Any nation, people, or organisation has a range of 'weapons' at its disposal, ranging from those of obvious and deadly purpose, to the more subtle ones that most people do not recognise as 'weapons'. Few think of attempts to reduce, restrict or damage another countries economy as a 'weapon', or as an act of war. Yet, arguably, it is both.
Those who call for 'economic sanctions' or 'boycotts' or 'disinvestment' do so in the belief that these are alternatives to sending in the military to change a country. They fondly believe that their 'sanctions' offer an alternative to war, but is it? Is it not a weapon deployed in exactly the same manner as deploying a Trident missile would be? OK, the visible damage is not going to be as great, and perhaps you won't kill several hundred thousand people in achieving your objective - to change a regime or a national culture - with 'sanctions/boycotts/disinvestments'. Or will you?
The unpleasant truth is that an economic blockade of a country can be just as damaging - over a longer term admittedly - as a short sharp 'little' shooting match. While bullets kill people, sanctions destroy livelihoods, they destroy opportunities, and they create hardships for the very ordinary people those who call for them claim to want to help. So those who want to impose them are, in the long term, likely to cause as much hardship as a 'hot' war will do. Why do I say this?
I have several reasons, one being that I have lived in a country under 'international sanctions'. The most observable effect was the steady increase in unemployment. Disinvestment was something of a two edged sword, many companies who did, walked away having 'sold' their holdings in local companies which simply found other sources of capital (a lot of it ironically, from the Far East and 'Communist' countries), while others simply pulled out, abandoning massively expensive infrastructures and leaving thousands unemployed in an already saturated employment market. Crime rates climbed steeply, with violent crimes such as murder and violent assaults becoming everyday.
And all the while, those imposing the sanctions talked of bringing the country to its knees economically in order to impose their vision of what the country should look like. When I had the opportunity to challenge someone who was a determined and very vocal advocate of sanctions, boycotts and disinvestment, they admitted it was a 'weapon' to be used 'for the good of the oppressed'. But when I pointed out that the 'oppressed' were suffering more than anyone else, the answer astonished me; "Well, some must suffer hardship for the good of the majority and the future."
Quite, as long as it is not the 'advocate' who suffers.
A flip through history reveals a number of interesting things about past 'sanctions' campaigns. Perhaps the most telling is the example of the sanctions against Japan in the 1930s. Intended to 'damage' Japan's ability to sustain its war in Manchuria, it actually convinced the Japanese that their only option was to go to war in order to secure the resources they needed to sustain their economy and population. Some historians still argue that the US policy may well have been deliberately designed to provoke exactly that response. At the very least, something those who advocate sanctions, boycotts or disinvestment should consider is that the response almost invariably invoked in the people on the receiving end, is a hardening of attitudes.
That can be seen today in Iran, in Russia, in Zimbabwe and in Israel.
Then there is the question of what happens once you have succeeded in destroying someones economy. Does it produce the happy smiling face you wanted to see? Or does it produce a failing state, struggling to stay afloat and unable to pay its way in the world economy? If some recent examples are anything to go by, the latter seems to be more likely. Iraq, having had sanctions imposed which ruined its currency and internal economy, then had 'regime change' imposed by a war, is a basket case. Even without the IS lunatics and all the other factions vying for power, it is a country in ruins because its economy is ruined - and it is likely to stay that way for a very long time.
Zimbabwe's economy all but collapsed toward the end of the long UDI government, so when Mugabe came to power, those who love this form of warfare, thought there would be a 'magic' recovery. There wasn't. The AID they poured in was stolen, then the banks were grabbed by Mugabe's thugs, and then the farms. Now? It is a subsistence economy at best. The same thing almost happened in South Africa, though it was better placed to survive, and the economy is at least now stable - but the corruption and white collar crime, coupled with a few other problems, is crippling any rebuilding of the economy. Yet another 'triumph' for the sanctions, boycotts and disinvestment advocates to rejoice over.
