Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s book A Human Being Died That Night does a wonderful job of exposing the mindset behind the state-sponsored atrocities of apartheid through interviews with Eugene de Kock, one of the principal perpetrators of some of the worst crimes committed under apartheid. This psychological analysis reveals motives and excuses that are not unlike those we hear today in the US with reference to Iraq. More specifically, we see similar descriptions of the supposed “enemy” in order to facilitate the type of action taken against resistors as well as similar justifications for these actions. But first, a rough description of apartheid.
Though apartheid officially began with the rise to power of the Afrikaners through the Purified Nationalist Party in 1948, apartheid-like practices had been in existence for much longer, along with corresponding resistance by black South Africans. For instance, in 1913, the Native Land Act was devised as a means of segregating the population and establishing native reserves, designating more than eighty percent of the land to whites; and the previous year, the African National Congress (ANC), which was to become one of the main resistance and liberation groups, was founded. Apartheid policies and laws included the establishment of a discriminatory racial classification scheme, requirements for blacks to carry identity passes, separate educational systems, the ban of interracial marriages, and resettlement of indigenous black South Africans onto Homelands that effectively revoked their South African citizenship by making them citizens of “independent nations,” among many other rules.
In opposition to apartheid policies in the 1940s, the ANC’s Youth League began, which further popularized the ANC and its peaceful resistance activities, but events such as the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre of nonviolent pass law protestors led to the ANC’s shift to militant resistance through “Spear of the Nation” led by Mandela as well as a splinter resistance group, Pan-African Congress. Most people are aware of South Africa’s attempts to squash resistance from highly publicized events such as the Soweto uprising in 1976 and the mysterious assassinations of opposition leaders such as Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko, but less is known about the more clandestine state-authorized killings, detentions, and tortures of black South Africans, which is the focus of Gobodo-Madikizela’s book that we will now turn to for our comparisons.
In order to justify the violent action taken against the anti-apartheid movement, the government had to portray their opponents in a way that would validate such harsh measures. Gobodo-Madikizela describes how the government characterized the anti-apartheid blacks in just this way:
“The liberation movement, they claimed, was a surrogate arm of the Soviet Union, a communist threat to “the democracies of the Western world,” and not, of course, what it was: a threat to their own position of power and privilege. This made it easier for the most violent actions to be taken against the liberation movement.”George Bush used similar rhetoric to justify the war in Iraq in a speech aboard the USS Lincoln on May 1, 2003 to declare—a little too early—that major combat had ended and the US had succeeded; namely, he claimed that a place like Saddam’s Iraq was “a grave danger to the civilized world”—much like the above claim by the apartheid state. According to this speech, freedom and democracy were the aims of the war, both for the Iraqis—hence the name Operation Iraqi Freedom—as well as for America. Bush himself said, “In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world,” and furthermore warned that “the enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we. Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend the homeland ….” The “enemies of freedom” and the “grave danger to the civilized world” sound a lot like the supposed “threat to “the democracies of the Western world”” posed by anti-apartheid blacks. Yet, many would also say that, as was the case with South Africa, there was an ulterior motive for the war in Iraq. Some would argue that it is eliminating the threat to America’s world dominance, just as the apartheid regime attempted to remove the threat to their “position of power and privilege” in South Africa. William Blum enumerates what he believes to be the true power-seeking motives in Iraq in a speech entitled “War against terrorism or expansion of the American Empire?”: the imperial establishment of military bases in the Middle East, corporate takeover by American firms, oil, protecting US currency, and supporting Israel.
As illustrated above, Bush frequently makes references to the “civilized world” in his speeches. For instance even before the war started, in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on February 27, 2003, Bush asserted, “In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world—and we will not allow it.” In other words, Bush does not include Iraq or the Middle East as part of the “civilized world”—of which the United States is the obvious leader. Excluding Iraq and the Middle East from civilization is reminiscent of the Eurocentric arrogance that claimed other peoples were primitive, savage, or barbaric and was a tactic used to justify colonizing other people. For instance, Colonel R. Meinertzhagen, who writes of his adventures in the British colony of Kenya in Kenya Diary: 1902-1906, talks about “administering and policing a district inhabited by half a million well-armed savages” and makes frequent references to savages throughout. Though it is now not acceptable to call people savages, Bush’s reference to civilization expresses a similar arrogant sentiment and excuse for occupation. In fact, the Oxford Thesaurus American Edition (1992) actually lists uncivilized as a synonym for savage, so Bush’s statement about the “civilized world” does seem to be saying something about his views of the people he considers to be outside of it.
