MODULE 5:
THE APARTHEID STATE AND ITS GEOGRAPHIES
Apartheid as Hegemonic Project
Apartheid means, literally, ‘apartness’. It was a shorthand for the Afrikaner nationalist doctrine
of separate development. This was the belief that different peoples, conceived largely in racial
terms, could only develop if they did not come into competition one with another. It was the
inspiration behind various policy initiatives that we discussed in Module 3 on the politics of
urbanization, including the Group Areas Act and influx control. This was in addition to a vast
panoply of legislation governing, among other things, racially separate education, separate public
facilities like beaches (see Figure 5.1), elevators, taxicabs and even park benches, and the
proscription of interracial marriage.
As we also saw in Module 3, much of the impetus for apartheid came from the crisis of
urbanization that overtook the South African city during WWII and the immediate post-war
period. In addition to the issue of ‘native crime’ and concern over labor market competition with
whites, this was a crisis which had ramifications for major economic interests in South Africa,
including both the gold mines and white agriculture. Both of these were in favor of limiting the
permanent settlement of blacks in the city, though for different reasons. White agriculture was
concerned about its labor supply and what the exodus of blacks implied for it. The gold mines,
on the other hand, did not want to the pay the sorts of wages that a permanently urbanized
workforce would almost certainly demand.
There was also a sense of black challenge to white rule. This resulted in part from the growth of
black labor unions during the war and their militancy in the immediate post-war period. But in
addition the major focus of black pressure on the white regime, the African National Congress,
as a result of the leadership of the ANC Youth League by Nelson Mandela had shifted its tactics
from the almost sweet reasonableness that had characterized it hitherto to a more militant,
activist stance. Apartheid was conceived in part as a way of responding to this challenge.
Keeping blacks out of the city was seen as a way of forestalling demands for democracy. Plans
1
Figure 5.1 Beach Segregation Sign
for retribalizing blacks through (e.g.) the establishment of separate political institutions for them
in the reserves and their segregation by tribe in the new townships were seen as steps in that
direction.
Finally, we should not ignore the role of Afrikaner nationalism. Apartheid was seen as a means
of bringing about an equalization of incomes and therefore of life chances relative to the Englishspeaking whites. Afrikaners were the most exposed of all whites to black labor market
competition. They were the most recently arrived of whites in the cities and lacked the skills of
the English-speaking. Influx control would give them a degree of protection. Similarly, the
Group Areas Act was seen as a way of eliminating Indian competition for Afrikaner retailers
since it meant that Indians would no longer be able to own downtown property.
This is not to claim that apartheid was a static body of controls and legal proscriptions. It evolved
as circumstances changed, as resistance emerged and as the international context shifted. It
started out with a quite clearly defined social base: Afrikaners. But as it faced resistance from
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those that apartheid excluded from the vote so it had to broaden that social base, and bring in
other fractions of the population as junior partners in its projects. In particular it was forced to
give the vote to blacks, Indians and Coloreds: but on its own terms. Blacks were given the vote
in the so-called Homelands. These were based on the old native reserves and the idea, formulated
towards the end of the ‘sixties, was that eventually they would be given independence. In other
words, apartheid governments would finesse their way out of the black demand for the vote:
blacks would get the vote, but as a territorially defined jurisdiction South Africa would be
defined in such a way as to exclude them. Indians and Coloreds had to wait.
But as the apartheid authorities faced increasing black challenges to their rule, so they too were
thrown some scraps from the table in the form of the 1983 Constitution Act. And finally there
were the permanent black residents of the city: the Section Tenners. Black discontent meant that
they had to be accommodated in some way. And accommodated they were in the form of black
municipalities. Like their ethnic brothers in the homelands they too would have the vote: but
only in their own municipalities and not in national elections. But by this time the South African
government was entering deep crisis. Despite its ‘reforms’ black resistance grew. The towel had
to be thrown in and negotiations commenced with black resistance groups around a new
constitution for the country. But even here the old theme of separate development reared its head
in a new form; ‘power sharing’. We now consider each of these institutional developments of
apartheid in turn.
The Changing Geography of the Apartheid State
The Homelands
The historical antecedent for the homeland or bantustan (see next page for a map) is the native
reserve. Native reserves were created by the colonial governments, such as that of Natal in 1840,
and their outline was confirmed by the 1913 Land Act. The 1913 Land Act defined them as those
parts of South Africa in which blacks would be allowed to own land (Figure 1.19, p.31 in
Christopher). Outside of those areas, constituting only 7% of South Africa's land area, they could
neither own nor lease land. As a general rule it seems fair to say that the native reserve was more
a policy of the British colonies than of the Afrikaner republics of the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State.
3
4
Land has been added to the reserves. A government commission, the Beaumont Commission,
recommended in 1916 the addition of lands, primarily in the Transvaal where governments prior
to the Act of Union had allocated very little reserve land. It was not until twenty years later,
however, that the South African government acted on these recommendations by passing the
Bantu Trust and Land Act in 1936. The reserves eventually created through the provisions of the
1913 Act and
purchase from white farmers subsequent to the 1936 Act are shown in
Christopher, Figure 1.19, p.31.
However, the native reserves received a new and quite crucial significance in 1948 with the
coming to power of the National Party. Under the National Party racial segregation, influx
control, etc. were not only tightened up and applied in a more systematic fashion: they were also
provided with legitimation through the concept of 'separate development'. Accordingly blacks
were to be given a greater voice in their own government, if a voice whose contours were to be
selected by the South African state. Under the 1951 Bantu Authorities Act there was an attempt
to revive chieftaincy and to give chiefs greater authority than they had enjoyed hitherto. This Act
established Tribal Authorities as the local form of government in the reserves. Legislative
assemblies were created and these allowed a broader representation of locally prominent, rural,
interests. As a result of the Act chiefs were, in effect converted into salaried bureaucrats
responsible to the Native Affairs Department and could be removed by the South African
government; so the enhanced self rule envisaged by the revival of the chieftaincy had a certain
hollow ring about it.
