Talk:History of South Africa in the apartheid era/Archive5

message: Among `white' South Africans were Europeans as well as people from Near East origins.  Lebanese, Turks and Iranians were accepted as white but not Indians , why? They are mostly Caucasoid and could claim Aryan heritage.  What would a European looking Anglo-Indian like Saira Mohan have been classified as? She could have assumed another identity and passed herself off for fully European(Mediterranean). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.169.47.77 (talk • contribs) 
: Indians make up a sizeable population in South Africa, and were defined as one of the four race groups under Apartheid (Black, White, Coloured and Indian).  Other nationalities like Lebanese, Turks and Iranians would have been numerically less significant. Partly it would have been decided based on physical appearance. I've also read that some nationalities were classed as "whites" because their countries had better diplomatic relations with South Africa.  I suppose individual foreigners would have gone through a bureaucratic process to determine their race in South African terms.  Maybe this involved ticking a box on a form, and hoping that an official didn't decide to "downgrade" you, based on your name, your relatives, your appearance, and how he felt that morning?  It became farcical when dealing with the blurred edges between the races too. The parliamentary opposition used to have a field day asking the Minister to report on how many Coloureds had been reclassified White, how many Whites reclassified Coloured, etc. It would be funny if it wasn't so offensive and painful to the people involved, separating families, condemning people to second-class citizenship, etc. Zaian 08:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  RACIAL CATEGORISATION 

message: Could we consider removing some of the links that don't go anywhere in this article? I would not know how, I'm just a newbie. Take Care, SonicBoom95 16:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point, athough all it probably needs is clarification, for example: "Many of the inequalities created and/or maintained by apartheid" --Gogtjop 16:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken Links 

message: Forgive me, I'm a newbie, but the page has been vandalised a bit-- a lot of "dfdfdf" for no good reason. Could someone fix it, or tell me how to go about reverting it? Thank you.
Ipsenaut 05:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: Can anyone contribute to the discussion of why links to the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Jim Crow laws are necessary? It seems they are associated with apartheid South Africa for no better reason that they pertain to racial issues in institutional policy. This intermingles American and South African politics erroneously in that the associations are too broad, which is why I request that these links in the See Also section be removed. EnglishEfternamntalkcontribs 22:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change needed in See Also sections 

message: I agree that these hatreds weren't created by the apartheid policy, perhaps the racial seperationary culture of South Africa prior to Apartheid should be added more to the beginnings. 
82.14.87.191 09:50, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly which "hatreds" do you mean? (41.242.239.251 18:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The concept of Apartheid 

message: I need help. An IP Address is making quite a lot of edits and I don't particular like one of them where the user deleted a couple sentences and replaced them, including removing a few references. Tried to use Undo, but didn't work. So just making note that there has been a lot of edits that should be checked over. Thanks. Gilawson 20:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't look like they made that many changes, just many edits.  I think one of the changes was to include a different citation and a statistic, which isn't the worst thing in the world.  The other one I don't really understand.  The sentense, "The withdrawal of Cuban troops, pressure on South Africa by its Western allies and the collapse of the Eastern bloc (and of the Soviet Union more generally) paved the way for the independence for Namibia in 1990." was changed to say "...abandonment of South Africa by its Western Allies..."  I don't know anything about this, and the citation  is odd and not very reliable, anyway.  Here is the diff from their first to last edit . Smmurphy(Talk) 22:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  International relations are always a bit murky. There's not a huge difference between allies starting to put pressure on you, and allies abandoning their support for you. Judging from the other changes by the same person, the sentence has tones of "they cynically abandoned us to the communists". However, another editor might have written the same words meaning "they finally abandoned their futile attempts to prop up the apartheid state".  Does this make it NPOV? :-) Zaian 10:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whoa... 

