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South Africa


									                    South Africa: no black and white case

South Africa is the southernmost country on the African continent. There appears to be a
general view that the South African population consists of a black majority and a white
minority. Until 1994 the black majority was oppressed by the white minority and deprived of
basic human rights – or so the Anglo-American propaganda line goes. Nothing could be
further from the truth than this simplistic dichotomy. In reality, the South African population
consists of almost a dozen distinct peoples, each with its own language and culture. This
reality is reflected in the country’s 11 official languages, namely Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans,
English, Venda, Tswana, Tsonga, Swati, Sotho, Northern Sotho and Southern Ndebele. In
addition, there are a number of smaller ethnic communities, including an Indian community
of a million strong, found mostly in the former Natal province; a Malay community in the
Western Cape, included for census purposes among the Coloured people; a Chinese
community found in the cities and some larger towns; and an English-speaking white
community of over a million. The latter represents the last remnant of the erstwhile British
Empire in Africa, and mostly refrained from associating themselves with any of the other
population groups in South Africa.

What is also not generally known is the religious diversity to be found in South Africa. Most
of the world religions are well established among the population. Thus Christianity is
represented by many Protestant denominations, of which the Dutch Reformed church is the
largest; a sizable Roman Catholic presence, including a number of monasteries; and an
Orthodox community, mostly Greek, found in the cities and some of the larger towns. Since
the beginning of the new millennium Orthodox missions have been founded among some of
the local peoples, including the Zulus and the Afrikaners. Islam is well established especially
in the Western Cape, mostly among the Coloured people, and is growing steadily. Hinduism
is strong among the Indian community. Buddhism is practised by the Chinese community and
a small but growing number of local converts. Judaism used to enjoy an influential following
in cities such as Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, but many of its adherents have
emigrated over the years. An interesting phenomenon is the so-called independent African
churches that represent the largest religious grouping in South Africa, being a mixture of
Christian and native African elements. Shamanism still enjoys widespread support among the
black peoples, even when they classify themselves as Christian, its medicine men formerly

called witchdoctors now enjoying formal recognition by the medical authorities in the new
South Africa.

A further propaganda tale about South Africa is that the blacks were dispossessed of their
land by the whites. In truth, neither race was in the country first. That honour belongs to the
Khoi and San peoples, being the indigenous population of southern Africa. The descendants
of the Khoi (formerly called Hottentots) are found among the Coloured people, including the
Griquas, having given their names to geographical areas such as Namaqualand, Griqualand
and the Outeniqua. It is of interest to note that South Africa’s first black president, Nelson
Mandela, was of Khoi descent on his mother’s side. Today most of the San (formerly called
Bushmen) are found in the Kalahari regions of Botswana and eastern Namibia, whence they
had been driven by the black and white settlers in the subcontinent. The San are the main
focus of the delightful movies The gods must be crazy 1 & 2, made in the 1980’s.

The coming of the Europeans
       The first Europeans to arrive at the southern tip of Africa were the Portuguese in their
golden age of intercontinental navigation. In 1488 Bartholomeus Diaz rounded the Cape of
Good Hope, but his mutinous crew prevented him from sailing further towards the East. Ten
years later Vasco da Gama became the first European to circumnavigate Africa by sailing all
the way from Portugal to India. Another Portuguese navigator, Antonio de Saldanha, in 1503
became the first European to scale Table Mountain, the majestic rock overlooking the later
city of Cape Town. However, the Portuguese did not settle along the South African shore,
preferring sites further to the north that would eventually become the colonies of Angola and

Of lasting importance for the future of South Africa would be the arrival at the Cape of Good
Hope in 1652 of a group of Dutch settlers led by Jan van Riebeeck. They were sent by the
Dutch commercial authorities to establish a halfway station between Europe and the East
Indies, in order to replenish passing ships with fresh produce. Within a few years the settlers
had managed to cultivate crops successfully, which were traded with both passing ships and
the native Khoi people. One of Van Riebeeck’s successors as governor of the new Dutch
colony was the able Simon van der Stel, who among other things founded Stellenbosch, later
to be a leading university town. Three hundred years later the South African Navy would
honour these two pioneers by naming their only destroyers after them. The colony was

bolstered by the arrival of several hundred French Huguenots in 1688, like their Dutch hosts
Calvinist Protestants in religion. They were assimilated into the Dutch-speaking proto-
Afrikaner community within a generation or two of their arrival. This accounts for the sizable
incidence of French surnames among the Afrikaner people to this day.

An early addition to the new community at the Cape of Good Hope took place towards the
end of the seventeenth century, when numbers of slaves and political exiles arrived from
Indonesia and Malaysia, then Dutch colonies. These Cape Malays, as they came to be called,
were Muslims by faith and have remained so until the present. They were among the first
speakers of the evolving Afrikaans language, and remarkably the Koran was translated into
Afrikaans before the Bible, the Protestant domination of the settlement notwithstanding.

A new nation is born
       Already by the end of the seventeenth century some of the Dutch settlers at the Cape
were beginning to see themselves as members of a new nation, later to be known as the
Afrikaners. This consciousness manifested itself in the first revolt against the colonial
authorities among some of the Vryburgers (Free citizens), who rose against the corrupt
governorship of Van der Stel’s son Willem Adriaan. Their uprising was forcibly suppressed,
but they eventually succeeded in having the governor recalled by the Dutch. To Van der Stel
junior’s credit it should be mentioned that he had thousands of oak trees planted in the new
colony’s towns, many of which are still gracing the streets of historical Western Cape towns.

During the eighteenth century, while the Cape colony was steadily increasing in population
numbers and economic activities, an increasing number of proto-Afrikaners left the comfort
of European civilisation and began migrating into the interior of the continent, where a life of
physical hardship awaited them. These migratory farmers (Afrikaans Trekboere) took their
herds of livestock wherever suitable grazing could be found, and began settling in the interior.
Not surprisingly, this movement brought them into contact first with the indigenous San
people and later with the Xhosa people migrating down the eastern Cape coast. This eastward
movement of the Afrikaners and westward movement of the Xhosa came to a head when the
two groups met at the Fish River, which became the de facto boundary between these widely
divergent cultures. From the second half of the century a series of border wars were fought
between the Afrikaners and the Xhosa, a conflict that would last deep into the nineteenth
century. Thus was born mistrust and rivalry between black and white in South Africa at an

early period of its history, due mainly to demographic and economic factors and not due to
racialism as is often asserted in ignorance of the facts.

The revolutionary events in France and North America towards the end of the eighteenth
century would have an impact even on the far-away Cape of Good Hope. In 1795 the
inhabitants of two towns founded by the Dutch colonists, Swellendam in the southern Cape
and Graaff-Reinet in the eastern Cape, proclaimed themselves independent from colonial rule.
The Dutch colonial officials were duly evicted from them, but the new ‘republics’ would be
brief in duration. Later in the same year Britain annexed the Cape colony in order to prevent
their archrivals at the time, the French, from establishing a naval base at Cape Town. This
was the beginning of the British imperialist presence at the southernmost part of Africa – one
that was to hold disastrous consequences for several of its population groups.

