Cuba, you know, played an important role in providing, you know, some military support, some trained guerrillas, you know, medical assistance and so on in solidarity with liberation struggles that often did confront the South Africans, you know, in the geopolitics of the southern African arena. Yeah. But this kind of this geopolitical orientation does lead me to for a question for everyone because I've heard, you know, I'm older than the rest of the hosts here co-hosts. And I do remember, you know, solidarity with the, you know, Black South Africans and the anti-apartheid struggle that came to college campuses and high schools, you know, across the, you know, Europe and North America. globally where these issues were being debated and the boycott divestment and sanctions movement was very important to, you know, have pension funds in your union, have your, you know, endowment

and investment funds of universities actually divest. And, you know, these were debated. at, you know, Board of Trustees meetings, you know, all over the place. And we like to think that these had a big effect materially. But I've heard discussion about, you know, well, what really caused the fall of the apartheid system? On one level, you could say it was, you know, globally that the Cold War ended or was ending and ended, you know, in the period that happened to coincide with a global anti-apartheid struggle. And so that factor obviously has to be somehow taken into consideration that it's another one of those 1945 World War II big pivots in history where it really wasn't suitable for

the United States to maintain its support, you know, overt, covert, however we want to think about it. It, you know, had a lot of covert support in the 1980s and, you know, and so on, even though, and I think in the 70s as well, even though, you know, technically in the 1960s, it said it wasn't, you know, the United States announced that it wasn't going to. It was going to abide by, you know, UN calls for arms embargoes, which I think is also an important kind of factor overall. That's one that's we haven't mentioned, which was, you know, imposing arms embargoes because obviously this was a system that was enforced with brutality. And as I was explaining, you know, they were also involved in all kinds of wars in this, in the, you know, in southern Africa as well. And so an arms embargo was imposed. And even the United States, at least technically on the surface, abided by that. and that really isolated, you know, the regime. But the question is, is what, you know, what were these factors and how much did the external kind of cultural campaigns and a boycott and divestment actually materially cause the end of apartheid?

These are important debates because I think symbolically and culturally it was really important in isolating the South African regime. but materially what were the factors that, you know, forced, you know, the white settler elite to finally accept that they couldn't maintain, you know, was it internal resistance? You know, was it, you know, isolation in the, in the, you know, in the diplomatic world? Was it changing kind of geopolitical conditions? I mean, these are all things that I have questions about, you know, how effective. each tactic was. I think you're right, Brett, from what you said before, that you really have to have resistance on all fronts, pressure coming on all fronts. It's not always clear to us what exactly is the factor that really, you know, broke the back of the apartheid, of the apartheid regime and just wondering what you all think about, you know, what were the most relevant and important kind of steps in this, in this process. I'm going to hop in first because there's actually something I'd like to lay out even before I talk about factors at the end of apartheid. It kind of picks up on something that Allison had been saying with regards to massacres and repression and armed struggle and things like this. So Allison very correctly highlights the Sharpsville massacre is a flash point in terms of extreme repression, violent repression, brutal repression by the regime of South Africa against. people who were peacefully protesting. This is not by any means the only large massacre that took place of peaceful protesters.

Another very famous one would, of course, be the Soweto uprising, which took place in 1976. And this is a result of another apartheid policy, which was that, of course, when we think about South Africa, the first two languages that probably pop to mind are English and Afrikaans. but of course there was many indigenous languages all around South Africa and there still is today many, many languages which have a lot of speakers of them as their primary language and this was no different at the time. However, the apartheid regime enforced schooling to take place

in either English or Afrikaans, kind of an equal proportion. You know, half of the day would be in Afrikaans, half the day would be in English, whatever. This and the story of is actually a much bigger story, which probably isn't worth getting into right now because we have limited time. And, you know, talking about, like, whether the church was running the education system or whether the state was running the education system, because that was one of the changes that took place with very profound impacts. But again, for sake of time, we'll kind of put that aside for now. But with regards to the Soweto uprising and what kind of precipitated it, is that many of the places across South Africa, particularly in the Batu stance, which again,

nominally were independent, although only South Africa recognized them as such. They had this policy enforced where they had to split instruction between English and Afrikaans, but there was a lot of resistance to using Afrikaans at all because, of course, this was like the colonial language. Of course, English also a colonial language, but the more pressing colonial language in the mind of the people was Afrikaans because that was the language that was primarily used by the government. And so there was a lot of resistance to using Afrikaans. And what do you know, the government decided now they're going to enforce using of Afrikaans for things like mathematics, science, and one other subject, which I'm forgetting. But they had to use Afrikaans. There was no longer

the option to use English for these subjects. So in Soweto, there was this uprising of people that were protesting against this educational reform where they were going to be, compelled to use Afrikaans and instruction. And what was the result of this? Again, peaceful protesters that were protesting against using Afrikaans as the language of instruction for these black South Africans were then gunned down upwards of 700 people. Again, just like in the Sharpsville massacre, the range is anywhere from like 150 up to 700, although the government admits to much, you know, at the time, admitted to much less than that.

Well over a thousand people were injured in this massacre. A terrible event. But what it did is it galvanized the black South African community and led to an upswing in resistance within South Africa. It also was one of the turning points for, and this is kind of getting towards the question that you asked, said non, so I'm sorry for, you know, circling back early. But it does also – Oh, no, because actually I was going to come back and say I neglected to say that I think, you know, Soweto was a big turning point in making it, making apartheid society seem ungovernable. And unpalatable to the international community, which is the point that I was driving at.

So the point, the kind of one of the points that I'm driving at here is that it is after this point that not only is there more resistance. since internally, but South Africa is being expelled from international sporting events. The BDS against South Africa, and of course, you know, we think silly, you know, is expelling them from sporting events really going to do anything? Sport is something that is very big worldwide with a huge number of people, and it is also something that can be used to legitimize governments. We see it even now, places like Hungary, for example, Victor Orban is very invested in the football national team of Hungary as well as clubs in Hungary doing well in European competitions

like the Champions League and Europa League and also hosting competition finals like the Europa League final in Hungary. This is something that is used to legitimate their form of government. It goes back to, you know, fascist Italy also hosting and winning the World Cup in the 1930s. We've talked about this in previous episodes of guerrilla history. So I'm going to kind of, you know, go past this. But they were being expelled from sporting events. BDS was being picked up by countries around the world. Countries were outright condemning apartheid, whereas they previously hadn't, you know, the Scandinavian countries were condemning apartheid more loudly than many other countries.

But even, you know, countries that we wouldn't normally think of as champions of justice were coming out and saying apartheid is an unjust system. As we pointed out, the UN was putting out resolutions that were saying that apartheid was an unjust system. You know, of course, Margaret Thatcher was all in favor of it, and Reagan tried to veto measures that were being put in place, legislation that was being put in place against breaking, you know, arms embargoes against South Africa and whatnot. But that veto was overridden very interestingly. So the international community was coming together in large part because of these extremely violent, repressive actions like the Soweto, Massacre, which in conjunction with internal resistance was a huge factor.

