Unit 3: South Africa

The first time I offered this course, I wanted students to have an opportunity to look at two different approaches to pursuing justice after mass injustice, but I was quite fearful of over simplistic analogies and comparisons between two very different types of atrocities. In light of this fear, I wrote a letter, essentially a rationale to my students that also provides some rationale for the next unit on South Africa. 

Dear Students of Good and Evil,

Thank you for the great work that you did with our last unit on post-Holocaust justice. The questions we tackled together are questions that still stump many politicians, leaders and legislatures of our day; nevertheless you were able to handle it with sensitivity and finesse. Continue to ask the hard questions, so that we can continue to have the difficult, yet enlightening conversations.

For the next month we will be shifting our focus to another time and place. It may seem at first to be unconnected to our last unit, but in time the relevance will become resoundingly clear. We debated long and hard about the success and failures of the Nuremberg Trials as a means to justice. Now we are going to investigate another attempt at justice in South Africa after the end of Apartheid[1]. “The struggle for justice within South Africa was, for many years, a symbol across the world. But at the end of the twentieth century, history was turned upside down. The oppressor opened their prison doors and sat down with those they had oppressed...people they had locked behind bars for years or driven out of the country. They exchanged words instead of bullets” (Naido, xiii). We will come across many similarities as well as differences between these two humanitarian crimes, but I implore you not to compare the atrocities, but to consider the differences in approach and theory behind the justice that was pursued thereafter.

The history of the power and racial struggle in South Africa dates back to the 1600’s. When Europeans arrived in the Cape of South Africa. Some came to look for riches other for adventure, and other were fleeing as a result of religious persecution. In South Africa, Europeans found fertile grounds for farming which the current inhabitants shared with them. But the European settlers chose to set themselves apart, “putting up fences wherever they settled” (Naidoo xiii). They wanted the land for themselves and fought many wars with Africans to get it and thus extended their boundaries. Workers were brought over from Asia when there were not enough Africans to work. A social hierarchy of races was being created, and “White” people were at the top. Next came the “Coloreds,” which was a name given to individuals of mixed European and African heritage, then came the Indians and then the black Africans.

Some Afrikaners supported Hitler during the WWII, and when they took over the government in 1948, “they tightened the ladder of racism through hundreds of laws. Everyone had to be classified by their so-called race” (Naidoo xiv). But it was only after years of breaking these laws, being thrown into jail, schoolchildren facing tanks and shootings that the powers realized that the anger could not be squashed. On February 11, 1990, the world watched Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s most famous prisoner, walk out of jail to help negotiate the future. Four years later, he became the first democratically elected President - the first black president and leader.

What we are going to study no longer takes place in South Africa, but it is important to study so that we don’t forget the lowest levels of human behaviors. Desmond Tutu, a leader in the pursuits of justice in post-Apartheid South Africa, wrote:

There is a beast in each of us, and none of us can ever say that we would never be guilty of such evil. We must acknowledge what happened... But more importantly we must renew our commitment to a new democracy and its new culture of respect for fundamental human rights and say for ourselves and our decedents, “Never Again will we want to treat fellow human beings in this fashion. And I hope and pray that others in other lands may commit themselves to ensure that such evil will never be tolerated and that they will not be guilty of perpetrating it.

Tutu echoes Hannah Arendt’s reflections on thoughtlessness and “banal” evil. Evil’s ordinary quality does not however make the atrocities any less severe or painful, on the contrary we will see that they repeat themselves in new and more horrifying ways. But, like Tutu says, the more we learn about these horrors, the more we can ensure they not be repeated.

Sincerely, Nitzan

[1] Apartheid - Afrikaans word for apart, separation. This was the name for the process of racial segregation in South Africa from 1948 -1990.