Change of administration
       In 1803 the British, convinced that the French were no longer a threat to their
expanding global empire, transferred the administration of the Cape of Good Hope back to the
Dutch. This time it would be the Batavian Republic rather than the Dutch East Indian
Company taking charge of affairs. However, the respite lasted for a mere 3 years, since in
1806 the British annexed the Cape for the second time. This time the annexation would lead
to the eventual establishment of British control over the whole country, taking almost a
century to accomplish thanks to the recalcitrant Boer people, who had inherited a marked
sense of liberty from their Dutch and French Calvinist ancestors. The opposition of the Zulus
in Natal to British rule should also be mentioned in this regard, but they were subdued some
time before the Boers were finally defeated.

Since its establishment in 1652 the European colony at the Cape had officially been Dutch-
speaking, quickly absorbing the German and French Huguenot arrivals into its linguistic
ambit. Out of this the new language of Afrikaans had gradually arisen – a remarkable
language that was destined to become the mother tongue of a major portion of the future
South African population and the second language of many more. However, with the arrival
of the British settlers in the Eastern Cape from 1820 onwards a second European language
was introduced among the inhabitants of the southernmost colony on the African continent.
These settlers founded cities such as Port Elizabeth and East London, in addition to numerous
towns and villages in the region. They would play an important role in establishing

agriculture in these areas, besides their notable contribution to the colony’s commercial
development. On the negative side, these colonists and their English-speaking descendants
would remain culturally and sentimentally attached to their mother country deep into the
twentieth century, in the process often clashing with the emerging nationalisms of the
Afrikaners and the Zulus especially.

The Great Trek and the Boer republics
       Of decisive importance for the new Afrikaner nation was the migration of a large
number of its people into the interior of the country, an event that came to be called the Great
Trek. This took place during the second half of the 1830’s, soon after the abolition of slavery
throughout the British Empire. Many of these early Afrikaners had come to realise that the
British colonial administration was striving to anglicise the Cape of Good Hope in order to
consolidate their hold on it. In reaction to this and other negative experiences, groups of
Afrikaners called Voortrekkers (‘pioneer migrants’) from various parts of the colony packed
their belongings onto ox wagons and moved northwards across the Orange River, into the
territory bordered on the east by the Drakensberge (‘Dragon mountains’) and on the north by
the Vaal (Grey) River. This area would become known as the Orange Free State, the smaller
of the two Boer republics to be founded by the migrants. The term Boer is the Afrikaans for
farmer, and became applied to the Afrikaners living north of the Orange River.

The Voortrekkers found a sparsely populated land awaiting them, since tribal warfare and
epidemics had decimated the black peoples of the South African interior. However, in the
Free State their migrations and settlements brought them into conflict with the Matabele
people, led by the formidable Mzilikazi. He was a former Zulu general who had fallen foul of
the tyrant Shaka, and then fled with his followers to the west and founded the Matabele
kingdom. In a major battle at Vegkop in 1836 the Afrikaners defeated the Matabele, who then
migrated further north across the Vaal and eventually further north across the Limpopo. The
Matabele finally settled in the western part of what would become Rhodesia, their territory
being called Matabeleland. Their defeat at Vegkop had contributed to the establishment of
Boer hegemony over much of the Orange Free State, its independence being recognised by
the British in 1852.

From the Free State some of the Voortrekkers continued migrating eastwards across the
Drakensberg mountains into Natal (named Natalia by the Portuguese centuries earlier), and

northwards across the Vaal into the area that would become known as the Transvaal. In Natal
the Afrikaners came head to head with the most martial among the black nations in Southern
Africa, the Zulus. They were ruled by the tyrant Dingane, who initially entered into an
agreement with the Afrikaners on a division of territory between the two peoples. This was a
mere ruse, for not long afterwards the Zulu king had an Afrikaner party visiting his capital at
Ulundi massacred after persuading them to leave their rifles aside in order to join in
festivities. Dingane’s warriors forthwith attacked the Afrikaner encampments by night,
causing substantial loss of life and much uncertainty as to the future of the Natal settlement,
not to mention the long-term effects of mistrust and suspicion. Towards the end of 1838 the
Afrikaners took revenge when they decisively defeated a large Zulu army at the Battle of
Blood River, thereby establishing their domination over parts of Natal. The battle was
preceded by the Afrikaner leaders entering into a covenant with God, so that the day (16
December) would afterwards solemnly be commemorated as a religious holiday by the
Afrikaners. This political freedom would not last long, since the British shortly thereafter
annexed the Natal colony in order to control the entire South African coastline and all its
ports, thus placing the British in a powerful military position against anyone wishing to
challenge their imperial rule.

The second and largest of the Boer republics, the Transvaal, had its independence recognised
by the British in 1854. With its capital at Pretoria, its territory stretched to the Limpopo River
in the north, the Maluti mountains in the east and the Kalahari Desert in the west. Like its
southern neighbour the Transvaal was developed from the outset as an agricultural country,
hence with a mostly rural population. This would change dramatically with the discovery of
diamonds and gold during the second half of the nineteenth century. A boomtown called
Kimberley became the centre of the diamond industry, while most of diamond region was
promptly annexed from the Orange Free State by the British and added to their Cape colony.
The excavations at Kimberley by thousands of prospectors led to the deepest man-made hole
in the world, the Big Hole, coming into being. Nevertheless, the bulk of the Free State
continued as a Boer republic with its capital at Bloemfontein (‘Flower fountain’). Its main
conflict would be with the Sotho people in the eastern areas, whose leader Mosjesj shrewdly
played off the Afrikaners and British against each other in order to protect his nation’s
independence in their mountain kingdom.

A new language appears on the scene
       During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, while the events mentioned above
were unfolding in the interior of the country, the Cape colony witnessed a cultural
development that would be of decisive importance for the Afrikaner nation. For the first time
the fledgling Afrikaans language became self-aware, as it were, when prominent users of it
began to agitate for linguistic rights. From the late seventeenth century Afrikaans had been
developing out of Dutch, also assimilating French, German and Malay influences, in this way
reflecting the demographics at the Cape. It is one of the most phonetic languages in the world,
besides being rich in biblical and agricultural idioms. In 1875 an association (GRA) was
established in the town of Paarl (‘Pearl’) that would play a notable role in the eventual
recognition of Afrikaans as a language in its own right, rather than being ‘kitchen Dutch’ as
the chauvinist English establishment in the Cape referred to it. An increasing number of
publications in Afrikaans began to appear, with writers and poets using it instead of Dutch,
which would nonetheless remain an official language into the twentieth century. The first
Afrikaans translation of the Bible would be published in 1933 – a version that has stood the
test of time in being extremely faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek, while being cast in
the poetic, literary Afrikaans used at the time. Thus did the youngest Germanic language and
the only one to arise outside Europe begin to assert itself.

