Aside from enacting the Native Lands Act to seize land from people based on race, and prohibit people to own land based on race, there was the Soweto Massacre were police killed hundreds of school age children.
But aside from murdering kids, taking property, denying voting rights, and prohibiting non-whites from owning some land, the Apartheid government had wonderful democratic principles.
I could easily make a stronger case with quite a good deal more evidence against what the US government has done to Americans in the time since. The 3rd Infantry Division did far worse in Waco, less than half as long ago.
In light of the unfolding reality that yes, given the chance, the S.A.’s black population would not hesitate to eliminate the whites and provide no quarter, the moral question concerning the judgments made in 1976 needs to consider whether those decisions were made in light of the understanding that suppressing the black population was a necessary act of survival and self-defense.
The time-to-live for the white S.A. population can be measured starting from the point of choosing to end Apartheid, so while it is easy to posture and virtual signal about those choices here long after the fact, realize that the act you are condemning was a brick in the dam holding back what we can now see is the unfolding genocide of the whites. It is no longer speculation, it is now a reality we can measure and watch unfold in real time.
Did the white leaders of 1976 know that the extinction of whites in South Africa was 30 years away from the end of Apartheid, and make their decisions in light of that knowledge?
The US military probably kills that many people twice over (possibly a gross underestimate) every day in over 100 countries around the globe in the name of the same mission, security and a future for our people.
Should they not do this, so that in 30 years someone in Norway can titter on about how morally terrible our choices today will have been?
I would suggest that the one-sided impression you may have of the Apartheid regime is due to the narrowness of the factors under consideration, a narrowing which does not match the realities on the ground for the human beings involved. The duration during which that regime resisted full-spectrum international pressure suggests that yes, they were well aware that the end of Apartheid also meant the end of a future for their children.
And now here we are, at the end of the future for their children. Do we feel good about this outcome?
The apartheid government was a soft fascist state.
Nothing in this post describes a policy of genocide or democide. It does describe th official oppression the apartheid regime instituted. Very bad stuff...but not genocidal.