History Making and Present Day Politics - Stolten's African Studies ...

H i s t o r y i n t h e n e w S o u t h A f r i c a
of government. 12 The liberal viewpoint has assumed that apartheid was the
result of the racist sentiments of Afrikaner nationalists, who dominated political
power at least after the Pact government of 1924, and that, contrary to
the opinion of revisionists, the system has slowed down economic growth. 13
The contrasting historical interpretations of the relationship between capitalism
and apartheid raised questions about the relative importance of race
and class in the development of the South African society, as well as questions
about the nature of the relationship between business and government,
including the extent to which the government ought to be viewed as a tool of
capital, or as an autonomous actor depending only on more indeterminable
group interests, such as those of a privileged electorate. These questions were
not only of theoretical interest for South Africa, but also important for the
development of political strategies. If fractions of capital were opposed to
apartheid, they were potential allies in the battle against the system. If, on the
other hand, separation of workers according to race supported capitalism, or
was perhaps even a condition for the existence of capitalism in South Africa
in a certain historical period, then the struggle against the prevailing form of
capitalist exploitation might have been an important ingredient in the battle
against racial discrimination. 14 As lessons of the struggle showed, these two
strategic lines were not totally incompatible. 15
The liberal-radical history debate which culminated in the late 1980s was
on the whole very stimulating for both productivity and quality in South
African historical research, and it would, as I see it, be a loss, if this discussion
and the related interaction between academia and society should just
fade away in favour of some kind of more or less static consensus in the area
of basic approaches.
This complex of problems is, despite great societal changes, still relevant
at a time when the South African government’s policy for economic growth
12. Deacon, Roger, “Structure and Agency: The Historical Development and Theoretical
Articulation of South African Marxist Historiography”, B.A. Hons. Thesis,
Political Science and History, University of Natal, 1986.
13. Thompson, Leonard M., A History of South Africa, New Haven, Yale University
Press, 1990/2000.
14. Luckhardt, Ken and Wall, Brenda, Working for Freedom. Black Trade Union Development
in South Africa throughout the 1970s, World Council of Churches, Geneva, ca.
1981.
15. Marx, Anthony W., Lessons of Struggle: South African Internal Opposition, 1960–1990,
New York, Oxford University Press, 1992.