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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

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

throwaway210222 5y ago
> 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
yardie 5y ago
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_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_South_African_general_ele...
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  Not only that, but the National Party were so rabid that in 1948 D.F Malan - their new prime minister - proposed in an actual parliament speech to deprive white English-speaking citizens of the vote. God alone knows how they were going to enforce that in a completely multi-lingual society. Strange times. A warning to us all.
throwaway210222 5y ago
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_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_South_African_apartheid_r...
- foldr 5y ago
  >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. This stat seems to support teacherdan's point. Even at a time where it had become clear that the apartheid system could not continue (regardless of whether or not people supported it in principle), almost a third of whites votes to maintain it. In other words, a whole lot of white people supported apartheid right up to the bitter end, and that is one of the reasons that it was possible for it to continue for so long. Also, the referendum appears to have been in 1992, not 1990.
  - throwaway210222 5y ago
    s/1990/1992/ - thanks. Of course a hell of a lot of people supported it - most of them now long dead. [This mandatory prelude is so tedious] However, as I have shown, clearly not enough that the ruling National Party were prepared to trust their own people with continuing to vote for it. An the 1992 referendum proved their suspicions to be correct! Hence the outrageous - from the start - manipulation. If you think banal voting manipulation isn't as big a deal as the evil that lurks in mens' hearts then ask yourself - now that Iran has an Islamic democracy (they do hold elections) how does the current/next generation ever return to a secular democracy via the ballot - if that is what they want? As as in Apartheid South Africa, enormous effort has been made by the initial true believers to prevent it from ever happening. I could be wrong.

throwaway210222 5y ago

> 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

yardie 5y ago

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

throwaway210222 5y ago
Not only that, but the National Party were so rabid that in 1948 D.F Malan - their new prime minister - proposed in an actual parliament speech to deprive white English-speaking citizens of the vote. God alone knows how they were going to enforce that in a completely multi-lingual society. Strange times. A warning to us all.

throwaway210222 5y ago

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_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_South_African_apartheid_r...

foldr 5y ago
>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. This stat seems to support teacherdan's point. Even at a time where it had become clear that the apartheid system could not continue (regardless of whether or not people supported it in principle), almost a third of whites votes to maintain it. In other words, a whole lot of white people supported apartheid right up to the bitter end, and that is one of the reasons that it was possible for it to continue for so long. Also, the referendum appears to have been in 1992, not 1990.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  s/1990/1992/ - thanks. Of course a hell of a lot of people supported it - most of them now long dead. [This mandatory prelude is so tedious] However, as I have shown, clearly not enough that the ruling National Party were prepared to trust their own people with continuing to vote for it. An the 1992 referendum proved their suspicions to be correct! Hence the outrageous - from the start - manipulation. If you think banal voting manipulation isn't as big a deal as the evil that lurks in mens' hearts then ask yourself - now that Iran has an Islamic democracy (they do hold elections) how does the current/next generation ever return to a secular democracy via the ballot - if that is what they want? As as in Apartheid South Africa, enormous effort has been made by the initial true believers to prevent it from ever happening. I could be wrong.