Sanctions/Economic Blockades do work. Again, if we consider history, we can see many examples. Britain's blockade of France during the Napoleonic wars crippled France's economy. Napoleon's 'Continental Blockade' of closed ports and trade bans in Northern Europe almost destroyed the British economy by smashing the Baltic Trade - worth over 42 million Pounds Sterling in 1809 and only 5 million Pounds Sterling five years later. The dramatic loss of market share almost destroyed the British economy in the middle of the war. The British blockade of German trade in 1914 - 18 smashed the German economy, and millions of Germans starved (so did millions of other Europeans caught between the 'Great Powers', what one might call 'collateral damage' today), and gave rise (as some always hope will happen when they demand sanctions) to mass civil unrest in German towns and cities. Communists seized town halls and other government buildings, but more crucially, the sanctions/blockade coupled with the demands of the Allies in the Versailles treaty, resulted in the rise of the National Socialists as a counter to the Communists.
Again and again we see the result of destroying an economy to compel regime change, and each time we see a situation resulting that is, if anything, worse than the first state. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are few and very far between.
Those who call for sanctions, boycotts or disinvestment against a country need to think very carefully about what they are doing. In essence they are declaring war on another country, another people, and they are deploying a very dangerous Weapon of Mass Disruption with the deliberate intent of destroying a people's ability to feed and house themselves.
It often strikes me as ironic that those who always advocate the deployment of this weapon are usually also anti-war, anti-military, but none I have ever spoken to seem to see the contradiction.
Showing posts with label South Africa.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Africa.. Show all posts
Wednesday, 26 November 2014
Friday, 6 December 2013
Reflections on an Era
The death of Nelson Mandela has prompted me to write something on my own memories of the South Africa I grew up in, and finally left forever in January 1988. It is very easy to put on the rose tinted spectacles, drag out the whitewash and try to pretend it was a straightforward and simple situation, but it wasn't. It was very complex, and despite the manner in which the 'history' is now being written by the winners, it wasn't by any means all one way, although it did, post the 1960s very rapidly become increasingly oppressive. I think very few of us, from the "European" tribes there realised just how insidious the Nationalist Party mechanism was. Certainly some aspects of it really only became clear once I had left the country and could access information not available to me while in SA.
For instance I did not fully appreciate just how closely the Nationalist organisations and structures resembled those of the National Sozialist Demokratische Arbeiters Partei - better known as the Nazi Party outside Germany. It had similar structures 'directing' and controlling many things I think most of us never even suspected. Committees 'organised' military housing, 'managed' Police promotions and even directed the Union I belonged to. The Chairmen of these 'steering' committees often had direct access to Ministers and even the State President himself. The Press and Media were tightly controlled, so we were fed a diet of news 'approved' by the Department of Information, and though we knew it was biased, we had no alternative references available to inform our understanding or our world view. Many of those who demanded sanctions and boycotts played directly into the narrative the Nat propagandists wanted to present, unwittingly (or perhaps deliberately) giving them wonderful ammunition to feed us.
Apartheid has its roots in the attitudes and mindsets of the 19th Century, in which all 'native' peoples were regarded as 'inferior' and 'primitives' to be patronised and 'provided for' by their European 'fathers'. It was founded in ideas stemming from the Theory of Evolution and of course, reached it's ultimate form in the Eugenics Theories of the 1900 - 1945 period. The division of power (and wealth) in South Africa was enshrined in the Constitution of the Union in 1910. This provided for "Native Commissioners" to "represent" the tribal peoples and lands in Parliament, set aside the Tribal Homelands as 'reservations' and envisaged the African tribes as being incapable of rising to the heights of civilised society. It must be one of the great ironies that this was written in Whitehall despite reservations expressed by "colonial" politicians in the four colonies soon to be amalgamated into the new Union.
