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

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Making of the Apartheid Plan, 1929–1948 385 Downloaded by [Shanghai Jiaotong University] at 18:42 19 September 2012 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 It proposed that blacks had to be steadily withdrawn from the white economy, and transferred to the territories where they ‘belonged’, with white labour taking their place.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.
386 Journal of Southern African Studies Downloaded by [Shanghai Jiaotong University] at 18:42 19 September 2012 A Racist Policy without Racists? While Eiselen and others stressed culture as the foundation of CNE and the political programme, a section of the Nationalist intelligentsia emphasised race. Invariably their point of departure was ‘racial purity’ as the foundation of white supremacy. It is sometimes suggested that such ideas were derived from the Nazi ideology that swept through Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. However, National Socialism had few adherents among the intelligentsia. There was broad support in South Africa for ‘race purity’, even among liberals, including Alfred Hoernlé and the editorial committee of Forum, but the biological variant of racism remained a fringe phenomenon. Piet Cillié, together with Hendrik Verwoerd the most articulate apartheid apologist, wrote in 1952 that ‘South Africa was remarkably free from racial mythologies.’ For him, the Afrikaners’ desire to survive was a far stronger and more indestructible feeling than race prejudice. ‘Like the Jews in Palestine and the Muslims in Pakistan, the Afrikaners had not fought themselves free from British domination only to be overwhelmed by a majority of a different kind. Eventually we shall give that majority its freedom, but never power over us … They [the blacks] will not get more rights if that means rights over and in our lives.’ 62 These can be seen as self-serving statements, but L. E. Neame, liberal editor of The Cape Argus and author of a book on apartheid, made the same point. Writing from a comparative perspective, he took issue with the argument that apartheid was based solely on the claim that the white race was inherently superior to all others. An unreasoning prejudice against colour was not the root of the matter. The problem is ‘national rather than pigmental… The motive is not detraction but defence.’ 63 The Nationalist academic with the most explicitly racist thesis, both in terminology and the practical suggestions he offered, was Geoff Cronjé, a Pretoria sociologist. Perhaps because his books appeared just before the 1948 election, analysts have mistakenly thought that he was an influential figure. But he had stronger ties to the extra-parliamentary, pro-Nazi Ossewa Brandwag movement than to the NP during the war years, and had no standing in D. F. Malan’s inner circle. (He was one of the few Nationalist academics who declined to send a submission to the committee that drew up the so-called Sauer report.) He went much further in the expression of his racial obsessions than almost any other Nationalist academic – John Coetzee calls him ‘crazy’ 64 – but how much his ideas resonated at a grass-roots level still has to be examined. The strongest and most enduring part of the apartheid ideology was the construct of liberal nationalism and the associated appeal to an ethical form of survival. Here, the most articulate exponent was N. P. van Wyk Louw, the leading intellectual in the Nationalist movement. He was initially attracted to National Socialism but abandoned it by the end of the1930s. As in the case of General Hertzog and many others, his faith in Westminster-style liberal democracy and its tendency towards majoritarianism received a severe shock in 1939 when General Smuts took South Africa into the war on a split vote. However, he did not reject the fundamental liberal principles of liberty and equality. In seeking a solution to the racial issue in South Africa, his point of departure was the impasse in the country and the impossibility of applying the principles of Westminster-style democracy there. ‘It was the typical tragic situation of history: two “rights” [the white and 62 J. C. Steyn, Penvegter: Piet Cillié van Die Burger (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2002), pp. 68–72. See also the views of Cillié’s predecessor, P. A. Weber, ‘Die Burger —SyStryd, Invloed en Tradisie’, in J. P. Scanell (ed), Keeromstraat 30 (Cape Town, Nasionale Boekhandel, 1965), pp. 18–38. 63 The article was re-published by the Journal of Racial Affairs,1,6(1954), pp. 45–47. See also Adam and Giliomee, Ethnic Power Mobilised, pp. 61–82. 64 J. M. Coetzee, ‘The Mind of Apartheid’, Social Dynamics, 17, 1 (1991), p. 30.
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