Another milestone in the developing plans of the South African state for the reserves was the
report of the Tomlinson Commission in 1955. This had been set up to report on the socioeconomic development of the reserves. In its conclusions it argued for massive employmentcreation by means of the channeling of white capital into the reserves – something which had up
till that time been barred -- and by encouraging business development on the part of blacks. At
the same time agricultural revitalization was to be sparked by the replacement of communal land
tenure by private land tenure; this, it was believed, would facilitate improved land and livestock
management practices and investment in land improvement and so provide the basis for the
emergence of a much more prosperous agriculture.i
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This was clearly a call which took separate development seriously. Separate development was
also to be economic and the dependence of the reserves on white South Africa was to be severely
attenuated. This obviously ran counter to important white interests, including those which had a
stake in the maintenance of the migrant labor system: above all, the mines, and opened up once
again the debate between the advocates of ‘pure’ and ‘practical’ apartheid respectively.
Moreover, the abolition of communal tenure would undermine the chiefs by taking away an
important material base of their authority for it was the chiefs who allocated and re-allocated
land to tribal members. The result was, effectively, rejection by the South African government of
the conclusions of the Tomlinson Commission. Separate development did not mean separate
economic development and reducing the dependence of the reserves on white South Africa for
the employment of their workforces.
In hindsight much of this has backfired on the South African state, but some aspects of separate
development earlier than others. One of the hidden agendas behind the Bantu Authorities Act of
1951 was to facilitate betterment programs; if chiefs would not cooperate they would be
replaced. But this meant that opposition to betterment was also, frequently, opposition to the
Bantu Authorities Act which was facilitating its imposition, and to collaborationist chiefs. Other
opposition to Tribal Authorities stemmed from the corruption which was subsequently
widespread among the chiefs and the levying of taxes to support them. Some chiefs grew
wealthy, for example, by imposing charges for allocating land to tribal members, and through
corruption in dispensing justice in tribal courts. Organized resistance to both betterment and
Tribal Authorities was in some instances intense and led to police and sometimes military
intervention in the Zoutpansberg, Witzieshoek, Nqutu and Thaba Nchu. These disturbances
culminated in 1960 in the Pondoland revolt in the Transkei reserve (see Christopher, Figure 6.1,
p.159). This was put down by force by the South African state, but it encouraged the South
African government to bring forward its plans to convert the reserves into homelands which
would eventually be independent; plans which were in any case being hatched in the context of a
broader series of events.
For with decolonization in the rest of Africa and the growth of demands for a black voice in
government the concept of Homelands as vehicles for black development acquired a more urgent
meaning: 'separate development' became seen in terms of ultimate independence for the
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Homelands. In this way, it was thought, black aspirations for majority rule could be satisfied; and
to the extent that blacks became citizens of respective Homelands and so lost their citizenship in
(white) South Africa so the country would shed its polecat status in the eyes of a critical world.
Presumably if this process was taken far enough there would be so few black citizens of South
Africa that a universal franchise and majority rule would no longer pose a threat to the whites
since they would then be in a majority. On the other hand, and as I have pointed out above, there
was never any intent of making the Homelands economically independent. Economically they
were intended to function as they had always functioned: as labor reserves for the mines,
factories and farms of 'white' South Africa.
If the Homelands (for a map see: www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/south_african_homelands.gif;
see also Figure 3.16, p.88 in Christopher) were to be a viable part of maintaining white
supremacy in South Africa, however, they had to have some domestic constituency: there had to
be some blacks in the homelands with a stake in independence. The South African government
sought to achieve this through building up local petty bourgeoisies. These consisted of the
Homeland state bureaucracies along with some small businesses, particularly in retail
distribution. The experience of the Transkei, which was the first of the Homelands to receive
independence, has been described by Roger Southall in his book South Africa's Transkei.(New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1983).
The problem was one of creating a collaborative African middle class in the homelands whose
material prosperity and political privileges would depend upon the favors of separate
development. Construction of this class was pursued along three lines:
i)
the politicians, deriving from the chiefs, headmen and some traders, were to be bound to
the South African state by financial inducements: remunerations in the Transkei
parliament were obscenely high relative to the poverty of the Transkei masses and were
to be maintained by a hefty subsidy from the South African government.
ii)
the shift of functions from the South African to the Transkei government allowed a rapid
growth of (well-paid jobs in) the bureaucracy in education, health and the judiciary; this
also gave civil servants the wherewithal to move into rent producing investments like
housing and some took the opportunity.
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iii)
there was an attempt to create a business class: the Bantu Investment Corporation was
established to make loans to Africans without security though this resulted largely in
growth in the commercial and service sectors rather than in industry.
However, in the face of widespread black suspicion of the intentions of the South African
government and the overwhelming poverty that most citizens faced there, this creation of stakes
in the Homelands would have had to have been much more extensive than it was.
The Homelands were for the most part immensely poor, and indeed, post-apartheid, the areas
that they covered remain so.
Apart from subsistence agriculture migrant labor was the
predominant form of survival strategy and this gave the homelands a very typical demographic
bias: women, the elderly and children predominated. This increased in importance with the
continuing policies of ‘resettlement’ and the dumping of people in so-called ‘closer settlements’
where they would be devoid of land rights. What wages circulated as a result of migrant labor
provide the basis for some petty commodity production such as the brewing of homemade beer.
This is not to say that there was no attempt by the South African government to build up job
opportunities in the Homelands -- aside, that is, from the building up of the Homeland
bureaucracies and some small businesses. As we have seen the South African government tried
to decentralize jobs towards or into the Homelands as an indirect form of influx control. An
unintended side effect of these policies as they evolved over time was to build up some industrial
employment in the homelands. An early and abortive scheme -- the so-called border industries
policy of 1969 -- sought decentralization into areas close to the Homelands. In 1969 this was
replaced by a scheme in which entrepreneurs could establish factories in the Homelands
themselves. This was to be achieved through limits on the employment of Africans in certain
metropolitan areas, notably the urban complex in Southern Transvaal; and a set of financial
incentives to divert industry to eight declared growth points in the Homelands (see Christopher,
Figure 3.19, p.91 ). Most of the jobs went to Boputhatswana suggesting an unwillingness on the
part of industries to decentralize substantially away from the PWV (i.e. the PretoriaWitwatersrand-Vereeniging) area. Everywhere, however, jobs created through this program fell
short of needs.
