Talk:Apartheid in South Africa

Merge from "Allegations of apartheid"[edit]

As there is no article titled "apartheid" I'd like to propose taking elements from the rewritten Allegations of apartheid article and merging them here with History of South Africa in the Apartheid era highlighted as the main article on the topic. Lothar of the Hill People 21:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Under your proposal, would there still be an article titled History of South Africa in the Apartheid era? And if so, what would be in it? 6SJ7 04:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would offer that yes, the article on South African apartheid would remain intact and titled as is. See my comments below for how the Apartheid page would be broadly structured. Tiamat 21:07, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If that's the case, this proposal is actually for a move, not a merge, since it would replace a redirect with an article currently located elsewhere. Therefore, it should be properly tagged and posted as a proposed move. 6SJ7 21:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support my proposal. Lothar of the Hill People 21:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose only the South african apartheid is really apartheid. All others are allegations and uses of the term, and that use is heavily disputed as to whether or not it is appropiate. Thus any merge would be inappropiate for wikipedia to mantain any neutrality.--Sefringle^Talk 03:05, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Too soon Look if wikipedia had been around forty years ago, you could bet your bottom dollar segregation would have been a redirect to what is now called Racial segregation in the United States. And you would have had to have fought tooth and nail, for decades, to have it ever even be the disambiguation page it is today. User:Sefringle is dead wrong; there are 200+ WP:RS's in the links from Template:Allegations of apartheid which either support a wider meaning, or at least acknowledge such allegations are worthy of a response. Still, it has only been 14 or so years since South African Apartheid has been dismantled, and South Africans still feel strongly that they WP:OWN the term. Give this another few decades until the young Turks who helped dismantle Apartheid in Souoth Africa back in the early 90s are old men, and they will see the wisdom of this term as a universal. Perhaps in a decade you might even resurrect Apartheid (disambiguation), leaving us much where segregation is now. Until then, and unless something notable happens to change the general worldview, you are racing the tide. -- 146.115.58.152 04:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - this page (Apartheid) should remain a redirect to the South Africa article, and the South African history should remain separate from the accusations (or whatever term you wish) against other countries. 6SJ7 04:46, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This pro-Israel editor, on the other hand, presents a case in point for why South Africa editors should accede to universal ownership of the term so that international pressure might be applied to ongoing apartheid regimes elsewhere. But, for the most part, and despite the sins of their ancestors, I don't think they have the wisdom to do so. -- 146.115.58.152 06:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure that if I understood what in the world you are trying to say here, I would find a personal attack in there somewhere. I'm not talking about the "pro-Israel editor" label that you choose to tag me with, I am talking about the rest of it. Why don't you just comment on the proposal instead of commenting on the other editors? 6SJ7 06:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Forgive me, 6SJ7. I'm taking the long term, meta, view here. I don't mean "pro-Israel" as an insult; if anything, I'm as much pro-Israel, in so much as I'd like to see everyone in Israel live happy productive and peaceful lives, as anyone. May peace be abundant, descend from heaven, with life for us and for all Israel and say "amen." But, like I said, some are blessed, or yet cursed, with this vision of the future, this long term view. And so can we agree on something, that at best, Lothar's proposal is too soon? Or do you think Iran cares about linguistics? I have before tried to war over words when someone else just wants to war and have a scar to show for it. Do you have a long view beyond today's public relations? -- 146.115.58.152 06:59, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Public relations"? Yet another cleverly couched attack? I am not playing this game with you, "146" or whoever you really are. 6SJ7 15:08, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The encyclopedic use of the term Apartheid is about South Africa, so the redirect is appropriate. Other uses should be handled through See Also links or disambiguation pages. Maybe there are sources using the term as a label for segregationist systems outside South Africa, but there are whole shelves of books written about the 4-decade system officially called Apartheid in South Africa. The other uses of the term are secondary to this main use. Zaian 09:19, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
comment. If there are two different articles where the word "apartheid" can be found in the title, it means apartheid must be a disambigation page. No need of vote for that. The discussion concerns the matter of existence of these other articles. Alithien 12:47, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not true; where one use predominates, it is OK to redirect straight to that page, as long as that page has suitable disambiguation links at the top. See for example Gandhi. Zaian 13:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And just to add to that, History of South Africa in the Apartheid era has had a suitable disambiguation header for more than a year. So the disambiguation is already taken care of. 6SJ7 15:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Zaian, indeed, if editors decided that one use predominates we can have a redirect to one page that itself can redirect to others.