At the same time that the Afrikaans language began to come of age, major political events
took place in the other side of the country, in the Natal colony. By this time the Zulus were
ruled by Cetshwayo, who became involved in increasing conflict with the British colonial
administrators. Early in 1879 the British invaded Zululand, but they were to suffer a
humiliating defeat at the hands of a Zulu army at Isandlwana. This setback to the imperial
plans would be vividly portrayed in the movie Zulu Dawn, made exactly 100 years later.
However, within a few months the reinforced British forces had driven the Zulus back to their
royal capital at Ulundi, where they were decisively defeated. This brought about the end of
the Zulu kingdom, its territory being annexed by the British.

Gold, war and genocide
       The world’s richest gold-bearing deposits were discovered in the southern Transvaal,
in an area called the Witwatersrand (‘White waters reef’). In its centre Johannesburg was
founded in 1886, destined to become the leading financial centre of South Africa and one of
Africa’s largest cities. As could be expected, barely a year later the British annexed the

Transvaal. For three years the Transvaal Afrikaners tried peacefully to convince the British
authorities of the injustice of their actions, without any result. Towards the end of 1880 the
covenant made at Blood River was renewed and at a large public meeting a vow was taken to
restore the Transvaal’s independence. This spurred its citizens into military action against the
British, leading to a notable Boer victory at Majuba early in the next year. However, the lure
of the Witwatersrand gold fields proved too strong for the British to resist, and early in 1896
they duly organised the Jameson raid from their colony Bechuanaland (today Botswana) into
the Transvaal to overthrow the government and establish British control. This attempted coup
turned out to be a complete fiasco and only served to reinforce the Boers’ resolve to maintain
their independence. To the chagrin of the British, the German emperor Wilhelm sent
congratulations to the Transvaal president Paul Kruger. Henceforth it could only be a matter
of time before renewed military conflict took place between a small republican nation and the
world’s largest imperial power.

Thus it was that the Anglo-Boer War broke out in October 1899. Against all expectations, this
would become the longest, bloodiest and costliest war fought by the British Empire in the
century between the end of the Napoleonic wars and the outbreak of the First World War. The
Boers would teach the British, as their famous writer Rudyard Kipling put it, ‘no end of a
lesson.’ The British for their part would never forget their humiliation at the hands of a small
yet fiercely determined nation – an attitude that contributed to the phenomenon of Boerehaat
(‘Boer hatred’) displayed by many British until the present day.

During the first months of the Anglo-Boer War the mostly self-trained Boer forces of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State inflicted a number of serious defeats on the professional
British armies, most notably at the battles of Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso and
Spioenkop. This led to widespread rejoicing on the European continent and in Ireland, where
the Boer cause enjoyed enthusiastic if mostly moral support. At the outbreak of war the Boer
forces had promptly besieged the strategic towns of Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith,
thereby threatening the British lines of transport and communication. The Boers also captured
the young British journalist Winston Churchill, whose subsequent escape from custody gave
this inveterate opportunist the chance to launch his overlong political career. However, the
vast resources at the disposal of the British military, including an influx of manpower from
their colonies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, made the odds facing the Boers
overwhelming. Before long the above-mentioned sieges were lifted and by the middle of 1900

the British had captured the two Boer capitals. The imperialists were looking forward to the
more pleasant task of administering and exploiting their new colonies, with the Transvaal’s
gold massively bolstering the finances of the empire.

But an easy victory was not to be the case, since the Boer leadership (minus the aged Kruger
who had gone into exile in Switzerland) had decided upon waging a guerrilla war against the
imperial forces. This unconventional strategy took the British completely by surprise and
prolonged the war for a further two years. To his lasting honour the Free State president
Marthinus Steyn, even though suffering from a rare, debilitating disease, remained with his
men in the field until the end of the war. Under able generals such as Christiaan de Wet in the
Free State, Koos de la Rey in the Western Transvaal and Louis Botha in the Eastern Transvaal
the Boer commandos roamed widely across the countryside, surviving on raiding the British
convoys and depots, while the British controlled the towns. Furthermore, several thousand
volunteers from a number of European countries, including enough to form two Irish
brigades, came at great personal risk to South Africa to fight on the Boer side.

However, under Gen Kitchener’s command the British military embarked on a campaign
against civilians, herding most of the Boer non-combatants and large numbers of blacks into
concentration camps, where the inmates were kept without proper shelter, enough food, fresh
water or medical care. As if this outrage against non-combatants was not enough, on
Kitchener’s orders around 90% of the farms in the Boer republics were destroyed. To the
lasting shame of the British Empire almost 30 000 Boer women and children and around 20
000 black civilians died in their camps – an atrocious fatality rate if kept in mind that it took
place in just over a year. This has rightly been called the first genocide of the twentieth
century, regardless whether the mass deaths occurred through intent or neglect. Ironically it
was an Englishwoman, Emily Hobhouse, who made it her mission to bring the plight of the
Boer camp internees under the attention of the British media. At first she was vehemently
opposed by the British establishment, notably the Church of England and the military, who
even denied the deaths in their camps. However, Hobhouse persisted in her efforts to save
civilian lives, and eventually it led to some amelioration in conditions and a reduction in the
death rate. She would afterwards be honoured by the Afrikaner nation as one of their greatest
heroines, being buried at the Women’s Memorial near Bloemfontein. In a further political
blunder the British placed thousands of Coloured and black people under arms to fight the

Boer forces, while the Boers refused to do likewise against the British. This unfortunate
aspect of the Anglo-Boer War would sour racial relations for many years to come.

During the early months of 1902 the commandos of the intrepid Boer general Jan Smuts were
beginning to wrest large areas of the barren but mineral-rich north-western Cape colony from
British control, but this remarkable feat made no appreciable difference to the plight of the
Boers. Thus in May of that year the remaining Boer commandos voted to accept the British
terms of surrender, thereby formally ending the existence of the Boer republics. This also
confirmed British control over the whole of South Africa and fulfilled the arch-imperialist
Cecil Rhodes’ dream of a British African empire stretching from the Cape to Cairo. The
Boers were allowed to return to their devastated farms, where the arduous task of rebuilding
awaited them and what remained of their families. To their credit the British authorities did
provide financial assistance to many of their former adversaries, who by now had become
subjects of the Crown.

Union, war and rebellion
       It was widely seen as a natural development when the four British colonies of the
Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State were united into the Union of
South Africa in 1910, with the former Boer general Louis Botha as the country’s first prime
minister. Henceforth the Afrikaners across the new country had the potential of being
politically united, provided able and dynamic leadership would be forthcoming. In view of the
heroic resistance of the Boer people against British imperialism it is not surprising that for
several decades into the twentieth century a number of former Boer generals provided the
political leadership of the Afrikaner nation. However, both Botha and Smuts had by the end
of the Anglo-Boer War become admirers of the British Empire, so that both would contribute
valuable support to it during the coming world wars by dragging their country into the
conflict on the British side. Interestingly, the predominantly English-speaking Natal province
remained fiercely loyal to their British overlords, to the extent that its (white) inhabitants
would until late in the twentieth century view themselves as the ‘last outpost of the British
Empire.’ Whether such a jingoist attitude could be reconciled with loyalty to South Africa is a
different matter altogether.

