Opinion: Of course it’s apartheid’s fault

It is apartheid's fault that people who benefited from it tell people who suffered because of it that they should stop blaming it. It was a system designed to make everyone believe that the black man was incapable. It was so evil and so well thought-out that its outcomes and effects are felt psychologically almost 20 years later – even by people who were not born during apartheid.

That, my friends, is apartheid's fault.

It is apartheid's fault that my grandfather was forced to have a police officer in class to make sure that he was teaching the apartheid syllabus to black children – syllabus which was designed not only to make them believe they were inferior, but to ensure that the education they received was of such poor quality that it left them ill-equipped to show they were equal to white people. 

It is apartheid's fault that my grandfather died long before his son was old enough to be married and for him to see his grandchildren born. It is apartheid's fault that he felt compelled to fight the stigma that a black man didn't deserve the right to be treated like a human being and with dignity in his own country. It is this very system that is to blame for his death. He died of a stroke after being tortured for fighting an injustice that sought to make him an unthinking subservient machine. He died not a hero but a man who fought for what is right.

'Playing catch-up'
It is apartheid's fault that people of colour in this country are still playing catch-up almost two decades later. It is apartheid's fault that our ancestors were denied a good education, which would have enabled them to have decent jobs so that they could afford a university education for their children. Even if a quality education were accessible, a good job would not be because they were not allowed to have good jobs.

It is apartheid's fault that we ended up with corrupt homelands, which were designed to make us believe we were independent when we were in fact being held prisoner.

It is apartheid's fault that land was taken away from black people by the white regime to force them to seek employment in the cities, creating a disintegration of the black family structure. Men had to go work in the cities for little money to live in inhumane conditions to mine gold, which enriched the oppressors. In other words, black people worked to make sure the government had enough money to continue oppressing them. We were basically paying for our very own oppression.

The system was so clever that it foresaw that at some point in the future, black people might run things, and when they do, they will blame apartheid if they fail. Those who benefited from the system are the first ones to shout down anyone who blames apartheid. They want to make sure that you don't remind them that they benefited. In fact, one year after it ended, you weren't allowed to blame it.

So what isn't apartheid's fault?
But it is not apartheid's fault today that we have an ill-equipped police force, almost 20 years after the end of the oppressive regime. Nor can we continue to blame it for the low-quality education we continue to give our children. There is no question that the policies implemented by the white supremacist government have impacted a great deal of lives today.

But we have to take responsibility for fixing what is wrong with the country today. We should not be paralysed by the past, which we have largely defeated. We still need to fight the disease of our past because in many cases, it lives among us.

The children who are getting a bad education today, our relatives who continue to get sub-par healthcare in government hospitals, are not blaming apartheid for what they see happening around them. They blame those who are in power now. But it is not apartheid's fault that we keep blaming apartheid. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Let's get this country working, knowing what it has been through, and make it what we know it ought to be.