Apartheid

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Helen Suzman still gets hate mail. These days it comes mainly from black South Africans, not white defenders of the racist apartheid regime against which she waged a determined and often lonely battle during 36 years in Parliament. "You were just a spy of the Jews," begins the latest letter, an unsigned note that arrived this week alleging Jewish exploitation of the country's majority black population. Suzman, who is sharp of mind and tongue at 87, tossed the letter on a table at her home north of Johannesburg and said such nastiness did not bother her. "I don't frighten easily," she said.

The fabricated allegations against Israel - such as letter writer Janice Kelly's claim of "Israeli apartheid" - never cease to amaze me (

As a housing lawyer on leave from my public-interest practice in Johannesburg, I came to Baltimore last October, enthusiastic to learn how to ''undo'' racial segregation. I was anxious for lessons about integrated neighborhoods, the constitutional right to choose where to live and the role of government in ensuring equal opportunities and fair housing practices.My own Afrikaner ancestors, after all, had developed a national social system -- apartheid -- upon the foundation of racial residential segregation.

Emmett Burns has been protesting since he was 15. The Maryland delegate and Lochearn preacher was born in Jackson, Miss., where he picketed in 1966 with Medgar Evers, an NAACP demonstrator who was instrumental in the desegregation of the University of Mississippi. Burns says he is a "proud jailbird," following his arrest in Washington during an anti-apartheid march in the early 1980s. All his life, he has tried to emulate the example of Nelson Mandela, the former South African president who ended apartheid and was buried Sunday.

A year ago, President F. W. de Klerk dropped a bombshell on opening the white parliament by announcing the legalization of outlawed organizations including the African National Congress. When he repeated the performance Friday, by announcing as his legislative program an end to the legal foundations of apartheid, the ANC was out in the street on a one-day national strike demanding an immediate share in political power for black people.Scrapping old laws of residential and land ownership segregation will not make one black person richer or happier or better housed the next day. The results of generations of those laws going back to 1913 will still be in place and will remain a major subject for future, multiracial South African politics.

The parliament of South Africa has dismantled the last pillar of apartheid law. The Population Registration Act of 1950 -- which required every South African to be registered as white, black, colored (mixed ancestry) or Asian -- is repealed. But nothing has replaced it. The change in law affects babies about to be born, who will not be registered. Everyone else already is. The rolls are not erased.Racial classification combined with segregation laws gave most of South Africa to its fortunate minority and denied most of it to its majority.

Welcome as South Africa's decision to scrap its apartheid land and housing laws may be, mere repeal of noxious laws does not compensate for years of dispossession. Millions of blacks were deprived of their homes and forcibly moved to segregated locations in the past four decades. Many were denied home ownership. There will have to be some system of reparation and redress before the country can really become a non-racial democracy.The situation in South Africa today can be compared, perhaps fancifully, with the demolition of the Berlin Wall.

A federal panel of three judges overturned Georgia's congressional districting scheme last month on the grounds that a district was an unconstitutional "racial gerrymander," drawn with the sole purpose of creating a black majority. Earlier, another federal panel ruled that three Texas districts drawn to facilitate the elections of minority candidates "bear the odious imprint of racial apartheid."Both panels were inspired by the Supreme Court's 1993 decision in a North Carolina case in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that a district whose residents have "little in common with one another but the color of their skin bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid."

NEW YORK -- Once upon a time, in a country called South Africa, the color of your skin determined where you lived, what jobs you were allowed to have and whether you could vote. Decent countries around the world fought the evil of racial apartheid by turning South Africa into a pariah state. They barred it from global events such as the Olympics. Businesses and universities boycotted South Africa, damaging its economy and adding to the isolation of the white-minority government, which finally repealed apartheid laws in 1991.

