37.3: Apartheid Repealed

37.3.1: Institutional Racism in South Africa

In South Africa during apartheid, institutional racism was a powerful means of excluding from resources and power any person not categorized as white. Those considered black were further discriminated against based upon their backgrounds, with Africans facing more extreme forms of exclusion and exploitation than those marked as colored or Indian.

Election of 1948

The Union of South Africa allowed social custom and law to govern the consideration of multiracial affairs and the allocation in racial terms of access to economic, social, and political status. Most white South Africans, regardless of their differences, accepted the prevailing pattern. Nevertheless, by 1948 it remained apparent that there were occasional gaps in the social structure, whether legislated or otherwise, concerning the rights and opportunities of nonwhites. The rapid economic development of World War II attracted black migrant workers in large numbers to chief industrial centers where they compensated for the wartime shortage of white labor. However, this escalated rate of black urbanization went unrecognized by the South African government, which failed to accommodate the influx with parallel expansion in housing or social services.

Overcrowding, spiking crime rates, and disillusionment resulted. Urban blacks came to support a new generation of leaders influenced by the principles of self-determination and popular freedoms enshrined in such statements as the Atlantic Charter. Whites reacted negatively to these developments. Many Afrikaners, whites chiefly of Dutch descent but with early infusions of Germans and French Huguenots who were soon assimilated, also resented what they perceived as disempowerment by an underpaid black workforce and the superior economic power and prosperity of white English speakers. In addition, Jan Smuts, as a strong advocate of the United Nations, lost domestic support when South Africa was criticized for its color bar and continued mandate of South-West Africa by other UN member states.

Afrikaner nationalists proclaimed they would offer voters a new policy to ensure continued white domination. The policy was initially expounded from a theory by Hendrik Verwoerd presented to the National Party by the Sauer Commission. It called for a systematic effort to organize relations, rights, and privileges of the races as officially defined through a series of parliamentary acts and administrative decrees. Segregation was previously pursued only in major matters, such as separate schools, and enforcement depended on local authorities and societal complicity. Now it would be a matter of national legislation. The party gave this policy a name: apartheid, meaning “apartness”. Apartheid would be the basic ideological and practical foundation of Afrikaner politics for the next quarter-century.

The National Party’s election platform stressed that apartheid would preserve a market for white employment in which nonwhites could not compete. On the issues of black urbanization, the regulation of nonwhite labor, influx control, social security, farm tariffs, and nonwhite taxation, the United Party’s policy remained contradictory and confused. Its traditional bases of support not only took mutually exclusive positions, but found themselves increasingly at odds with each other. Smuts’ reluctance to consider South African foreign policy against the mounting tensions of the Cold War also stirred up discontent, while the nationalists promised to purge the state and public service of communist sympathizers. First to desert the United Party were Afrikaner farmers, who wished to see a change in influx control due to problems with squatters, as well as higher prices for their maize and other produce in the face of mine owners’ demand for cheap food policies.

The party also failed to appeal to its working-class constituents given its long-term affiliation with affluent and capitalist sectors. Populist rhetoric allowed the National Party to sweep eight constituencies in the mining and industrial centers of the Witwatersrand and five more in Pretoria. Barring the predominantly English-speaking landowner electorate of the Natal, the United Party was defeated in almost every rural district. Its urban losses in the nation’s most populous province, the Transvaal, proved equally devastating. Because the voting system was disproportionately weighted in favor of rural constituencies and the Transvaal in particular, the 1948 election catapulted the National Party from a small minority to a commanding position with an eight-vote parliamentary lead. Daniel François Malan became the first nationalist prime minister, with the aim of implementing apartheid and silencing liberal opposition.

Daniel François Malan, the first apartheid-era prime minister (1948–1954).

Legislation

NP leaders argued that South Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, colored, and Indian. Such groups were split into 13 nations or racial federations. White people encompassed the English and Afrikaans language groups; the black populace was divided into ten such groups. The state passed laws that paved the way for “grand apartheid,” large-scale segregation by compelling people to live in separate places defined by race, leading to the creation of black-only townships where blacks were relocated en masse. This strategy was influenced in party by British rule after they took control of the Boer republics in the Anglo-Boer war.

The first grand apartheid law was the Population Registration Act of 1950, which formalized racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of 18 specifying their racial group. Official boards were established to decide on a classification when a person’s race was unclear. This caused difficulties for many people, especially colored people, when families were placed in different racial classes.

The second pillar of grand apartheid was the Group Areas Act of 1950. Until then, most settlements had people of different races living side-by-side. This Act put an end to diverse areas and determined where one lived according to race. Each race was allotted its own area, used in later years as a basis of forced removal. The Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951 allowed the government to demolish black shanty town slums and forced white employers to pay for the construction of housing for black workers who were permitted to reside in cities otherwise reserved for whites.

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of different races, and the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a different race a criminal offense.

Under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be reserved for a particular race, creating separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools, universities, and other facilities. Signboards such as “whites only” applied to public areas, including park benches. Blacks were provided with services greatly inferior to those given to whites, and to a lesser extent, to those for Indian and colored people.

