Stuff You Should Know - How Apartheid Worked

Episode Date: March 19, 2013

After WWII, while the rest of the world grew more socially progressive, the government of South Africa turned inward to focus its attention on domination of the white minority over the non-white majority. It took an internal struggle and the voice of the world to finally end the terrible practice of "apartness." Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes us Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. I've been working on my africana accent. Was that it? Sort of. I've also been told by some people, Chuck, we love your accents, because they're kind of bad, but they're funny. And other people said, my God, please don't

ever do accents again. Oh, you got to keep doing accents. Of course, people can't tell me what to do. I think your africana is a little rough around the edges, especially compared to your Italian. Well, sure. That's easy, though. But that's no problem. So do you want to say a word in africana? I think I know that you know one. Apartheid? Yes. And it means apartness in africana. And yeah, in africans. Yes. Sure. Which is the language. Yeah. Well, where'd I get africana? That is the person is an african. Okay, guys. They speak africans. So in africans, apartheid means apartness. Yeah. And you capitalize it. The reason you capitalize it is because for about 50 years, a little less than 50 years, it was a national policy in South Africa.

And it was brutal. Yeah. And awful. And the whole world said, you know what, South Africa, we judge you. And for good reason. Yeah, I remember being a kid. And we'll get to this later. But the artist against apartheid was the first time I ever heard that word. Yeah. As a young teenager, Bono, telling me don't play Sun City. Sun City was built in 81. Okay, Sun City, first of all, is a resort in South Africa. And, you know, little Steven van Zandt of the Sopranos. Yeah. And the East Street band, sure, wrote the song called, I ain't gonna play Sun City, got all these people to sing on it, sort of in the world era. It was like you two to Curtis Blow, to Africa, Bumbada, to Peter Gabriel. Dude, like so many people were on that song.

All these Miles Davis was on there. Yeah. Like everybody was there. It was a good song. It was a goodish song. It was okay. But it was like I ain't gonna play Sun City. And not only was it a song, but it was like a movement and an agreement, like a creed that you're kind of signing. Yeah. So who played? I saw the Elton John and Queen and Linda Ronstadt played during apartheid. Sinatra played. I mean, yeah, they knew ahead of time that there was like a, you know, Sun City was not a good place to be. And it was in apartheid. It was a good place to be if you were in a pro apartheid South African with a lot of money, because it was a very nice resort. Yeah. And you want to gamble. And they would get big name acts. But if you went there and played

there and made money there, even if you didn't make money there, actually, the UN had an anti apartheid unit. And they kept track of who was playing there and they would publish a blacklist. And there was a huge, huge backlash against it. Most people were just like, sorry, sorry. If you said it publicly, I'm very sorry that I went and played Sun City. I'm not going to go to apartheid South Africa again. As a performer, they would take you off the list. But it was still like that it's really smacked of McCarthyism because they used a blacklist for suspected communists in the entertainment industry. And this is the same thing. Yeah. But in this case, in this case, they were on the side of right. The blacklist is where but but yeah. So if you

went to Sun City, you ended up on this list and actually really interestingly, Tim Reed, Venus Flytrap, he went down to South Africa with Howard Hussman, Johnny Fever of W. K. R. P. and Cincinnati because W. K. R. P. and Cincinnati was a really huge hit down there. Really? Yeah. So they had Venus and Johnny Fever come down and Tim Reed was one of the first African Americans invited to apartheid South Africa to not perform like this is just a publicity tour. Right. And he spent the whole time speaking out against apartheid. Good. And he still ended up on the U. S. Blacklist. Really? Because he received like a per diem or something during his publicity tour there. And he he spoke out there's a Chicago Tribune article from the time from like 1986 that interviews

