Hashemite's South African History/Politics Thread

[Hash]

This was meant to be for Zioneer's thread about Commonwealth nation politics, but ultimately I decided it would be better here and it will end up being quite long (as always with me). Here's the first part(s)

Race
Race has underpinned and continues to underpin South African history, society, politics and economics. Understanding race in South Africa is fundamental to understanding its history, politics and its contemporary political divisions.

As of 2011, 79% (41 million) of South Africa’s population is classified as Black African. Under white minority rule, black Africans were called Bantus. High birth rates, combined with white emigration have led to an increase in the percentage of blacks in the total population, from around 68% in 1960 to 80% today. The black population is not ethnically or linguistically homogeneous, but compared to other African countries, ethnic/religious/tribal differences within the black majority has not played as large of a role in history or politics. 29% of blacks speak Zulu as their ‘home language’, 20% speak Xhosa, 11% speak Sepedi, 10% speak Setswana, 9% speak Sesotho, 6% speak Xitsonga, 3% speak SiSwati, 3% speak Tshivenda, 3% speak English and a bit less than 3% speak Ndebele as their home language.
 
Zulu speakers are concentrated in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) where they form 78% of the population, with smaller minorities in Mpumalanga and Gauteng (Johannesburg-Pretoria). Xhosa speakers are concentrated in the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape provinces. Sepedi/Northern Sotho is spoken in Limpopo, a northern province where most Tshivenda and Xitsonga speakers are found. Setswana speakers form the bulk of the black population in the Northwest and the Northern Cape. Sesotho is largely spoken in the Free State.

8.9% (4.6 million) of South Africans are Coloureds. The term Coloureds refers to persons of mixed white European, Khoisan (lighter-skinned natives who live in the Kalahari region) and South Asian (slaves brought to work in South Africa, including many Malays)/other African ancestry. Most Coloureds tend to be largely Khoisan in their genetic background. There is a big geographic/regional element to the distribution of the Coloured population. They are found mostly in the old Cape Province, in the modern provinces of the Western and Northern Capes. In WC they are 49% of the population and they are 40% of the NC’s population. The western regions of Eastern Cape are also largely Coloured. On the other hand, few Coloureds are found to the east of the Cape Province. The Dutch originally encouraged intermarriage between white Europeans and the natives in the Cape Colony, which led to the modern coloured population. They were historically more integrated into colonial society. 76% of Coloureds speak Afrikaans as their home language, 21% speak English.

Another 8.9% (4.5 million) South Africans are white. The South African white population includes the descendants of English and Dutch settlers. Today, the work Afrikaners refers to the descendents of the Cape Dutch settlers as well as the Boers, those Dutch settlers who settled on the fringes of the Cape Colony and later migrated north to the Orange Free State and Transvaal. The Dutch who migrated north to escape British rule defeated the native Zulu or African tribes and created Boer republics. The British defeated the Boers after Second Boer War. Lower birth rates combined with emigration both during apartheid and especially post-1994 have meant that the white share of the population has declined from about 20% 100 years ago to 9% today. Whites are concentrated in the inner suburbs of major cities (Cape Town, Joburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth), in coastal resort areas in the WC, and old Boer settlements in the Transvaal or OFS. Whites are 16% of the population in the WC and Gauteng. Around 60% of whites speak Afrikaans as their home language, against 36% whose home language is English. English speakers are concentrated in Natal, which was settled by British settlers and had only a limited Boer history. English speakers are also found in Joburg, the white parts of Cape Town and parts of other major cities. Rural whites outside Natal and the eastern EC tend to be Afrikaners (especially in the Free State), who are also the dominant white group in Pretoria and form a significant group in Cape Town.

Finally, 2.5% of South Africans are Indians/Asians (nearly 1.3 million). They are mostly found in KZN, where they account for 7% of the population. The British brought indentured labourers and servants from India to work on the sugar plantations in Natal. The government treated Indians as temporary settlers until 1961, and their policy up until that point was to forcibly expel them from South Africa. There is a large Indian community in Durban, smaller concentrations of Indians/Asians are found in Joburg (Gauteng). 86% of Indians speak English as their first language. The words Indians and Asians are used interchangeably, but there is a small Chinese community in South Africa. The Cape Malays and other descendents of South Asian slaves from the Dutch East Indies are not counted as Asians, they are Coloureds.

Apartheid-era legislation enforced residential segregation and pass laws/influx control laws often prevented non-whites from accessing (let along settling) in certain neighborhoods, cities or whole provinces (Indians were banned from the OFS). Residential segregation continues to be the norm, with the black townships having barely any non-blacks; and historically white affluent inner suburbs in major cities remaining heavily white. Because of the high criminality, affluent whites tend to live in enclosed compounds or in houses protected by a wall or secured fence.