message: The section says that 90% of the poor are black, and then points out that 10% of the population is white. The statement should tell us what percentage of the population is black to be consistent. The way it's worded, assuming the vast majority of citizens are either ethnically black or white, it does not sound at all strange that if 90% of the population is black, that 90% of the poor are black.
76.81.41.58 17:05, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  problem with Economic inequality and Black Economic Empowerment section 

message: There needs to be a section on SA's economic growth, industries, and international position during this period. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.4.116.14 (talk) 20:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economics 

message: I removed Template:Discrimination sidebar because I find it too long and too broadly focused and it was placed too prominently in the article.  It is nice that Wikipedia has articles about so many discrimination topics and it may even be useful to list them together, but it doesn't belong at the start of the article on apartheid, a fairly specific topic.  Maybe at the bottom of the apartheid article, the general discrimination topic guide may be more useful.  --CGM1980 23:46, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to replace at a better spot. Benjiboi 00:23, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Greetings. I've re-added template at the "See Also" section to avoid formattin gissues. FYI part of the Discrimination project is to show that all forms of discrimination, at the core, justify treating other people as somehow less human than oneself or of a lesser value than any other people. Although broad I think the point is to show we all have our value systems and we all can do a bit more to ensure that people are treated as equally or better than we would want ourselves to be treated. Keep up the good work! Benjiboi 23:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed [[Template:Discrimination sidebar]] 

message: Template: has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Terraxos 02:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of [[:Template:{{ucfirst:Allegations of apartheid}}]]

message: I am trying to assume good faith in the many edits from .  However, many of the changes from this address seem to be designed to excuse or whitewash the actions of the apartheid government.  As an example, I am reverting this change which removes a damning quote about the attitude of the police towards the victims of the Sharpeville Massacre. I'm surprised other editors are not doing more to prevent the systematic change in emphasis from this anonymous editor. 
Another change by this editor which I am uncomfortable with:
* Before - "With the ANC, PAC and South African Communist Party banned, and Mandela and his fellow leaders in jail or exile, South Africa entered some of its most troubled times. Apartheid legislation was increasingly enforced, and the walls between the races were built even higher, culminating in the creation of separate Homelands for blacks."
* After - "After Sharpeville the ANC, PAC and South African Communist Party were banned, and leaders like Mandela were either in jail or in exile. The State of Emergency was de-proclaimed; the economy boomed; and the government began implementing apartheid by building the infrastructures of the ten separate Homelands, and relocating blacks into these homelands." 
Woohoo, great times everyone!
Zaian 10:04, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In this edit the anonymous editor signs as "PE Louw". In  User:Eric Louw signs as PE Louw and as the author of "The Rise Fall and Legacy of Apartheid". Mr Louw, since you are contributing regularly to this article, please log in so that people can identify your contributions and engage you in discussion. Please do not delete content arbitrarily. Please use edit summaries to explain your changes. And finally, the introductory paragraphs are a short precis of the article, not an invitation to editorialise. Zaian 07:21, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Apartheid apologist?

message: There is some discussion at this page about a rename proposal to Apartheid (alternate meanings). I would like to have input from editors working on this article. There is a growing recognition that while apartheid has traditionally and primarily refers to the South African situation, that its use in other contexts is increasing. See Crime of apartheid, Social apartheid, Israeli apartheid, Social apartheid in Brazil, etc. Your input is valued. Tiamat 23:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Allegations of apartheid]]

message: :The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
*The current title of this article is misleading. It refers to the lenghty part of history of South Africa during the so called apartheid era without any link to the word "apartheid". There is no separate article entitled simply the "Apartheid" in English Wikipedia, like there are in most non-English other ones; just the redirection to this very article creating vicious circle. It causes lots of confusion in the so called "apartheid allegations series", especially in the Allegations of Israeli apartheid mess. greg park avenue 17:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it is time to revisit this issue. There is really no reason why this article shouldn't be named simply "Apartheid", with a disambiguation page with links to other Apartheid-related articles. --Ezeu 00:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

text: *This article about apartheid is sufficient enough with all the background concerning South Africa in the following sections in it. Just the title is misleading, that's all. There are different meanings of the term apartheid, but they belong to another article Apartheid (alternative meanings), see here. There were also other efforts to construct a separate article on this topic, see this, but not to avail. Also User:Tiamut tried one, but it failed. This one is the best I guess. greg park avenue 20:09, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

text: This is not a poll, its a discussion. "Per someone else" is useless. --Ezeu 01:50, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: An article about "apartheid in south africa" would be indistinguishable from an article about the "History of South Africa in the Apartheid era". Apartheid changed so much between 1948 and 1994 that a definition of apartheid which covered the entire period would have to be rather general. For this reason an article about apartheid from a non-historical perpective could not be as detailed as it should be. Any article concerning such a large subject has to be detailed, like this one is. BillMasen 16:53, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

