Abstract
A key dimension to the prospect of South Africa surviving in its present form is the degree to which the dominant white political elite is able to make a qualitative conceptual leap away from the hegemonic ideology of racial segregationism, which has dominated the country’s politics since Union in 1910. The government’s ‘reform’ policies are seen by its supporters as constituting just such a leap, while most opponents claim that they simply disguise the perpetuation of white political supremacy. In the former view, a change in the distribution of political power has already taken place, while in the latter the system survives because of the government’s capacity to employ the rhetoric of change to keep itself in power. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the ideological dimensions to doctrines of political ‘change’, thus extending the previous discussion of Guelke on the constitutional aspects of reform (Chapter 11). At the same time this chapter will be setting the scene for the more detailed analysis of the structural underpinnings of the issue in the next chapter by Mitchell and Russell.
I am grateful to the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust for providing grants for the research on which this chapter is based.
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Notes
Ruan Maud, ‘The Future of an Illusion: The Myth of White Meliorism in South Africa’, in Adrian Leftwich (ed.), South Africa, London, Allison and Busby, 1974, p. 309.
See, for instance, R. W. Rose-Innes, The Glen Grey Act and the Native Question, Lovedale, 1903, pp. 33–4;
Howard Pim, The Question of Race Johannesburg, 1906.
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See, for example, Martin Legassick, ‘Legislation, Ideology and Economy in Post 1948 South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, I, 1974, pp. 5–35.
Susan Rennie Ritner, ‘The Dutch Reformed Church and Apartheid’, Journal of Contemporary History, 2, 4, October 1967, pp. 17–37;
Brian M. du Toit, ‘Missionaries, Anthropologists and the Policies of the Dutch Reformed Church’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 22, 4, 1984, pp. 617–32.
Archibald Colquhoun, The Afrikaner Land London, 1906, p. 10.
W. F. Bailey, ‘Native and White in South Africa’, The Nineteenth Century, February 1906, p. 329.
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Fred W. Bell, The South African Native Problem: A Suggested Solution Transvaal, Central News Agency, 1909, p. 9. For an analysis of this debate on the Witwatersrand, see
Martin Legassick, ‘The Making of South African “Native Policy”, 1903–1923: The Origins of Segregation’, London, ICS seminar paper, 1972; ‘British Hegemony and the Origins of Segregation, 1900–1914’, ibid., 1973.
Fred W. Bell, The Black Vote: South Africa’s Greatest Problem, Johannesburg, 1909.
Paul B. Rich, ‘Milnerism and a Ripping Yarn: Transvaal Land Settlement and John Buchan’s novel Prester John, 1901–1910’, in Belinda Bozzoli (ed.), Town and Countryside in the Transvaal, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1983, pp. 412–13.
John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984. See also
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J. R. H. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History, Johannesburg, Macmillan, 1977, p. 332.
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The Star 14 April 1919. See also Peter Walshe, The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa London, C. Hurst, 1970.
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Rodney Davenport, ‘The Triumph of Colonel Stallard: The Transformation of the Natives (Urban Areas) Act between 1923 and 1937’, South African Historical Journal LXXI, 1972, pp. 360–88.
David Yudelman, The Emergence of Modern South Africa, Cape Town, David Philip, 1984, p. 261.
Adrienne Bird, ‘The Adult Night School Movement for Blacks on the Witwatersrand, 1920–1980’, in Peter Kollaway (ed.), Apartheid and Education, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1984, pp. 192–221.
The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa pp. 230–1; R. Morrell, ‘Nipping a Little Game in the Bud: Pixley Ka Izaka Seme, Land Purchase and Rural Differentiation in the Eastern Transvaal, c. 1910–1920’, History Workshop Paper, University of the Witwatersrand, 9–13 February 1987.
Michael L. Morris, ‘The Development of Capitalism in South African Agriculture: Class Struggle in the Countryside’, Economy and Society, 5, 1979, pp. 292–343.
Race and Empire in British Politics pp. 72–73; Paul B. Rich, ‘Industrialisation, Fabianism and Race: Sydney Olivier and the liberal critique of South African segregation’, London, ICS, seminar paper, 1984.
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W. M. Macmillan, Complex South Africa London, Faber and Faber, 1930; Paul B. Rich, ‘W. M. Macmillan, South African Segregation and Commonwealth Race Relations, 1919–1938’, in Shula Marks and Hugh Macmillan (eds), W. M. Macmillan: Historian, Thinker and Social Activist London, M. Temple Smith (forthcoming).
Report of the Native Economic Commission UG22–1932, p. 13; Paul B. Rich, White Power and the Liberal Conscience: Racial Segregation and South African Liberalism, 1921–1960 Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1984, pp. 58–63.
See, for example, H. R. Abercrombie, who argued for a strategy of major racial engineering since, ‘In Africa the Nordics may yet renew themselves and reverse for some considerable time the decadence which is apparent in some quarters. This can be done by physical efficiency and scientific planning’, H. R. Abercrombie, Africa’s Peril: the Colour Problem London, Marsham Simpkin (1938?), p. 216. The author was a former president in the Transvaal Agricultural Union.