But 'independence' gave the Homelands new opportunities for carving out a distinctive niche in
the South African spatial division of labor. In particular the prohibition in South Africa of
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gambling, pornography, and interracial sex created possibilities for large "entertainment"
complexes such as Sun City in Boputhatswana. A number of the homelands acquired casinos
(see Figure 3.25 in Christopher, p.98 and the discussion on pp.95-96) catering to white South
African tastes that could not be satisfied within the (rather puritanical) republic itself. The
independent state of Swaziland pursued a similar strategy and also has a casino. Indeed the
Homeland governments themselves had stakes in these developments, either through
partnerships or through tax writeoffs. The multiplier effects for the Homelands, however, were
quite meager since most of the purchases of these leisure complexes were made outside them.
The Homelands were not all uniformly poor. There was considerable uneven development
among them. The most successful in this regard was Boputhatswana in the northwestern part of
the country (see map above p.4). It benefitted from the industrial employment decentralized to it
from Pretoria and Johannesburg (Figure 3.19, p.91 and Figure 3.22, p.95 in Christopher) as well
as from Sun City and major deposits of platinum which provided the basis for an important
mining industry in the Rustenburg area. But by and large the economic record of the Homelands
was pretty dismal.
The attempt of the new Homeland governments to build up local economies also helps to explain
their history of vigorous anti-union policies. For South Africa created the possibility for the
Homelands of offering themselves as cheap labor, non-union alternatives. Legislation in other
areas tended to be similarly permissive from business's standpoint. Minimum standards in health
and safety could be avoided for example. In the Transkei the prohibition on the employment of
women and minors on night shifts was lifted subsequent to independence.
The repression of labor unions underlines the authoritarian nature of the Homeland governments.
Lacking legitimacy among wide sections of their populations their authority had to be bolstered
by brute force. Homeland governments confronted populations which on the whole were
opposed to the very concept of "independent" Homelands and who were loathe to lose their
South African citizenship. This popular disaffection was anticipated by the South African
government in devising constitutions for the new bantustans. In the case of the Transkei, for
example, the chiefs were entrenched as the dominant political group in the Legislative Assembly
outnumbering elected members 64 to 45. Even in the case of the elected members chiefly
9
influence was important in their selection and also in voting. This was partly by virtue of the role
that the chiefs played in local administration, in the allocation of land, and in the appointment of
teachers. As if to enhance the power of the chiefs to influence the outcome of elections, they
played a key role in the mechanism to accommodate illiterates -- of whom there are many -- for
the illiterate voter had to state his/her preference to the polling officer and most of these were
chiefs.
This is not to say that there was no support for the bantustan states. Rural populations tended to
more supportive. But on the whole the Homeland governments were viewed as collaborators
with the hated apartheid government of South Africa and as one more barrier to emancipation. In
this regard migrant labor and commuting to jobs in 'white' South Africa seem to have acted as
Trojan horses for the importation of unrest into the Homelands. Thus, as far as Boputhatswana is
concerned unrest was been concentrated largely in the dormitory settlements just inside the
Homeland boundary. It was here that there were people who confronted the reality of apartheid
on a daily basis and who were, consequently, more likely to see the Homeland governments as
one more instrument of their oppression.
From the viewpoint of the South African government, therefore, the Homelands came to be seen
as a problem rather than as a solution. The government certainly became quickly aware of the
discontented masses as a possible basis for support for the African National Congress. The
assistance given by the South African government to the training of Homeland police forces and
to the creation of bantustan armies should be seen in this light. The Homeland governments, in
this regard, played the role accorded them by the South African government, vigorously
denouncing the ANC and, indeed, proscribing its activities.
The Constitution Act of 1983
The creation of the homelands has to be interpreted in terms of the various forms of resistance
that the early apartheid legislation of the ‘fifties incited both within South Africa and abroad.
Resistance to the pass laws, the pressure mounted by the ANC on behalf of a non-racial franchise
combined with international concern over what was happening in South Africa were important
parts of the essential context for the homeland project. The other condition was the opposition,
internal to the reserves, to the Tribal Authorities Act, opposition which culminated in the
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Pondoland revolt n the late ‘fifties. In that instance the apartheid state found itself being defined
as the object against which opposition should be fomented for the tribal chiefs who were the
immediate object to animus were readily seen as the lackeys of the apartheid state. The
homelands represented a way of diverting popular wrath away from Pretoria, while at the same
time giving incentives to the new homeland elites to keep the lid on. The homeland elites, in fact,
were to become part of the broadening social base of the regime and their futures directly tied to
that of the regime itself.
The Constitution Act of 1983 represents a further development in this process of defending the
apartheid state from internal challenge and at the same time expanding the numbers of those who
could find some stake in the regime. In this particular case it was the Indians and Coloreds who
were the direct object of co-optation. But as it turned out, an earlier rapprochement with the
English-speaking whites was also important. This is because the Constitution Act was the
proximate cause of fracture within Afrikanerdom itself and the breakaway from the National
Party of its most intransigent, racist elements in the form of the euphemistically termed
Conservative Party. As a result of that breakaway the National Party needed the Englishspeaking to get their Constitution Act approved by referendum.
This particular initiative, along with an earlier coseying up to Colored, Indian and Englishspeaking white respectively has to be interpreted against a background of increasing black
opposition to the regime. If apartheid had a hey-day it was the ‘sixties. Formal opposition in the
form of the ANC and PAC had been banned and the opposition was in disarray. There was an
economic boom in South Africa and it was relatively easy to fund the growing body of
apparatchiks through which the apartheid was enforced. But from the early ‘seventies on, against
a backdrop of a slowing down in the world economy, things started to turn against the National
Party. Signal events were the 1973 Durban dock strike and then the 1976 Soweto riots.
Alongside these developments on the domestic front there was increasing concern about the subcontinental environment, particularly with the withdrawal of Portugal from its erstwhile colonies
in Angola and Mozambique respectively and the establishment of black majority rule in both
countries. The ‘seventies, therefore, were a time for consolidating the apartheid regime by
extending its social base.