him. And he is a really smart guy speaking out against this blacklist or at the very least like how clumsy it was that they weren't using a scalpel at all. They were just like, oh, you went to South Africa and they gave you some money and now you're blacklisted. Right. He's like, I was speaking out against apartheid. Like you get what are you doing? So let's talk. Let's talk apartheid. Where did this come from, Chuck? I mean, it was instituted in 1948, but it was way older than that. Yeah. Racial suppression was going on sort of from the 17th century on in Africa. Right. Or at least in Southern Africa. And it wasn't South Africa at the time. We should point out we'll get to that though. Yeah. But the Dutch came there in the 17th century just as a little stop off

station they wanted to set up on the spice route Dutch East India Company. They're like, we need a place to kick back a little bit and rest on this trip. Right. And so I was about to say they said, do you mind? I don't think they asked. No, they did not. They just sort of set up shop there and they were not there to colonize initially. No, it was just to set up a way station. Yeah, just to set up a station. And but the because they were Europeans, they did bring along with them the thought that white people are supreme to black people. Right. And to prove it, they brought along black slaves with them. That's right. So that notion is immediately set up like, hey, we're better than you. Right. You can't tell us what to do. We have guns and we're more quote unquote advanced

if you follow along those European lines of what advanced is. Right. And because they were Europeans during the age of exploration, they said, let's colonize anyway. Let's do it. That's true. So they did. And they started setting up settlements that weren't united, but were basically the Dutch and then later on the British into a much lesser extent, the French, basically saying just undergoing a land grab that involved basically taking land from the indigenous people there. And then setting up farms like another country. It sounds really familiar, doesn't it? Yeah, they basically would try and negotiate for land. And if that broke down, they were like, all right, we're taking it. Right. And then they would take the land, turn it and turn the land into

plantations, start growing stuff for export. And then the people would say, we're starving out here. And the Dutch people would say, well, come on in and work for us for like next to nothing. At the very least, you'll live long enough to till our fields. Yeah. And that's how the whole thing began. Yeah, basically, they would end up telling the fields that they at one point owned themselves or used themselves as slaves. Right. And this was the Dutch at first until about the mid 1700s, then British activity picked up in the region. And they, you know, at the time, it was, I think you said just like various separate societies, farming, live in agrarian lifestyle, ranching, hunter gathering. Right. And then the Dutch and then the Brits came down there

and with their own slaves and took the land and said, you know what, we're going to battle with each other over this area and eventually Britain gained control in the early 19th century from the Dutch even, but the Dutch were still there sort of running things. Is that how it worked? Yeah, there were way more Dutch settlers than British, but the British had managed to gain control of it. And now it was a British colony. And they said, but slavery is not legal. No, but you can be, you are a servant and we're going to codify this. And now for the first time in this area, blacks were legally subservient to whites. Yeah. So instead of master slave, it was master servant, big death. And even though the British, it was a British colony,

it was still basically run and operated by the Dutch. That's right. And some Dutch didn't like that. So they pressed further and further inward and ultimately creating more and more of an area for the future South Africa by dominating these tribes with guns, germ, steel, you know, that whole thing. And then around about 1860, something really big happened a little bit into the interior. They discovered diamonds and gold and said, oh, we're staying. Yeah. And they said, you know, we know you love farming and all that good stuff, but we think you'd be much happier working in a mine for next to nothing. At the very least, it would make us happier if you were working in our mines. That's right. And you know what? We're going to brutalize you. We're going to segregate you.

We're going to give you the most dangerous jobs and humiliate you and do cavity searches. And you know what? Now you have to have a passbook to go to your job as a miner. And you're going to be paid a lot less. And the passbooks. The reason we mentioned that is it soon became a staple that you couldn't go anywhere. You weren't supposed to go without a passbook. Right. It was initially started as a work thing, though, in the, in the minds of South Africa. That's where apartheid was born. And a lot of the apartheid techniques, like, like you say, passbooks, and just the general degradation of blacks in South Africa area. It all began. I mean, it was already in place, but just the brutality of it. I take it really picked up in the mines. Yeah, for sure. So that

was what the 1860s. Yeah. And that was pretty much the way it was. It was a British colony in South Africa. It was it wasn't South Africa yet, but it was a British colony, the Dutch were ruling it. The blacks, they're the African, the indigenous natives were on the losing end of all of this in a very brutal fashion. And then in the early 1900s, and I think 1908, the people who were running this British colony, the Dutch said, Hey, man, we want a little more authority here. Yeah. And they were at this point, they were Africana, like, right. In the past century, they had changed a lot. They had this weird hybrid language that developed. And they were not, they were Dutch in heritage, but they were starting to become a new people in Southern