text: *I understand your opposition to the offensive word, but Wikipedia first, anyone's sentiments after; it's just how it shall work. We don't sweep these words under the rug and hide it under some unconspicious title like part of an archaic history of SA. Please, be the Man and face it. greg park avenue 15:58, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

text: *What arrangement and where Israel fits into it? Do you really think the title of this article was created just for sake of South Africa's good image to prevent it from dilluting the content of the article by pro- or anti-Israeli propaganda? Ever heard about paranoia? greg park avenue 20:30, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: These arguments always involve Israel in one way or another. You even mentioned Israel when you brought up this topic. It's not about South Africa's good image - it's about keeping this article about South Africa. You've really got no reason to call me paranoid and it doesn't help your cause to be insulting. Zaian 05:38, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, it wasn't meant to offend you personally. The problem is that there is an article on South Africa including its history, but there is not a single article on Apartheid in English Wikipedia save for that paranoid apartheid series. And you cannot even create one, because it would have essentially the same content as in this one. That's why it's a stalemate - this article is blocking any potential article on "apatheid". Now imagine a hich school kid who never heard of South Africa looking in Google for the meaning of the word and finding what? Part of history of some outback coutry in apartheid era, but nothing on apartheid itself. This title is derivative of South Africa and apartheid, not the other way around. So it shall be changed if you want to keep Wikipedia logically consistent. It seems to me that you don't and you don't have even any single valid point for keeping this title, just WP:IDONTLIKEITgreg park avenue 10:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Apartheid is an offensive word, particularly to those South Africans who had no part in its creation, ie those who were eligible to vote for the first time in their lives during the 1994 elections who to this day are constantly reminded about Apartheid and suffer the consequences of being historicaly advantaged. Try another translation of the word and explore the Separateness of the Palestinians and the Jews etc. The Apartheid page redirects here as you know, so set it up as a disambiguation page pointing to The crime of Apartheid, Allegations of Apartheid, Other Apartheid-like systems etc. I once wanted an article Apartheid in a nutshell, and this is what it became. The recently created Apartheid Template is the closest thing to Apartheid in a nutshell that I have seen.Gregorydavid 13:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: With all due respect I still don't think you have a valid point here. Actually, young West Germans, back in 1949 when they were allowed first time to vote, may have said literally the same thing - "Nazism" is an offensive word, find some alternative, we haven't got nothing to do with that, or create a nutshell. And they did. The article on Nazism has any language version but German one (Deutsch), same as "Apartheid" has any language version but English. What about historical truth and the standards of Wikipedia WP:NPOV? Correction: Pardon me, there is a link in German to the article on nazism, just not in alphabetical order as it supposed to be. greg park avenue 14:30, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Appealing to other dialects and languages in use across the transwiki is a poor argument. English may be the only language where apartheid has gained traction expanding its meaning beyond South Africa, and that's rather typical of the fluidity of English. When an English speaker calls someone a Nazi, for example, they generally aren't accusing someone of actually being a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party during the middle of the 20th century. Among the articles in Template:Allegations of apartheid there are 200+ references which attest, to varying degree, to a wider meaning of apartheid in the English language. As for this article, I'm fine with the status quo, though I could see a split of this article to encapsulate material purely related to South African Apartheid, it would be hard to untangle this from the the overall history of the period. -- 67.98.206.2 16:15, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This template never got consensus (AfD) and was speedily closed last time by someone who took part in the discussion - Cerejota - not my kind of NPOV idea. Splitting the parts not related to SA is OK with me; that's why I have supported Lothar's idea of moving  the Allegations of apartheid to Apartheid (alternative meanings), but it failed. greg park avenue 16:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, but that was a TfD four days after the last TfD closed, and a speedy close was inevitable. The template has been reworked, unfortunately many people are still fighting the last war on the current TfD. -- 67.98.206.2 17:28, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

text: What about South African apartheid? This "history" angle looks just like a smoke screen. Just for future reference in case this RfM fails. greg park avenue 16:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal.  Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. --Stemonitis 17:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move

message: Some of you may wish to discuss the proposed merge from allegations of apartheid ongoing at Talk:Apartheid -- 146.115.58.152 04:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That discussion has now concluded. 6SJ7 22:57, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge proposal 

