My understanding is Mandela was a respected leader who was willing to play ball and facilitate a peaceful transition where the white leadership got to keep all their property. That's why there's still massive economic inequality in SA today. Not to say Mandela wasn't admirable or that he didn't suffer, but it was a conscious choice to avoid outright military conflict at the cost of preserving an implicit racial hierarchy.
Take North Korea, say, another extremely nasty rogue nuclear-armed state. Even if there was a level of pressure that the international community could put on North Korea that would collapse it (it's already pretty far down the 'autarky' route), you can see that countries would be unwilling to go quite _that_ far, because there's no viable opposition and it would likely collapse in a very dangerous and ugly way.
To me, the peaceful transition is the achievement. It is the amazing part of it.
Though to be fair none of these had happened prior to apartheid.
South Africa also has affirmative action.
In fact, there are more race based laws in South Africa currently than during Apartheid.
https://freemarketfoundation.com/race-law-in-south-africa-30...
Now maybe you're talking about violent wealth redistribution. That generally doesn't work. It results in collapse and everyone gets poorer.
Zimbabwe bring the prime most recent example.
> To me, the peaceful transition is the achievement. It is the amazing part of it.
Apartheid was "peaceful" enough. The problem is the lack of "transition." The same people are still living in the shacks their parents lived in.
> that's why non-South Africans look on Mandela so fondly.
Non-South Africans had a lot of cognitive dissonance because they did business with South Africa and they didn't like what that said about themselves morally. The end of Apartheid gave them the license to continue that business guilt-free. It's like how sharecropping debt peonage to the same plantations that people were enslaved in and the leasing of convicts who had been sentenced to decade-long sentences for the crime of vagrancy let Americans feel better about how much they benefited from slavery.
There wasn't any international pressure. There was a withdrawal of the continual and embarrassing support from Britain and the US, the only people other than Israel who hadn't been overly troubled by Apartheid. First from Britain, because as bad as she was, Thatcher was nauseated by Apartheid, then from the US who would have had to actively intervene (as they are right now in a similar context) in order to preserve Apartheid. This was only 25 years after the US had ended its own legal Apartheid.
The US political class was largely indifferent to Apartheid (aside from periodic expressions of mild disapproval of both sides and condemnation of Communist-backed terrorism), so when they saw how the wind was blowing within SA ("fear of a civil war"), and that individual domestic politicians could be damaged or gain politically through their actions towards SA, the US supported the "coup" (as always) so they could keep doing business without interruption.
So I'd instead say popular pressure among citizens of the US and Britain against their own politicians, and the resulting withdrawal of Anglo-American support. Everything else but "international pressure" I agree with totally.
First, there was significant pressure on de Klerk from Western governments. Thatcher told him to release Mandela, for example. The reason she did not support sanctions is because they would likely harm South Africans for no reason...this was justified by later events. As pressure on de Klerk would have made it a lot harder to negotiate with Mandela freely.
Two, de Klerk became leader and his first action was to try to form a path to reconciliation. Mandela played his part by abandoning terrorism (I am not sure why this is disputed...this is what Mandela said about himself). de Klerk's position was, however, not particularly easy because whilst everyone acknowledged that the system had to change, it wasn't clear how to get to that point.
Three, the article implies all white South Africans were racist...this is not true. This assumption is not why apartheid happened either. de Klerk was not Botha. The US experience dominates the world, the assumption that everyone in the NP was racist is not accurate...let alone saying everyone of a certain race must have been racist.
Four, there has been massive upheaval. The economy of South Africa has collapsed, and the ANC did seize property under the auspices of BEE. Large companies were told they had to hand shares to ANC members or they would be shut down, these companies then took out loans to buy back their shares. The current President was a friend of Mandela, union leader, he was then gifted hundreds of millions in shares...that is how he became wealthy (and, if you can believe it, he is the "anti-corruption" guy).
Five, the reason there wasn't bloodshed because there was a transitional period. This was agreed by both parties, this is why Mandela wins plaudits for recognizing that NP had legitimate concerns that had to be taken into account to move forward. But...this still hasn't stopped the country collapsing.
Six, the argument that there must still be racism because of economic inequality is a uniquely US take. The ANC expropriated wealth en masse, the majority went to party insiders, and there has been almost no interest in serious economic policy-making because...the country is majority black, and the ANC are the black party. The reason people are poor is because there is no education and so they have no skills, crime is also out of control...this doesn't have anything to do with someone else not being poor (and btw, almost everyone in South Africa is now poor, the currency has collapsed, everything has collapsed, there is so much corruption that electricity cuts frequently...yes, those white people again though...this is why Malema is popular).
Seven, it was reasonable for de Klerk to be wary. What happened to Rhodesia? Everyone has this idea that everything would be fine, just trust Mandela...okay, there is a country next door where you saw whites being slaughtered en masse when Zanu-PF took power. The country has still been ruined, but that didn't happen at least.
If you say that you are going to take large amounts of other people's assets, there is no way to run that process and not have huge amounts of corruption.
The problem has been: very high crime, heavily mismanaged infrastructure (Eskom is collapsing due to corruption, ANC politicians were taking tons of money from contracts), no investment in education, and so a population with no skills. I am not sure what wealth redistribution fixes...it has been tried repeatedly. It is like people thinking that a $1m loan from your father turns you into a different person...no, most people will end up wasting that money too.
In particular:
- There's no racial segregation laws; an Arab-Israeli can travel anywhere a Jewish-Israeli can. In fact, Arabic is an officially recognized language by the state of Israel, and throughout the country, every public service has signs in Arabic alongside Hebrew.
- Jews are not a minority in Israel, they comprise 78% of the population.
That is simply not true. E.g. The city of Hebron is segregated by religion - see https://youtu.be/Z42HhaywhGQ?si=bTBhEFi5lgBJQX9v
According to Human Rights Watch[1], Amnesty International[2], and many other human rights organizations, the regime in Israel today is in fact recognized as a system of apartheid. Mandela himself shown a lot of solidarity to the palestinian cause[3].
[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2022/02/qa-israel...
[3] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/nelson-mandela-30-years-p...
So demanding that settlers who illegally occupied land is “ethnic cleansing”? And you seem to be ceding my point and agreeing that it is apartheid, but justified.
> The Israeli government is obviously not perfect, but Arab citizens of Israel are generally treated way better than Jewish citizens of Muslim countries.
Whataboutism and irrelevant.
One comment ago you were saying it’s “”Palestinian apartheid”, now you are saying that it may be apartheid but it’s justified and so what, other countries are worse. I’m sorry but this I’m not going to engage any further with this type of discourse.