[throwaway210222]

> It takes a lot of people contributing to uphold it [Apartheid].

Actually it really, really didn't.

Students of history will know that National Party (which assembled Grand Apartheid and ruled from 1948 to 1994) merrily gerrymandered the entire country on a scale seldom seem.

1. liberal (more English) areas like those near Durban were magically made part of conservative (more Afrikaans) farming areas hundreds of kilometres away. A good example is the affluent enclaves of Kloof and Hillcrest in Durban were somehow part of the [at the time] extremely conservative Voortrekker town of Greytown a mere 150km away;

2. a further law deemed that the rural votes in each such Frankenstein voting district counted 100%, the distant urban votes a mere 75%

3. this happened everywhere and ensured a massive majority for the National Party in every province;

4. there was by design - and in the most literal sense - no way for the white population to vote themselves out of Apartheid. It was so successful that for many years their was only ONE liberal opposition member of parliament [Houghton, Johannesburg].

I understand details are tough and cloud the cartoon good-vs-evil polemic you were no doubt exposed to. I guess one does get more dopamine from wild sweeping statements that reinforce and display your own ignorance and bigotry. I wouldn't use my real name either in posts like yours.

For the casual observer: let this be a cautionary tale when gerrymandering is attempted in your own democracy.

[PS. Southern Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - had a different, but equally effective voting mechanism to suppress the growth of a liberal opposition. For another day ]

[yardie]

This is very good rebuttal. I didn't even consider the gerrymandering that went on in the 40s. You've exposed a blindness I didn't know.

> the cartoon good-vs-evil polemic you were no doubt exposed to

I was a child before apartheid was abolished. And growing up in the US I knew it was wrong and knew any government that supported it was wrong. It seems the BDS campaigns were effective on small kids of that time. Honestly, who would justify apartheid.

But based on the casual conversation with a few South Africans of that era I knew some actively benefited from it. A memorable one being with a soon retired office manager and ex SA military who had some ideas on what he would like to do to Nelson Mandela. How things were better before the ANC took over; kind of "the trains running on time" mindset.

I went to school in the US. We were told slavery was unpopular but politically immovable. We were also told the civil war wasn't about slavery. Turns out it was popular and the war was absolutely about slavery. So it does color my opinion when others tell me something unethical was unpopular but politically immovable.

[mcguire]

Speaking as an older adult male from the south of the United States, I'm afraid one of my eyebrows was creeping upward while I read this. It's not the first time I have seen this kind of argument.

Don't get me wrong, I am sure the vast majority of South Africans, English and Afrikaans, are decent enough people. It's really just that the "it wasn't all of us, it was those really bad people over there" is a part of the whole Lost Cause thing. Sorry.

[zizee]

So anyone living under a corrupt/violent regime are guilty of that regimes actions? Neat.

[teachrdan]

I never thought I'd see an impassioned defense of apartheid South Africa on Hacker News. But here we are.

So the question is, did "a whole lot" of white people uphold a system of white supremacy in South Africa? Literally the only honest answer is, "Of course they did."

"Although the majority of whites supported apartheid, some 20 percent did not." That's from Wikipedia as cited below. If you have an actual source to support your absurd claim that the majority of white South Africans opposed Apartheid, I'd love to see it. The gerrymandering you mention at great (distracting?) length could have been real, and would have had nothing to do with upholding apartheid, which had the support of about 80% of voters.

Literally the entire state apparatus was dedicated to supporting apartheid, particularly the police (which kept non-whites from moving freely in their own country without passes), the courts (which punished non-whites for transgressions against the white state), and the military (which violently attacked and killed non-whites who could not be controlled by the police and courts). And all this in a country that was never more than 20% white in modern times.

> I understand details are tough and cloud the cartoon good-vs-evil polemic you were no doubt exposed to.

In the case of apartheid, good vs evil is exactly what it is. The white apartheid government, which had the support of 80% of white voters, was evil. And all the specious detail about gerrymandering won't make that go away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

[yardie]

In the TAs defense the National Party ran on a platform of apartheid in the 1940s did lose the popular vote but won the parliament through gerrymandering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_South_African_general_ele...

[throwaway210222]

At the risk of exposing myself to some more sanctimonious insults, let me complete the half-told story here by showing - with the requested sources [1] that when white South Africans were actually offered a truly level-field, one-man-one-vote referendum as to whether to end Apartheid in 1990…

the vast majority (> 80%) of eligible whites turned out and voted 68% in favour - with the gerry-mandered districts in my original post voting 85% in favour.

Thus supporting my original explanation that a cynically engineered voting system is incredibly advantageous to the incumbent and needs far fewer supporters than is often believed to maintain the status quo over a long period.

Sadly, some people just stopped thinking after the Spitting Image jingle.

And since its a mandatory part of the weird I-never-thought-I'd-see kubuki theatre on HN: to remove all possible doubt, Apartheid had no redeeming characteristics, was a completely evil idea, and only a fucking moron would defend it. Sigh

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_South_African_apartheid_r...

[throwaway210222]

> I never thought I'd see an impassioned defense of apartheid South Africa on Hacker News. But here we are.

Good news mate - you still haven't.

But nice try