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 2 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 5 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 6 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. 7 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 8 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 10 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. 11 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 12 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 13 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 14 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. 15 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