Non-white “citizens of bantustans”

A white person eats a ripe pineapple, a black person eats a pineapple soaked with rot,

The white work is done by a white person, the black work is done by a black person.

V. Mayakovsky

When the author was a young pioneer in the Land of the Soviets (“Oh, it’s good to live in a Soviet country!”), then in the Young Leninist and Pioneer truth newspapers, that were mandatory for subscription for all pioneers and schoolchildren, he had to read ideologically angry articles on the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was difficult to learn anything about South Africa, as if it did not exist, but they often wrote about apartheid. Damned capitalists offended blacks there. They were not considered humans. Today, reading the printed texts of Russian bloggers and ordinary citizens, the author begins to understand that apartheid is possible without capitalists. And not only in South Africa. Why did the author come to this conclusion? Let’s try to figure it out.

In general, apartheid is the ideology and state policy of the dominant white minority regime during 1948-1989 in the Republic of South Africa. In other words, discrimination of the population on racial and ethnic and cultural grounds.

The white minority of South Africa, in order to justify monopoly rights to exploit the country’s resources and retain political power, established a segregation regime, that is, the strengthening of racial barriers in all areas of society. The ideologues of apartheid argued that each race has its own, predetermined historical path of development and way of life. And the assimilation of one race by another is a harmful and destructive phenomenon.

At an early stage in the introduction of apartheid, the laws On the prohibition of mixed marriages (1949) and On the fight against immorality (1950), as well as the Population Registration Act (1950) were passed. These documents forbade intermarriage and sexual relations (except for previously concluded marriages) between “whites” and “non-whites”.

The population was officially divided into several racial groups that differed in legal status and social status: whites, Asians (descendants of guest workers from British India and Malays), ethnic Bushmen and Hottentots, mulattoes and blacks. On the territory of South Africa, 10 bantustans (autonomous territorial entities for the black population of South Africa) were formed, four of which (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, Ciskei) were granted formal independence, not recognized by any state except South Africa.

As a result of the application of apartheid norms, the majority of the South African population was reduced to a powerless state. The colored population (Bantu, Indians, mestizos) did not have the civil rights that whites had. For example, 23 million blacks did not have the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

Now – why did the author remember the times and countries that were chronologically and geographically distant from our homeland?

Two pieces of news left the author confused and depressed. As is customary since Soviet times, at the beginning of the new year, a joyful message from two Russian cities spread in the media: 25-year-old Venera from Tuva in St. Petersburg gave birth to a boy, and a Kyrgyz woman Elnura in Samara gave birth to a girl. In such cases, a joyful message usually ends with an editorial wish for the health of the mother and child and an official-patriotic assurance about what a happy life they will have in our country. But, as they say, something went wrong…

A wave of … “discontent”, is not the right word, came on the authors of the messages, on the official local authorities, on the women after labor and non-white citizens of the Russian Federation. A hurricane of hatred blew up! “Narrow-eyed h … and, arrogant blo..ck…, creatures, I hate you rats, cockroaches!” Non-whites are accused of taking jobs and their children flooded playgrounds. That they are pushing out the true Petersburgers, the descendants of the heroic blockade survivors. That they are just birthing machines. That they are indirectly to blame for the death of purebred blue-eyed Samarans near Makeevka… It is difficult (and disgusting) to enumerate all the sophisticated curses and swearing.

I can imagine what kind of reciprocal feelings among non-white citizens of the Russian Federation generate such posts on Russian forums. There is one more personal moment… The fact is that the author has an old photograph of his mother with a newborn “author” in her arms on the shelf of the bookcase. It is made a long time ago, in a maternity hospital, in the traditional manner for such photos: a happy woman after labor demonstrates a tightly swaddled, freshly produced baby. So – the author’s mother and Elnura from Samara are very similar in portrait: the same broad face with an expression of kindness and tenderness, the same slanting eyes, smooth soft skin, dark hair … And involuntarily the author has to try on all these evil epithets on himself … so his mother is also a “narrow-eyed ch … ka”?

That’s where we live in our Great Russia.

Just as eloquent is the example of the Tuvan Venera. In fact, Tuva is part of the Siberian Federal District, a subject of the Russian Federation. That is, this young woman in St. Petersburg is just as at home as in Kyzyl. And after reading the comments on this event from Russians from St. Petersburg and Samara, one gets the impression that we live in South Africa in the 70s. There, the non-white population was allowed to appear in the areas for whites only with special passes to work, and after work they had to get out to their bantustans for a night. It turns out that our “advanced intellectuals” and patriotic “descendants of the blockade survivors” are, in fact, racists, followers of apartheid, that was condemned all over the world 60 years ago? If they had tried to write such things in the countries of the “rotten, capitalist” West, they would have been immediately brought into such a lawsuit that it would not have seemed a little. Any lawyer would seize on such a case – a court decision in favor of a non-white would be guaranteed!

And from the point of view of a purely common political science, the issue is solved quite simply! If for the Slavic, “Great Russian” population of the country, non-whites are perceived as strangers, then either let them go and allow them to create nation-states, or take for granted their right to self-determination and national liberation struggle. It is interesting that international law here is in full solidarity with “common political science”: if you are not satisfied, if you do not love or cannot ensure equality, let them go.

Everyone understands everything – both the Tajiks who shot their fellows soldiers at the training ground for blasphemy, and the Caucasians who mock the Slavs in the army, and the Tatar Ramil Shamsutdinov, who did not want to endure humiliation and killed 8 soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation … There are a lot of examples of hatred on national and racial grounds, wherever you look. And what do you think, dear reader, how many chances does such a country have to continue “living as a single human hostel”? According to the author – not really!