The Link Between Apartheid and Economic Inequality

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Upon reflection of my time in South Africa I can clearly say that the vestiges of Apartheid are still indelibly upon the native people of South Africa.   At the end of the era in which the struggle for racial equality reached its peak (around 1990) the Afrikaaner government called the ANC a terrorist organization.  The man who would lead the ANC was jailed on Robbin Island breaking big stones into little stones. 

One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.  The reality is that Nelson Mandela was a bomb thrower before he was the president of the ANC and asked for Truth and Reconciliation. 

The United States has had a similar history.  Thankfully, the civil rights movement here was non-violent.  However, the generational damage to people of color is deep.  Can you believe the civil rights act was only passed in 1964?  There is still much work to be done.  The election of a black president has not put us in a post-racial era.  If anything, we are dealing with a similar kind of backlash that happened after reconstruction in the post civil war period. 

What we are seeing unfolding in Palestine is also apartheid.  And in my way of thinking it is the worst kind of apartheid because it comes on the heels of one of the greatest atrocities in human history -- the holocaust.  Israelis ought to know better based on their history. 

Germany treated jewish people badly because they were deemed a security threat. 
South Africa treated blacks and colored people badly because they were deemed a security threat.  
The US treats blacks and people of color badly to this day because they are deemed a security threat. 
Israel treats Palestinians badly because they are deemed a security threat. 

One has to ask why this madness keeps happening? 

One has only to look at income inequality and the answer becomes abundantly clear.  Humans can be very generous if they want to be ... or they can act in the most heinous ways. 

All forms of apartheid, in my humble opinion, are myriad forms of selfishness cloaked under the giant umbrella of "security."   And by selfishness I mean the unwillingness to share economic opportunity. 

For 300 years Europeans and Americans enslaved black people to generate enormous wealth on plantations.
The English (and then the Afrikaaners afterward) used apartheid to separate people from their land and self sufficiency in order to get them into wage slavery. Today the average wage there is $1.50 per hour. 
Germans were sold a bill of goods (after the treaty of Versailles) that the Jews were the source of their economic problems when in fact it was just garden variety greed and expansionism from WWI that caused the economic collapse of Germany in the 1920's and 1930's. 

Here's a question: how desperate do you think a group of people has to be to start a war they know they will lose just to bring the attention of the world to their dire and extremely tragic living situation?   

The queries we could be engaged in at this moment in history are: 

• Why don't the people of the world demand an end to Palestinian apartheid and boycott Israel like South Africa was boycotted? 
• Why is Gaza completely and utterly dependent on outside aid to function? 
• Why doesn't Gaza have its own seaports or airports? 
• Why is the average monthly salary in Gaza $250 while in Tel Aviv it is $5000? 
• Why doesn't Gaza control its own fuel, water and electricity? 
• Are 27,000 deaths enough for Israel to feel secure?  If not, how many? 

If there is war, there is isolation and economic depravation.  There is a link between apartheid and economic inequality and the link is selfishness and the inability to see other people as human beings with the same hopes, dreams, fears and longings that all humans share.

~ Joseph Olejak