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Code that helped end Apartheid

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358 points impish9208 | 1 comments | 18 Oct 24 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Simulacra ◴[18 Oct 24 13:57 UTC] No.41879526[source]▶
I think it was the fishing trip with Mandela and then-Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk in 1990 that ended apartheid. Specifically when one of de Klerk's people got a hook in his hand, and a Mandela person cleaned and bandaged it. After that trip Apartheid was finally broken.
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bdndndndbve ◴[18 Oct 24 14:40 UTC] No.41879877[source]▶
What actually ended apartheid was international pressure and the white government's fear of a civil war. Economically isolated and vastly outnumbered, the apartheid government would have been completely removed from the country and had their property seized.

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.

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TheBruceHimself ◴[18 Oct 24 15:59 UTC] No.41880625[source]▶
While it certainly involved a lot of people doing the right thing, that peaceful transition was absolutely incredible and I really do think that's why non-South Africans look on Mandela so fondly. If you'd told me everything about the Apartheid right up until its collapse and then said "Ok, the ANC basically win, gain power, what do you think happens?", I'd struggle to think of any scenario where there wasn't incredible bloodshed or upheaval to the point of ruining lives beyond measure. There was so much bad blood. You'd assume that at least the people who were in charge, the people who ran the show, surely would've saw a grim end. Not even property seizures? . Somehow, Mandela led an effort that just rose above that. He probably prevented a lot of pain just by not giving into such things.

To me, the peaceful transition is the achievement. It is the amazing part of it.

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1. pessimizer ◴[18 Oct 24 20:29 UTC] No.41883174[source]▶
He essentially preserved the economic/racial balance of apartheid, while he and the people around him became the new insiders. He started hanging out with the Clintons and giving diamonds to Naomi Campbell.

> 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.