Born a Crime

Part 1 The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other. Apartheid is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another, so you can run them all. At the time, black South Africans outnumbered white South Africans nearly 5 to 1, yet they were divided into different tribes with different languages. Zulu, Xhosa, Tuana, Sotu, Venda, Ndebele, Tsonga, Peri, and more. Long before apartheid existed, these tribal factions clashed and warred with one another. Then, white rule used that animosity to divide and conquer. Those tribes and other non-whites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given different levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at odds. Perhaps the starkest of those divisions was between South Africa's two dominant tribes, the Zulu and the Xhosa. The Zulu man is known as the warrior. He is proud. He puts his head down and fights. When the colonial armies invaded, the Zulu charged into battle with nothing but spears and shields against men with guns. The Zulu were slaughtered by the thousands, but they never stopped fighting. The Xhosa, on the other hand, pride themselves on being the thinkers. My mother is Xhosa. Nelson Mandela was Xhosa. The Xhosa waged a long war against the white man as well. But after experiencing the futility of battle against a better-armed foe, many Xhosa chiefs took a more nimble approach. These white people are here whether we like it or not, they said. Let's see what tools they possess that can be useful to us. Instead of being resistant to English, let us learn English. We'll understand what the white man is saying and we can force him to negotiate with us. The Zulu went to war with the white man. The Xhosa played chess with the white man. For a long time, neither was particularly successful, and each blamed the other for a problem neither had created. Bitterness festered. For decades, those feelings were held in check by a common enemy. Then apartheid fell, Mandela walked free, and black South Africa went to war with itself.