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To start first with the rapprochement with the English-speaking whites: The National Party that
won the election of 1948 was vigorously Afrikaner nationalist and Afrikaner nationalism had
always defined itself in terms of a hostility to the British Empire and to a lesser degree towards
the British settlers in South Africa who had supported those imperial policies. English-speaking
whites clung to the symbols of the imperial attachment, like the Commonwealth and the
monarchy, and this was anathema to Afrikaners not merely on account of what it suggested about
divided loyalty but also on account of their hatred of the Empire: a hatred born of the hurts they
believed they had suffered at its hands, all the way from the Great Trek to the Boer War.
But with the passage of time, with the emergence of a clear black challenge to National Party
power from the early ‘seventies on, and with the severing of links with the Commonwealth and
the declaration of a South African republic, the rhetoric started to be toned down. The National
Party tried to broaden its appeal to whites as a whole. Thus, according to Giliomee (1992):
"Once the idea of a republic had been realized the NP leadership's attention began to shift to the
task of building up the state. While the state's purpose was certainly to protect the culture and
status of Afrikaners as a group it had to meet many other pressing demands of which some
required that the nationalist rhetoric and the specific favoring of Afrikaner interests be toned
down.", though he refrains from elaborating on the nature of those 'other pressing demands'; and
"(T)o survive the increasingly embattled apartheid state had to align English-speaking whites and
English big business in particular behind the state and the NP government" (1992: 346).
To be sure this was possible because much of the hostility to the English- speaking had never
been fundamentally national at all, but had to do with questions of relative economic privilege.
The British had always dominated economic life in South Africa and the South African state so
that there was a clear stratification between Brit and Afrikaner with the Brits on top. The changes
ushered in by the election of 1948 brought the two groups into much greater equality. Afrikaners
began to share in the good life which, until then, had been largely a British prerogative. The
purging of the English-speaking from the state opened up large numbers of well paid government
jobs to the Afrikaner. Afrikaner business was likewise stimulated. Government contracts showed
a clear bias towards Afrikaner firms. The various parastatal corporations, ISCOR (steel), SAPPI
(timber and paper), ALUSAF (aluminum), SASOL (synthetic oil), which the National Party
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government inherited from previous governments or created anew, provided other opportunities
for the creation of an Afrikaner entrepreneurial/managerial stratum.
So on the one hand, economic resentment was taken out of the picture. On the other hand, the
emergent Afrikaner bourgeoisie found that they were on increasingly common ground with the
British bourgeoisie: how to reconstruct a state which would reproduce the basis of their
prosperity through the continued subordination of the larger mass of the population.
A second major line taken was an increasing incorporation of the Indians and Coloreds into the
white state. This policy line became increasingly apparent from 1960 on as apartheid
governments saw the need to mend fences with those who had been sorely used by the
implementation of the Group Areas Act and, in the case of the Coloreds, by the abrogation of
their franchise. As far as the Indians were concerned, before 1960 they had been labeled as
aliens and emphasis was placed on making repatriation to India attractive to them. But
afterwards the government conceded their permanent status. In particular the government made
substantial investments in housing for the Indian working class and in education. A South
African Indian Council through which Indians could consult with the government was
established in 1964; and a separate ministry of Indian Affairs was created in 1966. According to
Freund there was a growing willingness to channel Indians into some professional fields like
pharmacy and engineering and this resulted in a general upgrading of the educational system for
them, including the establishment of a teacher training college and an Indians-only university.
The previous exclusion of Indians from apprenticeships and from the acquisition of skills was
remedied by the provision of training courses at the Technikon and the university: "During the
1970s significant numbers of skilled Indian workers emerged. This made possible unprecedented
mobility, symbolized by the constant home expansions and improvements characterizing
Chatsworth and other Indian working class areas (of Durban)" (Freund 1995: 84).
There was a similar policy shift with respect to the Coloreds and an attempt at economic
amelioration. In 1962 the Colored Development Corporation was established with the aim of
encourageing and assisting the growth of an entrepreneurial group through the provision of low
interest finance. Likewise the government Department of Colored Affairs began increasingly to
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employ Colored men in administrative positions. By 1970 approximately 86% of the nearly
25,000 Coloreds classified as professional were employed by the state.
The climax of this process of building bridges and cementing alliances was the 1983 Constitution
Act. From a number of viewpoints this is an extremely interesting piece of legislation. It was also
the context for the outbreak of the township disturbances that rocked South Africa during the
mid-'eighties. The Constitution Act aimed to bring Indians and Coloreds into the South African
state in legislative and executive roles. It created a tricameral parliament with separate white,
Indian and Colored legislative assemblies. Each chamber was supposed to legislate for what
were called 'own' affairs, while all three chambers met jointly to consider 'general' affairs. The
own affairs/general affairs is obviously an important classification underlying this whole
procedure. 'Own affairs' included things like housing and education: not such a forced definition
considering that whites, Coloreds and Indians already had their own separate schools,
universities and public housing. 'General affairs' included those aspects of policy, like fiscal and
monetary policy and defence, that were defined as of common interest. As we will see, this
distinction became important later in the context of negotiations over a new constitution and the
demands of the National Party for ‘power sharing’.
White hegemony was to be assured owing to the relative proportions of legislators in the three
chambers: 4 (white): 2 (Colored): 1 (Indian). When the three chambers came together to consider
'general affairs' there was, therefore, no danger that white interests would be seriously
challenged. Likewise the President was chosen by an electoral college selected from each of the
Chambers on the 4:2:1 principle, thus virtually guaranteeing that the President would be white.
On the other hand, these relative proportions did at least -- and conveniently for whites -- have
the justification of approximately matching relative shares of the total South African population.
To what degree these measures actually succeeded in binding Indians and Coloreds to the South
African state is hard to assess. Colored and Indian turnout at the elections for their respective
Houses were extremely low and this has been interpreted as a rejection of the apartheid's state's
overtures and solidarity with blacks who were left out of the arrangements. One of the effects of
the 1983 Constitution Act was to unleash a formidable opposition movement, the so-called
United Democratic Front, to oppose it. This was a movement that brought Indians and Coloreds
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together with blacks and undoubtedly there was a section of the respective Indian and Colored
communities strongly opposed to the Act. A strategy of expressing this opposition was to picket
polling stations and dissuade other Indians and Coloreds from voting. But to what extent
compliance represented a support for the objectives of the UDF or simply a fear of what might
happen if the picket lines were breached is unclear.