message: See my above comments under the heading "Apartheid apologist?". This same editor has been repeatedly editing the opening paragraph to avoid the term "racial segregation" and to add a slightly peculiar interpretation of what signalled the end of apartheid. I have been reverting them, for reasons described below.
As this editor seems to be unaware of edit summaries and talk pages, I've taken the unusual step of (temporarily) adding a message to them, as an HTML comment, in the article itself. 
Mr Louw, I have repeatedly removed your edits to the opening paragraph, for the following reasons:
* of course apartheid was a system of racial segregation. You might prefer to call it something else, but that doesn't change the fact that races were segregated. Please stop removing this link and substituting another term.
* The Bophuthatswana coup was one of many steps in the end of apartheid. It was by no means important enough to be mentioned in the opening paragraph. Please do not add it again.
Please use edit summaries, please log in when editing, and please engage in discussions on the talk page.  Zaian 07:21, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The details referred to above need to be dealt with in appropriate sections from the Bop coup to the Bhisho massacre..Gregorydavid 11:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anonymous edits from PE Louw 

message: I think this article is unfortunately a bit of a mess, and is in need of some sweet lovin', so I've decided that I'm going to attempt a rewrite of it. I think the biggest problem here is that there's no real organisation, and related to this is that there's some confusion as to the scope of the article.
Now I haven't edited this article before, but I've browsed through the talk archives so I now realise why the article has ended up at this title. However, I don't think that decision is a useful one for the long term, because it has meant that we no longer have an article that is solely about the apartheid policy that was maintained in South Africa in the latter part of the twentieth century. Making things less clear can only harm our readers.
This article should at least be entitled "Apartheid in South Africa" or something like that, so that the scope is clear and other parts of South African history don't have to be accommodated in the article. Obviously apartheid is intimately intertwined with the rest of South African history during the period, but given that this article will obviously be in summary style because of its size,
I've drawn up a draft outline of what a rewritten version might include, available here. Hopefully it provides a clearer structure. I would appreciate any comments that people have on the outline, particularly as to what people think it ought to include; that is, have I missed out anything significant. --bainer (talk) 08:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Planned rewrite 

message: I noticed an awkwardly worded image caption towards the bottom of the page. I'm not quite sure how to fix it, but I wanted to call it out. I've included the box to the right of this comment.
I don't really know what the image is or if it even contributes anything to the article, nor do I really feel that the caption is unbiased or even particularly sensible.
Corwinlw 05:12, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awkwardly worded image caption towards the bottom 

message: Why is there no mention of Lucky Dube in this article, since according to the Economist he provided the soundtrack to the anti-apartheid movement?  Thanks201.221.71.25 16:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: South Africa - Lucky Dube

message: This article does not meet the basic standards of a good article. It is largely unsourced, much of it is in bullet form and certain areas, including the introduction, are quite lacking in content. Perspicacite (c. 9:33, 3 November 2007)
: Drive-by delisting is not recommended. It is polite to give editors a chance to respond to the concerns you have raised before delisting the article. More detailed comments are also appreciated by other editors of the article. Finally, if you take the trouble to look up the current oldid of the article, and also check for errors after making edits to the article history template (:Category:ArticleHistory error lights up at the base of the talk page), then it will be appreciated by other editors such as myself. Thank you. Geometry guy 13:36, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Notice The Bainer already notified users back on October 9 that the article did not meet GA requirements. He then suggested several areas for improvement. Stop complaining. Try actually improving the article. Perspicacite 01:08, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  No: Bainer offered to rewrite the article, not delist it. You should have notified editors of your intention to delist. I am not an editor of this article, so it is no use asking me to fix it: I would not know where to start. I already spent enough time fixing the errors you made to the templates (and that is the only reason I came here). Geometry guy 01:37, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, nice try. From Wikipedia:Good article reassessment:
*"3. Leave a message on the article talk page detailing any remaining problems. If appropriate, add maintenance templates to the article."
*Nowhere on the delisting instructions does it say you have state your intention to delist - only where the article is lacking in quality. Furthermore, 'na na na boo boo' is not a response. I am not asking you to improve the article. I am asking you to complaining about standard GA delisting. Perspicacite 04:09, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

text:  I'm one of the people who wrote these guidelines, and actually, they then say "4. Allow time for other editors to respond". You delisted at the same time as listing your concerns. However, if I thought you had seriously breached delisting procedure, then I would have overturned your delistment immediately. Instead I fixed it, and gave you some advice about best practice. I have been less than impressed by your response. Geometry guy 11:43, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Delisted from GA status