Apartheid-Era Sign

Further laws suppressed resistance, especially armed resistance, to apartheid. The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 banned any party subscribing to Communism. The act defined Communism and its aims so broadly that anyone who opposed government policy risked being labeled as a Communist. Since the law specifically stated that Communism aimed to disrupt racial harmony, it was frequently used to gag opposition to apartheid. Disorderly gatherings were banned, as were certain organizations deemed threatening to the government.

Education was segregated by the 1953 Bantu Education Act, which crafted a separate system of education for black South African students and was designed to prepare black people for lives as a laboring class. In 1959, separate universities were created for black, colored, and Indian people. Existing universities were not permitted to enroll new black students. The Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 required the use of Afrikaans and English equally in high schools outside the homelands.

The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for blacks and whites and was the first legislation to support the government’s plan of separate development in the Bantustans. The Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of 1959 entrenched the NP policy of nominally independent “homelands” for blacks. So-called “self–governing Bantu units” were proposed, which would have devolved administrative powers with the promise later of autonomy and self-government. It also abolished the seats of white representatives of black South Africans and disenfranchised the few blacks still qualified to vote. The Bantu Investment Corporation Act of 1959 set up a mechanism to transfer capital to the homelands to create employment there. Legislation in 1967 allowed the government to halt industrial development in white cities and redirect such development to the black homelands. The Black Homeland Citizenship Act of 1970 marked a new phase in Bantustan strategy. It changed the citizenship of blacks to apply only within one of the ten autonomous territories. The aim was to ensure a demographic majority of white people within South Africa by having all ten Bantustans achieve full independence.

The government tightened pass laws compelling blacks to carry identity documents in order to prevent the immigration of blacks from other countries. To reside in a city, blacks had to be employed there. Until 1956, women were for the most part excluded from these pass requirements, as attempts to introduce pass laws for women were met with fierce resistance.

Disenfranchisement of Colored Voters

In 1950, D.F. Malan announcement the NP’s intention to create a Colored Affairs Department. J.G. Strijdom, Malan’s successor as Prime Minister, moved to strip voting rights from black and colored residents of the Cape Province. The previous government introduced the Separate Representation of Voters Bill into Parliament in 1951; however, four voters, G. Harris, W.D. Franklin, W.D. Collins, and Edgar Deane, challenged its validity in court with support from the United Party. The Cape Supreme Court upheld the act, but it was reversed by the Appeal Court, which found it invalid because a two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament was needed to change the entrenched clauses of the Constitution. The government then introduced the High Court of Parliament Bill (1952), which gave Parliament the power to overrule decisions of the court. The Cape Supreme Court and the Appeal Court declared this invalid as well.

In 1955, the Strijdom government increased the number of judges in the Appeal Court from five to 11 and appointed pro-Nationalist judges to fill the new seats. In the same year, the Strijdom government introduced the Senate Act, which increased the Senate from 49 seats to 89. Adjustments were made to the effect that the NP controlled 77 of these seats. Parliament met in a joint sitting and passed the Separate Representation of Voters Act in 1956, which transferred colored voters from the common voters’ roll in the Cape to a new colored voters’ roll. Immediately after the vote, Senate was restored to its original size.

The Senate Act was contested in the Supreme Court, but the recently enlarged Appeal Court, packed with government-supporting judges, upheld both the Senate and Separate Representation of Voters Acts. The Separate Representation of Voters Act allowed colored people to elect four people to Parliament, but a 1969 law abolished those seats and stripped colored people of their right to vote. Since Asians had never been allowed to vote, this resulted in whites being the sole enfranchised group.

Division Among Whites

Before South Africa became a republic, politics among white South Africans was typified by the division between mainly Afrikaner pro-republic conservatives and largely English anti-republican liberal sentiments, with the legacy of the Boer War still affecting viewpoints among many people. Once South Africa became a republic, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd called for improved relations and greater accord between people of British descent and the Afrikaners. He claimed that the only difference among these groups was between those in favor of apartheid and those against it. The ethnic division would no longer be between Afrikaans and English speakers, but between blacks and whites. Most Afrikaners supported the notion of unanimity among white people as a means to ensure their safety. White voters of British descent were divided. Many opposed a republic, leading to a majority “no” vote in Natal. Later, some recognized the perceived need for white unity, convinced by the growing trend of decolonization elsewhere in Africa, which concerned them. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” speech left the British faction feeling that Britain had abandoned them.

More conservative English speakers supported Verwoerd. Yet others were troubled by the implications of severing ties with Britain and wished to remain loyal to the Crown. They were displeased with their perceived choice between British and South African nationalities. Although Verwoerd tried to bind these different blocs along racial lines, subsequent voting patterns illustrated only a minor swell of support, indicating that many English speakers remained apathetic and Verwoerd had not truly succeeded in uniting the white population.

Attributions

• Institutional Racism in South Africa
  • “Institutional racism: South Africa.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#South_Africa. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Bantustan.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Atlantic Charter.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Charter. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Apartheid.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “DFMalanPortret.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DFMalanPortret.jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.
  • “ApartheidSignEnglishAfrikaans.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ApartheidSignEnglishAfrikaans.jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.