These examples all highlight the important role that vocabulary and rhetoric play in “wars” of this kind for the means of justifying one’s actions and characterizing the people one is against. According to Gobodo-Madikizela, word usage was a major aspect of the covert apartheid operations, and the use of vague, implicit language was a means of removing blame from the higher officials giving the orders. For instance, she writes that “expressions such as “making a plan,” “taking out” enemy leaders, and “neutralizing,” “eliminating,” or “removing” certain people from society formed much of the lexicon of death within the upper levels of power.” Similar ambiguities and euphemisms for murderous activities have also made their way into military operations in Iraq and discourse on the war. I couldn’t help but notice while watching a CBS 60 Minutes story in September about the November 19, 2005 Haditha incident that killed twenty-four Iraqi civilians the detached, non-descriptive terminology used by American Sgt. Wuterich who led the attack. He says in describing what they call “clearing” houses, which led to some of the civilian deaths, “we went through that house much the same, prepping the room with grenades, going in there, and eliminating the threat and engaging the targets…" One normally doesn’t refer to blowing up things as “prepping”—it sounds more like getting ready for a performance or sports competition. And “engaging the targets,” what does that mean? Engaging them in conversation? “Eliminating” the threat doesn’t need much explaining; apartheid’s “lexicon of death” above has already made us aware of what that means.
Gobodo-Madikizela’s interview with de Kock further reveals that the ANC, now considered a liberator for blacks in South Africa, was also seen in much the same way the insurgents and terrorist groups are seen now.
“Each and every one, from officers to lower ranks, wanted to fight terrorism,” de Kock says. “Every time ANC hit targets—civilians—the number of requests to join Vlakplaas [the head site for secret anti-apartheid operations, detentions, and murder] went up….The question of whether what we did was legal or not did not come into the picture…People wanted to see results. They wanted to know that we were rooting out what at the time we called terrorism.”
This representation sounds all too familiar in light of what we hear about the “war on terror,” which Iraq is now a part of. In fact, the same phrase “rooting out” terrorism has been used on numerous occasions to refer to US war endeavors and foreign policy—just Google the words Bush root out terror and see what comes up. Though I don’t condone violence of any type, one wonders if what we as Americans now call terrorism will also be seen differently in the future. Will it become just another group that did not tolerate US global hegemony? Will the insurgency become just another group wanting liberation from US occupation?
William Blum also recognizes how now and in the past, semantics has played a role in characterizing the “other”. In his speech, he comments
“During the cold war, Washington officials of course couldn't say that they were intervening to block social change, so they called it fighting communism, fighting a communist conspiracy, and of course fighting for freedom and democracy. Just like now the White House can't say that it invaded Iraq to expand the empire, or for the oil, or for the corporations, so it says it's fighting terrorism. During the cold war, the word "communist" was used exceptionally loosely, just as the word "terrorist" is used these days; or "al Qaeda" -- almost every individual or group that Washington wants to stigmatize is charged with being a member of al Qaeda…. It's just more word games to dazzle you and throw you off the scent.”
Sources: Background information on apartheid from the appendix of: Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid (New York, Houghton Mifflin Company 2003) and lectures by Caroline Elkins for Historical Study A-21: Africa and Africans: The Making of a Continent in the Modern World, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005.
-Quotes on apartheid South Africa from Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid (New York, Houghton Mifflin Company 2003), 62, 64-65, 74.
-Colonel R. Meinertzhagen, Kenya Diary: 1902-1906 (London, Oliver and Boyd Ltd. 1957), 32.
-President George W. Bush, “Full Text: Bush Speech Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln” Washington Post, May 1, 2003 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2627-2003May1
- President George W. Bush, “Full text: George Bush's speech to the American Enterprise Institute,” Guardian Unlimited February 27, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,904086,00.html
-William Blum, “War against terrorism or expansion of the American Empire?” given on October 28, 2005 at Carleton University in Ottowa http://members.aol.com/bblum6/speech.htm
-CBS News, “The Killings in Haditha” 60 Minutes September 2, 2007 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/15/60minutes/main2574973.shtml