Interestingly, in a discussion of the 1994 elections in the Western Cape in which most Coloreds
seem to have voted for the National Party, it has been suggested that large numbers of Colored
people actually benefitted from the 1983 Act and regret the abolition of the political structures
that it createdii. This is because it created the conditions for the construction of extensive
patronage networks linking MPs to constituents: many voters benefitted, for example, from food
parcels or public sector jobs and this cemented their support for their MPs.
Yet if the South African government succeeded in building up a phalanx of protective ramparts
for itself by co-opting various elements of the subordinated populations, as well as burying the
hatchet with the British, this was not without cost. Allies were gained and supporters were lost.
A decisive moment in the history of the National Party came in 1983 when a substantial minority
of its MPs formed a new political party, the Conservative Party. The conditions which led to this
breakaway were complex. The immediate cause was the 1983 Constitution Act. By bringing
Indians and Coloreds into the government this was seen as compromising the principle of racial
domination on which apartheid had been constructed. But there were other concerns which had
been building during the latter part of the 'seventies and perhaps earlier.
An emergent division within the National Party and indeed within Afrikanerdom as a whole
during that period was that between the verligtes or 'enlightened ones' and the verkramptes or
'reactionaries'. Several things were at issue. One was the whole matter of reforming apartheid, as
we have seen in the reaction to the 1983 Act. Another was the cooling down of Afrikaner
nationalism as the National Party moved towards an alliance with the English-speaking whites.
This was anathema to hard line Afrikaner nationalists. A third were those reforms which
threatened the position of working class whites. The granting of trade union rights to blacks, the
abolition of job reservation in the early 'eighties, the recognition of a need to shift more resources
into black education, all these struck hard at the interests of the less privileged whites.
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The Conservative Party, therefore, was a complex social formation bringing together those
opposed to reform, those still defensive towards specifically Afrikaner interests, and the
disaffected white working class. It found particular appeal in the Orange Free State and the
Transvaal while its support in the Cape and Natal was much more limited. This reflected in
particular historical differences in the intensity of Afrikaner nationalism, differences which went
back to the Boer War. The Afrikaners of the Cape had always been more bourgeois, more liberal,
less intense about their nationalism, while the Afrikaner nationalism of the north had been more
populistic and existing altogether at a higher temperature.
The Black Municipalities
Alongside the Coloreds and Indians a substantial number of blacks gained from the patronage of
the white government and found their futures increasingly tied to support for its policies and the
preservation of apartheid. Foremost in this list, and as we have noted above, must be those who
had a vested interest in the continued existence of the homelands. Primarily this amounted to
their governments, including their civil servants, though some small businesses also relied on
them for licenses to operate, and for soft loans. As was remarked on in the first chapter, the
homeland governments opened up lucrative positions for the few. Moreover, they could be relied
on to oppose apartheid since, on the one hand, they relied for their wealth on South African
largess: in 1981 the homelands independent at that time -- the Transkei, Venda and
Boputhatswana -- received an average of 75% of their revenues from the South African
governmentiii; and on the other hand, with the abolition of apartheid the homeland governments
could be expected to go, and with them their positions.
Eventually the homeland governments came to be a first line of defence against the black
African masses. With those masses the concept of the homelands was far from popular. A survey
conducted prior to the granting of independence to the Ciskei found that 90% of all Xhosaspeaking blacks desired one person, one vote in a unitary South Africaiv. Extremely repressive
security legislation was enacted within the homelands and 'independent' homeland armies
operated for the most part under the guidance of the South African Defence Force.
16
For most blacks of course, the plan was that it would be in the homelands that they would have
the vote. This, however, left no provision for those, the Section Tenners, with permanent rights
of urban residence. The option that the government moved towards here was to establish
something akin to homeland governments and, from their standpoint, having similar functions.
The first effort in this direction was the setting up of Community Councils in 1977 responsible
through periodic elections to the township populations. These, however, were seen as mere
rubber stamps for the Bantu Administration Boards. So in the 1982 Black Local Authorities Act
they were replaced by Municipal Councils. Both these institutions had troubled histories. The
earlier Community Councils were seen as mere rubber stamps for the Bantu Administration
Boards.
The more recent town or village councils took over many of the powers of the
Administration Boards (allocation of housing, administration of services) but lacked the tax base
through which to implement those powers. Accordingly, to generate revenue, rents and service
charges (e.g. for water) were raised, creating a good deal of resistance. Moreover, just as the
homeland governments were recognized by their 'citizens' as collaborating with the apartheid
government so too were the black township councils. That did not mean that there was a shortage
of people willing to serve, for the power to allocate business licences, housing, contracts for
various services, provided considerable opportunities for quite lucrative kickbacks.
The analogy between these structures and the homeland governments is well taken. The South
African business paper, The Financial Mail, remarked (May 18, 1979) on how they represented
an "attempt to co-opt a small black leadership group to help it (the government) carry out its
policies". It continued:
... by and large this strategy has been successful as far as bantustans are concerned. Most
homeland 'governments' have gone along with administering key aspects of the labor
system ... One effect of setting up governments and parliaments and civil services all over
the show is to put the educated elite onto official payrolls, which is a good deal healthier
than having them fomenting unrest. So well has this co-option policy worked that
government is now gambling on applying it to the urban areasv.
Finally, and during the nineteen eighties, there was an attempt to create a black urban middle
class. As was discussed in Module 2, the entry of blacks into any form of entrepreneurial activity
in the cities of South Africa has always been fraught with severe obstacles. Not only did the
17
super-exploited status of blacks mean that it was very difficult to accumulate the initial capital
sum to enter a line of business. In addition, black business activity has historically been subject
to a restrictive system of licensing designed to protect white business interests.
These
restrictions became extremely onerous after 1963.