You know, we can't look at any individual factor and say, well, maybe this, maybe expelling them from sporting competitions wasn't brought down apartheid. Of course it wasn't. Maybe the internal resistance alone was not enough to bring down apartheid. Probably not. Maybe the BDS from other countries against South Africa, the apartheid South African regime was not enough to bring it down by itself. Yeah, it was not.

you know, maybe arms embargoes against South Africa wasn't enough by itself because, of course, Israel was still arming South Africa up until pretty much the bitter end of apartheid, you know, which is something that we've talked about in some recent episodes of guerrilla history, listeners, we've been doing episodes on Palestine and Israel for the last two months, almost exclusively. So there's a lot there for you to listen to. You know, these things don't by themselves cause the downfall of apartheid. And I'm definitely going to have. everybody else give their thoughts on this as well. But there's one thing in particular that sometimes gets overlooked when we talk about what does, what did bring down apartheid. And that's the assassination of Chris Haney. Chris Haney was Nelson Mandela's, really his era parent. He was this younger. So remember that as a part, as we get to the 1990s, when Mandela is released from prison, he's in his 70s. You know, we think of Mandela being, you know, the president of South Africa, you know, he only died not that long ago, but he was old.

You know, he was in his 70s, as was most of the leaders of the ANC. And, you know, the ANC, it's also worth mentioning, was not the only force that was fighting against apartheid far from. You know, we mentioned the South African Communist Party. We haven't talked about the Pan-African Congress, which is another huge force. But I'm going to kind of go past that for now. Maybe somebody else will pick that up because I'm talking a lot. right now. But the assassination of Chris Haney, this is something that happened, if I remember correctly, 1992, 1993, something like that. It's right at the very bitter end of apartheid.

And Chris Haney was this relatively young. I think he was about 50, which, you know, by ANC standards or by American politician's standards, is a spring chicken. He was somebody that was very impressive, even when he would talk to these like fascist sympathizing white supremacist national party heads, they would come out of meetings with him saying he had the most amazing insights with me on like whatever my PhD dissertation at Oxford was about. Because of course, many of the national party leaders in South Africa were Oxford educated gentlemen. But Chris Honey was incredibly impressive. This immigrant, a white immigrant that came down to.

South Africa, neo-Nazi supporting white immigrant to South Africa, was given weaponry by a sitting representative of the National Party in government to go and assassinate Chris Haney, which of course he then does. Chris Hany dies instantly. This leads to huge social upheaval, which would not have been possible without, you know, it's one thing to say like people were coming out in the streets because this horrible event had taken place. And it's another thing for that to be organized. And at this point, the resistance was very organized. And at that point, the white South African president, DeClerc looks at the streets and says, hey, 80% of the population is ready to burn everything down. I don't have the legitimacy with this population. And so as a response, this is an incredible

thing, by the way. He's the sitting president, you know, FW. DeClerc, who only, he died a couple years ago, year ago, two years ago, something like that, he comes out, thinks about it and realizes that if he goes out and makes a statement condemning the assassination of Chris Haney, that the black population of South Africa is not going to care what he has to say. So he has to ring up Nelson Mandela, who is not an ally of his by any stretch of the imagination. FW DeClure comes into the presidency of South Africa as a conservative white nationalist.

He ends up winning the Nobel Peace Prize, by the way, but, you know, white nationalists winning the Nobel Peace Prize is a kind of normal thing. So he calls up Nelson Mandela and he says, hey, Nelson, I can't make this speech because if I go out there and I make this speech, we are going to have a civil war.

Nelson Mandela says, you are absolutely right. There will be a civil war if you make this speech. Mandela comes out. He gives a very, very famous speech, which is worth looking up in response to Chris Honey. Maybe we'll even, as a like supplemental thing for the respective patrons, maybe we can do a reading of that speech or something like that. Maybe we can find the audio. I know that's out there.

It gives a very famous speech. And at this moment, it legitimizes the ANC as a political force. It delegitimizes the national party as a political force because. Look, the president can't even go out and make a speech to the country as a response to a crisis. He has to go and draft in this political enemy of his to do it for him. So like the long story that I'm trying to weave is that it's not one thing in particular. It's all of these things coming to a head. Yeah. I'll expand on that a little bit too, I think.

There's a couple factors that we haven't mentioned by. I do you think overarchingly this point is really important that you make Henry, which is that each of these tactics has their successes and their limits, right? And it really is all of them coming together that contributes to it. Obviously, in terms of domestic nonviolent resistance, one of the limits that is imposed there is state repression, right? The ability to just arrest the people involved in it or kill them. But another thing that I think when you take into account is the limits of the armed resistance, which occurred as well. So again, the ANC's armed wing in the MK is really interesting because it got involved in broader African politics in a way that is very complicated. Henry, you mentioned

the Pan-African Conference, which I think is an extremely important organization for understanding this. The ANC and the Pan-African Conference did not have a very good relationship with each other throughout much of their history, and this actually really undermined the ability of the ANC to engage in armed struggle on the scale that they wanted to. So again, following the Sharpsville Massacre, when the ANC moves towards militarization and is forced into exile, one of the first places that they go is to Ghana. And unfortunately, they are not able to stay in Ghana. for very long because the government in Ghana ends up siding with the PAC and forces the ANC out. And we get the beginning of this really interesting history throughout the 60s and the

70s of the ANC bouncing around between different African countries as its main exile base as a result of these broader politics that are going. So one of the really hard things that happens there is this attempt to kick off a broader armed struggle requires the ANC to get involved in larger decolonial politics within Africa outside of South Africa proper. and the contradictions that emerged there. But I do think one important thing to point out is that the military struggle here, I think, was hampered in a lot of ways due to military tactical issues that are overcome by what you brought up, Brett, the bringing in of the Cubans, actually. So one important thing is that the very early on military training of the ANC's armed wing

occurs in the Soviet Union primarily. And a lot of this training is being overseen by Soviet commanders who had been involved in World War II. And they're being trained in this very conventional style of warfare, which perhaps unsurprisingly is not super well suited for guerrilla operations in a decolonial context, right? But when the Cubans are brought in to actually do military training, I think it's something like 500 military advisors are brought in from Cuba, there is this movement towards more guerrilla tactics that will later on allow them to scale up again in the late 70s and early 80s to engage in more kind of terroristic attacks that fit a guerrilla style of fighting more. So that creates an intense.

intense amount of pressure that comes in later, I think, than the ANC wanted and at a smaller scale than it wanted, but absolutely is timed perfectly with a couple of other factors that are going on. So one of the other things that is timed up with this violence that scales up from the MK is the South African wars along its border with Namibia and Angola. And this is super, super important as well. South Africa ends up involved in these wars with these states seeking decolonization. And importantly, the Cubans fit in here as well. has troops in Namibia in Angola who are also involved in this conflict. And this conflict obviously is destabilizing for South Africa in a number of ways, but it sets the stage for two things to occur.