Africa, which is Africana. They probably felt about as Dutch as like you and I feel British. You know, yeah, that's a good point. But yeah, so yeah, they were like a whole new, a whole new group. But the basis of this was that they were a whole new group who had grown up in charge of another group. Yeah. And they wanted to make sure that they had a free hand in dealing with these other subclasses. And also, I want to say like anytime you hear me say subclasses, I'm making air quotes, everybody. Yeah. And when I say big difference between master slave and master servant, I was being sarcastic. Right. We're anti apartheid. Okay. So the these Africaners running the show, sent a new constitution to Britain and Britain said, okay, go ahead. We're

going to go ahead and grant this. It's going to be called the South Africa Act of 1910. And with that, British decreed that the state of South Africa was born, still British colony, but it was officially under Africana control. That's right. And oh yeah, one other thing, black people can't hold office over. Yeah, that's like the first of what would be many, many, many restrictions. And that's a huge one because all of a sudden you have an all white government made up of white people who feel that this is their white man's burden to keep you from being shiftless and lazy and thieving and just killing yourselves and cutting off your own hands and killing one another. It's up to the white man to make sure you don't do that. And we're going to

keep you safe by subjugating you. And the first way we're going to do that is to just have an all white government. That's right. And the second thing we're going to do is we're going to take your land because even though we only make up 20% of the population as white people, we need 93% of the land. So we're going to shuffle seven, I'm sorry, 80% of the people onto 7% of the land, really crappy land. Really bad land was a really bad housing. And that was under the leadership of General Lewis or Louis or Louis Botha, First Prime Minister of South Africa and the Native Lands Act of 1913. Basically, it was when they said, you know what, we're going to move all these communities. If we kill you

along the way or you die, no big deal. If your whole life is disrupted, no big deal. And we're essentially going to shove you onto these tiny parcels of crappy land. So that began what's called the segregation period. You can't go here. This is white land. Right. And after during the segregation period between the 1913 Lands Act and the 50s or 1948, a bunch of other things happened for the blacks who came to be called Bantu's, indigenous Africans. They lost the right to vote in the 30s. In the 20s, they had lost the right to unionize. And basically they're just being pushed further and further out of a meaningful participation in society. Yeah, they tried to hamper their access to education even early on and fired them from jobs, even if they were

totally more skilled than a white worker. Yeah. If you were a skilled craftsman and you had apprenticed, you couldn't carry out your craft any longer. No. But legally, they could go in and be like, you know what? There's a white guy who we think is better for this job. So you're fired. Yeah, because that was the government. Right. And this was even before the Africana Nationalist Party. This is before apartheid officially. Yeah, that didn't come around till 1948. 1948 when, again, with an all white government that had been in power for 35 years, this extreme right wing basically a fringe movement, the Africana Nationalist movement, yeah, came to power and they officially instituted what we call apartheid. There are apartheid

policies starting in 1948, but really kicking off in 1950 with what the Population Registration Act, right? Yeah. And this was under Prime Minister D.F. Mullen at the time. And with the Population Registration Act is when they created officially the Bantu, like you said, and named the indigenous black population. So there's Bantu, there's white, and then there's colored, which is mixed race. And you have to register yourself and be legally classified as one of these three races. Everyone was. Everybody. If you're white, good news for you. Yeah, because you got 93% of the land. Yeah, if you're Bantu or mixed race, then bad luck for you. Right. And then at first, Indians were left out and Indians, I guess, because it was a British

colony. Yeah. Since India was also a British colony, South Africa was kind of a place to be for Indians, including Gandhi, who was one of the early protesters of this segregationist idea and was imprisoned for, I think, 20 years in South Africa. Yeah, he was. Or he was imprisoned while he was there for 20 years. He spent part of it in prison for protesting. Right. Segregation peacefully, of course. But then, so ultimately Indians were excluded as foreigners, but then just to keep problems from happening is to keep the bureaucracy going. Right. They were added as a fourth race. That's right. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse.

