Quote Originally Posted by Strike For The South View Post
Screw it, I'll do it now.

The British and Boers were mutually antagonistic to eachother. This culminated in the Boer wars. I would like to see how Boer treatment equates with that of Africans considering the Boers were able to settle up country, out of the cape and aparthied is the brain child of the Boers. The war was brutal but it was not a systematic dienfrnachisement like that of aprthied. South Africas early history is all about British-Boer power brokering. The Boers were equal in that sense.

The British cape colony extended voting rights to civilized property holding blacks, and by all accounts treated them with much less parentelism than the Boers. After the union the British and Boers came together. Due to some brilliant political manuvering by Smuts he was able to keep the more hardline Boers and Brits together and after the second war Malan was able to rally the groups around the symbolism of white Africa.

Aparthied was the bastard brain child of the Calvanist themed Dutch reformed church and it's archeticts are almost wholly Boers themselves. It is the price Brits paid for alliance during the war and remaining in the commonwealth (until the republic of course) Boers also held allot of the land, and the Brits ever being the pragmatists realized they would have to work with them.

On the other hand the Africans were seperated and marginilized to the worst farmland (in part helped by traditional African chiefs whom saw their traditonal power being chipped away by the ANCs calls for democratazation)

It has become en vouge for the self styled polmec to point to high living standards of South Africa and equate it with the benovlence of white rule. Completely ignoring the speical status and lucrative trade contracts South Africa was able to obtain from the UK and later the US as a peice in the later cold war.

So yea the Boers and the Brits fought a war but they were also the most politically enfranchised groups in Southern Africa. The Brits may have killed their fair share of Boers but in peacetime it was more haggiling than jackboots

Your source is a peice of trash
The historic narrative with the British/Boer power haggling doesn't change the fact that the Boers were rounded up into what were effectively concentration camps and suffered mass casualties.

I think that it is strange that you can say black South Africans were "treated worse than dogs" with the conditions they had under Apartheid, and then with a straight face tell me that for all the Boers endured it was "more haggling than jackboots".

Also despite your emphasis on Apartheid being a brainchild of the Boers, I don't think I ever suggested otherwise. If it was meant to be implicit that this was somehow denouncing the Boers when I've been defending them, well then it's a bit redundant as a point since I was defending Apartheid itself.

Regarding the high quality of life of black South Africans, I don't believe I ever attributed that to white rule. My point was simply that for them to have enjoyed such a relatively good standard of life, they can't have been treated that badly.

Of course financial growth can go hand in hand with political oppression. But when it comes to political rights, like I said blacks had their homelands where they had their own political system and even defence forces. They were actually recognised as sovereign nations by the South African government. Although only a couple like Swaziland and Lesotho happened to be recognised by the British.

So the only point really addressing an example of black oppression is the one about the 1913 Native Land Act. Now, I know history isn't all, well... black and white. That Act did store up a lot of problems for black South Africans given the rapid population growth they would experience. And the white government failed to keep their promises to the black people to expand the borders they could hold land in.

But I don't think the intent was so malicious when the Act was passed, it was I believe actually supported by some black politicians and liberal white ones. The 7% figure people like to throw about is very misleading given that a large portion of the landmass was desert or semi-desert. Not to mention the fact that it was only actually enforced in the Orange, Transvaal and Natal areas (since it was unconstitutional in Cape-Colony).

Maybe it's just so simple that some people miss it, but the reality of inequality in South Africa is surely just down to the vast difference in the level of advancement that the different peoples in the area had. Black South Africans live in shacks just like the rest of black Africans white rule or not. The Boers brought civlization and they continue to enjoy it.

Which is not to say that some level of oppression did not take place. It looks like a tough topic to me, it's quite complicated stuff. But from what I've gathered so far it seems like the wickedness of the Apartheid regime is quite notably overstated.