The Pettiness of Apartheid

 Apartheid can be viewed as having existed on two different levels. On the one hand, you had ‘grand apartheid’.  This comprised of civil and political rights such as the right to vote.  On the other hand you had ‘petty apartheid’.  This was your more day-to-day manifestations of apartheid. Of course petty apartheid was only enabled through the loss of rights due to grand apartheid, but I wonder had petty apartheid not existed as it did, whether there would have been as much opposition to the system throughout its existence.

Petty apartheid was indeed petty.  It led to multiple humiliations upon the non-White population of South Africa. It was a constant reminder of inferior status in their own country.  There are two examples of petty apartheid that have really stuck out to me from all my reading over the years.  I have read a lot about the justice system in South Africa and the punishments and cruel treatment and even summary killings.  These are horrific things to read, but on some level they seem almost unreal in their nature. They are things that I don’t have familiarity with in my own life.  The examples that follow are from the normal day to day. Things I can well imagine as part of my own life. I guess that is why they have stuck with me.

The first - an anecdote I am not going to be able to reference as I have no idea which book I read it in - was a description of the layout of a train station in South Africa.  The platforms were split into a White area and a non-White area.  The White area was conveniently placed near to the entrance of the station and was sheltered from the elements.  The non-White area was set away from the entrance and a distance to walk.  No shelter was provided for that part of the platform.  The thought of rain pouring down upon those people deemed to be inferior, whether healthy or sick, the elderly or babes in arms, solely due to their skin colour, is an image that has stayed with me.

The second example is also related to public transport and I am sure that this comes from Jan Morris’s book about her travels in South Africa – South African Winter - a book I highly recommend.  She recalled travelling on a bus and seeing two smartly dressed young Indian children, a boy and a girl, waiting at a bus stop. The White bus driver decided not to stop to pick them up and drove straight past the bus stop.  The thought of a grown man leaving two children waiting at the bus stop brings tears to my eyes. It was spiteful. It was cruel.  Apartheid gave people free rein to be spiteful and cruel.

These are just two examples that I have picked up. There must be countless examples of such things. It seems impossible to think that anyone at all was left unaffected by these little pinpricks of injustice, all-pervasive as they were.  Most of my research involves the arrests and trials of leaders of anti-apartheid groups, so history from the top down. My exposure to the social impact of apartheid on a day-to-day level has been secondary to a large extent, but any study of apartheid does involve some understanding of the broader impact that it had upon South African society.

I am not sure people can ever get used to such treatment.  How can you, when the treatment of others in a more privileged group are living cheek by jowl with you?  How can anyone defend this as a system of government I will never understand.  I think apartheid defenders today – and they exist, I have come up against them on Twitter - may not fully have considered the depth that apartheid reached to. It was not merely a matter of not being able to vote or protest. Or even a matter of where you lived, worked or who you could marry.  It was an insidious system that extended into all areas of life, no matter how small and insignificant, and served as a constant humiliation for the majority of the country. It was objectively wicked and cruel. And petty of course.