As the South African government tried to build up a black middle class, however, as a protective
rampart for its own position, so there was, necessarily, some relaxation of these restrictions. A
change in the law in 1979 allowed blacks to carry on small service and manufacturing
enterprises. This, in turn, provided a condition necessary to more positive measures such as the
provision of low rent facilities for black entrepreneurs. These were provided by the government
(in the form of the Small Business Development Corporation) or by philanthropic groups such as
the Urban Foundation.
The Changing International Context
South Africa also faced threats from outside its boundaries. This too was cause for building
alliances, or forcing into compliance. Several related changes occurred over the long period of
domination by apartheid governments. Most importantly there was a secular shift, particularly in
the First World of North America and Europe, in the acceptability, scientific and moral, of racist
argument. It is easy to forget just how taken for granted such arguments and beliefs had been
prior to the Second World War. Nor was this a climate of opinion fostered by politicians and
other assorted rabble rousers. Genetic argument, albeit informed more by assumption than by
defensible knowledge, permeated a good deal of work in the academic fields of education,
demography, and even biology. Differences in test scores in education and psychology tended to
be interpreted as a function of genetic constitution rather than social influences and there was
widespread interest in the possibilities of eugenics for 'improving the race'.
After the Second World War this changed. This owed something to Nazi excesses but in addition
there was some shift in the balance of political forces. Political parties influenced by various
forms of socialist belief came to the fore. The ideologies they adhered to were ones that
emphasized the role of society as opposed to biology. It was, other words, nurture rather than
nature that was then deemed to be important.
18
In part related to this shift in belief was the retreat from empire. Starting in 1947 with the
granting of independence to India and stretching over a period of almost thirty years, British,
French, Dutch, Portuguese and Belgian overseas empires were liquidated. Nowhere was this
more apparent than in Africa. So when Harold Macmillan, then British Prime Minister, went to
Cape Town in 1960 and talked to the South African parliament about the 'winds of change' and
how South African policy towards the franchise would have to change accordingly he was
thinking specifically about countries on South Africa's doorstep.vi Decolonization was followed
by the accession of the new régimes to membership of the United Nations. This provided them
with a forum for their views on white dominance, views to which, in the context of the Cold
War, the major Western powers had to be sensitive.
Likewise within the First World there was a retreat from racism with respect to their own
minorities. The outstanding example here is the United States and the rise of the civil rights
movement. The discourse of racial equality that emerged during that period of the 'sixties and
'seventies, the enhanced political power of blacks in the United States, albeit circumscribed,
provided an important backdrop for the pressures that the United States government would
eventually feel it had to bring to bear on South Africa.
The apartheid governments of South Africa therefore had the disadvantage of trying to justify
their policies in terms of beliefs that were increasingly unacceptable in the world. This led to
some shift in their ideological moorings. We have already seen in the case of the homeland
policy how there was a move away from race as the structuring category towards ethnicity: the
Tswana, the Sotho, the Xhosa, were in the view of the South African government, peoples just
like the Nigerians, the Ghanaians, the Algerians, and so forth, and were to be accordingly given
independence.
There was also an attempt to exploit the Cold War. What made this possible were two things. In
the first place the organizations spearheading the black resistance movement -- the African
National Congress, and the Pan African Congress -- both had fairly strong anti-capitalist lines.
The ANC, moreover, was in alliance with the South African Communist Party and received
considerable sums of financial aid along with matériel from the Eastern Bloc. So the idea of a
communist threat to South Africa had a certain plausibility: to yield to the demands of the black
19
liberation movement could be seen as conniving in a communist takeover, something which
certainly got the attention of the most vigorously anti-communist country, the United States.
Moreover, the possible loss of South Africa to the Communist Bloc could be depicted as carrying
very severe consequences. South Africa, it was proclaimed, was not just any country. It was a
country with strategic minerals over which it enjoyed a considerable monopoly in the free world:
platinum and titanium in particular. It also produced much of the world's gold and gold has
always figured in some way as a means of stabilizing and/or restoring the value of national
currencies: an essential function for the maintenance of economic stability. Finally South Africa
enjoyed a strategic location relative to world trade routes. With the expansion in size of cargo
vessels an increasing proportion of the trade between Europe and the Eastern hemisphere -- the
Far East, South and Southeast Asia, Australasia -- as well as with the oil fields of the Middle
East, was going around the Cape. What if, therefore, South Africa should come under the control
of a hostile government which could threaten these trade routes? What if the naval base at
Simonstown on the Cape peninsula, which provided a surveillance capability with respect to that
shipping, should fall under Soviet influence?
Finally there was what one might define as the mixed record of decolonization, especially in
Africa. For whatever reason the subsequent histories of the new countries were very mixed.
Tribal warfare, economic basket cases, petty dictators became the way in which much of Africa
was depicted, and increasingly so. This again was something that South African governments
were able to turn to their advantage as they tried to court the support, or at least studied
indifference, of the countries of Western Europe and North America. Under majority rule this,
they argued, would be the future of South Africa. On the other hand, black people in South
Africa enjoyed a standard of living not enjoyed by blacks anywhere else in the continent. All this
meant that the abolition of apartheid was a mere self indulgence for them and that the true
interest of South African blacks lay in the status quo.
A particular, and more local, expression of decolonization in Africa was the emergence of the socalled 'frontline states'. As the 'fifties turned into the 'sixties and the 'sixties into the 'seventies, so
South Africa found itself surrounded by the erstwhile colonies of Portugal and Britain that had
gained their independence: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, and from 1981
20
on, Zimbabwe. These frontline states provided launching pads for the major liberation
movements (the ANC, PAC). This meant devoting resources to policing the boundaries, to
destabilizing the new post-colonial régimes in order to dissuade them from providing bases for
the black South African liberation movement (see Christopher pp.183-186 for a discussion and a
map).
Dissuasion might involve punitive raids at ANC safe houses inside Mozambique, Botswana,
Lesotho or wherever. South Africa also became adept at using its economic leverage. Much of
this stemmed from the fact that for countries like Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho,
even Zambia, access to deep water ports for their export products lay through South Africa.