One, for these violent attacks happening domestically to be stressing an already overstressed security state in South Africa, and two, for the arms embargoes that come from the United Nations to have a really devastating effect. So we mentioned the arms embargoes before and why those matter, But the 1977 embargo that comes down actually immediately cancels several military deals that the South African military has to get fighter jets, to get submarines and other weaponry that they see as necessary to win this war. And I think that is another part that really needs to get focused on. It's not just the divestment sanction and cutting them off, but it's cutting them off in this moment of domestic crisis where they feel like they need to be able to bring in

this outside military aid. That's very important. Another thing that Henry mentioned that I think is an important factor to think about here, too, is the Scandinavian states and the support that came from the Scandinavian states. And I think we should be really clear for several of these states, this wasn't just vocal support, but it was actually material assistance as well. Sweden stands out under Olaf Palm is a very weird example of this, where Sweden gave millions of dollars in aid to the ANC directly and vocally spoke in support of the more militant wings as well. So when we think about the international movement, it is really easy to think about it as a primarily symbolic struggle, right? The sports aspect of it, or even just denunciations from governments. But international solidarity did also take the form of financial aid to the ANC and literally blocking access to weaponry for the South African government in a way that's very important. So I do think that all of the tactics have their limits, but they also handed this exact right time of political instability within South Africa from the late 70s into the early 90s, where these external pressures play on domestic contradictions that are taking

place already. And that ultimately is very important for pushing the National Party to the table to have the talks that eventually occur. Just to add on one quick thing, it's a great point that you brought up about how the arms embargo was perfectly timed to, you know, kind of destabilize the efforts that South Africa was having in the wars and countries along its border. The example of Angola is particularly useful and famously the battle of Quito Carnivali, which was a direct confrontation between Cuban tanks and South Africa, you know, white apartheid South African tanks. This is in 1987, 1988, 1988. And what we see is in one battle, which, you know, I say one battle. It was a seven months long battle. So it's not like, you know,

World War II style battle where it only takes a, you know, a couple days other than the, you know, the famous sieges. But what we see is that South Africa in one battle loses 13 tanks, 120 infantry fighting vehicles, a dozen fighters and four bombers in one battle at the same time that they're grappling with having to rely on their domestic weapons producing capabilities, which, were mostly, they were given blueprints by their Western allies in the decades previously. They weren't actually in many cases even sold the things directly.

In some cases they were. But in many cases, they were just given blueprints and say, here you go, have fun. And while, you know, when you're having your things getting toasted by the Cubans on the battlefields in Angola, you're trying to pump out things as quickly as possible

and your only other partner that's willing to actually directly produce things for you is Israel, who has their own issues going on at the at the same time, you can see that actually the arms embargo, whereas if it had happened in isolation, aside from these external factors, may have not been a huge issue given that South Africa was able to develop its own weaponry within its own country as a result of having had those blueprints passed over to them in the decades previously. Because of what was happening at the time. It became a very, very pressing concern for them and something that made it much harder, as you pointed out, Alison, to hold up against the internal resistance that was

taking place within South Africa. Yeah. Very well said by everybody. I agree with everybody's takes. I like to make a little dialectical point here. There's the quantitative into qualitative shift, right? And if we think about this multifaceted pressure campaign, yeah, sure, this may be internal pressure was more decisive than this international pressure. Maybe this pressure is a little more vague than this one. But overall, the quantitative sort of increase, reached a threshold that helped result in the qualitative transformation of the state of South Africa, despite all its ongoing problems. And so I think the big takeaway is everything all the time, right? And that's also a lesson going forward for Israel and other anti-apartheid, anti-oppression campaigns that we're going to

have to face going forward. The other thing I wanted to mention is, of course, as communists were much more willing than other people to embrace armed struggle, of course, but we also have to understand, as I said earlier, this dialectical relationship with these nonviolent protests, which really do play a critical role. And one of the roles they play from the Great March of Return in Palestine to the Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the American South to the Soweto uprising is these nonviolent, peaceful, largely peaceful protests being brutalized by the regime, and in so doing, the regime reveals their true face. And that has an enormous impact on the conscience of anybody else watching around the world. And so, you know,

there's absolutely a role for these nonviolent movements to play in any liberation struggle. And, you know, in every instance from Palestine to the U.S. to South Africa, we see an example of just that. And the result is not, as the regime hopes, a squashing of the resistance. It's actually an intensification of it and the increase in sympathy around the world for these protesters and their cause. And I think that's an interesting thing to note. Now, let's just to throw out there, Brett, I like that you pointed out that we have to do everything all the time. You know, there was a movie. I haven't seen it because when I watch movies, they're old Soviet movies.

I don't watch. I don't really, I don't have time for much. So when I do, I just, you know, hop on to Moss film, watch one of their old movies. But I know that there was a movie that came out last year and just judging off the title, it must be about what we're talking about in terms of resisting things like apartheid and, you know, Zio-imperialism. It came out last year, everything everywhere, all at once. Surely that's what that movie is about.

I haven't seen it, but I can only assume from the title that that's what it's about. I think it was more about many worlds theory and quantum mechanics, but, you know, maybe it's about that. Same thing. Same thing, really. All right, let's, we're almost at two hours here. so I want to sort of coast into the closing here. But there are two things that I want to touch on as we wrap this up. One, is there anything else that anybody wants to say about the fall of apartheid,

Truth and Reconciliation Commission, anything like that? And then after that, we will end the discussion with a reflection on the similarities and differences between the South African anti-apartheid struggle and the Palestinian struggle in Israel, because I think there's lots of interesting similarities as well as interesting differences. So these are the last two things we're going to contend with. Anybody have anything to say about the fall of apartheid before we move on? I have something on truth and reconciliation. I know, Alison, that you have a lot more than I do.

But I'm just going to put out there very briefly that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was, I mean, it is a very famous thing and does have some successes, which Allison, I think you can probably touch on when you're talking about it. But it was flawed from the beginning, and it's worth underscoring that by truth and reconciliation, they mean some truth and very little reconciliation. When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formulated, it was a voluntary process by which these perpetrators of crimes against humanity and atrocities over the course of decades were allowed. to come forward and say what they did. And then essentially were granted immunity. There was an intention for there to be reparations that came out of this process,

although that never materialized. And so just my brief, you know, kind of introduction to this topic before I pass it off to Allison, because I know that you have done more of the research on this side of things than I did, it was when your when your process in terms of examining war crimes is based on voluntary admissions which then grant you immunity and then no reparations out of that process your process is not about true truth and it's not about actually having reconciliation and as a result we see many of the structures still in place today that we did during the times of formal apartheid which again and I'm sure we'll touch on later, but I'm going to leave it there for Allison to actually

dive into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission formally. Yeah. So I'll lead us into the Truth of Reconciliation Commission a little bit by discussing the few years leading up to it in which negotiations occur around apartheid with the National Party is really forced to the table. This is starting in 91 through 94, really. Important to note here, the National Party seemed to have interest in starting negotiations earlier than they happened. They were discussing privately with Mandela in prison, and within the