This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or be in Rob. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app,

Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast, Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show. Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to block buster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey, dude, the 90s called on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You could not get married between races. If you were a bond to and loved with someone of mixed race, you couldn't even marry them. Very restrictive. And then next came another act called the group areas act. And this really escalated the segregation because now you needed passbooks, essentially passports to go from one area to another. Some you weren't even allowed in.

And that even went further in the Bantu homelands act of 1951, which basically said, you know what, wherever your area is in South Africa, that is now your homeland. And you're not even South African anymore. Yeah. If you're if you're Bantu, you live in this area. If you're a Bantu married to a colored person, the your colored spouse lives in a different area. Yeah. Your family's just ripped apart now. Well, they took away basically said you're not in South African, right? And we're allowing you to stay here. Basically, if you stay in this one area that your passbook says that you can stay in, right? Because you can't stay here because you're not you're no longer a member of this country. I drew exclamation points next to that one,

just because like they literally moved in, took over these people and then said, you're not even a part of this country, right, that we've established. So they have they've been pushed out of participation society. The anybody who is not white is now forced onto a reservation. Yeah, essentially. And then they really kind of started indoctrinating the next generation with the Bantu Education Act of 1953. Yeah. And basically, if you were Bantu, you would be put into a school where the student teacher ratio was about 56 to one on average. You went to school three hours a day. Yeah. They did it in two shifts. A teacher would see two different classes, three hours for one, three hours for another. And you would be taught basically how

like the history of your people was that you were you were kind of dumb and meandering and you hadn't really done anything with the land before and how you were reliant on the white people who came to rescue you and your people. Yeah. You were taught how you could work in a factory and that's about as good as it got for you. Yeah. And basically, they were taught to be servile and better servants to the white Africaners. Yeah. Well, that was the plan at least. Yeah. But it backfired because in the 1950s and 60s, instead of becoming more docile, they rallied and became more upset and basically raged against the machine in the 1950s and 60s at the same time that the US civil rights movement was going on. The same thing was kind of starting to happen

in South Africa. And it was the beginning of what would be a 30 year end of apartheid. Yeah. I guess you could say. Yeah. People got mad. Yeah. And rightly so. Yeah. And this wasn't just indigenous people. There were also white liberals at the time, just like here in the US, that were very much against apartheid and also suppressed when they tried to raise awareness or fight back. Right. Because one of the things about the apartheid government, it wasn't just racial segregation. They were, like I said, extremely right wing and they were very much into isolationism. Yeah. They kept a very tight control over what their population, white or non-white, had access to as far as the news went.

Oh, yeah. Music. Music. Have you seen Searching for Sugar Man? Yeah. It's a good one. And you saw what they did with, like there was a record on, there was a song on his record. Rodríguez, yeah. And they scratched the song, the vinyl, so it couldn't be played. They did stuff like that. You guys should see that. They just won the Academy Award. Yeah. And we don't want to spoil anything, though, because it unfolds in a really great, mysterious way. It's a good document. It's a great documentary. And that's what inspired this decision to do this, actually. Right. So the government was fairly close to totalitarian. Like if you descended against the government, white, black, otherwise, you would go to jail. But despite this, and despite the

brutality that the police were engaged in, like there was a, for example, there was a strike in 1946. 75,000 unarmed black minors went on strike. Peaceful protest. Yeah. A thousand people were killed by the police. Yeah, they would just open fire on crowds. Yeah. So this is like peaceful crowds, even. Right. And this is one of the reasons why I think people were so resistant to being indoctrinated into apartheid mentality, in part because of the brutality of the police tactics. Yeah. But so let's talk about this. In the 60s, like you were saying, when the U.S. Civil Rights Movement was really starting to brew and take shape, Nelson Mandela emerged as a member of the African National Congress. Yeah. Huge organization. And then there was also the Pan-African,