And so, currently Apartheid redirects to History of etc where there are other redirects to eg. crime of apartheid

As soon as somebody has statistics about what interests people when they look for apartheid in wikipedia, we can determine what predominates.

It would be simpler to have apartheid as a redirect page, except that we don't say/state/calculate which one predominates.

Alithien 15:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support - It would be good to have an article that addresses the concept of apartheid, in all its entirety. Padishah5000 17:58, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Clearly separate topics: the primary meaning and subsequent "recycling" of the term. Mukadderat 18:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom, Padishah5000 and even Too soon who properly points out that there are 200+ WP:RS's in the links from Template:Allegations of apartheid which either support a wider meaning, or at least acknowledge such allegations are worthy of a response. The article should point out that the term is primarily associated with apartheid in South Africa, link to that article and discuss the other applications as well. Failing that, Apartheid should be a disambiguation page that links to all articles on apartheid. Tiamat 19:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The connection made by "Too soon" is dubious. The word segregation comes to English via Latin (in the Middle Ages) and was originally used in a general sense. Its cultural connection to the former policies of the southern United States was temporal: the policies segregated, and so were called Segregation. Apartheid, on the other hand, comes to English via Afrikaans and was originally used to refer to the specific policies of South Africa. Yes, the term is applicable elsewhere, especially for policies that more closely resemble the South African model than other types of segregation and discrimination. But it is, by and large, meant to refer to the meaning as expressed by the article to which this page currently redirects, History of South Africa in the Apartheid era, and other meanings and uses can be (and are) addressed at the top of that article.—Kbolino 06:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. We have a ridiculous situation where our article on Apartheid is titled something other than simply Apartheid. I don't actually know how that happened, but that's a really poor reason to compound the insanity. <<-armon->> 11:14, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's no insanity there. History of South Africa in the Apartheid era is part of a series of "History of South Africa X" articles in Template:History of South Africa. The editors there simply see no way of separating South Africa's apartheid system from the history of that period. I've looked that the article, and don't see a way either -- 146.115.58.152 16:23, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's correct at all. They were very happy to have the article about apartheid be called "Apartheid" until people insisted on putting extraneous material about Israel (and perhaps other countries) into the article, so they renamed it to something that would exclude material that is not about South Africa. 6SJ7 02:21, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct about the title. people insisted on putting extraneous material about Israel (and perhaps other countries) into the article Though I don't believe that ever occurred either. -- 146.115.58.152 14:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do not understand, it is not clear to me what it is you are saying never occured. If some people insisted in doing something, did that never get as far as doing so? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregorydavid (talk • contribs) 06:25, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion seems to have ended, and there obviously has been no consensus in favor of the proposed merge. (Arguably there has been consensus against it.) Therefore, I have removed the merge tag from the other article. As I pointed out above, this really wasn't the proper procedure anyway, as moving an article to where there is now a redirect is really a move (and in this case a contested move, so it needed an WP:RM posting), not just a merge. 6SJ7 18:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - the discussion has not quite ended. History of South Africa in the apartheid era should remain, but the "A" in apartheid should revert to where it was several months ago ie in lower case!Phase4 20:14, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a completely different issue, and needs to be discussed on the talk page for that article, not here.6SJ7 21:32, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

True, and that's why I've already discussed it on the article's talk page: "I think the solution now is to move the article back to where it was a couple of months ago when the "A" in apartheid in the title was in lower case. In my opinion, none of this pointless discussion would have been engendered if it had been left by Hayden5650 as History of South Africa in the apartheid era.Phase4 16:31, 28 August 2007 (UTC)"Phase4 21:49, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]