National Party, their intelligence wing, there was discussion about how to get in contact with the ANC and exile starting in the early 80s. This is probably, again, because of that arms embargo really weighing them down, as well as escalating domestic violence that's occurring here. So all of this is occurring, and eventually they are brought to the table. We don't need to get to the details too much of what those negotiations look like, although Henry brought up that fantastic point about the assassination of Chris Haney, which is extremely important for accelerating this. And, you know, it doesn't seem like something that should have helped in negotiations. It really seems like something it should have gotten in the way of them. But Mandela's involvement

in the response to that really had a massive impact in favor of allowing negotiations to continue. And so the Peace of Reconciliation Commission actually follows in the wake of these negotiations, which have already occurred, and has kind of the weight of what happened during those negotiations into it as well. So during the negotiation period, it would be incorrect to think that there was a very peaceful transition. The assassination of Chris Haney was actually part of a broader terror campaign carried out by essentially neo-Nazis in South Africa, who were opposed to the National Party conceding on this. You actually also saw some interesting resistance from one of the Bantustan districts that was opposed to the move as well on the basis of wanting to maintain something like

semi-autonomy. This ended up not mattering too much, but there's, was, you know, tumult and some about of actual, like, domestic terror that evolved from this process. So going to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it would be incorrect to think that things are particularly settled, right? But in 1996, Mandela calls the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and allows Desmond Tutu to be in charge of it. And the Truth in Reconciliation Commission has a couple interesting points. So like Henry pointed out, it is voluntary, right? And that obviously imposes a huge limit. No one was forced to participate. in it. It had the ability to call people for hearings, but you could just ignore those, as many

four National Party leaders actually just did. They just refused to appear in front of it. And in addition to that, one of the other things is, yeah, this idea that if you come and you speak and discuss the atrocities that you were a part of and oversaw, you have the opportunity to receive amnesty. So one of the interesting things that often doesn't get talked about in terms of the details of the commission is that amnesty wasn't automatically granted, actually. Speaking didn't lead to a guarantee of amnesty. There was a formal application process for amnesty, which one had to undergo. And another interesting detail is that it was a minority of these that were approved. So many people spoke without receiving amnesty. But this ended up being kind of

irrelevant because de facto, most of these people were never prosecuted anyway, right? So the attempt to formalize the process to make sure amnesty was deserved ended up really kind of not having any serious bearing. So the Truth in Reconciliation Commission is really interesting for a number of reasons, but one, and I think this is one of its greatest flaws, because it is pointed in both directions. The commission is interested in hearing atrocities committed by the South African government, but also in hearing violence that came from the ANC's armed wings, from the South African Communist Party, and from the Pan-African Congress. And so people are called to testify, again, in a non-binding matter from both sides of this.

Frustratingly, this actually leads to the truth and reconciliation not only condemning the apartheid government, but also condemning actions taken by the ANC and its armed wings. So after we have this successful negotiation for the end of apartheid, we actually see the Truth and Reconciliation Commission immediately begin to decry some of the tactics which brought South Africa to that point in the first place, those violent military resisting there. So that becomes, I think, very frustrated. The legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is somewhat mixed in terms of what it accomplished, while many of the National Party leaders did choose to speak at it. Most were fairly unapologetic, and apologizing

was not necessary as part of your speech that you gave to it. You just had to recognize what the crimes were. Many continued to justify their involvement in apartheid in the wake of this, and in South Africa, there has been a good amount of dissatisfaction with the results of the commission. For example, the family of Hani were very unhappy about the fact that the assassination was brought up in the context of this, and they felt like the truth and reconciliation Commission provided a basis for denying actual justice in the wake of this. So the Truth of Reconciliation Commission, it's this thing that liberals kind of love, right? I really think of this as like a thing that gets brought up on like West Wing episodes a lot

of this kind of like, oh, we can have these high values and principles and come in and find a non-punitive solution to this. But in the end, it really did serve to, you know, fail to hold accountability. And I think we can actually see political parallels of this in a lot of contexts. I think a lot about reconstruction United States, where there really was a failure to hold the southern elite and military class accountable for the actions that they took and a choice to just attempt to reintegrate them into U.S. society. And the failures that we saw in the wake of that, the institutionalization of racism

and new forms in the South, also have occurred in South Africa, partially as a result of this. So I think it is important to take the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into account as a sort of historic archetype that we see, where states do achieve some. level of success fighting colonial internal powers, but then don't solidify the gains through a decolonial violence and choose to opt out for reintegration instead. And that is, I think, one of the big limits of its legacy that we have to wrestle with. Just to add on to what Allison was saying in terms of some specific examples of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So one of the main ideas behind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that families of people who died

as a result of, you know, massacres or various things that were carried out secret state repression, you know, executions, et cetera, that were carried out by the apartheid regime, at least the bodies of their family members would be able to be identified. And in many cases, this is not the case. In fact, even today, there are anthropologists who are going around South Africa to try to find and identify the remains of individuals because, as a voluntary process, The people who would actually know where the bodies were and who the bodies were, they were not brought forward before the commission and were not able or, you know, weren't willing to provide that information. And therefore, it's having to be done independently by anthropologists today.

We also have individuals like the very famous Steve Biko, who it's, you know, we'd be remiss to get through this episode without mentioning him. He was one of the higher ups within the PAC, the Pan-African Congress, very prominent anti-apartheid activists. He was murdered in 1977. And as the Truth in Reconciliation Commission came up, and this kind of also goes back to the PAC and the ANC, not having the friendliest of relations over the years. But the family of Steve Biko, who very firmly within that PAC group, they were continuously. criticizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a vehicle for political expediency for the state to kind of get past that without having to answer those hard questions of where are the reparations going to come from? What are we going to do with these people that

were committing crimes against humanity? By having this Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it gives you the legitimacy of having done something, but without actually having to do anything very difficult about it. And just one other brief example. On the opposite side, we had former president of South Africa, P.W. Botha, who was a very brutal, you know, apartheid president who was called to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an order which he did not just outright refused to do. He never came forward. He said that it was a political circus and that he would never appear before a truth reconciliation commission hearing, which he did not. This then got him a fine, which he, refused to pay. And then it was overturned on appeal. So if we can't even get the person who is running the apartheid, uh, the apartheid structure for a period of six years when he was president to even appear. And then even when he doesn't appear, we can't even levy a fine against him. Again, this just underscores the toothlessness of the truth and reconciliation commission.

But again, as Allison said, it does make liberals feel good that, you know, quote, quote, something was done. We have some truth that has come out. And, you know, sure, there were a lot of family members that got that kind of closure because people did come forward and say where the bodies were. But to say that this was, you know, an institution or a body that actually had some lasting positive impact, I'm not so sure that we can actually go that far and say that this was a, you know, that. Yeah, I just wanted to pick up on a couple of these issues and themes, is that there is a kind of tendency, perhaps in liberalism, but, you know, just the kind of cultural orientation of left politics in the neoliberal era

that recognizing the problem is enough. Like, if you can speak the problem, this is what is most important for it to be, you know, taken into account somehow. And the materials components of it, you know, are not very significant or important. Those are ancillary to recognition of the issue or the problem. So people having their day to be able to articulate the crimes of apartheid and what they've suffered is enough, you know, but, you know, reparations is impractical. and not even the most important component of it. This is reconciliation, meaning some kind of cultural healing, where actually what is the actual demand? Maybe there's a bit of a demand.

Well, there's two demands. One is for the criminals to confess their crimes without necessarily being prosecuted or having to face any real genuine material accountability for those crimes. and the reconciliation of its victims to forgive the perpetrators of those crimes. This is basically the logic of it. And it's no accident, it seems to me, that this was devised by, you know, a wonderful person struggling for liberation, but a Christian church figure, you know, in Desmond Tutu, and that the theology of confession and forgiveness is clearly the operation that's taking

place in, you know, how this truth and reconciliation commission was supposed to function. And really, what it accomplishes is really creating the conditions for the victims to forgive the perpetrators and reconcile themselves to a future with, you know, in the new South Africa and to take away the political demands for reparations or justice. And I think the other really vicious part that Alison pointed out is that, you know, those who struggled against apartheid and contravened aspects of, you know, international humanitarian law or, you know, were kind of accused of, you know, killings of, well, actually, I'm not even sure this is a question that I would have. I mean, were actual attacks on policemen, military personnel included among the purview, among the ambit, you know, of what needed to be kind of confessed and was regarded as condemnable, you know, or was it just kind of civilians if they had been, you know, or, you know, what exactly were the crimes that had to be, what were the categories of crimes that had to be confessed?

