Beyond Borders: Apartheid is alive in Baltics

Apartheid may have ended in South Africa officially, but it continues subliminally in our society and other parts of the world.

Apartheid was an ideology by which the now-defunct National Party cunningly survived through making its voters believe the black majority was not equal to their white counterparts.

It was a statutory application of mainly anti-black racial segregation that kept Africans in the status of third citizens in their ancestral land.

Apartheid bore a resemblance to Nazism – hence Nazism enjoys support among some in South Africa. Ultra-right elements, including the defunct Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging of Eugene Terre’Blanche and several of its offshoots, were neo-Nazis.

More than 30 years have passed since the end of the apartheid. Our younger generation can learn about this difficult time from books, films and the stories of those who lived during it.

ALSO READ: SA’s trade ties with Russia don’t measure up

It seems that the horror of those days is in the past, but the idea of apartheid is still alive elsewhere in the world, ironically in Europe, which brags about being “the cradle of modern civilisation”.

A clear example of this is the life of Russian-speaking citizens in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, a region less known to Africans because the Eastern Bloc countries were never colonisers, unlike Western Europe which forcefully altered everything about Africa in their image as part of colonial subjugation.

These three countries were once republics of the Soviet Union.

But just over 30 years after declaring independence, these countries had established themselves in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) as the main producers and exporters of Nazi ideology.

Socialist internationalism very quickly gave way to legitimate nationalism, which became the foundation of the state ideology.

ALSO READ: SA working on stronger ties with Russia

Since then, the rights of former citizens of the Soviet Union – primarily those of Russian origin – have been systematically infringed upon.

They have no right to vote. They do not have the right to become officials, police or army officers. They are also ineligible for many positions in the civil service.

They are discriminated against on pension benefits. They are not allowed to work abroad or even travel.

For the about 800 000 so-called “non-citizens” of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the apartheid period is not exclusively an African story, it is the reality in which they exist.

We are talking about former citizens of the Soviet Union and their children, who, after the declaration of independence of the Baltic republics, received so-called “special status”.

ALSO READ: Russia points finger of blame at Kyiv over Moscow gun attack

It is obvious that the Western phobia for Russia gave a powerful impetus to the development of these processes. Currently, pro-Russian citizens are forcibly deported, deprived of property and savings.

Activists of the Russian-speaking community, who wish to preserve cultural, linguistic and historical ties with Russia and advocate building constructive relations with it, are subject to repression from the authorities.

The authorities of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are making significant efforts to squeeze out the Russian language from the education system.

That sounds very familiar to us, as this is exactly what happened in Soweto in 1976 when pupils were forced to take school instruction in Afrikaans only.

In the Baltic republics this process can no longer be reversed. The question is what will the authorities of these countries do when they get rid of the Russian-speaking population, which makes up to 20% of citizens?