An examination of Apartheid South Africa’s Eugenics-inspired Project Coast, the racist rhetorics that underlined it and what it tells us about Nationalism
Written by Advait Joshi
Introduction
In the grand scheme of things, Project Coast was only one of the many horrific feathers in Apartheid South Africa’s cap. A conspiracy to commit genocide by carrying out mass sterilisations of South Africa’s “Natives,” only eclipsed by the Eugenic Holocaust movement in terms of how horrific it would have been, had it been carried out. That being said, if we fully begin to account for the circumstances in which Project Coast was born, one can find a number of worrying patterns that are fairly consistent between Apartheid South Africa and contemporary manifestations of nationalism.
I intend to bring together the theoretical understandings of Eugenics and Nationalism and their respective manifestations in Apartheid South Africa, so as to identify the deep-seated patterns that have begun to emerge in the present day.
The Lean, Mean, Mass-Sterilising, Apartheid Machine
The circumstances in which Project Coast came into existence in the 1980s were, in no small part due to a particularly virulent stream of nationalism. The Afrikaner Nationalist Party had been in power for nearly three decades. Armed by beliefs regarding their divinely ordained racial purity and a blatantly ethno-nationalist agenda,
the governmental Apartheid system had been moulded to their requirements. It was in this situation that the erstwhile Prime Minister, P.W Botha, recruited Dr. Wouter Basson and established the South African Chemical and Bio-weapon(CBW) Programme, known as Project Coast. Having started off by experimenting with lethal agents and drugs that could be used in South Africa’s many regional conflicts, the programme quickly evolved and began tinkering around with the creation of bioweapons. Their intended use: against the
Apartheid Government’s domestic political opponents, and eventually, the Black South African Population. It was this evolution that marked the beginning of a conspiracy to commit genocide with the exploitation of minute genetic differences and assaulting Black South
Africans’ ability to have children. This attack dismantled the very idea of a traditional family unit in Black South African households, reinforcing the Apartheid’s Government’s oppressive control over its victims. As Miles Jackson articulates , “scientists at Project Coast were deeply engaged in anti-fertility research. The goal…to produce a ‘vaccine’ that could surreptitiously be given to Black South
Africans…to curtail the Birth rate of the Black population in the country.” (Jackson, 2015, pp.935-936) As Jackson argues, these initiatives, while ultimately unsuccessful, do suggest there is
“reasonable basis to believe that Project Coast was involved in a conspiracy to commit genocide, pursuant to the provisions set out under Article 2(d) of the 1951 UN Genocide Convention(CPPCG), which states that genocide, amongst a number of other things, can also constitute “Imposing measures intended to prevent birth within
the group”. (here, ‘the group i.e Black South Africans).
Whilst it was horrifying, the South African plan to sterilise its Black population was not unique. Its existence was sustained by three sources in particular: one domestic, the second international, and the third a trend shared with a number of other nationalist movements that exist today. The first, most immediate source was a school of Apartheid-based ideology that arose within South Africa. This
constituted of pro-Apartheid ideologists’ justifications for racial separation. Their ‘fears’ surrounding the Black South African majority, and the belief that other races ‘diluted’ their racial purity, marked the Apartheid necessary in their Darwinian struggle for survival as a race. Furthermore, these ideas bound together “issues of legitimacy, cultural tradition, political stability and the need to preserve white privilege.” (Glaser, 2015, pp.372) The second source was the older, more infamous, school of Eugenics, which Project Coast scientists adopted, making use of research which took place during the Nazi Third Reich. More specifically, the Apartheid government aimed to build
on Nazi ideology about “undesirables” and their exclusion from what the Nazis considered civilised society. In this regard, Apartheid South Africa seems to have followed the ‘Nazi template’. As Kallis articulates, “National Socialism was instrumental in removing…moral impediments that had prevented the adoption of…eugenic abortion or sterilisation.” (Kallis, 2007, pp.402) Similarly, the rise of Apartheid was instrumental in creating conditions that facilitated the sterilisation
program perpetrated by the Apartheid Government against Black South Africans.
The final source of legitimacy, in some ways a consequence of the first and perhaps the most immediate reason behind the existence of the programme, was moral disengagement. Here the interests of a ‘labelled group’ were termed ‘less relevant.’ The idea was that, by virtue of their perceived inherent inferiority, the actions committed against the Black South African population were acceptable.
It is worrying that a lot of discourse in global politics at the moment is predicated on the very same negative labelling. Besides inherently being a violation of the Right to Equality, this labelling, as is demonstrated by the Apartheid South Africa case, is potentially step one to other, even more violent, appalling ends. Both Williams and Singh describe the morally horrific nature of this conspiracy,
opining that it unfolded the way it did, in no small part because of the “intellectual and moral bankruptcy of apartheid”, where the negative labelling and devaluing of non-White South Africans “bred a culture of ideological totalitarianism, moral disengagement and blind patriotism… encouraged disregard for opponents of the Apartheid Government… and led to engagement in ethically questionable practices” (Singh, 2008, pp.9),
The circumstances that gave birth to this sinister plot in South Africa make it clear that this is potentially a dangerous precedent. The ethnic and racial equality of humanity isn’t a new concept; the UN Declaration of Human Rights, amongst a number of international agreements and customary international law, explicitly states
it. However, in order to avoid a repeat of events in South Africa, a refocus on this principle is essential.
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Identity Hunters 