But the very fact that revolutionary struggles for decolonization were placed under the same onus kind of erased in some ways the legitimacy of armed struggle against, you know, a settler colonial regime, which, you know, is again, of course, I mean, even the UN recognizes, even though nobody remembers this in the current context, that struggling against colonialism, you know, resistance is. you know, lawful, and that does include armed resistance. Now, there are limits and all of that, but armed resistance itself shouldn't be delegitimized by such a process. And that seemed to be another possible flaw in the way in which this was conceptualized. So I think it's not a model for really anything. It's often used as, you know, as an example of the ways in which you could bring people who have been in conflict to some kind of, you know, peaceful resolution. But if we were to see something like this developed for other conflicts, I don't think, you know, I don't think it would lead to outcomes.

And perhaps we're going to talk a little bit about the fact that this ended up being a neoliberal, you know, democratic, but neoliberal state that, you know, the revolution. that took place here was one against, you know, apartheid, but not really in transforming the nature of the state. It wasn't the beginning of, you know, socialism or equality. It was just liberalizing the social order from these, you know, draconian authoritarian and racial, race-based, you know, laws. And that, of course, means that, of course, means that, as many South Africans feel today is that the struggle continues, but of course it's much harder to gain, you know, support and solidarity, you know, in the post-apartheid South African struggles

for social equality and justice then, you know, it was during the era of international attention and solidarity for the end of apartheid. Yeah. All really good points, of course, you know, to Adnan's point about raising awareness, you know, that being the liberal solution to things. It just sort of ends there. Everybody's raising awareness, then everybody's aware. So now what? Nothing. And the Black Lives Matter movement, I think, is a really good example of how liberals do this because what happened with the liberal establishment after Black Lives Matter? Well, there were murals painted. There were street names that were changed. They even sacrificed Derek Chauvin, you know, as a little, you know, a little something for the Black Lives Matter movement.

but did anything materially change? Did the carceral system in any way face any, you know, overturning or reform? Did the policing in this country face any reform whatsoever as the negative culture and the racist culture within the police departments altered in any significant way? Absolutely not. And so what that does is just guarantee that there's going to be, as there has all through American history, another iteration in our lifetimes almost undoubtedly, of black liberation movements. movements, you know, coming around to another issue, whatever that may be in the future,

whatever the sparking event may be, and we're going to have to relive this cycle until this is materially addressed. And what liberalism does in so many ways is anything and everything except real material change. But now, you know, the legacy of apartheid in South Africa is now you're just in a horrific situation of capitalism and neoliberal domination, where inequality is still insane. I mean, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries on the planet of the earth um you have these uh the estate that is unable to do much i mean even keeping the electricity on is a big problem in south africa you have white south africans um who have now cloistered themselves and sometimes intentional communities in rural areas far away from big cities

with their own private police forces they're still shanty towns you know dramatically overrepresented by black south africans and then there's these nice leafy suburbs with huge walls and gates and private securities, you know, companies stamped on the front of their little, you know, gates around their communities or their homes. Literally, even policing becomes an issue, a huge issue with crime, which of course stems from poverty and the lack of life opportunities. So the struggle literally does continue, you know, formalized apartheid fell, but a lot of the same things that were hallmarks, not the formal policies, but the basic structure of society, hasn't much changed and south africans especially poor and black south africans still suffer in a lot

of ways was there a certain group of bourgeois black south africans that were able to rise and now live a middle class life in a way that they might not have been able to during apartheid sure but is that a solution to the problem ultimately of course not and so that legacy still continues to haunt south Africa, like the legacy of Jim Crow and racism and slavery continue to haunt the U.S. Because there's no sense in which we're going to materially address this injustice, set the playing field equal, and move into a new era. It's just a dismantling of certain policies, but no, you know, striking at the root of the problem, as it were.

So as this final question to ask all of you, I'm going to keep it very broad. I want to talk about similarities and differences with the South African situation to the Israeli situation, what we might be able to learn from it. Any last words at all, I know Allison had a point about the international movement around anti-apartheid as a blueprint for combating Zionism, which I'd like to hear your thoughts on. Henry made a point earlier about Max Isle, you know, having a certain sort of disagreement with the use of apartheid in the context of Palestine I'd like to hear about. So anybody can kind of take this final question. I just wanted to start first, though, with something about the fact that the end of apartheid, you know, in the early 1990s was accomplished. So we've just talked about the, you know, limited legacy that it was, but yet it was also a heroic struggle that ended, you know, this racial regime. At that time, people believed and thought that the Palestinian.

question, would also be soon resolved because the world was changing if the apartheid regime fell? Surely next was Palestine. So I think it's an interesting question to frame why are we still dealing with the question of Palestine in similar terms in some ways to what we had been dealing with in the 1980s and the 90s, and why didn't, you know, Israel's Zionist regime undergo the same kind of transformation? And I think, you know, I would just say one component, I think, has to be that the different histories of the legacies of African slavery and racism in the world's kind of imperial core must have played some kind of of role in culturally being able to recognize after, you know, decades of brutal repression

in South Africa of, you know, the black population, indigenous black population, of them as sympathetic victims. And one thing that we have not seen happen for various reasons that need to be thought about and considered and that were, of course, exacerbated with the global war on terrorism and the demonization of Muslims, the globalization of Islamophobia, kind of cultural calc of Western kind of crusader mentality and these legacies, is that Arabs, Muslims were less sympathetic as victims and didn't, there wasn't the history to be able to draw on of like post-disegregation and civil rights struggles, you know, the abolition of slavery, you know, the, you know, abolition of slavery struggles that took place, you know, in in Europe and North America

as a legacy that could be appealed to that was culturally relevant. I mean, Arabs and Muslims were not seen as as human victims, you know, in that context. That's got to be one component. I think there's a larger kind of question as well. And maybe that'll get into some of the similarities and differences in, you know, the cases of the apartheid regime of South Africa and the Zionist exclusionary state in Israel. Just to say really quickly, I think Adnan sort of hit the nail on the head when you talk about the war on terror, the ideological apparatus that was mobilized in the wake of 9-11 and the war on terror, dehumanizing Muslims writ large, the Syrian refugee crisis spilling, you know, Muslim Arabs into European countries, creating a fascist backlash.

that we still see ongoing today is sort of, as you're saying, exactly right, different than like the black liberation struggle against racism, which is, you know, much more globally accepted, had made more perhaps inroads to the global consciousness, you know, fighting Jim Crow segregation, fighting apartheid in South Africa, that lent that and the decolonization movements in the 60s, right, that led more credence to that. And perhaps in a non-9-11, non-war on terror world, in a different timeline, maybe that would have, the process of humanizing Arab Muslims would have perhaps caught on. I can't guarantee that, of course, but the war on terror, the Syrian crisis, all those things sort of collaborated to continue, the dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims in particular that we're still living with today and slowing down that process. Yeah. Yeah, well, I would say also geopolitically that the role of South Africa as, you know, what position in role it played in the kind of global capitalist and imperialist. order was possibly different or at least geopolitically those conditions changed and shifted so that

it still was relevant and very important to have control over, you know, energy as a key, key resource. I mean, we're seeing rare earth metals may become, you know, something similar and are becoming similar. But I think the geopolitics of maintaining a frontier, affiliated state in, you know, the region where, you know, global energy, fossil fuel energy supply could be, you know, affected and controlled may have also played a major role in the U.S. has continued almost unexamined commitment, you know, to maintaining, you know, Israel in its, in its current shape. Yeah, I think that point is really important, and I think the geopolitics matters a lot here, because one of the questions that I was finding a lot when I was looking at the historical accounts of the end of apartheid is why it is that Thatcher and Reagan in particular so clearly were opposed to a mass movement domestically that was bipartisan in many ways within the United States and the UK. And one of the explanations that is the context of the Cold War, right? Even if your domestic population is horrified by what's occurring in the U.K. South Africa and is speaking out about it, South Africa as a buffer state against Soviet and