Already during Botha’s rule an Afrikaner nationalist party (NP) was founded by his former
comrade in arms, General Hertzog, in opposition to the ruling South African Party (SAP). In a

remarkable historical irony this time also witnessed the birth of black political consciousness
in South Africa when the African Native Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912, the word
‘native’ later to be replaced by ‘national’. The conflict between Afrikaner nationalism and
black consciousness (nationalism is by definition found in nations, while across nations racial
consciousness might be found) would come to dominate most of the remainder of the
twentieth century, as will be seen further on.

The cause of Afrikaner nationalism was bolstered by the rebellion of 1914, led by a number
of prominent Boer leaders, among whom the war heroes Beyers, De Wet and De la Rey, the
latter being killed at a police roadblock. The rebels had opposed South Africa’s entry into the
First World War on the British side, arguing correctly that Germany had never caused any
harm to the Afrikaner people, in contrast to the bloodstained British record. However, forces
loyal to Botha and his ally Smuts easily suppressed the rebellion, enabling South Africa to
easily defeat the vastly outnumbered German colonial forces in South West Africa (SWA).
Afterwards Smuts would command the South Africans in fighting the Germans in East Africa,
where the Allies were often to be outfought by the brilliant commander Paul von Lettow-
Vorbeck. At the post-war Versailles Conference the South Africans were rewarded with
administrative control over SWA – an arrangement that would later in the century become a
considerable bone of contention, culminating in a protracted guerrilla war. By this time Smuts
had taken over the premiership from the deceased Botha.

Interregnum and renewed war
       During a mineworkers’ strike in 1922 Smuts sent in the military to suppress it. This
decisive action ended the unrest but did not endear him to the country’s (white) workers,
while most Afrikaners had by this time come to see Smuts as a British imperialist agent. As a
result, only two years later the Afrikaner nationalists (Hertzog’s NP) came to power in
alliance with the socialists. During the 15 years of his premiership Hertzog proved himself to
be an able statesman, playing a key role in the Westminster agreement whereby South Africa
became a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth. He strove to reconcile
the Afrikaners and the (white) English population of the country in an attempt to create a
broader South African patriotism. A beginning was also made during Hertzog’s rule to
designate parts of the country to exclusive settlement by some of the black peoples, notably
the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape. However, when he joined forces with his old opponent Smuts
to form a coalition government (United Party) in 1934, at a time when the world-wide

economic depression was beginning to wreak havoc in South Africa also, the more
nationalist-minded Afrikaners led by the former newspaper editor Daniel Malan broke away
and re-founded the NP in opposition to the new government. Their power base lay mostly
among Cape and Free State Afrikaners, the Transvaal Afrikaners initially siding with Hertzog
and Smuts.

During 1938, with war clouds gathering yet again in Europe, the centenary of the Great Trek
was commemorated by the Afrikaner nationalists, who over the years had built up an
influential network of cultural organisations, newspapers and magazines to support their
cause. Prominent among these was the secretive Afrikaner Broederbond (‘Brotherhood’),
whose members came to dominate the South African government, public services and
agriculture until at least the early 1980’s. A number of symbolic ox wagon treks from various
parts of the country converged on Pretoria, where the foundations of a massive monument to
the Voortrekkers of a century earlier had just been laid. Afrikaner enthusiasm reached fever
pitch by the time of the final ceremony to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of Blood
River in December 1938.

However, this could not prevent South Africa from again being drawn into a world war on the
British side less than a year later, thanks to the machinations of Smuts and his political allies,
after Hertzog had failed in his parliamentary bid to keep the country neutral. Disillusioned,
Hertzog joined forces with Malan in opposition to the Smuts war government. The South
African military would serve with distinction in the Allied campaigns in East and North
Africa, although their surrender of the Tobruk fortress to the great German general Rommel
in 1942 infuriated the British war leader Churchill. By the time of the final Allied victory over
the Axis in 1945 it seemed as if South Africa would remain an obedient member of the British
Empire, as she had been since 1910.

Afrikaner nationalism comes to power
       Yet history is filled with examples of the improbable and the imponderable. A mere
three years after the end of the war the Afrikaner nationalist NP under Malan, in alliance with
a smaller Afrikaner party, won the general election of 1948 on a programme of
comprehensive racial segregation. Incidentally, this shock result came in the same month in
which the Zionist state of Israel proclaimed its independence from British rule. Even the
former premier Smuts lost his parliamentary seat and retired to his farm, where he died not

long thereafter, rejected by his own people for his subservience to the British imperialists.
This change of government ended half a century during which a number of Boer generals had
dominated South African politics. It also inaugurated a new era in which the Afrikaner
nationalists for the first time obtained political power over the whole country, thus much
wider in scope than with the old Boer republics. The new rulers immediately set out to
consolidate their power, one of the first steps being to remove the Cape Coloured population
from the voters’ roll, amidst vehement opposition. Henceforth only the Afrikaners and other
whites would enjoy parliamentary suffrage.

This was only the beginning, as the new government embarked on a comprehensive campaign
of social engineering that was to have lasting repercussions, both locally and internationally.
The new socio-political system was branded apartheid (separateness) by its opponents, its
supporters eventually coming to prefer the term separate development. Step by step almost all
aspects of South African life became segregated on a racial basis: residential areas, schools,
hospitals, sport facilities, beaches and even park benches. Undoubtedly, the most hurtful and
notorious segregation was that of facilities marked ‘whites’ and ‘non-whites’, or inexplicably
‘Europeans’ and ‘non-Europeans’. Among the most loyal supporters of the new policy
counted the Afrikaans churches, all of them being Calvinist Protestant, whose spokesmen
went so far as to find ‘Scriptural support’ for racial separation. The programme was continued
during the premiership of Hans Strijdom, who in the 1930’s had been the only Transvaal
parliamentarian to follow Malan into the political wilderness. Under his vigorous leadership
the Transvaal became a renewed stronghold of Afrikaner nationalism, together with the
Orange Free State, while the Cape Afrikaners gradually became exposed to more liberal
influences from the printed media and the academic world.

Thus it happened that from the time the Afrikaner nationalists came to power in 1948 they
appeared to have forgotten much of their own history, not to mention the Christian values
they were so fond of proclaiming. Instead of accepting that they are an African people, albeit
one with strong cultural links to Western Europe, the Afrikaners continued to think like their
settler ancestors, seeing their own nation in terms of a European presence on African soil.
This forgetfulness enabled them to implement a socio-political system that excluded the
majority of their fellow South Africans from meaningful political participation, not to
mention the extensive socio-economic discrimination that came into effect. In this way the
Afrikaners alienated most of the rest of the population, while vainly trying to win the support

of certain European countries and even that of the perennially hostile Anglo-American world.
With the wisdom of hindsight, it would have been much better for the ruling Afrikaners to
develop positive relations with the other peoples of the country, notably the Zulus and the
Coloureds with whom they had historically much in common. By the time something like this
appeared in the early 1990’s it was too late and too little to undo the damage done, alas.

