South Africa's Tragic Political Past

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

Seventy years ago an election took place that ushered in the darkest period of South Africa’s history. 

On May 26, 1948 the United Party, which had led the government since 1933, was defeated by the Reunited National Party (Herenigde Nasionale Party in Afrikaans). 

Prime Minister Jan Smuts, the noted British Commonwealth statesman, lost power to Daniel François Malan, a Dutch Reformed Church cleric.

Government would now be completely dominated by the insular Afrikaner nationalists, the descendants of the “Boers” who had been defeated by Britain in the bitter South African Boer War of 1899-1902. 

Their surrender had forced them to dismantle their two independent entities, the Orange Free State and the South African (Transvaal) Republic, in the interior of the land. These were forcibly merged with the British Cape and Natal colonies along the coast into the Union of South Africa in 1910. 

But British atrocities during the war had created a strong sense of Afrikaner nationalism.

Malan and his National Party had opposed South Africa’s participation in the Second World War as much of the Afrikaner population continued to harbor anti-British feelings, and some were attracted to Nazi German ideology.

As a student at Stellenbosch University Malan had embraced Social Darwinism as a logical development of the theory of evolution.

Founded in 1918, the Afrikaner Broederbond had played a seminal role in disseminating Afrikaner nationalism. It was dedicated to the promotion of Afrikaner values, cultural identity and political supremacy, and promoted Afrikaans as a distinct language, rather than a Dutch dialect.

The victorious National Party, many of them Broederbond members, now began to institute the country’s officially sanctioned system of white supremacy known as apartheid (“separateness” in Afrikaans). 

It was not entirely dismantled until 1994, when a new South Africa, with universal suffrage and majority rule, emerged under Nelson Mandela.

Apartheid’s foundations were firmly laid during Malan’s six-and-a-half years as prime minister. His objective was to secure white (particularly Afrikaner) rule for all time. The basic components of his strategy were the full separation of the racial groups in South Africa.

These included the establishment of separate residential and business sections in urban areas for each race, the ban on sexual relations between the races, the establishment of separate educational standards that disadvantaged Black Africans,  and the disenfranchisement of “Coloured” (mixed race) people.

The system was later expanded under the concept known as separate development. The Bantustans, or homelands, were areas to which the majority of the Black population would be moved to prevent them from living in the urban areas of South Africa. 

The white minority regime argued that the Bantustans were the “original homes” of the black peoples of South Africa.

The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 declared that Blacks living throughout South Africa would henceforth be legal citizens in the homeland designated for their particular ethnic group. These were to be treated as separate nations. It cancelled their South African citizenship.

In reality the National government aimed to move every Black person to their respective ethnic “homeland” in order to leave South Africa completely in the hands of the White population. 

It has been estimated that 3.5 million people were forced from their homes from the 1960s through the 1980s, many being resettled in the Bantustans.

In total, ten homelands designed for specific ethnic groups were created. The two homelands of Ciskei and Transkei were established for the Xhosa people, while Bophuthatswana was founded for the Tswana people.

KwaZulu was intended for the Zulu people, Lebowa for the Pedi and Northern Ndebele, KwaNdebele for the Ndebele,Venda for Vendas, Gazankulu was for Shangaan and Tsonga people, KaNgwane for the Swazi, while Qwa Qwa was for Basothos.

The South African government declared four of the Bantustans “independent.” Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981 became supposedly “sovereign,” though no other countries recognized them as such. The remaining Bantustans remained self-governing.

There were ten others in Southwest Africa (now Namibia) then controlled by South Africa. They were abolished in May 1989.

After a long and sometimes violent struggle by the African National Congress (ANC) and other anti-apartheid activists both inside and outside the country, the repeal of discriminatory laws began in 1990.

The South African Bantustans ceased to exist in April 1994, and were re-incorporated into the new provinces of a democratic South Africa.