"Apartheid", the Afrikaans word meaning "Separation" was the brainchild of the Nationalist Party. It began in the 1930s with some 'minor' changes to the Constitution which changed the representation of the African population in Parliament. The outbreak of the second World War brought a change of government, Malan's Nationalists were replaced by Smuts' United Party, and South Africa sent its volunteer forces to liberate Abyssinia and then fight in Egypt, just as they had done in 1914 - 1918 in South West Africa, Tanganyika, Gallipoli (you never hear of that one!) and Flanders, as well as to sea in the RN, RNVR and the fledgling SANF, the RAF and the fledgling SAAF. Unfortunately Smuts lost the election in 1947 and the new Nationalist government lost no time in introducing changes to the constituency boundaries which more or less guaranteed they would always have a majority.
Many of their leading members had spent the war in internment because they supported the Nazi cause and embarked on a campaign of sabotage to weaken the South African war effort. Now they brought all of that evil ideology into government. Of course nothing happened overnight, they'd learned how to manipulate the system, the people and to subtly take control of key positions, key Ministries, the military and the police in ways that would not be obvious or arouse opposition. The architects of all this were Verwoerd, Vorster, Malan and Hertzog. Verwoerd hated the British, and by association, the English speaking half of the white South African population. Vorster was no better, and people really should have taken note even that early.
Little changes gradually began to bite, and the ANC to organise. As a school child one was aware of the tensions, but never really understood them. On the one hand we could see that Africans didn't behave or live as we did. They were different, they lived in their own villages and travelled on their own buses, trains and so on. The first major upheaval came, in my memory, with the violent murder, and some reports stated the 'muti' consumption of parts of the bodies, of two white nuns on a visit to Duncan Village on the West Bank of the Buffalo River. We heard people discussing these events, and we were aware that our fathers were possibly to be recalled to uniform as it was expected that the violence would spread and become a general uprising. Some of my school friends, whose parents farmed in what was then the Transkei, were frightened that their parents might be murdered and their homes destroyed, but, as children, we noticed only the absence of Africans in the city centre and in other areas of our daily lives where we normally encountered them and interacted with them.
What is very obvious with the benefit of hindsight and now distance, is that it is very difficult when growing up in that sort of society, to develop a balanced and unbiased view of the country, or of the rights and wrongs of the society you live in. For me that awareness really didn't begin to develop until the mid-1970s. By then I could see the impact of the policies on my 'non-European' friends in the Indian, Chinese and Coloured communities. I had long been aware of the manner in which the apartheid system impacted Africans, but, as I didn't have many acquaintances in that group, and those I did know tended to be better educated and wealthier, it seemed more a question of social and cultural difference. I must also admit that the campaigns of bombings, shootings and ambushes, to murder 'whites', coupled with the daily murders in the 'townships' motivated by rival political ambitions, definitely coloured my view. As they say, when you stand to close to the trees, you can't always see the forest.
The real campaigns of violence began in the 1960s, possibly with Sharpville. Horrible as that was, it pales into insignificance against similar events against demonstrators in recent years, but Sharpville is supposedly 'unique' in that it was a 'white' oppressor acting against 'Blacks'. The violence escalated year on year from there, and was certainly not one sided, nor was it simply Black/White. Different factions fought one another for ascendancy, and the big players in the Cold War all had a finger and sometimes a whole hand in it. The ANC wasn't the only player. They're still not, though one now seldom hears of the Pan African Congress (Marxist) or the Azania Peoples Party (Maoist) and one or two others. The USSR, China and North Korea all supplied arms, explosives and training to their particular favourites of the moment. The west tacitly propped up the Nationalist government in return for military intelligence and sometimes Russian and Chinese hardware captured in battle.
As a fire fighter I was one among many caught in the middle. We were shot at, petrol bombed, acid bombed and occasionally stabbed when were not being subjected to stone throwing. The stone throwing became something we expected, but it was always interesting to note that it usually was absent if there were no foreign TV crews present. No TV, no stone throwing, no other forms of assault on us. As I have said there were factions involved as well, and there were, in my personal experience, many more 'black on black' murders and terror attacks, then there were on whites. The 'Winnie Necklace' was a particularly hideous form of execution practised by ANC cadres on anyone accused of 'informing' and, as a fire fighter I saw far too many of these.