Changing international relations
       During the 1950’s not only the domestic policies of South Africa underwent major
changes, but also aspects of its foreign policy. With the so-called Cold War between the
American-led capitalist world and the Soviet-led socialist world increasing in its global
extent, the Afrikaner government broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and
banned the local communist party. For the next four decades the two countries would be
sworn enemies, with the Soviets and their Chinese allies (at the time, later to become hostile)
financing, equipping and training the guerrilla movements that would from 1960 onwards
wage an armed insurgency against the South African government. In hindsight this appears to
have been a major strategic error committed by the Afrikaner leadership, who failed to realise
that its main enemy was the Anglo-American world, with its inveterate enmity towards those
nations that dared to oppose its drive towards global hegemony, and not the so-called
‘communist threat’.

Another watershed year for South Africa was 1960, when the Sharpeville riots led to Anglo-
American condemnation of the country’s domestic policies. In the wake of it the main black
consciousness movements (ANC and PAC) and the local communist party were banned, all of
which proceeded to engage in a guerrilla war against the government. Their campaign against
white rule was an integral part of the wider one waged across the African subcontinent. In the
case of South Africa this conflict would last into the early 1990’s, with thousands of civilians
killed as a result. Ironically, most of these victims were black, making a mockery of the
claims to ‘liberation’ by all these movements.

The colossus
       By the early 1960’s the so-called ‘winds of change’ were sweeping over much of
Africa, as one by one the African countries obtained political independence from France,
Belgium and Britain. At the same time South Africa was ruled by the Afrikaner nationalists
led by the Dutch-born Hendrik Verwoerd, destined to become the ultimate tragic hero of the

Afrikaner nation. Verwoerd was a visionary leader and statesman, with the ability to inspire
his followers with unwavering idealism while fomenting unremitting hostility among his
opposition. To his lasting credit he led South Africa out of the British Commonwealth and
established the country as an independent republic in 1961. By this time the country’s fiercest
opposition came from other English-speaking countries such as the United States, Canada and
Australia. Less surprising perhaps was the hostility of ‘non-aligned’ countries such as India
and Pakistan, the former already in the late 1940’s having taken South Africa to task in the
United Nations for alleged mistreatment of its Indian population.

Having succeeded in freeing South Africa from its last British imperial shackles, Verwoerd
then set out to convince his Afrikaner supporters of the need to share the country with the
various black peoples living within its borders, instead of dominating them as had been the
case since the nineteenth century. By granting each of the black peoples the right to elect their
own government and administer their own territory, it was hoped that this project would lead
to self-government and eventual political independence, while maintaining economic co-
operation. Instead of an Afrikaner-ruled country, Verwoerd thus envisaged the creation of a
South African confederation of ethnic states, each with its own government and domestic
policies. This policy became branded as ‘grand apartheid’ by its opponents, led by the English
media in South Africa and parroted in the rest of the English-speaking world.

Furthermore, to the chagrin of the Anglo-American establishment Verwoerd became the first
Afrikaner nationalist leader since Hertzog to draw substantial English-speaking support for
his policies, as was confirmed in the 1966 general election. When Verwoerd began to
successfully reach out to some of South Africa’s black neighbouring states, his enemies
decided it was time to strike before it became too late. Within days of meeting with the new
Lesotho premier Leabua Jonathan, Verwoerd was struck down by an assassin’s knife in the
parliamentary building in Cape Town, in September 1966. Most Afrikaners and many others
were in a state of deep shock following this horrendous event, occurring less than 3 years
after the assassination of the American president John Kennedy. Verwoerd’s murder and the
subsequent cover-up showed signs of being part of a conspiracy involving government
members at the highest level, but this possibility was never officially pursued and his
murderer was promptly thrown into a mental asylum – a ‘classical’ method of suppressing
further enquiry.

The aftermath
       Verwoerd was succeeded by John Vorster, who as minister of police had
masterminded the suppression of the black guerrilla movements in the early 1960’s. Vorster at
first vowed to continue the policies of his esteemed predecessor, but time was to tell a
different story in respect of foreign policy at least. Under his rule a beginning was made to
end racially segregated sport, a move that was seen by some devoted followers of Verwoerd
as the ‘thin end of the wedge’ that would ultimately lead to full racial integration. This led to
a breakaway Afrikaner nationalist party (HNP) being established in 1969, one that never
made headway with voters but also never tired of putting forward candidates in elections,
whose lost deposits would make a welcome contribution to government finances over the
following two decades. In the meantime the South African heart specialist Chris Barnard, an
Afrikaner who had grown up in the barren Cape interior, had become an international
celebrity in 1967 when he performed the first successful heart transplant in history. The
country would maintain its prominent position in medical research for many years to come,
until the 1990’s when the huge outflow of medical practitioners led to the new black
government importing large numbers of Cuban doctors to take their place.

The tenth anniversary of the South African republic was celebrated with much ceremony in
1971. By this time the country’s international isolation had extended further culturally and in
sport, for example athletics and cricket. The much-beloved (among the white and Coloured
populations) sport of rugby still enjoyed international links with France, Argentina, New
Zealand and Britain, although one by one these countries would severe sporting ties in the
following years. However, there was a widespread spirit of optimism and hope for the future
of the country, based on a sincere belief that the racial problematic would be solved in a way
that would be acceptable to most South Africans, given sufficient time. What should also be
mentioned is that in terms of public morality the country was far more conservative than
anywhere in the Anglo-European world. Law and order was strictly enforced by the
authorities, thereby providing safety and security to the population at large. All of this was set
to change in the decades to come, following the disastrous collapse of morality and order in
much of the western world from the 1960’s onwards.

In continuation of Verwoerd’s policy of separate nationhood the first of the black homelands
(some English-speakers preferring the term Bantustans), the Xhosa-speaking Transkei, was
granted political independence in 1976. Although this new state was not recognised by any

other country, over the following 5 years three more black homelands would follow the
Transkei’s example: Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei. However, most of these homelands,
whether independent or not, remained economically heavily dependent on South Africa. An
exception was Bophuthatswana, whose astute leader Lucas Mangope allowed casinos (banned
in South Africa) to be opened in his country. Within its borders there arose the popular
holiday resort of Sun City, which would become one of the subcontinent’s most popular
tourist attractions. A homeland that would play an increasingly prominent role in South
African politics was Kwazulu in Natal, home to the majority of the country’s Zulu people.
Their chieftain Mangosuthu Buthelezi founded the Inkatha movement in the late 1970’s, for
the preservation of the Zulu culture. Inkatha would over the years play a leading role in
focussing Zulu nationalism, in contrast to most of the other black peoples in South Africa to
which nationalism did not seem to appeal much. Among the country’s black leaders
Buthelezi’s stature was such that his steadfast refusal to accept political independence for
Kwazulu effectively derailed the further devolution of power to the black homelands.