Cuban functions in Africa has this important role. And so interestingly, apartheid ends at the time that the Soviet Union ends as well, right? And that creates the political context for that excuse, that sort of like real politic we are just doing containment strategy here. We have to ignore the human rights. The excuse falls away at that time. But that similar transition doesn't occur for Israel, right? And in fact, as Brett pointed out, precisely as the Cold War ends that we shift our geostrategic military focus to the Mideast and this focus on combat there that will evolve into the Gulf War and then eventually the war on terror, that allows this excuse that was applied in South Africa to now be applied

to Israel continually and the necessity of a client state in the region. So I do think the end of the Cold War is this other factor we haven't quite touched at that really undermines the geopolitical aspect of Western support for South Africa, which doesn't have a clear parallel yet in the context of Israel. That's right. And I think the last kind of component that I would identify as kind of performing some role in maintaining this, you know, unquestioned support is also, of course, that it is a state formed by Europe's explicit victims, you know, from World War II. And that there is a great deal of guilt and complicity that is processed.

by, you know, that Zionism actually as a kind of national ideology served a very useful function, you know, for the anti-Semites of Europe, I mean, essentially, or the racists of Europe, is that, well, we can solve our Jewish question by supporting a state, you know, elsewhere, you know, and in fact actually transform, you know, a population that had been a source of political problems and an object of racism of, you know, a thousand or two thousand years of, you know, religio racial prejudice, you know, into an ally, you know, into an actual asset. And so there was also some kind of cultural, you know, question here. that on the backs of Palestinians, Europe and North America could process its complicity in racism, bigotry, and genocide of Jews in its own history. That's something that I hear quite often, and I will, I'll push back on that slightly, in that I think that the feeling of guilt and that being a legitimizing factor for the existence of the settler colonial state of Islam. Israel. This is a feeling that is present within a lot of citizens of countries that were complicit in the extermination of Jews. But this is not the motivating factor for the governments that support the state of Israel. No doubt. Yeah. We're talking about the cultural conditions under which you can manage this potential social pressure. Now that is breaking down. We're seeing in the situations today that when you, in the era of social media, where you can see the images of what actually is happening in Gaza is that, you know, people are having to confront, you know, a different kind of picture and a different, you know, sense of their values in this context that might not have been part of the narrative framework before that

would be part of the cultural sympathy that Europeans and Americans, you know, broadly might, might have. That, I think, is breaking down. But I think you're right, that it is a And, you know, that's not the factor that makes the decisions by, you know, these politicians only insofar as they feel they may be pushed by changing social and cultural, you know, positions that put them under under political pressure to some extent. I mean, if we were in a real democracy, you know, this might happen a lot more quickly, but even in the, you know, kind of political system that we have now, where our. rulers make decisions regardless of whether they're popular or not, they do feel some kinds of political pressure and do respond in some ways to it. So that is a factor in that way. That's absolutely right. And I didn't mean that I was pushing against like your line of thinking, but the way that it was framed. And the reason that I do that is because it's quite apparent

that the reasoning for the support of Israel by governments is much more rooted in in one anti-Semitism itself than guilt about previous anti-Semitism, but also geopolitics. Geopolitics is a driving factor here. This is not, you know, the government of Germany is not supporting Israel to the hilt because the government of Germany feels guilt about, you know, the previous anti-Semitic. Nazi regime. No, of course not. The reason that they're supporting Israel is geopolitics, having this Western, as some, I've mentioned it,

in our Patreon and bonus episode, which will be coming out as a forward of a forthcoming book. Many analysts see Israel as a landed aircraft carrier for the United States in the Middle East, which I think is a fairly apt comparison. Germany benefits greatly from that. And also, there is still a very prominent anti-Semitic current within German society and also within the German government and having this kind of route for the Jewish population to get pushed into and legitimizing this structure and saying, look, you have a safe place where you belong.

That is something that exists. But I do want to bring up before we get too deep, I want to bring up the point that matter. Ile made because this might also prompt a little bit of further discussion on this point. And most of my additional thoughts are things that we've said in our recent episodes of guerrilla history. So I'm not going to talk any more other than putting this point out there. And then I'll let you folks have your thoughts on it. So I had seen that Max had said that he wasn't particularly fond of the usage of the term apartheid to describe the Israel-Palestine relationship, which, you know, I was very curious

about. And of course, Max is one of the smartest people I know. So when I have a question about anything, I, you know, I looked at Max anyway for answers. And on this specific point, I was very curious. So I texted him and said, Max, you know, I saw you weren't particularly fond of this usage. Why is that? And he didn't give me a long answer because he's writing an article on it right now, I am looking forward to, and I'm sure that listeners, you are as well. And perhaps with his permission, we can do a reading of it on our Patreon or something like that. And we'll talk with him about it as it comes out. But he says, ultimately, the problem isn't the term itself, but that they're all confined to non-Arab nationalist and non-national liberation

perspectives, which I think is a very interesting standpoint to take on this. And I'm looking forward to reading more because that's not something that I had previously been thinking about, but is the case. So I'm going to step out on this point now and see if anybody has any other thoughts as we close out the conversation. Yeah, I mean, I guess I just wonder what those terms are and I would love to hear his article.

I don't have... I think I'm looking forward to the article too. I'm assuming that settler colonialism, imperialism, imperialism, and genocide would be top of the list. Yeah, those are the more fitting terms. And, yeah, often... Yeah, and I don't think anybody who uses the term apartheid Israel would object to saying that it's even better to use settler colonialism and genocide.

You know, it's just, I think, merely that it's recognizable to a broader public that may not be fully immersed in, you know, the analysis of the history of colonialism to know what's the difference between a settler colonial, you know, kind of state and a, you know, and colonialism or imperialism. Like those are abstract terms that are terms of art in the anti-imperialist left. However, not everyone is part of the anti-imperialist left, but they can grasp and understand that they were part of struggles or they remember that there was liberation from, you know, a racist regime that we think of as apartheid. And we know it from South Africa as apartheid. And it helps, you know, kind of convey that this is a racial. differentiation between Jew and Arab that means that your status is completely different. The one good thing I think about it is that it also does highlight not just the kind of occupation. It's a bit more capacious than if we say we struggle against the occupation.