As in Germany under the Nazis, not everyone was supportive of the apartheid regime or the ideology. Indeed, Connie Mulder, as Minister for the Interior (Home Secretary) actually regarded English speaking South Africans as untrustworthy (as in we wouldn't vote for the Nats and their policies) and proposed stripping us of our vote, or making us 'second class citizens' with a limited version of the vote. By the 1970s the National Party had managed to gain complete control of the civil service, the television and radio services, the military and the police. Even the Fire Service was, in some Provinces, subject to the oversight of political committees they operated in every facet of the nation's life. Again, this is something one only really appreciated once you stood back and stepped outside of it. Now I can see how we were told what to think, how to act, what was considered 'correct'. It was subtle, you might have reservations, you might even on occasion refuse, but somehow, when you did, you were bypassed and someone else took over. It came as a shock to me when, after I'd left SA, to learn that I had twice been 'investigated' by the Security Police because I'd made proposals that did not meet the approval of members of the political committee 'interested' in our service on one, and because I was a member of my Bishop's Committee for Reconciliation on the other.
What the media have covered in great detail is the 'wrongs' and confessions of the key players from the police and government against the Black population. What is never mentioned are the camps maintained by the ANC for 're-education' of people they had abducted, or the multiple murders of their own people who dared to disagree with their campaigns. I have never heard a word of apology or sympathy for the many innocent victims of bombings perpetrated on stations, in restaurants or bus stops in the name of 'the cause' from the many who praised those, but condemned any arrest, any application of justice for murder. They have never had to deal with the shattered lives, torn and dismembered bodies of the victims - but can pontificate and justify any assault on a 'white' person as long as it is in some country a long way away. What they seem to be unable to connect is the link between all terrorist activities in every country. These same people have no trouble it seems labelling one group "freedom fighters" and another "terrorist" because they happen to be on a different side, or in a different situation.
I have mixed feelings on Nelson Mandela. He was, after all, the Head of the ANC's military wing and instrumental in the planning, supplying and organising of much of the terrorism of the 1960s. The evidence against him at his trial was overwhelming and he knew it, even making a statement to the court that the organisation intended the violent overthrow of the regime. Desmond Tutu wrote what is probably the best obituary we will see for "The Madiba". In it he wrote that the 27 years Mandela spent in prison are probably what made him what he became - a man of great understanding, vision and compassion. I think the Archbishop is right, and perhaps that is what we should all learn from the events that produced him.
It was not easy living in the apartheid South Africa, even for a 'white' person. There was always an element of threat; there was always the vilification from outside the country, and, if one could travel abroad, one soon discovered what it felt like to be a pariah as soon as it was revealed that you were from South Africa. At home, if one dared question anything 'official' there was always the threat to your job, or of a visit from the Security police. It was not a nice place to be, especially as there was little most of us could do to change any of it.
The Madiba is dead. He was a remarkable man, even a great man, though that was probably thrust upon him. South Africa will miss him. Sadly I very much doubt there is anyone in South Africa now with the same degree of integrity or compassion. It is my fear that his legacy will be squandered in the coming years to the detriment of all the peoples of that land.
For instance I did not fully appreciate just how closely the Nationalist organisations and structures resembled those of the National Sozialist Demokratische Arbeiters Partei - better known as the Nazi Party outside Germany. It had similar structures 'directing' and controlling many things I think most of us never even suspected. Committees 'organised' military housing, 'managed' Police promotions and even directed the Union I belonged to. The Chairmen of these 'steering' committees often had direct access to Ministers and even the State President himself. The Press and Media were tightly controlled, so we were fed a diet of news 'approved' by the Department of Information, and though we knew it was biased, we had no alternative references available to inform our understanding or our world view. Many of those who demanded sanctions and boycotts played directly into the narrative the Nat propagandists wanted to present, unwittingly (or perhaps deliberately) giving them wonderful ammunition to feed us.