Pan-Africanist Congress. Yeah. And they were basically peaceful protest groups that were set up to counter the apartheid philosophy. Yeah. And like we said, even though it was peaceful, it didn't matter. The Sharps, Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, a thousand black Africans left their passbooks at home and said, you know what, we're just going to go to the police station and turn ourselves in because we don't have our passbooks. Right. What are you going to do? Process us all? No. They're going to open fire in the crowd, killed 69 people, wounded hundreds apparently. Yeah. And then they said, you know what, we're going to ban public gatherings then. And they also banned the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress. Yeah. Like you're all

illegitimate now. And Nelson Mandela, you're going to jail. Not yet. Not yet. They drove the Pan-Africanist Congress and the African National Congress. Well, 1963, he went to jail. Right. But in 1960, they drove him underground. Oh, well, yeah. And as a result, these groups went from being peaceful to becoming actually, they formed paramilitary wings. And Mandela led the African National Congress's guerrilla wing. Yeah. And he actually later on said, yeah, we were guerrillas and possibly terrorists. And there were human rights violations by my group. And I regret that. Yeah. But they were good terrorists. Yeah. Right. So he was jailed for, well, sentenced to a life in prison and remained in prison for 30 years. And most people, unless you're super young,

remember Nelson Mandela, free Nelson Mandela being a rallying cry up until like freaking 80s, which is ridiculous. This is still going on then. Yeah. But that's the way it went there. 1976, another protest, peaceful, so we know this time it was students. And it was because they were trying to make Africans the primary language in black upper schools, even though not many of them even spoke it. Right. So what good is that? So they went to protest this. And again, peaceful protests, open fire, two children were killed this time. And it started a bunch of riots. And in the end, 3000 people up to 3000, it says between 575 and 3000, probably depends on who you're asking. Right. Were killed by the police. Yeah. And again, just following the same script

that they did with Sharpeville in 1960, the government said, all right, any dissent groups are completely banned outright. And that included the South African Students Organization led by a guy named Steve Biko. And Steve Biko, he was a medical student. He was like 30, I think, when he died. He had founded what was called the Black Consciousness Movement. It was basically like it was teaching African self-worth, countering everything that was taught through the Bantu Education Act and everything you learned in school, African self-reliance, economic self-reliance. And it had spread outside of Africa. He was a pretty big figure. And he was pulled over with the buddy and a bunch of anti-apartheid pamphlets. And the police arrested him. They beat him. They

left him with a head wound and he died of his injuries. And when Steve Biko died, that was that changed everything. Yeah, he was detained under the Terrorism Act, 83 of 1967, which basically said, if we suspect you being a terrorist, we can detain you for up to 60 days. And then we can renew that 60 days, by the way, indefinitely, without telling anyone, without releasing who's there. And it was basically a way to make people disappear. Usually if you were detained under this act, you were never heard from again. And Biko eventually found himself in a coma and because of torture, and then eventually they said, after about three weeks, you know, we should probably take this guy to a prison or the hospital at least. So they threw his naked

body in the back of a truck to take him to a hospital. And he died. They said it was a hunger strike. It was actually brain hemorrhage from being beaten upside the head. And years later, Denzel Washington would play him and cry freedom. Nice. And Peter Gabriel wrote the awesome song Biko. Yeah. And Tribe Called Quest has Steve Biko song. Yeah. Stir it up. Yeah. So the Soweto uprising, and the police killings of those two children, was followed right on the heels by Steve Biko's death. Which was a big deal, like around the world. Yeah, it was. The US ambassador to South Africa, I think in probably what was a huge protest move, went to Steve Biko's funeral. There was a little, yeah, Steve Biko dying was, that was a big deal. Yeah. And we should shout out to Helen