W. A. Russell, European Versus Bantu Cape Town, Marshall Miller (1928?), p. 6.
Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasurement of Man, New York, W. W. Norton, 1981.
Leonard Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985.
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R. F. A. Hoernle, South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1939, p. 168; White Power and the Liberal Conscience pp. 66–9.
Paul B. Rich, ‘Liberalism and Ethnicity in South African Politics, 1921–1948’, African Studies, 34, 3–4, 1976, pp. 167–80.
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Ken Jubbe, ‘The Prodigal Church: South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church And Apartheid Policy’, Social Compass, 2–3, 1985, p. 281.
W. E. Barker, ‘Apartheid: The Only Solution’, Journal of Racial Affairs 1,1, September 1948, pp. 24–38.
See also L. E. Neame, White Man’s Africa Stewart, 1952, p. 62, arguing for a similar idea of ‘Separation’ on the basis of R. F. A. Hoernle’s arguments.
Quintin Whyte, Apartheid and Other Policies, Johannesburg, SAIRR, 1948, p. 20.
See also Q. Whyte, Go Forward in Faith, Johannesburg, SAIRR, 1954.
Ellen Hellman, In Defence of a Shared Society Johannesburg, SAIRR, 1956, p. 3; ‘The Racial Problem in South Africa’, The Listener 12 July 1956.
Philip Frankel, Pretoria’s Praetorians, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Trevor Huddleston, Naught For Your Comfort, London, Collins, 1956.
Jaap Durand, ‘Afrikaner Piety and Dissent’, in Charles Villa-Vicencio and John W. de Gruchy (eds), Resistance and Hope: South African Essays in honour of Beyers Naude Cape Town, David Philip, 1985, pp. 39–51; See also
Dunbar T. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975.
The term ‘pragmatic liberalism’ comes from Charles Simkins, Reconstructing South African Liberalism Johannesburg, SAIRR, 1984. For the development of Spro-Cas see
Peter Walshe, Church versus State in South Africa: The Case of the Christian Institute, London, C. Hurst, 1983, pp. 102–23.
C. W. de Kiewiet, ‘The World and Pretoria’, Virginia Quarterly Review, 45, 1, Winter 1969, p. 5.
Kogila Moodley, ‘The Legitimation Crisis of the South African State’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 24, 2, 1986, pp. 188–90.
Joseph Lelyveld, Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, New York, Times Books, 1985, p. 37.
Vernon Van Dyke, ‘The Individual, the State and Ethnic Communities in Political Theory’, World Politics, 29, 3, April 1979, p. 367.
Spro-Cas, South Africa’s Political Alternatives Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1981 (first edition 1973), p. 217.
Heribert Adam, ‘Outside Influences on South Africa: Afrikanerdom in Disarray’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 21, 1, 1983, pp. 235–51.
Heribert Adam, ‘Survival Politics: Afrikanerdom in Search of a New Ideology’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 16, 4, 1978, pp. 657–69; ‘When the chips are Down: Confrontation and Accommodation in South Africa’, Contemporary Crises 1, 1977, pp. 417–35. ‘Mere survival ideology’, remark Adam and Moodley, ‘represents the lowest common denominator of a divided ruling class in crisis’
Heribert Adam and Kogila A. Moodley, South Africa Without Apartheid, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986, p. 72.
Arend Lijphart, ‘Majority Rule Versus Democracy in Deeply Divided Societies’, in Nic Rhoodie (ed.), Intergroup Accommodation in Plural Societies London, Macmillan for the Institute for Plural Societies, University of Pretoria, 1978, p. 35; L. Schlemmer, ‘The Plural Devolution of Power’ in ibid.
Arend Lijphart, ‘Federal, Confederal and Consociational Options for the South African Plural Society’, in Robert I. Rotberg and John Barratt (eds), Conflict and Compromise in South Africa, Cape Town, David Philip, 1980, p. 51.
Arend Lijphart, Power Sharing in South Africa Berkeley, Institute of International Studies, 1985, p. 106. Elsewhere, though, we are told that ‘it is important to understand that consociationalism deals with the potential problems of a plural society not by trying to make the society less plural, but by making it more plural — at least initially’ (p. 106).
Paul B. Rich, ‘R. F. A. Hoernle, Idealism and the Liberal Response to South African Segregation’, paper presented to South African History Workshop, Wesleyan University, April 1986.
Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, “A Plural or a Common Society in South Africa”, Queens Quarterly 92, 1985, p. 697; South Africa Without Apartheid pp. 207–10.
Alf Stadler, The Political Economy of Apartheid, London, Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 88–93.
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Rich, P.B. (1989). Doctrines of ‘Change’ in South Africa. In: Brewer, J.D. (eds) Can South Africa Survive?. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19661-6_13
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