The border wars
       By the early 1970’s South Africa had been drawn into an armed insurgency waged by
black guerrillas against its administration in northern SWA. At the same the Portuguese were
fighting counter-insurgency wars in their colonies Angola and Mozambique, while South
Africa’s northern neighbour Rhodesia, whose white government had declared the country to
be independent from British rule in 1965, was involved in a vicious border war between
government forces and several black guerrilla movements operating mostly from Zambia and
Tanzania. Most South Africans did not attach much importance to these conflicts, being far
away from the country’s own borders and population centres. However, from 1975 this
situation was to change dramatically. In that year Angola and Mozambique obtained
independence from Portugal, with former guerrilla movements becoming the government in
each case. Tens of thousands of Portuguese fled from both countries to South Africa or
returned to their mother country. In Angola independence was to be followed by a civil war
between former guerrilla movements that would last for the next two decades. Both South
Africa and Cuba sent military forces into the fray, so that from 1976 onwards the conflict in
Angola gradually escalated. On the one side there was the Angolan government aided by the
Cubans, both of whom supported the anti-South African guerrillas fighting in northern SWA,
all of them using Soviet-made weapons; and on the other side there was the guerrilla
movement Unita controlling most of southern Angola and supported by the South Africans.

The complicated war in southern Angola and northern SWA would last until 1989 and proved
to be a powerful stimulus to the South African armaments industry, which expanded
enormously from the late 1970’s onwards. World-class weaponry including jet fighters, attack
helicopters, long-range artillery, armoured vehicles, guided missiles and frequency-hopping
radio came to be manufactured in South Africa, with increasing quantities of it being
exported. All of this took place in the face of an international arms embargo against the
country on account of its domestic policies, introduced by the Americans in the early 1960’s,
followed by the British in the early 1970’s and enforced by the UN in 1977. To provide
manpower for the country’s military needs the government introduced compulsory military
service for a period of 2 years among all white men in the late 1970’s. This would inevitably
leave deep social and psychological marks among those affected, in addition to the substantial
economic cost thereof. It is of interest to note that the South African forces on the border
became increasingly multi-racial as the conflict dragged on, with a Coloured corps and a
Bushman battalion counting among the units that distinguished themselves in action.

What is not generally known is that during this time the state of Israel became South Africa’s
main ally in the military field, either in providing weaponry as such or collaborating in its
design and production by the South Africans. By the late 1980’s the conflict in Angola had
expanded to the level of conventional war, so that a number of large-scale battles took place
between the South African-led and Cuban-led forces. This included the largest armoured
conflict in Africa since the Second World War, at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987.
Needless to say, these developments placed a huge strain on the South African economy,
except the armaments industry that was obviously flourishing.

Times of change
       The second half of the 1970’s was also a time of political upheaval for South Africa.
The Soweto riots of June 1976 led to widespread international condemnation of the country’s
racial policies, led as always by the Anglo-American media, and to increasing isolation. In
addition to the arms boycott already referred to, South Africa was increasingly cut off from
the rest of the world culturally and economically. By the beginning of 1977 the NP
government was calling on the country to unite in the face of the ‘total onslaught’ that was
being waged against it by the ‘communist’ world – a grand misstatement if ever there was
one. Vorster even went so far as to declare that the USA was his leader, being the ‘leader of

the free world’. The incessant hostility of the English-speaking world was in fact a far more
lethal threat to the Afrikaner nation than the ‘communist’ onslaught, as later events would
prove. However, the rhetoric proved to be highly effective among the white electorate, since
in the general election held later in 1977 the ruling party mauled the liberal opposition and
won over 80% of the parliamentary seats – the largest win ever in South African political
history. Furthermore, the introduction of television in 1975/76, long resisted by conservative
Afrikaner church and cultural leaders, opened the door for a deluge of Anglo-American
indoctrination among the whole South African population, although only a few perceptive
minds could notice this at the time.

A further negative development during Vorster’s premiership was the substitution of the
earlier idealism (whether misguided or not) by pragmatism on the Anglo-American model, so
that the need to maintain political power became the ruling NP’s prime motivation. Even so,
there was sufficient attachment to civilised values among the rulers to ensure continued
economic development that benefited the bulk of the South African population. The 1970’s
thus witnessed the construction of several large dams for irrigation and other purposes, coal-
fired power stations for electricity generation, and industrial plants for the conversion of coal
into oil, in which the country was a world leader. This development enabled the country to
become the economic powerhouse of sub-Saharan Africa, with food and electricity being
provided to numerous African countries, strangely also to some of those actively supporting
the guerrilla movements fighting the authorities in South Africa and SWA. This is probably
another instance of the smoke and mirrors and wheels within wheels that is so characteristic
of politics.

During the rule of Pieter Botha, who had succeeded Vorster in 1978, the country’s military
and security apparatus was greatly expanded, as we have already remarked upon. This was
not surprising, given Botha’s background as defence minister since 1966. In addition to the
war fought in SWA and Angola, the internal security forces were reinforced to suppress the
urban insurgency in the country’s cities, especially the black townships. Furthermore, Botha
adopted a ‘adapt or die’ approach to South Africa’s complicated racial predicament. He thus
began to dismantle the system of discriminatory racial laws that had come to be called ‘petty
apartheid’ to distinguish it from the Verwoerdian concept of separate nationhood for the
peoples of South Africa. Botha also intended to draw the Coloured and Indian populations
into the country’s political structures on the same basis as the white population. Regarding

foreign policy, in addition to continuing the counter-insurgency in SWA and the war in
Angola, the South Africans supported the rebel Renamo movement in Mozambique in order
to exert pressure on its eastern neighbour. This was apparently a successful strategy, since in
1984 the Mozambique leader and Botha signed an agreement on co-operation and trade.

New beginnings
       The reformist moves of Botha’s government were viewed as succumbing to liberal
pressure and opening the door to black domination by his conservative opponents, who in
1982 founded a new opposition party (Conservative Party) led by Andries Treurnicht, a
former church leader, newspaper editor and Transvaal NP leader. To the alarm of the NP the
new conservative opposition increasingly drew Afrikaner support away from it, to the extent
that in the 1987 general election the conservatives replaced the liberals of the PFP as the
official opposition. This course of events went hand in hand with a renewed upsurge of
Afrikaner nationalism, with a number of cultural and paramilitary organisations opposing the
government being founded, and of which Treurnicht was widely seen as the political leader.
Among these groups the most prominent was the neo-fascist AWB (Afrikaner Resistance
Movement) led by Eugene Terreblanche, a fiery orator whose militant followers from the
middle 1980’s onwards prepared to prevent an expected ANC takeover of the Transvaal and
Free State rural areas. However, the ruling party continued to control the electronic media and
was avidly supported by much of the printed media, so that a repeat of the 1948 election
shock was never a real possibility.

Casual observers of the South African scene are probably unaware of the civil war that
commenced in 1984 between the main guerrilla movement, the ANC, and the Zulu nationalist
movement Inkatha. This ethnic conflict was prompted by the admirable refusal of the Inkatha
chief Buthelezi, on moral grounds, to participate in the armed insurgency against the
authorities, to which the guerrilla leaders comfortably living in exile in Britain had invited
him. That Orwellian year also saw the extension of parliamentary suffrage to the country’s
Coloured and Indian populations, the two groups thereby being drawn into the political
structures. However, despite Botha’s undoubted good intentions in this regard the majority of
Coloureds and Indians chose to remain outside the government’s sharing of power with them.
The thorniest issue remained the constitutional position of the urban blacks, whose numbers
had been soaring since the ruling party abolished its measures to limit urbanisation in the
early 1980’s.