Sussman. Shout out. She was the one voice of reason in South Africa's all-white parliament. She was the one voice, anti-apartheid voice. And she was like, if you look her up today, man, she's an amazing, amazing woman. She just died a few years ago. Oh yeah. But she was at the funeral. And yeah, this is when it became like a thing around the world, like, hey, you know what? We're going to start pulling our embassies out of South Africa. Yeah. We're going to start boycotting sanctions against South Africa, economic sanctions. And this was happening with the United States, Great Britain, other Western nations. And basically South Africa became, you know, the evil empire exposed. It was pretty cool by the by finally in 1986, the US Congress got its

act together enough to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. Yeah. And it banned any new investment, any new business setting up and dealing in trade with South Africa. South Africa was banned from doing business here in the US. So South African Airlines couldn't land at any US airport. Yeah. Hit them where it hurt, basically. Yeah, big time. The Rand Fallon value is a big deal. And Reagan vetoed it, actually. And his veto was overridden by Congress. Awesome. That's how much that's how badly they wanted to do it. And it was a very important thing. This is right in the middle of this is like when we were kids, you remember that, like that Keith Haring poster of South Africa. There was like the in-game play Sun City. Yep. The song Free Nelson Mandela,

I remember that one. Yeah, it was a there's a big deal. Yeah. The whole world was opposed to South Africa. There was this great thing called divestment that actually may have really been the thing that killed apartheid in South Africa. Yeah, what was the deal there? So divestment is and it's going on now. But with apartheid, it was basically where people like it started with colleges. Colleges have huge endowments that are heavily invested in all sorts of stuff. And they said, you know what, we're not going to invest in anything that has anything to do with South Africa anymore. Coca-Cola, if you're doing business in South Africa, we're not going to invest in you. Right. Whoever. And so they they divested rather than invested. They got all their money out. And a lot

of universities, a lot of universities did this. And they did it at the prompting of some of their students. Like in Harvard, the students erected a shaney town to show what the people who lived in the shaney town of South Africa were living like and got all these endowments to start divesting. And I think Cal had the biggest one. They divested $3 billion from the South African economy. Holy Cal. And they think that that was the thing that really like like opened the bleeding. Go Bears. Yeah. So this divestment combined with this international political pressure all over the world. And South Africa still says, go to hell. We're not getting rid of apartheid for years still. Yeah. And then through the eighties. Yeah. And then finally it was what 1993. Well,

1989 is when the big turning point came. That's when FW de Klerk became president of apartheid South Africa. And between 89 and 93 is when you basically repealed everything on the books and said, this is going in a different direction now. Yeah. Let's release Nelson Mandela. And in fact, when we have our first democratic election in 1994, Nelson Mandela wins. So what a great ending to that story. It really is. And despite being in prison for 30 years on May 10, 1994, when Mandela was giving his speech, he's closed by speaking in Afrikaans. This is his inauguration. Yeah. Which is like the fact that even spoken that tongue to me, it says a lot about the man. And he said, what is past is past. And here's a Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Mandela and Mr. de Klerk.

Yeah. Like you both get it in 1993. And I like the article pointed out, it was a shockingly peaceful transition. And I'm sure there are still many, many more years that are needed for the healing. You don't get over something like that overnight if it's been hundreds of years. But I think things are definitely headed in the right direction now. Yeah. Well, one of the things that they did was they set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was like basically a tribunal that heard stories of human rights violations that gave victims a voice to say it in public. Like this happened to me. Right. In some instances, people who perpetrated these could be prosecuted. They could also be forgiven publicly by this court, this tribunal. It was

a really good move to kind of help this national healing. Because yeah, all of a sudden apartheid is gone over a four year period. Yeah. But I mean, there was a lot of people who were kind of into that. And they did a lot of stuff and they're not protected by the government anymore. And a lot of bad things happened to a lot of people who are still alive. Like what do you do? Yeah. And I think that was a really good move to move not just the government, but also the society to the post-apartheid life. Yeah. I'd like to hear from people in South Africa about the state of things today. Yeah. And watch Searching for Sugarman people. Yes. It's really like through this great story of music encapsulates this whole time period really, really well.

