American Companies Assisted Apartheid

Think slavery was a bitch…..apartheid was no fun either. Imagine living in a land where your people are a majority and still subjected to being treated as a second class citizen. For those of you that is not familiar with apartheid I will give you a brief run down.



With the enactment of apartheid laws in 1948, racial discrimination was institutionalized. Race laws touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of marriage between non-whites and whites, and the sanctioning of ``white-only'' jobs. In 1950, the Population Registration Act required that all South Africans be racially classified into one of three categories: white, black (African), or colored (of mixed decent). The coloured category included major subgroups of Indians and Asians. Classification into these categories was based on appearance, social acceptance, and descent. For example, a white person was defined as ``in appearance obviously a white person or generally accepted as a white person.'' A person could not be considered white if one of his or her parents were non-white. The determination that a person was ``obviously white'' would take into account ``his habits, education, and speech and deportment and demeanor.'' A black person would be of or accepted as a member of an African tribe or race, and a colored person is one that is not black or white. The Department of Home Affairs (a government bureau) was responsible for the classification of the citizenry.






Now that we all on the same page… apartheid victims have won the right to sue companies in the United States.


In a major court ruling, victims of South Africa's apartheid era have won the right to sue General Motors, IBM and other multi-national corporations
for complicity in human rights abuses.
A federal judge in New York gave the green light Wednesday for class actions against the corporations under US law allowing rights claims from abroad to be addressed in a US court.



IBM is being sued because it is likely that the tool which made the most crucial contribution to the system of apartheid was the computerized population register. The Plural Affairs Department maintained the passbook system on the more than twenty five million Africans defined as black. These records were all kept electronically on British-made ICL hardware. The Department of the Interior maintained the "Book of Life" files on the other seven million citizens classified as non-blacks using an IBM hardware system. The main purpose of the population registry was administration of the influx control system, a system which channeled needed black workers into the labor force to be exploited, and confined others to the desolate homelands. The passbooks, which every black person was automatically given at the age of sixteen, coupled with the computer database, guaranteed one's instant identification and one's history of government opposition. If these passbooks were properly endorsed, the owner had the right to work or live in "white areas", and lack of these endorsements or failure to produce the passbook resulted in arrest and jail. Many were detained for months at a time without a trial and their families were not given notification of their whereabouts



The lawsuits argue that the car-makers knew their vehicles were being used by South African forces to violently suppress protests. Allegedly Daimler, Ford and General Motors aided and abetted apartheid, torture, extrajudicial killing and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment -- in part because their security personnel were”intimately involved" with the torture and inhuman treatment of several plaintiffs and also because the companies provided the military equipment and trucks used by the South African Defense Forces and the special branch for attacks on protesting citizens and activists;


Based on the ties many American companies have with slavery it would not be a far fetch idea to believe they were involved with apartheid too. The American and European economy was built on the exploitation of Africa. Stealing her diamonds and her most precious commodity… her people. Not only do I hope the victims of apartheid are victorious in their court case, I also hope reparations can be paid to the descendants of slavery. I know this has been debated by far more educated and refined pundits, but I feel that issuing an apology is wack and not enough. Seriously, they paid the Japanese and Native Americans, why not pay the African Americans. Hell at this point 40 acres and a Ford F-150 don’t sound too bad.


The sad part about apartheid is it ended in 1994. I graduated from high school that year and I never knew that people in Africa was dealing with such racism and hatred. My school(s) never taught about the trials and tribulations of my African brothers and sisters. However, they did teach us about European history and every February we would talk about Martin Lutha Kang...Harriett Tubman, W.E.B. Dubois, and Fredrick Douglas. They acted like these were the only black people worth discussing for the 28 days of black history