m - DISA

and othar claaa forces, began to crumble and shift.
Of apaolal significance aaa the position of various
large Afrikaner undertakings, both at Individual
companies, and organised collectively through tha
Afrikaanse Hsndeleinstltuut (Afrikaner Commerciel
Institute). This points to tha need for datallad
research on tha development of Afrikaner undertakings
over tha pravious IS years. But it can ba notad that
tha now strongly-expressed demand by Afrikanar
buainaas for raform in tha raatrlctiona on tha
aobllityt employment, training and organisation of
african labour, togathar with a vahaaant attack on
atata lntarfaranca in the aconoay and a vigorous
caapalgn for *tha davalopaant of tha black middle
dees', was shaking loos* a long-standing political
allianca batwaan Afrikanar buainaas on tha ona hand,
and cartain strata of white workers and tha patty
bourgeoisla on tha other.
This laada fifthly to tha point at tha heart of
. this paper. Tha exploeion of politicking over tha
appropriate economic end political responses to
these crises, whan taken together with this shift
in traditional political alliances, began to raise in
vary atark form another problem a the political
capacity of tha Nationalist Party government to
implement tha necessary reforms* This Is not to pose
the hackneyed and discredited view of a contradiction
between the requirements of a rational capitalism on
the one hand, end tha irrational 'ethnic' concema of
the Nationalist Party on tha othar, in which the
latter dominates end distort* tha former. Indeed,
elsewhere I have argued that tha election of the hP
government in t943 represented e form of solution to
an earlier political crisis of the capitalist state,
and that its apartheid policies facilitated rapid
capital accumulation in all branches of capitalist
production. Thus, at no stage during Its rule up
to the 1970s had the capitalist class seriously
challenged the notionalist government, precleely
because tha role of capital Itself wes not challenged*
But the coterminous collapse of capitalist prosperity
and the intensification of class struggles in the
early 1970a began to pose the political Question of
the role of the W> as the governing party in the
capitalist State.
This is tha context of Uuldergatef Tha general
economic and political crlawe want hand in hand with and
helped to shape a growing crisis within both tha NP
government, and tha party itself outside of government.
Put another way, Uuldwrgate reproeented in condeneed
form the complex articulation of three separate
political crises:
a) tha crisis both for individual capitals and the
capltellet claae aa a whole in tha economic and
political conditions of accumulation;
b) for tha Natlonallat Party as the governing party
in tha capitalist state; and
c} for the Natlonallat Party cutalde of government
M an Afrikaner natlonallat party built on a
particular eat of political alliances.
It la crucial to realise that though inextricably
interconnectedt these three different levels of the
crisis of the South African atata in 1978 refer to
very different alignments of sets of organisational
and Ideological class forcee. Thua, the political
crlele confronting the NP government aa the ruling
party in the capitalist state, was not the same as,
and cannot ba reduced to, tha political crisis
confronting the NP as a political party representing
a particular alignment of clews forcee within the
social formation. Existing accounts of both
muldergate and the development of Afrikaner nationalist
19
politico have glibly collapsed thess levels. To
understand Uuldargate as a crisis for tha capitalist
state aa a wholea it Is necessary to grasp these
verloue crises both in their aeparateness and
articulation.
The Struggle Inalde the Nationalist Party
THE Nationalist Party has been In power in South
Africa since 1906. It is conventionally seen as a
monolithic omaniaetlon rapreaanting 'the Afrikaner*
in South African politics. Such a static,
undifferentiated .view of the NP la profoundly
misleading. As I have shown elsewhere tha NP camm
into office in 1948 as tha political organisation of
a ehlftlng, highly differentiated end contradictory
cleas alliance. Far from being a monolithic force,
the NP has always been wracked by vigorous, oftwn
bitter and sometimes violent conflicts between the
various forces comprising its social basis. To the
vary limited extent that these conflicts have avwn
bean recognised in the literature, they have been
univereally depicted In purely ideological termet
often overlaid with a regional 1st emphasis. Thua,
tha so-called 'moderate* nationalists of 'the South'
Pmge G
(la the Cepe province) are supposed to be at loggerheads
with the hardlinare of 'the North' (tha Provinces of
ths Transvaal and the Orange Free State). This la
usually taken es given. Now clearly there are deep
ideological and regional differancaa in the character
of Afrikaner nationallme. Yet these are hardly their
own explanations. They must needs ba understood in
terms of the significantly different social bases of
the various provlnciel NPs, and tha forms in and
through which these class differences have bean
Institutionalised in nationalist politics.
Tha NP la no single 'national' party, but rather
a loose federation of 4 autonomous provincial parties,
wmch with its own distinct social basis, party
organisation, membership, constitution, leadership,
press, and political and ideological etyle. The NP
qua party has a 'national' existence only through 4
institutions: the National Leader elected by the
Parliamentary caucus; a 'Federal Council*
representing each provincial party, and which meets
but rarely; the 'Federal Congreas', which meets even
more rarely; and the Parliamentary caucus in which sit
tha Nationalist ammmmTt of Parliament from all 4
provinces. Tha cabinet makes up a fifth National Party
institution, but le simultaneously engaged at a vary
different level of politlca, and subject to a much
wider sat of pressures and struggles.
Each of these 'national• institutions of tha party
ia a site of widely differing etrugglea and represente
widely varying Interests* Tha much-neglected structure
of tha NP la vital to an understanding of its
operation, as tha real locus of power within the
party oye party. Ilea in the Provincial party