Right. And then I guess ever since the aliens landed over Johannesburg, that's kind of taken up a lot of their attention. Oh yeah. What was that? District nine. Yeah. Which was really based on apartheid pretty much. What? Was that the inspiration for that movie? That was a good movie. Yeah. So watch that. Watch District nine, Searching for Sugarman and watch Cry Freedom. Yeah. And go listen to Tribe Called Quest, Peter Gabriel. I have not listened or seen the Rugby movie yet. Oh. Morgan Freeman plays Mandela. Invictus or. Damon. Yeah. What is it? Invictus? Yeah. Yeah. I need to see that one. Okay. That's it for apartheid, huh? Yeah. Thank goodness. If you want to do a word from our sponsor. Yeah. We got Listener Mail coming up,

but word from our sponsor first. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they

call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast on the podcast. Hey, dude, the nineties called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show. Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the nineties. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you

remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's vapor because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your game boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the nineties. Listen to Hey, dude, the nineties called on the I heart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So now it's time for listener mail, right? That's right. Josh, I'm going to call this surfs up. I just listened to how surfing works as someone who surfs 300 days a year all over

the world and teaches surfing for a living. Just wanted to say that you guys did an excellent job for two guys who don't surf in a very limited experience with it. Your definitions and descriptions were pretty much spot on. And I would have to agree with you, Chuck, that it is very difficult to learn. It has one of the slowest, most miserable learning curves of any sport. I always tell people that if you don't enjoy sucking at it, then you won't enjoy surfing. So quickly, did you surf on your vacation? Yeah, I did. And how did you do? I've been waiting to ask. I got up. You meet was watching from the shore and she agrees that I did get up at least once. Okay. She says possibly twice, but I only stand by one. And by get up, I mean, I was virtually

crouching and then fell off after like five seconds. And how many days did you try it? I just won. And I didn't even take a lesson. Okay, you just went out there. Do you know how? Well, our podcast. Exactly. Yeah. That's how I figured out how to do it. I did kind of, but I remember we were talking about how it's very easy to get on your hands and knees and then get up, but you don't want to learn that technique. That's what I learned. Yeah, sure. You got to crawl before you can walk. Exactly. Also, I should clear up that in general, learning to surf on a longboard is usually preferred as it catch waves easier and easier to stand up on than a shortboard. But being that catching a wave is the hardest part for

beginners, you're usually better off learning that way. Yeah. Did you have a shortboard? Yeah, it was shortish. Shortish. Yeah, it definitely wasn't a longboard. They turn easier, but turning is pointless if you can't catch the wave in the first place. Right. Yeah, there was no turning going on. Yeah. It was surf riding. Surf riding. Anyway, I just want to say good job, guys. I'll be teaching surfing all summer in Southampton, New York. If you're up in New York this summer, hit me up. I'll take you out for a surf. And that is Miles from Santa Cruz. PS Big Wednesday is the best movie ever. Of course, you did that because that's what surfers do. That's nice. Miles, 300 days a year. Can you

believe that? It sounds like Miles has got a pretty decent life. If he's living in Santa Cruz and then teaching in New York in the summers. Yeah, that's cool. Thanks for writing in, Miles. If you are an expert or you do something that we've talked about 300 days a year, we want to hear from you because that pretty much makes you an expert. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email, right? Isn't that what those are called? Yeah. To stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com and check out our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Borey and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting, groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where

we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.