I was 18. I had been at college only a week and there was this poster asking us not to buy South African oranges. It seemed so obvious and so compelling that I wrote immediately to my parish priest at home demanding that he preach on the topic that Sunday. I truly believed that if enough of us students did as I did, the walls of Jericho would soon come tumbling down.That was 34 years ago. I have since learned not only that it takes more than the marching feet of students to change South Africa, but that South Africa is only one of many terrible examples of man's bestiality to man. Yet to me, as to many of my generation, South Africa remains the special case that affected us more intimately and emotionally than Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq or Rwanda.

Seldom does the death of a foreign leader touch the hearts and minds of Americans as did the passing at age 95 of Nelson Mandela, who suffered, struggled and eventually led South Africa out of the scourge of racial apartheid and became, almost miraculously, its president. He rose to prominence in his embattled country and eventually throughout the world as the central figure in the fight for racial and human justice after 27 years of harsh imprisonment on a desolate island redoubt.

In the Christmas season, it is natural for men and women of the Christian faith to ponder the lessons of the Gospel and particularly the forbearance of their savior who made the ultimate sacrifice so that others might be free. Few political leaders who have walked the earth inspire comparisons to Jesus Christ and the love he held for mankind. Nelson Mandela, the South African leader who died Thursday night at the age of 95, would be the exception. For many, Mr. Mandela will be remembered for ending apartheid rule, for fighting against racism and oppression, leading a revolution and for surviving 27 years as a political prisoner.

I was mostly OK with the commentary by Lawrence Brown until the Open Society Institute fellow blamed all problems of the African-American community on "the full apparatus of American apartheid" ("Trayvon and Brandon," July 23). I assume he was alluding to the leaders in the Race Industry - the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who have zero desire to have blacks integrate with the rest of the United States and do so for their own monetary aggrandizement. The writer would be much better served by reading Ben Carson's books and implementing some of his logical ideas.

With songs, stirring words and a cake, a group of Baltimoreans joined the worldwide party to celebrate Nelson Mandela's 95th birthday, an occasion made even happier by news that the health of the hospitalized former South African president was improving. "I was waiting for this day for a long time," said the Rev. Mankekolo Mahlangu-Ngcobo, a minister public health educator from South Africa who led a celebration at Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church in Baltimore. "I know people lost hope … but we can celebrate 95 years of Nelson Mandela's life - hallelujah!"

As someone who was involved in the divestment movement against apartheid in South Africa, I read with interest the Rev. James W. Dale's recent commentary ("Choosing to stay engaged," May 4). I was appreciative of the author's recognition that the Israeli occupation is oppressive. However, the case against divestment from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation was not made. In fact, his commentary reminded me of the arguments made against divestment of companies involved in South Africa.

Theodore Neal "Ted" Holmes, who founded the old Chicken George restaurant chain and built it into a regional fast-food business, died of diabetic complications Nov. 29 at Sanctuary at Holy Cross in Burtonsville. The Jessup resident was 72. Born in York, Pa., he was son of the Theodore G. Holmes, a Cadillac dealership worker, and Sarah Wilson Holmes. He was a 1957 graduate of William Penn Senior High School, where he played basketball and was later inducted into the school's hall of fame.

On a radio show a black woman insists that few would care if the victims were black. By fax comes an update of an elaborate O.J. frame-up fantasy signed, ''An African-American.'' On the phone, a black professor recalls his visit to Seattle where two hotel employees told him, ''They're cutting us down one by one.''A Gallup Poll solidifies these amorphous racial feelings into numbers. Sixty percent of black Americans but only 15 percent of white Americans think O.J. is innocent. Sixty-eight percent of white Americans but 24 percent of black Americans think the charges against him are true.

During the late 20th century, human rights campaigns led by Western progressives helped to liberate two nations on the tip of the African continent from brutal whites-only rule. In 1980, the apartheid regime of Rhodesia gave way to a black-led Zimbabwe. And in 1994, the first multiracial elections in South Africa delivered the presidency to a black man, the longtime anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela. In the years since, the two nations have traveled very different paths. South Africa has enjoyed stability, a free press, international investment, an independent judiciary and democratic elections - helped by the graceful exit of Mr. Mandela, who retired after one term.