The horror of racially motivated murders is too painful to comprehend. It leaves a long lasting negative impression on the minds of the victims' families, community and society as a whole. It is a signal and a warning which Christians, and people who care about humanity, should never ignore. It is a warning of the consequences of racial and ethnical hatred, enmity and dislike of the other. The genocides in Rwanda, Kosovo and Bosnia are recent reminders of the evil that can be generated by political systems. History is littered with similar examples, and we must never forget the systematic violence, meted out to slaves, Indigenous peoples and others during the slave trade, colonialism and imperialism.
States sanction racial violence by legal documents, rules and procedures which portray certain groups of people as inferior, as criminals or as scroungers.
The role that major religions play in causing and perpetuating racism, and the associated violence that went with it must be acknowledged. For many people it is easy to recognise and name violence associated with wars, ethnic cleansing and state aggression against its own citizens. However, we must understand and make links between the root causes of violence against individuals and other forms of violence. The fear, hatred, dislike and negative attitude towards people because of their ethnicity, colour, cast, religion, class or gender, when nurtured and fuelled by those who have the advantage of possessing economic, political or military power, can be turned into the ugly and obscene annihilation of people and the total disregard of their humanity.
Apartheid has been credited with some remarkable powers. To its detractors it has been the cause of most, if not all, evils in South Africa. Unemployment, illiteracy, crime, child molestation, AIDS, sexual harassment, corruption and power outages have been attributed to apartheid. The new black controlled regime routinely ascribes the problems in which it is entangled to the legacy of apartheid. It is widely held that "apartheid fallout" will contaminate South Africa for many years to come.
In another era, apartheid was advertised as the solution to multiple evils, by Afrikaner Nationalists who were eager to be seen as the political saviours of white South Africa. The very word "apartheid" was a product of the political propaganda devised by the nationalists in the 1940 s. The central claim of this propaganda was that whites were being betrayed by the government of the day, and would be lost if they were not protected by the state. This proved to be a successful political weapon for the nationalists, even though their opponents were mystified by the claim that they were any less pro white.
For many, apartheid was the set of segregationist measures designed to reserve certain facilities and areas for white use, and to prevent inter-racial miscengation. This resonated with the American experience, where similar methods had been adopted until recently in some states. This fails to capture the political dimension of apartheid, for it is possible to have one without the other. Apartheid in the strict sense refers to the set of policies evolved by the white controlled state to rule and administer blacks indirectly. Blacks were not represented within the white political system, which their vastly greater numbers would inevitably dominate, but were incorporated under their traditional leadership within areas they had been restricted to in the process of conquest. Although this system evolved theoretically, from an ambiguous set of dependent protectorates towards ethnic self-determination, in practise it was always indirect rule.
Apartheid was actually pioneered by the British colonial governments of Natal and the Cape Province. Indirect rule of the blacks was devised in the 19th century in territories under British colonial rule. The two key ingredients of indirect rule were integration of existing black political structures within the European created state, by co-opting black chiefs, and confinement of blacks to the territory they had been restricted to by conquest. Black chiefs became salaried officials, on the payroll of the colonial authorities. In exchange, these chiefs kept order within their areas and assisted in local government of blacks. Rhodes passed laws requiring blacks to carry passes when travelling outside their reserves. The Boers were concerned that the British policy would leave the blacks independent, hostile and uncivilised. Most importantly, the Boers were concerned that the farms, then the basis of the economy, would be starved of labour by the isolation of the blacks. Instead they advocated dispersing the blacks across the country, thus placing them into the labour market in the most efficient manner, and bringing them under the civilising influence of white Christianity (Du Toit, 1991).