South Africa controlled the railroad lines and much of the rolling stock. So if South Africa was
unhappy with the policies a particular front line state was adopting with respect to the ANC, then
there might be delays in getting exports to port: delays attributable to 'lack of rolling stock', or
'congestion on the railroads'.
The frontline states also provided threats of a more subtle nature which required countermeasures. In particular chaos in the frontline states had to be maintained so that the credibility to
the outside world of black rule as an alternative to apartheid could be undermined. In
Mozambique the South African government is widely believed to have supported, through
money and training, the Renamo uprising aimed at overthrowing the government there. In
Angola likewise South Africa came to the aid of one of the participants -- Joseph Savimbi's
UNITA -- in the civil war there and probably succeeded in greatly prolonging it.
Towards Negotiation
During 1989, and subsequent to Frederick De Klerk becoming Prime Minister, it became clear
that the South African government was edging towards negotiations with the ANC. The release
of political prisoners such as Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki along with the persisting debate
about the release of Nelson Mandela were indicative of the changing climate. In 1990, with the
unbanning of the ANC and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, events moved at a much
more rapid pace. In particular, the dismantling of apartheid was clearly in the minds of the
National Party: the Separate Amenities Act of 1953 was repealed; plans were revealed to scrap
the Homelands, as well as the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936; and the Group Areas Act was to be
21
eliminated in 1991. Yet the abolition of apartheid also necessitated a new constitution for South
Africa: there would have to be negotiations among the parties affected.
In hindsight this was not a surprising outcome. The intensification of black discontent during the
'eighties, the increasing disillusionment of business with apartheid, South African and
international, paved the way. There were also factors of a highly specific kind which may have
brought forward the decision to negotiate, and on the part of the South African government and
the ANC, both. There are two, related, considerations, here.
The first is the breakup of the Communist bloc and the termination of the Cold War. As far as the
ANC is concerned it put pressure on them to negotiate since it meant a loss of funds through
which to sustain their campaign for the overthrow of apartheid. For the South African
government it seemed they had less to lose since with the end of the Cold War the specter of a
communist takeover in the country, which many took very seriously, was now greatly
diminished.
The second change was the ascendancy of free market ideas in public discourse and the
movement away from state intervention in production, investment and trade. During the 'eighties
the major industrial countries increasingly embraced ideas of privatization, competition, and
facilitating the flow of commodities and investment finance on a global scale. The sorts of
socialist policies that the ANC had advocated no longer seemed advisable and in fact, during the
negotiations over a new constitution, the ANC clearly moved away from them.
Relatedly there was the emergence during this period of a rhetoric of globalization. The
autonomy of states in regulating respective national economies was called into question. The
global marketplace, rightly or wrongly, was seen more and more as a stern disciplinarian of
national governments, weeding out those that were unfriendly to investment. Preserving a good
'business climate' became a major goal of national economic policy. The sorts of policies that the
ANC had advocated in its long years of exile seemed out of date, even to the ANC.
In assessing the outcome of the constitutional negotiations it is important to see where the two
sides started: what an ideal outcome would be for them. For the ANC it can be stated simply: a
22
nonracial franchise with a plurality system of returning legislators to parliament and with a high
degree of central control. This was entirely in keeping with the ANC's view that it would
command -- as indeed turned out to be the case -- the votes of most blacks who vastly
outnumbered whites, Indians and Coloreds, though it should be noted that the ANC also
expected to do well among the latter two groups.
Initially, and in preparing for these negotiations the South African government seemed unwilling
to yield the point of 1-person 1-vote with majority rule. Rather they clung to the concept of
group rather than individual rights. According to one of their early proposals representation
would be on a group basis with equality between the groups. Representatives of these groups
would come together at the national level to decide "general affairs": matters of economic policy
and state security, for example. There would be constitutional safeguards to prevent one group or
groups dominating another. At the local level each group would be responsible for its "own"
affairs -- primarily education and housing, but possibly health as well. Groups would be defined
culturally rather than racially and a new "open" group would be established at the local level: this
would be for those who want de-segregation of "own" affairs.
In this position they were almost certainly supported by South African business. Their major
concerns were: i) the protection of private property rights; ii) the preservation of enough of the
privileges of the white middle class to persuade them to stay. White business was fearful of the
ANC since in the past it had advocated nationalization of private industry and mining as one of
its first priorities whenever it might come to power. There was also concern that if the private
sector of the South African economy diminished then the state would be less attractive as a
borrower on global capital markets. This would force up borrowing expenses and so increase the
overall burden on what remained of the private sector and possibly make it more difficult for the
state to finance new physical and social infrastructure projects. Placating the white middle class
was important because they were key workers in the South African economy: engineers,
chemists, lawyers, physicians, university professors, higher management. If a new constitution
produced a government that would be aggressive with respect to redistribution to the Have-Nots
then the fear was that this would incite a mass exodus and leave South African industry short of
critical personnel. A constitution which in some way fell short of majority rule and/or kept open
23
the strong possibility of a veto over measures proposed by a black government was therefore
looked on with favorvii.
However, this drive for protection of minority rights was obviously unlikely to sit well with nonwhite groups since it was so obviously an attempt to protect privilege. There was, accordingly,
attempt to give the idea some degree of legitimacy. This assumed the form of the idea of
consociational democracy. This is an idea developed by the Dutch political scientist, Arend
Lijphart, who consequently became something of a guru in South African ruling class circles.
Lijphart's argument is that majoritarian democracy, in which voting majorities determine policy,
is unstable in societies with deep social cleavages. The attempt to impose it will result either in
civil disorder and the imposition of authoritarian forms; or partition/secession as in the
India/Pakistan/Bangladesh cases, or as prefigured by the claims of some Afrikaaners for a
Boorestaat. He suggests, however, that there is a democratic form that is compatible with deeply
divided societies; this is what he calls consociational democracy. It has four major principles:
i)
grand coalition government in which the political leaders of all significant segments of
the population cooperate in government (cf. the National Party suggestion that any party
gaining 15% of the vote be guaranteed at least one ministerial appointment).
ii)
mutual or minority veto on vital interests (cf. the white South African concern over
education).
iii)
PR.
iv)
some autonomy for the different segments of the population, as in federalism or the South
African Constitution Act of 1983.
