The Making of the Apartheid Plan, 1929-1948* - CC

Making of the Apartheid Plan, 1929–1948 385
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accompli, Malan and his followers had to reconsider their views. They soon proceeded to
make a virtue of necessity.
Three different academic approaches to legitimate apartheid can be discerned: the first
was based on historical claims, the second on ethnic differences and the third on racial
differences. The historical argument was that whites and blacks had arrived simultaneously
in the territorial boundaries of the South African state and that the Voortrekkers had
followed a policy of ‘isolation’ and territorial separation. Liberal historians easily dismissed
this view. Afrikaner historians such as H. B. Thom were closer to the mark when they
claimed that resistance to gelykstelling (social levelling), originating in the status distinctions
of the Dutch East Company, remained a central idea in Afrikaner political thinking. 56
Indeed, apartheid embodied this idea, with a remarkable correspondence between its
statutory groups and the status groups introduced by the Dutch East India Company at the
Cape.
One of the first Afrikaner scholars who stressed ethnic difference as a basis for policy
was the anthropologist Werner Eiselen, who argued that the real task in South Africa was
not the solution of a race problem but ‘the creation of effective arrangements for the
peaceful existence of different ethnic groups.’ 57 The first book (it was more an extended
pamphlet) propagating a policy called apartheid in social science language was written by
three Stellenbosch academics, P. J. Coertze (a lecturer in anthropology), F. J. Language
(‘native administration’) and B. I. C. van Eeden (Bantu languages). The acknowledgement
in the preface of Gerdener’s influence highlights the marriage of the ideas of mission
strategists and secular nationalists. It proposed that blacks had to be steadily withdrawn
from the white economy, and transferred to the territories where they ‘belonged’, with white
labour taking their place. Only those ‘absolutely necessary’ were to be permitted to remain.
The study also advocated the regeneration of traditional institutions in the reserves where
Africans could administer themselves, preserve their customs and restore discipline and all
‘that was healthy in the volkseie.’ 58
The novelist Joseph Conrad remarked that in order to dominate people one has to have
an idea – something one can ‘set up, and bow down before and offer a sacrifice to.’ 59 What
redeemed apartheid in the eyes of the Nationalist intelligentsia was the idea that the
Afrikaners were prepared to grant (the Afrikaans word for it, gun, is much stronger)
everything to blacks that they demanded for themselves. 60 Like the Afrikaners, Africans
would have their own schools, churches, residential areas, homelands and governments on
which they could put their own cultural imprint. Nationalists persuaded themselves that
apartheid would be implemented much more ‘positively’ than segregation, particularly
because the Afrikaner nationalists had waged a long and bitter struggle against attempts to
assimilate them. 61
It was within the context of an emphasis on culture that the ideology of Christian-National
education developed. Here, the Broederbond, with its large contingent of teachers,
lecturers and church ministers, did play a prominent role.
56 H. B. Thom, Die Geloftekerk en ander Studies (Cape Town, Nasionale Pers, 1949).
57 W. Eiselen, ‘Die Aandeel van die Blanke in Afsonderlike Ontwikkeling’, Journal of Racial Affairs (1965); Moodie,
The Rise of Afrikanerdom, p.275.
58 P. J. Coertze, F. J. Language and B. I. C. van Eeden, Die Oplossing van die Naturellevraagstuk in Suid-Afrika
(Johannesburg, Publicité, 1943).
59 J. Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Cologne, Könemann, 1999), p. 52
60 Kinghorn, ‘Die Groei van ‘n Teologie’, pp. 92–96.
61 L. J. du Plessis, ‘Die Naturellevraagstuk in Suid-Afrika’, Koers, 8,1(1940), p. 5.