Transition of power
       By the end of the 1980’s the internal structures of the guerrilla movements fighting the
South African government had largely been smashed by the highly efficient security forces,
while the Cubans had been defeated in a number of conventional encounters in Angola in
1987/88. The country’s innovative armaments industry had finally found ways to circumvent
the UN embargo, so that in 1988 it took part in an international weapons exhibition in Chile,
thereby ending 11 years of UN-imposed military isolation. The AWB and some smaller yet
equally militant extra-parliamentary groups, notably the BBB (White Liberation Movement),
drew huge crowds to its meetings and protests. However, in 1988 the BBB was banned by the
Botha government, in addition to a number of ANC-aligned organisations in South Africa. In
the 1989 general election Treurnicht’s conservative opposition almost doubled its
parliamentary representation, while the new liberal opposition (Democratic Party) also scored
impressive gains from the NP. It seemed as if the Afrikaner-dominated white government was
as secure as can be, but certain orchestrated events from 1989 onwards would turn this
position upside down.

How did this come about? Firstly, in a palace revolution Botha was ousted as president (his
office had replaced that of prime minister in 1984) and replaced by Frederik de Klerk, who
until that moment had pretended to lead the remaining conservatives in the ruling party.
Within months his true intentions became known when he legitimised the guerrilla
movements banned in 1960 and released their imprisoned leaders, of whom Nelson Mandela
was the most well known. At the same time, early 1990, the former SWA became the newly
independent state of Namibia, ruled by the former guerrilla movement Swapo that had fought
the South Africans there since the late 1960’s. This isolated and weakened the Unita
movement in southern Angola from its erstwhile ally, so that within a few years the civil war
in that country would be something of the past.

Thus from 1990 South Africa was for all practical purposes ruled by a coalition government
in which the ANC, in a tripartite alliance with the largest labour confederation and the local
communist party, was a highly vocal partner of De Klerk’s NP. In this time the government
allowed thousands of former guerrillas to enter the country without being required to
surrender their weapons. To make matters worse, De Klerk gave amnesty to tens of thousands
of violent criminals in South Africans prisons, inevitably unleashing a tidal wave of murder

and other violent crimes onto the population. These developments brought forth a massive
backlash among the white population, with by-elections showing large numbers of English-
speakers joining the ranks of the Afrikaner nationalists in opposing De Klerk’s capitulation to
the ANC.

However, the Anglo-American establishment of which De Klerk was a faithful servant, was
determined not to be obstructed in its plans to install an ANC government in South Africa at
the earliest possible opportunity. With a final referendum for the white population coming up
in 1992, the mass media waged an intensive campaign to convince the electorate to vote in
favour of De Klerk’s transfer of power, disguised as ‘power-sharing’ with ‘protection of
minority rights’ and ‘checks and balances’. In order to counter the swing to the right the
renewal of international sporting links was employed as the main tactic to induce Afrikaner
surrender. This was so successful that the NP government, supported by the small liberal
opposition, won the referendum with a two-thirds majority. From that point onwards it was
only a matter of time before the new ANC government would formally take power.
Interestingly, shortly after the referendum the Inkatha movement registered as a federalist
political party and from the outset attracted some interest from Afrikaners, both nationalist
and liberal ones, as increasing numbers of them came to the realisation that the days of white
rule over South Africa were irrevocably over.

In the last year before black rule over South Africa became a reality a most remarkable event
occurred – one that had the potential of setting the country’s further history on a rather
different course than the one actually taken. This was the formation in 1993 of a multi-ethnic
‘freedom alliance’ between the Afrikaner nationalist opposition, the Zulu nationalists of
Inkatha, some of the black ‘homeland’ leaders, and even some Coloured nationalists, the latter
being a new yet perfectly natural phenomenon. Television viewers were amazed to see images
of public protests with Zulu warriors and Afrikaner militias marching side by side to demand
autonomy for their peoples, rather than being drawn into the unitary state planned by De
Klerk and the ANC leadership. By the beginning on 1994 this multi-ethnic alliance appeared
to be dominant in several parts of the country, including much of the rural areas of the Free
State, the Western Transvaal, the Northern Cape and Natal. It should be kept in mind that the
early 1990’s witnessed a number of multi-ethnic European states breaking up along ethnic
lines, such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. There was therefore a

widespread hope that an ethnic-based confederation might be established in South Africa
alongside the expected ANC-ruled remainder of the country.

Alas, once again the powers behind the scenes that were managing the transfer of power went
to work to ensure that there would be no interference with their plans for a unitary state under
ANC rule. It was announced that the first general election in which all adult South Africans
could vote for a new parliament would be held towards the end of April 1994. It was clear to
most observers that the three main parties in terms of popular support would be the ANC, the
NP and Inkatha. Although the NP had been abandoned by most of its former white supporters,
it managed to draw considerable Coloured support at this stage. However, the Inkatha
leadership refused to be drawn into the election, displaying an admirable sense of solidarity
with their Afrikaner, Tswana, Xhoza and Coloured nationalist partners. This obstacle to the
ANC/NP plans was overcome by convincing an Afrikaner hero of the border war, General
Constand Viljoen, to form his own party (Freedom Front) and take part in the forthcoming
elections, on the basis of Afrikaner ‘self-determination’. At the same time an attempt by the
main Afrikaner militia movement (AWB) to invade Bophutatswana in order to prevent an
ANC takeover there ended in a fiasco. These unforeseen developments forced the hand of
Buthelezi to announce Inkatha’s participation in the election at the last minute, as the Xhosa
and Tswana nationalists had by that stage already done. This left the Afrikaner and Coloured
nationalists isolated and their leaders doomed to the political wilderness – the price for
remaining loyal to your convictions, in other words for moral integrity.

The new South Africa
       The 1994 election took place relatively peacefully, despite isolated bombings by some
Afrikaner militants in a desperate last-minute attempt to prevent ANC rule over the whole
country. However, there were so many electoral irregularities that it took 2 weeks for the
results to be announced. In what was generally interpreted as a negotiated result the ANC and
their alliance partners won over 60% of the national vote and control over 7 of the 9 new
provinces, the NP 20% and the Western Cape, and Inkatha 10% and Kwazulu Natal. Viljoen’s
FF showed poorly with less than 5% of the total vote, despite his well-funded campaign to
convince the Afrikaners that his party would represent their interests in the new scheme of
things. The liberal opposition (DP) as well as the former guerrilla movements of the PAC and
Azapo were decimated, leaving the political scene in the new South Africa to be dominated
by the Big Three parties.

