During the pandemic, I dedicated myself to reading at least one book a week, and no other book has opened my eyes to the effects of apartheid than the current book I'm reading by the South African comedian, Trevor Noah, titled "Born a Crime." Here are some of the thing from the book which I found very intriguing and thought I'd share them with you.
As you read the excerpts below, I can almost guarantee you that you may not help but draw a parallel between the former white apartheid system in South Africa and the former white apartheid system wearing a black agame face in Ethiopia.
"The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the over-whelming majority to turn on each other. Apart hate, is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all.
At the time, black South Africans outnumbered white South Africans nearly five to one, yet we were divided into different tribes with different languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda, Ndebele, Tsonga, Pedi, and more. Long before apartheid existed these tribal factions clashed and warred with one another. Then white rule used that animosity to divide and conquer. Then these groups were given different levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at odds.
Apartheid was perfect racism. It took centuries to develop, starting all the way back in 1652 when the Dutch East India Company landed at the Cape of Good Hope and established a trading colony. To impose white rule, the Dutch colonists went to war with the natives, ultimately developed a set of laws to subjugate and enslave them. When the British took over the Cape colony, the descendants of the original Dutch settlers trekked inland and developed their own language, culture, and customs, eventually becoming their own people, the Afrikaners - the white tribe of Africa.
As the British empire fell, the Afrikaner rose up to claim South Africa as his rightful inheritance. To maintain power in the face of the country's rising and restless black majority, the government realized they needed a newer and more robust set of tools. They set up a formal commission to go out and study institutionalized racism all over the world. They went to Australia. They went to the Netherlands. They went to America. They saw what worked, what didn't. Then they came back and published a report, and the government used that knowledge to build the most advanced system of racial oppression known to man. (Remember the TPLF manifesto replete with satanic verses, which was later introduced as a "constitution"?)
Apartheid was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control. (Remember the አንድ-ለአምስት የወያኔ የስለላ ድር?) In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group at the same time. That was apartheid.
Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says "We are the same." A language barrier says "We are different." The architects of apartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu schools, children were only taught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we'd fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were different.(Remember: ብሔር፣ ብሔረሰቦችና ሕዝቦች በቋንቋቸው የመማር፣ የመዳኘት፣.... የራስን ዕድል በራስ የመወሰን መብት ....)
Brilliant!The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite: convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it's easily tricked. If you're racist and you meet someone who doesn't look like you, the fact that he can't speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions: He's different, less intelligent. A brilliant scientist can come over the border from Mexico to live in America, but if he speaks in broken English, people say, "Eh, I don't trust this guy."
"But he's a scientist."
"In Mexican science, may be. I don't trust him."
However, if the person who doesn't look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code. "Wait, wait," your mind says, "the racist code says if he doesn't look like me he isn't like me, but the language code says if he speaks like me he....is like me? Something is off here. I can't figure this out."