Jd wrote:
Subject: Perspective
Since this tired old canard keeps cropping up to hit white South Africans over the nose like a rolled up newspaper, I thought it perhaps time to separate fact from fiction once and for all. Let those who object say so now or forever hold their peace. While we're at it, let's put apartheid as a system into perspective.

Do we know how many blacks were killed under apartheid?

We do, and the source ...is none other than the Human Right Commission submitted as evidence to the TRC in 1997.

The statistics they proffered relate to the number of blacks killed between the years 1948 up to the election in 1994. The total number of blacks killed were 21 000. But wait, it gets more interesting. It's not the full story.

The HRC report also makes a distinction between two periods. One from 1948 till 1989 and the next from 1990 to the election in 1994. The number killed for the period from 1948 until 1989 is 7 000.

That means the number killed from 1990 to 1994 which is AFTER the unbanning of the ANC and for all intents and purposes apartheid had ended is a whopping 14 000, involving mostly black on black violence between the ANC and the IFP and various other factions! Not whitey's fault.

Of the 14 000 killed during those 4 years, 92% of deaths were caused by blacks killing blacks. Only 5.6% were attributed to the Security Forces at the time and usually in retaliation to attacks initiated by the ANC/UDF that had been unbanned. Remember Ciskei? The difference in % is due to unknown causes.

What this means is that during the apartheid reign of 41 years, 7 000 blacks died compared to double the amount of dead in just 4 years! Let me break it down yet further, 170 blacks were killed as a result of apartheid ANNUALLY. That's 170 people per year! That's the HRC figures people! Sounds like an insignificant number now doesn't it?

More blacks then were killed under De Klerk's 'new' anti-apartheid government of 4 years than in 41 years of government under full blown apartheid! How good was the propaganda of the anti-apartheid movement eh?!

Let me summarise, this needs to sink in:
1948 - 1989: 7 000
1990 - 1994: 14 000 (of which 92% as a result of 'black-on-black' violence)

Really, is this the death toll of the "heinous" apartheid system the world grew to hate? Just 7000 deaths? And was it the worst thing to happen in the 20th century? Um, let's look at the Left's favourite socialist/ communist/ Marxist/ dictators leaders to name but a few:

-Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) : 23 million (the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
-Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) : 78 million
-Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79): 1,7 million
-Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78): 1,5 million

Apartheid: 7 000.
The list of far worse political systems is quite extensive and apartheid wouldn't even feature. But such was the venom against it that the result is a country destroyed. Apartheid was far from the monster it continues to be portrayed. I agree though that it was unjustifiable and unsustainable and just plain wrong and given a do-over, whites would rather leave blacks to find their way than provide jobs and healthcare and other services which caused their population to balloon from 500 000 when Van Riebeeck landed to the almost 40 million in 1994. Facts people, inconvenient little things that keep getting in the way.