Is South Africa of ’48 now California of ’94?

Is South Africa of ’48 now California of ’94?

By Peter Simithka

"It is accepted Government policy that the [Blacks] are only
temporarily residents of the [White] areas of the Republic, for as
long as they offer their labor there. As soon as they become … no
longer fit or superfluous … they are expected to return to their
country of origin … no stone is to be left unturned to achieve
the settlement in [Black] homelands of non-productive [Blacks] at
present residing in the [White] areas."

– South African government official, "The Discarded People,"
1967

"It makes sense … to have some sort of guest worker program
… But not the kind of thing we have been seeing … where whole
families have come and where they are … requiring services that
are being paid for by state taxpayers …"

– Gov. Pete Wilson, Nov. 18, 1994, The Los Angeles Times

On Oct. 15, 1994, just before what was to be the largest
demonstration of its type in L.A. history, I sat at a dinner table
trying to encourage three fellow South Africans to attend the
demonstration against Proposition 187.

Sensing that one of them would need extra convincing, I
suggested that California in 1994 is exactly where South Africa was
in 1948 when the white population voted for apartheid, which
promised to deepen already-existing segregation to protect white
living standards from the "black peril."

Suddenly, I had everyone’s rapt attention. I had to smile at the
somber faces that the analogy produced. Surely, I thought, my
analogy was a rhetorical excess; of course California in ’94 is
quite unlike the South Africa of ’48.

But then I started thinking. There are indeed great divergences
between the two situations. Foremost is the process of judicial
review based on a liberal constitution and Bill of Rights. There is
also a strong American tradition of dissident social movements
stretching from the early suffrage and abolitionist movements to
this century’s worker, civil rights and feminist movements.

Up until the 1950s, however, South African resistance was more
episodic and regional than sustained and national in scale. Its
legal system ­ until 1994 ­ was based on the British
system’s principle of parliamentary sovereignty, making it next to
impossible to legally challenge a law passed by Parliament.

The context of international politics was also quite different.
White South Africa opted for apartheid at a time when the world was
moving away from similar doctrines: Colonialism had reached its
apogee well before 1948 and was already in decline; Eugenics and
Social Darwinist doctrines exhausted themselves in the 1930s, just
as their ideological progeny, Fascism and Nazism, would later
suffer military defeat in World War II. This ensured that South
Africa under apartheid would be an outcast in the international
order.

In contrast, white California’s embrace of the vindictive
"three-strikes" and anti-immigrant "S.O.S." initiatives suggests it
is moving in tandem with world-wide trends toward xenophobic
nationalisms. The disconcerting Social Darwinism of earlier times
is also experiencing a profound resurgence as the mass media rings
the bells of Charles Murray’s IQ curves. The idea of colonialism,
while not reincarnated, is certainly close to resurrection in many
recent "United Nations" resolutions.

More chilling are the close parallels. White South Africa in the
late 1940s faced a social crisis as white workers returned from
World War II and had to compete with African workers (who fulfilled
industrial needs created by both the war and the resulting
"scarcity" of white South African males).

As Cold War factories go offline, California is in a similar
crisis. The difference, of course, is that aerospace workers do not
compete directly with immigrant labor. South Africa temporarily
resolved its crisis on the backs of black labor. How will
California resolve its crisis?

The current winner-take-all electoral system provides another
disturbing parallel. In South Africa, the electoral system allowed
the National Party to use its slim majority at the polls to deepen
and entrench racial domination. Coupled with gerrymandering, the
single-member district system enabled the National Party to
exaggerate its margin of victory in subsequent elections.

In California, the winner-take-all system has meant that
approximately a third of the population, which favors a progressive
policy package, has never been represented. Polls show evidence for
the existence of this voting bloc in the sense that about a quarter
of voters supported the underfunded Proposition 186.

Also, in the 1992 election, about two-fifths of voters supported
the orphaned "Tax-the-Rich" initiative. The winner-take-all nature
of both the initiative process and representative races means that
these voters never get represented in proportion to their size.

Mainstream politicians, moreover, have chosen not to base
themselves on this constituency. As a result, this constituency is
rarely cultivated and organized, and this rules out the development
of a progressive majority.

Of course, there is another more obvious parallel between
California in 1994 and South Africa in 1948. Borders in this part
of the world, as in South Africa, have crossed people as much as
people (and corporations for that matter) have crossed borders.

With this historical legacy of conquest has come
disenfranchisement. Despite their enormous contribution to society,
and despite their taxation, the undocumented have become a
political football precisely because they cannot vote.

In California, those who benefit directly from the contributions
of undocumented workers have been reserved in their opposition to
Proposition 187. The same thing happened in South Africa.
Mineowners and industrialists, despite their rhetorical opposition
to the interference of the apartheid state with the allocation of
labor, were eminently practical. They cooperated with the state to
"import" the precise quantities of labor they needed.

These workers, of course, did not have the same rights to
organize as did the enfranchised workers and up until the heroic
labor battles of the 1980s, they were very exploitable. If Gov.
Pete Wilson’s past efforts on behalf of U.S. growers is anything to
go by, he will borrow a page from the apartheid code.

Above all else, however, apartheid was a formidable creation
designed for social control and the suppression of dissent. Its
arsenal included the now-notorious Suppression of Communism Act and
Terrorism Act. Everyone from Christian pacifists to anti-apartheid
communists fell victim to the laws’ broad swath, and this was
necessary to protect the state from resistance to the restructuring
apartheid entailed.

As California continues with its restructuring and demographic
shifts, there will be many labor battles and militant social
movements. California now seems equipped to respond to dissidents.
The latter will be easy prey for "three-strikes" laws, which can
easily apply to incidents that routinely occur on picket lines and
at protests.

At UCLA two years ago, for example, students demonstrating for a
Chicana/o studies department were initially charged with "felony
trespassing." Were it not for a massive mobilization of the student
and Chicana/o communities, that would have been their first strike.
Two more protests, and then what? Life?

In South Africa, where the new president was sentenced to "life
imprisonment plus five years," social change came. But it came
slowly and with great human tragedy. California today might find a
future in South Africa’s past. It need not be. It is important to
note that 1948 South Africa was not inevitable.

Responsibility lies with politicians for not proposing an
inclusive social agenda. At a minimum, this must include a
state-sponsored conversion of war time industries, investment in
mass transit systems, creating a health care system and addressing
regressive tax codes, etc.

In California today, there is also a positive alternative in the
electorate which differs from the (white) South African electorate
of 1948. Anti-communism and racism blinded white South Africa to
these options; although these forces are at work in California, a
progressive alternative is available. A substantial core population
­ made up of the 25 to 40 percent of voters who supported
Proposition 167 ( the "Tax-the-Rich" initiative) and who currently
support Proposition 186 ­ exists for responsible political
entrepreneurs to mobilize.

Also, the proliferation of gang truces, militant organization of
unions across L.A.’s service and light manufacturing sectors and
recent high school walk-outs suggest that there is hope outside the
traditional electoral arena for a new generation of political
organizers and militants.

In this sense, California might be like South Africa of the
1980s: pregnant with the possibility for progressive change.
Indeed, two of my three (South African) compatriots came to what
would be the largest demonstration of our lives … thus far!

Simithka is a junior history student and a member of the Network
for Public Education and Social Justice.