Margaret Thatcher believed South Africa should be a 'whites-only state', says UK's former chief dipl

[Nonhlanhla]

19. As a white South African, let me say how much is wrong here

First of all, since whites are a minority in South Africa, making it into a white country would entail genocide or mass removal of people of color. That is an evil idea in itself.

Ironically, not even the apartheid government really had that goal. The initial ideology of apartheid, wrongheaded as it was, was not premised on removing black people, but on separation based on a twisted form of multiculturalism - each cultural group living separately and on their own terms. I'm NOT defending it - just saying not even those apartheid guys went as far as aiming at SA being a completely white country.

Thirdly, apartheid was the direct consequence of British colonialism in South Africa, on two levels: apartheid policies were to a large extent a continuation of colonial policies; secondly, apartheid was the Afrikaners' response to the horrors of the Anglo Boer War, in which the British basically committed genocide on the Afrikaners. (Again, not defending apartheid here, but to understand where it came from, history is important - the book, "Apartheid: Britain's Bastard Child" by Hélène Opperman Lewis, might be insightful here.)

So, basically, Thatcher was horrible and full of $#!t.