And we're only talking and most of the time when we're speaking about that in terms of the history of its application under international law, we're speaking about the post-1967 military conquest of the West Bank and Gaza. And when we say, you know, in the occupation, if we're speaking in that frame, we're confining our sense of the liberation that's needed just to those territories. And it doesn't address two other components. One, you know, the refugees and their right of return and their right of return not just to, you know, a supposed territory of a Palestinian independent state in a two-state solution, but to their homes, which may be. maybe in 1948, you know, Palestine. And secondly, of course, the remaining Palestinian population

that didn't get massacred or be forced into exile, forced into becoming refugees and still do live in a Zionist state where they have second class citizenship. So it helps, I think, dramatize, though. So I would say there's value to it, but no. one, I would never argue that you wouldn't be better off just, you know, thinking about it as settler colonialism. Yeah, absolutely. I kind of have two thoughts as well to build on that that I think, you know, the value of the term despite the limitations. One, I think what is striking about apartheid as an example in a historical comparison is the fact that apartheid was this very intentionally constructed separation. Again, it didn't all occur in 48, but over the course of

several decades where these laws are passed to create that separation. And I think that's important to apply in the context of Palestine as well, because the reality is that prior to Zionist occupation and prior to partition, there were Jews and Arabs living in Palestine side by side. Obviously, the Jewish groups were the minorities, the Mizrahi populations that were already in Palestine prior to colonization that occurred. But the reality is that separateness is something that was imposed artificially through various means, whether we want to talk about the early Zionist occupation, buying, land and forming the Haganah to defend that land and that separation, or then the U.N. partition, which comes down, followed by the Nakhba. All of this, I think, has an important historical parallel to show that the separateness, which is what that term apartheid, again, gets at, is a political imposition that really

is meant to erase a reality, which already existed. So I think that's important. But the second thing is I think there's a strategic reason internationally to use the term apartheid, which, again, is to tie the current BDS movement to the historical struggle against South Africa, right? Because realistically, BDS as it exists today, as a movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people, is building on those lessons that were learned in the 80s and the 90s in terms of exerting pressure against apartheid. And so drawing that connection to say we are taking tools from this other struggle as well, and we are looking at the success of that

other struggle through using the term apartheid, I think draws a line of connection that is important propagandistically, but also strategically for saying there is something to learn between these two struggles, and we can talk about that a little bit more. But I do think those are two strategic reasons that the use of the term apartheid can be useful for us. At the end of the day, though, I think we all agree. Settler colonialism describes the relationship of land that is at the core of this, and that is the term that really allows us to get into a more material aspect of it. Apartheid has more of a kind of the details of the implementation of that system, perhaps. I think that this is a conversation worth carrying on once that article is up.

Yeah, of course. One thing I would just to finish up that point, my perspective on that is sort of I use like words apartheid and occupation as words in addition to settler colonialism to highlight aspects of it. You know, ethnic cleansing, the occupation, apartheid is elements of this broader settler colonial project. And even when I use occupation, I actually kind of, and this might be a problem of language because people read into these terms different things. I think of just like, oh, the occupation of Palestine by Israel. You know, I don't, I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I mean like just Gaza or just the West Bank or just these specific areas. So that can kind of be lost in translation sometimes when people are reading into these terms. But another thing that I think is important is the how invested liberal elites are in dismantling this colonialist framework that they might even like liberals I'm talking. They might accept apartheid, right? But if you can get rid of apartheid, although the two state solution is still getting rid of apartheid, but it's not getting rid of settler colonialism. Right. So there's a sort of ideological interest there in using apartheid. And I think, you know, Max Ile sort of is

pointing towards this, using that instead of and to the exclusion of terms like settler colonialism, which is a big problem. I watched the latest episode of Bill Maher. I know I'm a glutton for punishment. And James, it was James Carville and that Dave Rubin. So I mean, I'm just, those three guys, Bill Maher. You're scraping the bottom of humanity's barrel there. You're a masochist. There's no other explanation, Brett. You're a massacist. There's a slight teeth marks on the barrel of my gun after listening to them. But what James

Carville said is very revealing because he says and you know Bill Maher and James Car they love to tell everybody that doesn't agree with them is stupid and everybody who uses these terms are just dumb college kids. He says you know there's lots of problems there but it's not colonialism and anybody who says that it is colonialism

his argument is an idiot. There's no follow-up there's no like justification for this position. They're just deeply invested in this idea that it has nothing to do with colonialism and settler colonialism. And so I think that's why we should emphasize that absolutely. And if we're going to use words like apartheid and occupation, of course, try to define them if you can, but also use them in unison with the framework of settler colonialism to flesh out different aspects of that process, right? Yeah, I would say that that's right on point that there's no reason to use it exclusively. Right.

And I think, you know, our sense of the outcome of the successful anti-apartheid struggle still not meeting the demands of real equality and justice, you know, is a cautionary kind of suggestion there that you don't want your struggle just to be, you know, the end of the racial regime. That is the key initial demand, but that isn't itself going to, you know, if you just have a neoliberal state that maintains all of these kind of clobiles. class hierarchies through the more sophisticated regime of, you know, capitalism that still maintains, you know, Palestinians as an underclass, you know, this would not be, you know, an ideal outcome. And it's why we need to connect the demands that are specific to the struggle for Palestine's freedom to the wider analysis of its position in the global, you know, and geopolitical, you know, kind of imperial, you know, capitalist system. And that that is a struggle that has to be widened, you know, we have to end the military, industrial surveillance,

security, you know, kind of economy that is building, you know, a kind of global apartheid and a global, you know, kind of inequality and, you know, kind of segregation of people in that way. So I think that's an important kind of point, I think, possibly a little bit of a cautionary note for using it that that shouldn't be the end of our conceptual understanding, and settler colonialism is probably the broader one. And I think that what's interesting about the backlash to the use of these terms is that I see a lot of interest in saying it's not genocide and it doesn't fit the definition of genocide. And anybody who uses and calls it genocide is exaggerating and is an idiot or is like, you know, worse, you know, is anti-Semitic, et cetera, is the same kind

of reflex that's going on with the objection to the use of colonialism. We need to be very clear and cogent analytically about what we're talking about, that it does fit best, but also to recognize that the people who want to talk about the definitions, is it genocide, is it not genocide, are basically trying to avoid and, you know, not confront the reality. It is a massacre. It is a slaughter. It is unjust. It has to stop. And so it's to try and push away the political demand that the current, you know, killing of Palestinians must stop and that a just solution has to be developed. Like, these are the key demands, and they want to avoid it by discussing these subsidiary questions of, is it genocide or is it not? I mean, this is fake intellectualism

of the highest order. And of course, what Max is doing is actually what is needed, which is, so I'm very much looking forward to the article and we should have a good discussion with is the clarification of conceptual analysis so that we understand what is our political target, right? And I actually, you know, think that maybe I wouldn't use apartheid after thinking about it together as much as insisting on settler colonialism, if only because I don't want the solution that we propose politically to be limited by what we identify as the enemy, right? So that, I think, is valuable. That's the good kind of political discussion about clarifying our conceptions and so on versus what we see happening, which is a lot of distraction and fake intellectualism to try and short circuit a real confrontation with the devastating horror that we need to take a standing against. And last thing I just wanted to point on this is just that there's two. great books by an Israeli scholar and activist, Yuri Davis, where I think this kind of

suggestion is where it kind of came from politically. He wrote a book called Israel and apartheid state. And then he wrote apartheid Israel. I think the subtitle was something like possibilities for the internal struggle. And what he was trying to do was say, you know, we need to have a political solution. This is during the Oslo era, you know, before, right before the Oslo era in the sort of end of the Intifada. And at the start, you know, kind of when the Oslo was clearly not working. And the Oslo Accords had just become a mechanism for maintaining the occupation by subcontracting it out to an authority, not a state, but an authority to do, you know, the work of enforcing Israel's illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, which is a

