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

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Making of the Apartheid Plan, 1929–1948 387 Downloaded by [Shanghai Jiaotong University] at 18:42 19 September 2012 the black right to self-determination] which confronted each other implacably.’ There was a ‘balance of power’: blacks had their numbers; whites, particularly the Afrikaners, held the upper hand, politically, economically and militarily. The ‘stale-mate’ could be resolved either by the ‘ploughing under’ of the less numerous group or by the ‘separate development’ of each, which he claimed represented a peaceful solution. He was stimulated by a 1939 lecture by Alfred Hoernlé, which was subsequently widely discussed among Nationalist academics. Hoernlé discerned three future political possibilities for South Africa. They were: parallelism, inwhich different races would be subjugated to a ‘master group’, assimilation, inwhich all racial differences would be obliterated, and separation. Hedescribed the latter as ‘a sundering or dissociation so complete as to destroy the very possibility of effective domination’ by another group. The third option was ethically sound, but Hoernlé, like Jan Hofmeyr, thought that whites would refuse the enormous sacrifices that would be required to make it a reality. 65 Van Wyk Louw projected Hoernlé’s option of ‘separation’ as a possible solution to South Africa’s racial problem. In 1946 he wrote: ‘For Nationalism to be based on a true political principle it has to be true for everyone.’ Accordingly, the recognition of the nationalist principle for the Afrikaners logically had to be extended to all other national groups in South Africa. Hence, ‘we [the Afrikaners] should not speak of ourselves as the volk [nation] of South Africa, but as one of the volke of South Africa.’ 66 By 1948 he was envisaging four white and four black separate states in southern Africa. But he left the whole question of the actual division of land obscure, and it was only in the 1960s that he made a brief reference to the ‘two halves of this large country of ours’ to which whites and blacks had claims. 67 Louw’s words were double-edged. In the 1960s and the early 1970s, apartheid apologists used formulations and imagery very similar to those he had first used in the mid-1940s. But at the same time, his conception of Afrikaners forming only one of several co-equal volke over the longer run undermined the ideology of white supremacy. Yet the real reason why Van Wyk Louw’s political ideas outlived him was the ethical dimension he introduced into the debate about Afrikaner survival. He did this by using the evocative phrase, ‘voortbestaan in geregtigheid’ – survival in justice – and by insisting that national death might be preferable to a form of ethnic survival based on injustice. He identified three kinds of volkskrisisse, ornational crises – situations in which the very existence of the ethno-national group was at stake. • When the Afrikaners were overwhelmed by external military might or ‘ploughed under’ by mass immigration as propagated by some pro-British politicians. Louw was referring to the defeat of the Boer republics at the hands of the British in the Anglo–Boer War of 1899–1902, and the subsequent attempt by Lord Alfred Milner to establish an Englishspeaking majority in the white population by way of state-sponsored mass immigration. • When a great number of the Afrikaner people doubted in themselves ‘whether we ought to survive as a volk’. Afrikaners might still survive individually and some might even prosper, but they would no longer constitute a distinctive volk: they ‘would be absorbed in either an Anglo-Saxon or Bantu-speaking nation.’ • ‘When some time in the future a great number of our people would come to believe that 65 A. Hoernlé,South African Native Policy (Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1939), pp. 149–68. 66 Van Wyk Louw, Versamelde Prosa, vol. 1, pp. 502–506. 67 N. P. van Wyk Louw, ‘Inleiding’, in D. P. Botha, Die Opkoms van ons Derde Stand (Cape Town, Human and Rousseau, 1960), p. viii. I elaborate on this in ‘Apartheid, Verligtheid and Liberalism’, in J. Butler et al. (eds), Democratic Liberalism in South Africa (Cape Town, David Philip, 1987), pp. 363–383.
388 Journal of Southern African Studies Downloaded by [Shanghai Jiaotong University] at 18:42 19 September 2012 we need not live together in justice [Louw’s emphasis] with other ethnic groups; when they come to believe that mere survival is the chief issue, not a just existence.’ In a vivid passage he posed this question: ‘Can a small volk survive for long, if it becomes hateful, even evil in the eyes of the best of its members and also to people outside its fold?’ The volk, he warned, ran the risk of the withdrawal of allegiance by a critical number of intellectuals if it yielded to the ‘final temptation’ of abandoning the quest for ‘survival in justice’ and preferred ‘mere survival’. In the case of a small nation like the Afrikaners this could have a fatal effect. But he did not despair that ultimately Afrikaner survival would come to be based on moral values. As he phrased it: ‘I believe that the greatest, almost mystical crisis of a volk is that in which it is reborn and re-emerges young and creative; the “dark night of the soul” in which it says: “I would rather go down than survive in injustice”.’ Because van Wyk Louw remained a staunch member of the Afrikaner Broederbond and supporter of apartheid he has been judged negatively. 68 Ultimately, however, his status as a critic revolves around the question of whether he could envisage a point where the volk deserved to go under. In this essay, Louw refuses to go down the route of ethnic survival at all costs. His argument about survival in justice was a moral argument. Put differently, the Afrikaner people were not entitled to use extreme measures to maintain their hold on power. There was ultimately no justification for a policy aimed at ensuring survival that constantly and consistently flouted liberal values. Van Wyk Louw died too early – in 1970 – for judgement to be passed on whether he would have denounced nationalism and apartheid. During the 1980s, André duToit and other members of a new generation of Afrikaner academics could, in urging the abandonment of apartheid, draw on van Wyk Louw’s work to do so. 69 In the end, the seemingly parallel lines of liberalism and liberal nationalism did meet. 70 The Crystallisation of Apartheid In May 1944, D. F. Malan and his closest political associate, Paul Sauer, offered the first extended defence of apartheid in parliament. Their ideas were far removed from the racial ideology and xenophobia propounded at this time on the continent of Europe. Instead they were firmly rooted in the Cape Afrikaner experience of slavery, with its ideology of paternalism, and British colonialism, with its stress on indirect rule and trusteeship. In his first mention of the term ‘apartheid’, Malan called for a republic based on the policy of ‘apartheid and trusteeship, made safe for the white race and the development of the non-white race, according their own aptitude and abilities.’ 71 As the historian Kenneth Robinson points out, the British notions of trusteeship were influenced by the thoughts of a seminal liberal thinker, John Stuart Mill. He argued in 1859 that rule by a dominant country or ‘by persons delegated for that purpose’ was as legitimate as any other, if it 68 For analyses of Louw’s ideas, see in particular J. J. Degenaar, Moraliteit en Politiek (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 1976), pp. 55–91; G. Olivier, N. P. van Wyk Louw (Cape Town, Human and Rousseau, 1992); M. Sanders, ‘Complicities: On the Intellectual’ (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1998); and J. C. Steyn, Van Wyk Louw, (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 1998). The interpretations of Degenaar and Steyn are largely positive. For an effective response to Olivier’s jaundiced view, see J. C. Kannemeyer, Ontsyferde Stene (Stellenbosch, Inset, 1996), pp. 62–76. 69 A. du Toit, Sondes van die Vaders (Cape Town, Rubicon, 1982). 70 I elaborate on some of these issues in my ‘Critical Afrikaner Intellectuals and Apartheid,’ South African Journal of Philosophy, 19, 4 (2000), pp. 307–320; for criticism, see H. Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (London, Hurst and Co., 2003), pp. 447–486. 71 Louw, Dawie, p.48.
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