Apartheid has its roots in the attitudes and mindsets of the 19th Century, in which all 'native' peoples were regarded as 'inferior' and 'primitives' to be patronised and 'provided for' by their European 'fathers'. It was founded in ideas stemming from the Theory of Evolution and of course, reached it's ultimate form in the Eugenics Theories of the 1900 - 1945 period. The division of power (and wealth) in South Africa was enshrined in the Constitution of the Union in 1910. This provided for "Native Commissioners" to "represent" the tribal peoples and lands in Parliament, set aside the Tribal Homelands as 'reservations' and envisaged the African tribes as being incapable of rising to the heights of civilised society. It must be one of the great ironies that this was written in Whitehall despite reservations expressed by "colonial" politicians in the four colonies soon to be amalgamated into the new Union.
"Apartheid", the Afrikaans word meaning "Separation" was the brainchild of the Nationalist Party. It began in the 1930s with some 'minor' changes to the Constitution which changed the representation of the African population in Parliament. The outbreak of the second World War brought a change of government, Malan's Nationalists were replaced by Smuts' United Party, and South Africa sent its volunteer forces to liberate Abyssinia and then fight in Egypt, just as they had done in 1914 - 1918 in South West Africa, Tanganyika, Gallipoli (you never hear of that one!) and Flanders, as well as to sea in the RN, RNVR and the fledgling SANF, the RAF and the fledgling SAAF. Unfortunately Smuts lost the election in 1947 and the new Nationalist government lost no time in introducing changes to the constituency boundaries which more or less guaranteed they would always have a majority.
Many of their leading members had spent the war in internment because they supported the Nazi cause and embarked on a campaign of sabotage to weaken the South African war effort. Now they brought all of that evil ideology into government. Of course nothing happened overnight, they'd learned how to manipulate the system, the people and to subtly take control of key positions, key Ministries, the military and the police in ways that would not be obvious or arouse opposition. The architects of all this were Verwoerd, Vorster, Malan and Hertzog. Verwoerd hated the British, and by association, the English speaking half of the white South African population. Vorster was no better, and people really should have taken note even that early.
Little changes gradually began to bite, and the ANC to organise. As a school child one was aware of the tensions, but never really understood them. On the one hand we could see that Africans didn't behave or live as we did. They were different, they lived in their own villages and travelled on their own buses, trains and so on. The first major upheaval came, in my memory, with the violent murder, and some reports stated the 'muti' consumption of parts of the bodies, of two white nuns on a visit to Duncan Village on the West Bank of the Buffalo River. We heard people discussing these events, and we were aware that our fathers were possibly to be recalled to uniform as it was expected that the violence would spread and become a general uprising. Some of my school friends, whose parents farmed in what was then the Transkei, were frightened that their parents might be murdered and their homes destroyed, but, as children, we noticed only the absence of Africans in the city centre and in other areas of our daily lives where we normally encountered them and interacted with them.
What is very obvious with the benefit of hindsight and now distance, is that it is very difficult when growing up in that sort of society, to develop a balanced and unbiased view of the country, or of the rights and wrongs of the society you live in. For me that awareness really didn't begin to develop until the mid-1970s. By then I could see the impact of the policies on my 'non-European' friends in the Indian, Chinese and Coloured communities. I had long been aware of the manner in which the apartheid system impacted Africans, but, as I didn't have many acquaintances in that group, and those I did know tended to be better educated and wealthier, it seemed more a question of social and cultural difference. I must also admit that the campaigns of bombings, shootings and ambushes, to murder 'whites', coupled with the daily murders in the 'townships' motivated by rival political ambitions, definitely coloured my view. As they say, when you stand to close to the trees, you can't always see the forest.
The real campaigns of violence began in the 1960s, possibly with Sharpville. Horrible as that was, it pales into insignificance against similar events against demonstrators in recent years, but Sharpville is supposedly 'unique' in that it was a 'white' oppressor acting against 'Blacks'. The violence escalated year on year from there, and was certainly not one sided, nor was it simply Black/White. Different factions fought one another for ascendancy, and the big players in the Cold War all had a finger and sometimes a whole hand in it. The ANC wasn't the only player. They're still not, though one now seldom hears of the Pan African Congress (Marxist) or the Azania Peoples Party (Maoist) and one or two others. The USSR, China and North Korea all supplied arms, explosives and training to their particular favourites of the moment. The west tacitly propped up the Nationalist government in return for military intelligence and sometimes Russian and Chinese hardware captured in battle.
