Writes: Prof. Ali Mazrui
Compared to the rest of the continent, the story of South Africa is a play in four acts on the stage of history. It is a play about South Africa’s triumph, its emerging leadership, and its hazards as a new continental power.
Put in another way, South Africa’s impact on Pan-Africanism has included at least four distinctive roles. These roles are what might be called the four ‘v’s of South Africa’s destiny. One is V for Victim — South Africa as a victim and racial martyr; V for Victor — the country’s triumphant success in avoiding a large-scale racial war, and instead establishing the most progressive democracy on the continent.
V for Vanguard — South Africa in a continental leadership role, eager to open up new horizons, and V for Villain — the country at a risk of becoming a villain, with the potential of evolving as a regional hegemony.
The country’s tragic suffering during apartheid was a resource for Pan-Africanism. The martyrdom of the people of colour generated passions among black people worldwide. Events like Sharpeville and the brutalities of Soweto, especially in 1976, struck a powerful chord of sympathy.
From 1948 to the 1990s, South Africa had evolved as the most systematic and institutionalised form of racism in history. The country’s martyrs included Nelson Mandela in prison and Steve Biko in his grave.
Apartheid also strengthened trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism and Afro-Arab relations. The idea that White and Black people needed separate homelands was akin to the Zionist idea that Arabs and Jews needed separate homelands.
Bantustans in South Africa were the equivalent of the Occupied Territories in Palestine, separate and brutally unequal. Both Zionism and macro-apartheid were forms of ethnic cleansing. Africans and Arabs were brought together in the joint struggle, against the background of nuclear collaboration between Israel and apartheid South Africa.
Most of us expected a racial war before apartheid could be dislodged. But a great Faustian bargain was struck between the two races. The Whites said to the Blacks: “You take the Crown and we will keep the Jewels.”
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