Empirical cases of consociational democracy include: Switzerland, Lebanon (1943-75) and the
Netherlands (1917-67). However, although the South African ruling class might gain some
reassurance from the Swiss and Dutch cases, Lijphart points out that consociational democracies
aren't necessarily successful. And the criteria he lists did not suggest a happy future for it in the
South African context: e.g. such criteria as the absence of external social inequalities among
segments and no overwhelming majority group.
In the event the most notable decision was that the electoral system would be one of proportional
representation or PR. The attraction of PR is precisely that it protects minority political parties.
Under the plurality system of electoral representation ("first past the post") a majority share of
24
the vote tends to yield a proportionally much larger share of the legislative seats. One attempt to
systematize this relation is the empirical relationship known as the Cube Law. According to this,
and given 2-party contests, the ratio of respective shares of seats obtained is equal to the cube of
the ratio of the respective shares of the total, national, vote. So for instance, while a 50% share of
the vote would give 50% of the legislative seats, a 60% share would give 77% of the seats, and a
70% share of the vote, 93% of the seats. PR, on the other hand, would mean that even though
"white" parties might obtain only 20% of the vote, they would gain 20% of the seats (as
compared with less than 2% under the plurality system). In other words, under a plurality system
the votes for any pro-white party would be defeated by the ANC, assuming that is, that most
blacks voted for the that party.viii
Now it is true that since whites only comprise 11% of the population of the country PR does not
amount to very much in the way of representation. However, the major white political party -the National Party -- clearly hoped for more than this. They believed that a number of blacks and
other non-whites -- Coloreds and Indians -- will vote for them, as indeed turned out to be correct
in the 1994 elections. There are large numbers of very traditional blacks who have believed that
white domination is right; Coloreds and Indians, on the other hand, fear black domination. Yet
again there is still the concern that when one adds up all the anti-black voters who might
conceivably vote for the National Party under a plurality system they could still find themselves
outvoted by other blacks voting for the African National Congress. Proportional representation
on these calculations will provide them with far more seats than they could reasonably expect
under first-past-the-post rules and might just possibly give them very strong representation.
The other major issue in the constitutional negotiations turned out to be the extent to which
central government would monopolize power in the new South Africa. The ANC had always
insisted on strong central powers. Arrayed against them, however, was an interesting alliance
pressing for enhanced regional powers, in some cases a federal constitution and for yet others a
confederal one in which there would have been virtually no central power.
The elements in the loose alliance pressing for strong regional powers were threefold:
25
a)
the NP which thought that it might win a majority in some regional elections, especially
in the Western Cape; non-ANC majorities in other regions, like KwaZulu-Natal where
the Inkatha Freedom party was expected to be strong, might also increase its leverage in
its struggle against the sorts of changes that the ANC wanted to see in South Africa
b)
the Freedom Alliance which consisted of two major groupings. On the one hand there
were the leaders of the homeland governments of KwaZulu and Boputhtatswana who
believed that strong regions, depending on how their boundaries were drawn, would
allow them to retain much of their power base. In a newly constituted Natal or KwaZuluNatal (see Figure 5.2) the Inkatha Freedom Party reckoned to have a good chance of
winning a majority of the legislative seats. The Bop government felt the same way about
a possible Northwest region (Figure 5.2). A minority in KwaZulu threatened secession if
their demands for strong regional governments were not conceded. On the other hand
there was the white right. Diverse groups on the far right of the political spectrum were
pushing for a white homeland or so-called volkstaat (an Afrikaner homeland) (see
Christopher, Figure 8.4, p.201 for some of the proposals; also Figure 5.3 below for one
such proposal). This group One of the (many) Volkstaat Proposals included the
Conservative Party along with other groupings even further to the right. There were
many, many proposals for these. The assumption was that some area of South Africa
would be proclaimed as purely for white residence and only whites would have the vote
there. Such a territorial unit would either be part of a federal or confederal South Africa,
or even an independent state.
26
Figure 5.2: The New Provincial Map of South Africa
Figure 5.3: : One of the (many) Volkstaat Proposals
27
In the event the proponents of significant regional decentralization got less than they had asked
for. To be sure, they got their regions. In the KwaZulu-Natal homeland the Inkatha Freedom
Party looks like being a strong party since it won (though barely) a majority of the votes in the
1994 election in that region. Likewise the National Party will be strong in the Western Cape.
However, though there is to be no white or Afrikaner homeland and it is still unclear what the
extent of the powers of the regions will be. They will certainly be ones which the central
government can override if it sees fit: not something that the alliance for strong regions was
pushing for. Nevertheless, it would be premature to say that the situation is resolved. Indeed the
interim constitution left it very open so much will depend on the political process and the courts.
1
The Report of the Tomlinson Commission also advocated consolidated homelands, again in the
interest of making them economically more viable. For a map of its proposals, see Figure 3.6,
p.76 in Christopher.
2
William Finnegan, 'The Election that Mandela Lost,' New York Review of Books XLI:17,
October, 1994: 33-43.
3
John Saul and Stephen Gelb, The Crisis in South Africa: Class Defense, Class Revolution (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1981), p.49.
4
Ibid, p.48.
5
Saul and Gelb, p.56.
6
On the ‘winds of change’ speech see http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/rap/3.4myers.html
7
The matter of private property rights obviously has implications for the pressing issue of land
reform. Blacks have clearly suffered a great deal from the Land Acts: many experienced
successive reductions in status from share cropper to labor tenant; from labor tenant to laborer;
and then to being redundant and "resettled" in a Homeland. The appropriation of white land and
its allocation to blacks provides not only a form of compensation but also alleviates land hunger
in the Homelands. A clause on property rights in the constitution, however, blocks expropriation,
so attention now has to focus on how to make land available to blacks on cheap terms. The ANC
is pressing for an affirmative action program to give blacks access to land. The Pan African
Congress has always had outright confiscation as a central feature of its program.
8
For a lengthier discussion and explanation of the cube law:
http://www.janda.org/c24/Readings/Duverger/Duverger.htm
28