As a fire fighter I was one among many caught in the middle. We were shot at, petrol bombed, acid bombed and occasionally stabbed when were not being subjected to stone throwing. The stone throwing became something we expected, but it was always interesting to note that it usually was absent if there were no foreign TV crews present. No TV, no stone throwing, no other forms of assault on us. As I have said there were factions involved as well, and there were, in my personal experience, many more 'black on black' murders and terror attacks, then there were on whites. The 'Winnie Necklace' was a particularly hideous form of execution practised by ANC cadres on anyone accused of 'informing' and, as a fire fighter I saw far too many of these.
As in Germany under the Nazis, not everyone was supportive of the apartheid regime or the ideology. Indeed, Connie Mulder, as Minister for the Interior (Home Secretary) actually regarded English speaking South Africans as untrustworthy (as in we wouldn't vote for the Nats and their policies) and proposed stripping us of our vote, or making us 'second class citizens' with a limited version of the vote. By the 1970s the National Party had managed to gain complete control of the civil service, the television and radio services, the military and the police. Even the Fire Service was, in some Provinces, subject to the oversight of political committees they operated in every facet of the nation's life. Again, this is something one only really appreciated once you stood back and stepped outside of it. Now I can see how we were told what to think, how to act, what was considered 'correct'. It was subtle, you might have reservations, you might even on occasion refuse, but somehow, when you did, you were bypassed and someone else took over. It came as a shock to me when, after I'd left SA, to learn that I had twice been 'investigated' by the Security Police because I'd made proposals that did not meet the approval of members of the political committee 'interested' in our service on one, and because I was a member of my Bishop's Committee for Reconciliation on the other.
What the media have covered in great detail is the 'wrongs' and confessions of the key players from the police and government against the Black population. What is never mentioned are the camps maintained by the ANC for 're-education' of people they had abducted, or the multiple murders of their own people who dared to disagree with their campaigns. I have never heard a word of apology or sympathy for the many innocent victims of bombings perpetrated on stations, in restaurants or bus stops in the name of 'the cause' from the many who praised those, but condemned any arrest, any application of justice for murder. They have never had to deal with the shattered lives, torn and dismembered bodies of the victims - but can pontificate and justify any assault on a 'white' person as long as it is in some country a long way away. What they seem to be unable to connect is the link between all terrorist activities in every country. These same people have no trouble it seems labelling one group "freedom fighters" and another "terrorist" because they happen to be on a different side, or in a different situation.
I have mixed feelings on Nelson Mandela. He was, after all, the Head of the ANC's military wing and instrumental in the planning, supplying and organising of much of the terrorism of the 1960s. The evidence against him at his trial was overwhelming and he knew it, even making a statement to the court that the organisation intended the violent overthrow of the regime. Desmond Tutu wrote what is probably the best obituary we will see for "The Madiba". In it he wrote that the 27 years Mandela spent in prison are probably what made him what he became - a man of great understanding, vision and compassion. I think the Archbishop is right, and perhaps that is what we should all learn from the events that produced him.
It was not easy living in the apartheid South Africa, even for a 'white' person. There was always an element of threat; there was always the vilification from outside the country, and, if one could travel abroad, one soon discovered what it felt like to be a pariah as soon as it was revealed that you were from South Africa. At home, if one dared question anything 'official' there was always the threat to your job, or of a visit from the Security police. It was not a nice place to be, especially as there was little most of us could do to change any of it.
The Madiba is dead. He was a remarkable man, even a great man, though that was probably thrust upon him. South Africa will miss him. Sadly I very much doubt there is anyone in South Africa now with the same degree of integrity or compassion. It is my fear that his legacy will be squandered in the coming years to the detriment of all the peoples of that land.
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