As was expected, Mandela became the country’s first black president, with De Klerk
becoming deputy president and Buthelezi put in charge of home affairs. For managing the
transfer from white to black rule Mandela and De Klerk were duly rewarded with a shared
Nobel peace prize. To media-indoctrinated observers in the rest of the world it seemed as if
centuries of injustice had finally been corrected. When South Africa hosted and unexpectedly
won the rugby world cup in 1995, the first time the country was allowed to participate in the
tournament, euphoria reigned in the new South Africa. Heaven on earth at last! Or so
everyone was made to believe…

A mere 5 years into the new government’s rule was enough to convince the majority of the
white population, Afrikaners and English, that things were not going as well as was promised
by Mandela and De Klerk. By now violent crime, including an alarming wave of farm
murders, and widespread corruption had become hallmarks of the new South Africa. In 1999
the veteran ANC leader announced his retirement in favour of the jet-setting Thabo Mbeki,
and the general election later in the year saw a much lower voter turnout than the previous
one. Nevertheless, the ruling party again won the election with a large majority, as was
expected. But in a surprising development the DP became the new official opposition in
parliament by drawing 1.5 million votes, around 10 percent of the total. This was the result of
an aggressive election campaign by the party leader Tony Leon, capitalising on the discontent
of many South Africans with ANC rule. Remarkably, large numbers of Afrikaner nationalists,
who had mostly abstained from voting in 1994, voted for Leon’s party. In addition the DP
maintained its traditional white English support base, and drew many Coloured and Asian
votes. To add injury to insult to the former official opposition, of which De Klerk had in the
meantime retired as leader, Buthelezi’s Inkatha finished in third position, ahead of the NP in
fourth place.

By this time the majority of the Afrikaner people had become apathetic as far as national
freedom was concerned, due (at least in part) to their loss of political power. They were thus
again in the position of the Boer people at the end of the Anglo-Boer War, although in a
stronger position economically. Small groups were engaged in cultural activities, notably to
preserve the Afrikaans language against the ANC government’s policy of anglicisation. But
for the most part the Afrikaners since 1994 chose to focus on economic survival and even
physical survival, given the disastrous levels of violent crime. In this they were not much

different from millions of other South Africans, such as the impoverished black masses and
many Coloured people.

Into the third millennium
       A few words should be mentioned regarding demographics, to further dispel the
propaganda of a white minority oppressing a black majority. At the beginning of the twentieth
century the total population of what was to become the Union of South Africa numbered
around 5 million. Two thirds (67%) of this number belonged to one of the black peoples (total
3.5 million), while the Afrikaners and English whites numbered just over a million, or 21
percent of the population. The ratio of black to white was therefore just over 3 to one. In their
turn the Coloureds numbered less than half a million and the Asians just over 100 000. A
century later, at the time of the 2001 census, the total population had increased to around 45
million, in other words a nine-fold increase. The black population now stood at 35 million
(79%), the whites at 4.5 million (10%), the Coloureds at 4 million (9%) and the Asians at one
million (2.5%). Remarkably, the percentage share of the Coloured and Asian groups had
remained fairly constant over the previous century. However, the country’s blacks had
increased not only their number ten-fold but also their share of the total by 12 percent. During
the same time the white population had grown only four-fold and had declined as part of the
whole by over 10 percent. The ratio of black to white now stood at 8 to one. Some

In the early years of the new millennium the opportunistic NP leadership had first joined
forces with the DP to form the Democratic Alliance (DA) with Leon as leader, and two years
later switched allegiance to climb onto the ANC bandwagon. Despite the continuing crime
wave, high levels of unemployment and other glaring deficiencies in government, the ANC
obtained a huge 70% of the national vote in the 2004 general election, as well as control over
all 9 provinces. Apparently the right to make a cross on a ballot paper every 5 years was
deemed more important by the majority of the country’s black people than such trivialities as
law and order, civilised standards and values, economic development and cultural rights. As
in the previous two elections the rural Zulus of the Kwazulu Natal province served as an
exception to this rule, the majority continuing their support for Inkatha. The DA obtained
increased support from white, Coloured and Asian voters, so that the electoral alliance of the
DA and Inkatha drew over 20% of the total vote. The NP was finally destroyed at the polls, to
the relief of most South Africans. Sadly, this did not prevent the last NP leader from being

rewarded with a cabinet post in recognition of services rendered to the ANC during the
preceding years.

As far as public morality is concerned, South Africa had been continuing the downward slide
upon which it had entered during the 1970s. In common with most of the western world, the
country experienced a large-scale breakdown of traditional values such as the integrity of
family life, proper upbringing of children, respect for law and order, decent behaviour
towards others, and so forth. By the 1990s South Africans were being treated to the spectacle
of homosexual and lesbian parades demanding ‘equal rights’ with heterosexual persons, the
latter increasing becoming branded as ‘homophobic’. By 2007 South Africa had joined the
ranks of ‘progressive nationhood’ by the legalisation of homosexual marriages, thereby
flouting the religious sensibilities of most Christians and Muslims as well as traditional
African beliefs.

The fourth general election in which all adult South Africans were eligible to vote took place
in 2009. As in the previous three elections the ANC won the national election easily,
garnering 65% of the vote. Although it lost the two-thirds majority obtained in the previous
two elections, the ruling party won victories in 8 provinces. The election proved to be a
considerable boost to the DA, having worked hard to gain popular support since becoming the
official opposition in the national parliament 10 years earlier. Under the dynamic leadership
of Helen Zille, the party in this election increased its share of the national vote to almost 17
percent, representing just under 3 million voters. Moreover, the DA wrested control of the
country’s most prosperous province, the Western Cape, from the ANC by winning just over
half the province’s votes.

Another noteworthy performer in the 2009 election was a party formed only a few months
earlier, the Congress of the People (Cope). Although hampered by presenting a largely
unknown leader to the electorate, the new black party drew an impressive 1.3 million votes
nationwide. Since Cope was formed by dissident ANC members and waged a campaign based
on a return to traditional ANC principles, it can reasonably be assumed that the vast majority
of its votes came from former ANC supporters. This has been the first time since 1994 that an
opposition party has succeeded in drawing a substantial number of votes away from the ruling
party. In the process Cope replaced the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as the third largest party
on the South Africa political landscape, a position the IFP had held since 1994. Furthermore,

in the ANC heartland of the Eastern Cape, the new party became the official opposition in the
provincial parliament. Should Cope continue to grow in future elections it would be a cause of
considerable concern to the ANC leadership, hitherto assured of easy victories due to the
uncritical loyalty of the country’s huge black electorate.

Will the Afrikaners and Zulus and other freedom-loving South Africans ever be able to live in
a system in which cultural diversity is respected, in which law and order is more than empty
rhetoric, and in which merit is more important than colour? Perhaps this way of thinking is
completely unrealistic, given the country’s convoluted history and complicated demographics.
The only viable alternative then would be regional autonomy to those population groups that
do not wish to lose their culture and values to the bland conformity of Anglo-American
materialism and superficiality. In the case of the Afrikaners, this would mean an autonomous
region somewhere in the western or southern parts of South Africa, being the only place
where they could establish a majority of the population and become economically self-
sufficient. Only time will tell if this alternative will remain a dream or become reality.

Andre Basson
Cape Town
April 2010

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