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

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Making of the Apartheid Plan, 1929–1948 379 Downloaded by [Shanghai Jiaotong University] at 18:42 19 September 2012 middle between Malan and General Hertzog in their party affiliation. Subsequently, the overwhelming majority supported Malan and the construction of apartheid. 29 The case of Hendrik Verwoerd is instructive. After his studies at Stellenbosch he spent 1926 in Germany and part of 1927 in the US before returning for an academic career. There is no evidence that he had agreed with the racial ideology of the National Socialists in Germany. His lecture notes and memoranda at Stellenbosch stressed that there were no biological differences between the big racial groups (or for that matter between Europeans and Africans), and since there were no differences, ‘this was not really a factor in the development of a higher social civilisation by the Caucasian race.’ 30 Like many of his colleagues he was captivated by the new ‘scientific’ approach to curing social ills. In the USA, attempts to address these questions through scientific enquiry and management were heralded as ‘social engineering’. Afrikaner social scientists were attracted to this enterprise. During a visit to South Africa in the mid-1930s, Lord Hailey observed that ‘South Africa regards itself as USA in the making’. Far from being a product of Nazi-style deviance, apartheid developed within the mainstream of pre-Second World War racism and social engineering enthusiasms in the West. Contrary to the main assumption in the literature, the northern-based Afrikaner Broederbond and the intellectuals influenced by Nazi thinking, in fact, contributed relatively little to the making of the apartheid plan. In 1934, a Bond sub-committee recommended ‘comprehensive mass segregation’ for blacks, but this did not differ significantly from mainstream segregation. The Bond established a sub-committee on the racial issue, but this committee could not report significant progress. Leading Bond members attended meetings of an ‘Afrikaanse Bond vir Rassestudie’, founded in 1935, but this foundered a few years later. The 1938 Broederbond general conference (called the Bondsraad), felt that since a white consensus on policy towards blacks had already been formulated in the legislation, their attention had to focus on policy towards coloureds. The Bond’s Executive Council asked a sub-committee to identify an organisation to study the racial problem ‘on behalf of Afrikanerdom’. But this request ‘landed in the doldrums’, as a Broederbond document noted. 31 In 1940, L. J. du Plessis, one of the most prominent Broederbond academics, did not use the word ‘apartheid’ in an article on the ‘native question’. He called segregation ‘the national policy’ that had not yet been fully implemented ‘because Afrikanerdom had not yet had the chance to carry it out’. 32 Where the Broederbond, with its large contingent of teachers, lecturers and church ministers, did play a prominent role was in promoting Christian-national education. In 1944, the Bond initiated a conference of cultural activists, academics and church leaders on the racial question. While some broad policy guidelines were suggested there, no practical policy was formulated. Two years later a plan had still not crystallised, and the Broederbond intelligentsia in the north was largely dispirited. Albert Hertzog, a Broederbond stalwart, despondently told the Bond’s Executive Council in August 1946, ‘[The] Afrikaner people is without inspiration … and without that no power can emanate from it.’ A year later he wrote in his diary that the NP was divided between a conservative Cape group and a northern group, among whom were Hendrik Verwoerd and J. G. Strijdom, who 29 A good starting point for this important topic is J. J. Broodryk, ‘Stellenbosse Akademici en die Politieke Problematiek in Suid-Afrika, 1934–1948’ (MA dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, 1991). 30 R. Millar, ‘Science and Society in the early career of H. F. Verwoerd’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19, 4 (1993), p. 646. 31 E. Stals, ‘Die Geskiedenis van die Afrikaner Broederbond, 1918–1994’ (unpublished manuscript, 1998), pp. 133–141. 32 L. J. du Plessis, ‘Die Naturellevraagstuk’, Koers, 8,1(1940), pp. 5–9.
380 Journal of Southern African Studies were idealists. He added: ‘Unfortunately they are half-baked idealists who, except for a few vague principles, do not propose a major new direction.’ 33 At a 1947 Broederbond conference, basic disagreements about key aspects of the racial policy surfaced. Speakers resigned themselves to the fact that Africans would remain part of the white socio-economic system for a long time. After the meeting, Bond secretary Ivan Lombard called the proceedings ‘depressing’, because no solutions had been suggested for the numerous problems that were identified. Ernst Stals, who enjoyed unrestricted access to the Broederbond archives for his unpublished study of the organisation, notes that the Broederbond agreed with, and supported, apartheid, but it did not develop and formulate it. 34 We can now turn to the other, more important, sources from which the apartheid ideology drew. Downloaded by [Shanghai Jiaotong University] at 18:42 19 September 2012 ‘The Spirit of Apartheid’: the DRC’s Faith In 1981 a segregated DRC for coloured people was founded. By 1930 the DRC had established a broad record of missionary activity in places such as Rhodesia, Kenya and the Sudan. However, its missionary efforts among Africans in South Africa itself had lagged behind. The exception was the black DRC in the Orange Free State. Here, the white DRC, which formed an independent synod in 1864, continued to be influenced by the white DRC in the Cape, which had made missionary work one of its main activities. By 1910, the DRC in the OFS had fourteen missionaries working for it and had established 40 mission congregations with a total of 6,839 members. In that year, the white church founded a separate DRC for its black (African) members, using the Mission Church for coloured people as its model. By the 1920s, there was still no prominent figure in the DRC in any of the provinces who advocated extending the practice of segregated schools, parishes and churches to political rights and representation. Indeed, Johannes du Plessis (no relation to J. C. du Plessis), a towering figure in the DRC in the field of missions, rejected any attempt to use the DRC approach as a justification for political or economic discrimination. In 1921, du Plessis edited a volume with contributions from ten leading figures in DRC missionary circles who tried to defend the DRC against the charge of D. D. T. Jabavu, an influential black academic, that it was ‘an anti-native church’. The book admitted that the DRC record with respect to black South Africans was not bright, but pointed out that it was the only large church in the country that had to rely exclusively on local funding for missionary work. While the writers regarded segregation as a ‘most excellent theory’, they were, as Richard Elphick has pointed out, ‘more aware of the ambiguities, contradictions and pitfalls of segregation than many English-speaking theorists’. 35 Within the church, a conservative reaction had made itself felt by the end of the 1920s. A leading representative was J. G. (Valie) Strydom (no relation to the later Prime Minister), who became Secretary for Missions of the DRC in the OFS. He would become one of the leading exponents of what he called ‘apartheid as the DRC’s missions policy’. At a 1927 meeting organised by the DRC Federal Council, and attended by Afrikaans, English and black church leaders, it was suggested that the aspirations of the small Westernised African elite be accommodated. Strydom replied as follows: ‘All natives were not as calm and 33 B. M. Schoeman, Die Broederbond en die Afrikaner-politiek (Pretoria, Aktuele Publikasies, 1982), pp. 27–30. 34 Stals, ‘Geskiedenis van die AB’, pp. 203–208. 35 R. Elphick, ‘Missions and Afrikaner Nationalism’ (unpublished paper, 1999). See also his ‘Missiology, Afrikaner Nationalism, and the Road to Apartheid’, presented at Currents in World Christianity symposium, ‘Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire’, Queen’s College, Cambridge, 6–9 September 2000, forthcoming in a volume edited by B. Stanley (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans).
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