The True Victim of Apartheid

The True Victim of Apartheid

Who is the real victim of apartheid?
What does the word apartheid really mean?

When I hear people talk about their terrible black lives under apartheid and about the “automatic advantage” I supposedly had simply because I was born white, I often shake my head in disbelief.
Over the years, I have heard these complaints again and again. People repeat the same story about how apartheid ruined their lives, and how others benefited from it.

But the truth is more complicated than that.
Let me explain something very clearly.
I was also a victim of apartheid.

At the age of just eighteen years old, I was placed on a train with thousands of other young men. None of us was asked what we wanted.
None of us had a choice.
We were taken away to military camps where our lives changed overnight.
If we objected or refused then we were sent to D.B.
Detention barracks for GOD knows how long.
We were then branded as cowards and a disgrace to our people and our country, R.S.A.

When we arrived at our different military bases, we were forced to wear brown uniforms and live under strict discipline. From the moment we arrived, we were shouted at, ordered around, and pushed through severe physical training every single day. Privacy no longer existed. We were constantly surrounded by other men and watched by those in charge.
We had to share toilets and showers. We had no say over what we ate or when we ate. Our daily lives were completely controlled by the system.
Some months after that, we were loaded onto the back of military trucks and onto noisy, rattling aircraft. Without ceremony, without explanation, and without any real choice in the matter, we were sent to fight in a war in another country.
This was not my decision.
It was forced upon me.
In that foreign land, we slept in the open bush like animals. Sometimes we had to dig into the ground just to create a place where we could lie down for a few hours. Clean water was often scarce. Many times, we had to drink from muddy holes where animals also drank, siphoning water through our bush hats to separate the water from the insects, goat shit, and mud to get enough water to fill a one-liter water bottle that had to last a full day.
Our rations were small. Just enough to keep our bodies functioning and our minds focused. Every day we lived with the constant risk of being injured, maimed or dying in a place far away from home, surrounded by danger and uncertainty.
We were young men, barely out of school, suddenly placed in life-and-death situations.
At just nineteen years old, I was required to write my first will and testament. Imagine that for a moment. A teenager, writing a legal document, preparing for the possibility of his own death. That was the reality we lived with, because there was a very real chance that any one of us might return home in a black body bag.
Many did.
During those years, we lived in tents through the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Ten men often shared one tent. Everything we owned had to fit inside a small canvas bag, which we called a “bal sak.” That bag contained our entire lives in it.
Our freedom of movement was almost nonexistent. Armed guards were present day and night. Even when we were allowed to return home on leave, we had to carry official documents that allowed us to pass through permanent roadblocks and military checkpoints.
When we spoke about “going on tour,” it did not mean a holiday. It meant spending months at a time, sometimes up to four months, in harsh and dangerous conditions, fighting to stay alive and protect one another.
We were not there with our families. We were not there with our loved ones. We were there with other young men from many different backgrounds, men with different cultures, religions, and skin colors, all trying to survive together, as a brotherhood, as a family.

No one spoke about our human rights.
No one asked whether we wanted to be there.
No organizations came to investigate our situation or defend our freedom.
The Human Rights Commission was not standing at the gates of those camps asking questions.

Despite all of this, I do not regret those years.
Those experiences shaped me into the person I became.
They forced me to grow from a boy into a man, a killing machine in a very short period of time.
They taught me discipline, resilience, and strength.
They showed me my weaknesses and my strengths and taught me how to use both to survive and move forward in life.
Most importantly, those years trained my mind never to wander into self-pity and never to adopt a victim mentality.
If I had my life over again, I would do it again by free choice, not because of apartheid, but because of brothers from another mother that I loved more than my own life.

So when I hear people complaining about apartheid year after year, I sometimes think to myself, they have no idea what it was like to lose control of your own life completely.
If someone had offered me the choice back then, I would have gladly sat on a separate bench. I would have ridden in a separate bus or train. I would have stood in a separate queue if it meant I could keep my freedom and my youth.
I would have accepted those things if it meant I could get back the twelve years of my life that were taken from me while I lived under my own version of apartheid, a system where my life was not my own and where the government decided where I went, what I did, and whether I lived or died.

Would you have accepted that kind of life?
Would you have willingly given up, your family, your friends, your freedom, your safety, and your youth to spend years in military camps and foreign battlefields?
Would you have been able to hold your brothers bloodied body in your arms, look into his tearful eyes and all he can say is how he misses his mother before he died?

Many people who speak loudly about apartheid today would not have chosen that path. They would not have accepted that prison sentence.
Yet today the word apartheid is still used again and again, often by people who were born long after 1994 and who never personally lived through that era. The apartheid era.
Today, South Africa is supposed to be living in a new and free era.
Yet many people still live in informal settlements and squatter camps. Many families still struggle without proper running water or sanitation. Toilets are shared by many people.
Opportunities remain scarce.
At the same time, many politicians live lives of wealth and privilege while the people who voted for them continue to struggle.
Education is not free for many who need it. Healthcare is not always accessible or reliable. Millions of people are unemployed and searching for work.
Crime and corruption remain among the highest in the world. Roads are filled with potholes that sometimes look more like bomb craters than ordinary damage.
Public institutions often struggle with inefficiency and corruption. Trust in leadership has weakened.
These are serious problems that affect everyone in this country.
But blaming apartheid and the past continuously will not fix the future.

So, before someone lectures me about apartheid, and how the black people suffered under apartheid, ask them a simple question:
Do you truly understand what the word apartheid means?
Do you understand that the system affected different people in different ways?
Do you understand that moving forward as a country will require more than simply repeating the past over and over again?
Because history should teach us lessons, not trap us in endless arguments about who suffered more.
The blacks or the whites?

The real challenge now is not arguing about yesterday.
The real challenge is building a better tomorrow..........

In Closing
War is a place where young people who do not know each other and do not hate each other, kill each other, based on a decisions made by old people who know each other and hate each other, but do not kill each other.......

Composed and Created by
Author, Article Writer, Novelist, and Poet
Major Marius F Robbertze
AKA (MFR ™) ©®

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