distinction. And in these works, he drew a distinction between what he called petty apartheid and structural apartheid. And he said, yes, Israel is not, you know, doesn't have petty apartheid that you've got separate drinking fountains or you've got overt kind of laws. You've got to sit at the back of the bus and things like that that were sometimes used to challenge in a sort of species, you know, specious sort of way in much the same way that people who want to argue about whether it's genocide or not, said, oh, it's not apartheid because you don't have, you know, racial regimes regulating things like, you know, public services or public spaces and so on like that. But he termed those petty apartheid, you know, whereas there was deep structural apartheid,

which is how it's embedded in institutions, in control of land, and in a much more fundamental aspects of society. And in those, I mean, you know, I think we can say that there are are, you know, that there is structural apartheid that's going on in the way in which Israel creates different tiers of citizenship in the way in which land is organized that it can't be alienated from the Jewish National Fund and which means that Palestinians can't, you know, purchase land. They can't serve in the military, which, you know, it's not that anybody would want to, should want to serve in, you know, Israeli occupation forces. But when you see what it is as an institution that guarantees genuine citizenship in that society and the kind of connections that allow you to, you know, progress in the state, in politics, in, you know, the economy and so on, you can see that it is an exclusion that is structural in effect.

And so I think there's a reason to identify this, which is why in the Rome statute, you know, it talks about the crime of apartheid. as something abstracted from the particular historical conditions of South African history, which is where the term originally arises. There are differences. Every history is unique, but there is, of course, also structural analysis of forms of oppression based on racial exclusion that are valuable to recognize. And that's the sense in which I think, you know, it's being used. Perhaps that use can be improved. But let's not forget, of course, that, you know, there is something, as Uri Davis said, of a structural analysis of the conditions of apartheid that probably is still relevant to the situation of Israeli society and the Israeli state.

Yeah, really wonderful analysis there. We're going to wrap up here. I just want to say really quickly you mentioned the genocide point, Adnan. That's often used as a way to sort of bog people down in technical definitions, but it's also importantly a way for people who literally support Israel to distance themselves from that charge right it's never that's never the overt claim but that's the that's the covert claim because they don't want they they support israel's right to defend itself and they do not want to be associated with genocide so that's that work there as well alison and i on our most recent episode of red menace actually dove in quite deep on that on the concept of genocide the definition of it and we made a robust defense of why using the term genocide is absolutely

proper in the case of what israel is doing to Palestinians so for people interested in that go and check that out. I also want to plug again the 101 South Africa introduction episode that we did on guerrilla history. People can go check that out as well. This was a wonderful episode, you know, almost approaching three hours. A really great end of the year, Revellev family get together. I wish the topic was a little bit more happy, but you know, that's what we deal with. So as a way to wrap up, I'm going to go this time right to left on my Zoom call to everybody, any last words, but also where listeners can find you and your work. online. We'll start with Adnan.

Well, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N. And you can check out the Mudgellis podcast. We are going to, I now am scheduling a conversation about a new book on the history of the Ood, a wonderful instrument. And listeners, you can't see. But in the back, I actually have now got an Ood. am taking lessons, and so this is both of interest that it's, you know, a new book and something from Middle Eastern culture, but also of personal interest. So that should be coming up soon. So you can subscribe to the M-A-J-L-I-S. And I just want to say, we should do this more often than

once a year. A fabulous conversation. I learned so much thinking together. And it's great to have Allison, join the crew for a, what is it, a guerrilla. Revolutionary guerrilla menace. Revolutionary guerrilla menace, yes. It's not elegant, but. No, it's great. It's great. Allison, where can people find you in your work online?

Yeah, so I'm not on social media anywhere, but if you want to hear more from me, you can definitely check out Red Menace. Again, that's the podcast that I have with Brett. We have a whole host of episodes that I hope could be useful if you want context around this, including diving into topics of decolonization, looking at the history of settler colonialism in the U.S. and in Palestine, also looking at theoretical works like Retched of the Earth by Fanon and discourse on colonialism by Sassar, which I highly emphasize as necessary theoretical works if you really want to understand these discussions, and also

Linens writing on imperialism. We have an episode on as well, which I would be remiss not to mention. So, yeah, if you're interested in more, definitely check out several episodes if we've done on that. That can provide the theoretical framework that I think all of us are coming to these conversations with. Yeah, Allison and I have been working together for years. Couldn't ask for a better co-host for Red Menace. So people, if you haven't heard that or check that show out, definitely go check it out. Henry, where can listeners find you and your work online, my friend?

Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at Huck, 1995, H-U-C-1-995. I mentioned the Stalin book earlier. You can get the PDF for free or get one of the physical, copies from iscarbooks.org. And of course, I co-host guerrilla history with Brett and Adnan. Like Allison said for Red Menace, we have a lot

of episodes on guerrilla history as well that are relevant for understanding the current situations. And ever since October 7, we've been putting out pretty much exclusively content that is relevant for understanding what's going on in Gaza.

And to help us think about how these things work and really it's thinking about all of these conversations that we've had together is allowing us to kind of further our analysis of the situation as well as draw these parallels

between things like South African apartheid and Gaza. So recent episodes on guerrilla history, you're listening on the Rev. Left or Red Menace feed and not the guerrilla history feed. We re-released an old episode how the West stole democracy from the Arabs with Elizabeth Thompson. We have

Palestinian resistance versus the Zionist project with Max Iyle and Patrick Higgins, understanding the conflict and occupied Palestine, history and geopolitics with Rabab, Abdul-Hadi, and Ariel Saltsman, Palestine in the media with Tara Alami, Palestine in the BDS movement with Karina Mullen, Palestine, war occupation, and proletarianization with Ali Qadri. And then we also have the apartheid 101 episode that Brett had referred to earlier. So if you go through and listen to all of those, you'll kind of be thinking the same, you know, in the same ways that we are about how these conversations integrate with one another in analyzing current situation and drawing these parallels between things. And of course, in addition to the conversation that we

just had here, we are going to have even more analysis from excellent scholars, activists, and thinkers on related topics coming up on guerrilla history. So subscribe if you're not already. Yeah, it's a great honor and pleasure for me to be. able to work with all of you in the individual capacities in which we work together. As for me, you can find everything I do at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com, everything I do politically. I also have a secret hidden podcast that my co-host is really angry with me that I don't promote it. I try to do this purposefully non-promotive thing to keep a sort of niche underground audience that's sort of separate from my political work. But to, you know, to satiate my friend,

Dave, I will just say it right here. Shoe List in South Dakota. If you want to break from politics, You want to hear us opine about our highly speculative theories of the universe and life and addiction, mental health, and our incredibly juvenile sense of humor, you can go check that out. But as a way to wrap it up, thank you to everybody who listens to Gorilla History, Red Menace, or RevLeft Radio, leaving us a positive review, sharing our shows with your friends and family, spreading class consciousness, using our podcast to do so. All are great ways to support the show and continue to expand it. So thank you to everybody who listens and supports the show.

love all three of you, my wonderful co-hosts, and hopefully we don't wait another year to do this again. So love and solidarity. I'm going to be able to be.