Random cool maps from Wikipedia:
dominant language (2011): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:South_Africa_2011_dominant_language_map.svg
dominant race (2001): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:South_Africa_2001_dominant_population_group_map.svg
white distribution (2001): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:South_Africa_2001_White_population_proportion_map.svg
dominant language, whites only (2001, English in red, Afrikaans in blue): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:South_Africa_2001_linguistic_distribution_of_white_people_map.svg

History

The key to understanding modern South Africa is probably to understand apartheid, meaning that instead of looking back on the past 40 years in South African political history, we really need to look back to 1948 at least.

Apartheid was not the first instance of racial discrimination, oppression and segregation in South African history. Discriminatory measures against blacks had existed since the colonial era and they were entrenched with the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1909. However, apartheid was the first instance where such discriminatory racist policies put together as a whole became an official government policy and the means towards an end (that end being white minority rule).

Prelude to Apartheid: South African politics from 1909 to 1948 and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism

Following dominion, South African (whites-only, or close to that - blacks and Coloureds had voting rights in the Cape, due to the non-racial nature of the Cape’s income and property based franchise, but the income requirements naturally discriminated against them) politics were dominated by Afrikaners; the three leading figures of South African politics in that early dominion era had all been Boer generals.  But ‘Afrikanerdom’ was not a homogeneous nationalist entity as later Afrikaner historiography or NP mythology would posit.

The first Prime Minister, Louis Botha, had sought to bridge the post-war divisions between Afrikaners, supporting self-government and racially discriminatory policies (to counter black job competition). Botha’s deputy and eventual successor, Jan Smuts, emphasized the need for (racist) white unity, regardless of language, to counter the black majority. Smuts strongly supported Britain and sought to reconcile Afrikaners and Anglos. On the other hand, JBM Hertzog, a minister in Botha’s cabinet, represented a brand of Afrikaner nationalism hostile towards Britain and local Anglos, supportive of an independent republic and white supremacy. Opposed to the alliance with Britain during World War I, Hertzog resigned from cabinet and the ruling party (SAP) to create the National Party (NP) in 1914. Smuts became Prime Minister and leader of the SAP in 1919. Eventually, the pro-British right-wing Unionist Party folded into the SAP, reducing the field to the mildly pro-British and pro-capital SAP, the Afrikaner nationalist NP and the socialist (but white supremacist) Labour Party (SALP).

Hertzog’s NP won the 1924 election and formed government with the support of the SALP (the so-called Pact Government). The SALP found Smuts’ SAP unpalatable after his government had used military force against the 1922 Rand Rebellion. Hertzog’s Pact Government passed several whites-only welfare measures, including the principle of civilized labour which prevented white wages from falling below European levels. At the same time, Hertzog finished what Botha had started in the way of racially discriminatory policies. In 1913, the Natives Land Act banned blacks from owning property outside the ‘native reserves’ (7% of the territory, largely unproductive land). In 1923, the Native (Urban Areas) Act laid the foundations of residential segregation policies, imposing passbooks (influx control) and segregated urban areas, in a bid to keep blacks out of urban areas unless they were necessary to the whites.

The bases for these racially discriminatory economic and job policies was, besides traditional racism, the rapid industrialization and urbanization of the Afrikaners post-war. Poverty and low education placed them in direct competition with blacks for jobs (notably in the mines). The nationalist elites feared “equalization” of the Afrikaners and the blacks, and they were determined to prevent any such equalization or racial intermingling (such as interracial marriage, and interracial sex - banned in 1927).

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The NP was reelected with a larger majority in 1929. But Hertzog, uncertain that he would win the 1934 election because of the Depression, decided to merge his party with Smuts’ SAP in 1933. Apparently, the 1926 Balfour Declaration and the 1931 Statute of Westminster calmed Hertzog’s anxieties about British imperialism. The fused United Party (UP) won a huge majority in 1934, which allowed Hertzog to finally remove Cape blacks from the common voting roll, which he had been trying to do since taking office.

But fusion created a rift within the NP between the moderate and pragmatic Hertzogites and a Cape-based faction of radical nationalists led by DF Malan (and JG Strijdom in the Transvaal). Malan split from the NP and founded the Purified National Party (GNP), which remained true to the NP’s original anti-British and anti-imperialist nationalist/racist creed. Malan’s nationalism made use of nationalist mythology, using historical events (the Great Trek) to fit his Calvinist-influenced nationalist and racist ideology (the Great Trek as a divine task, Afrikaners as God’s chosen people, white superiority, protecting Christian civilization). Malan stuck to the NP’s original anti-imperialism, and although he emphasized the racial ‘problem’ over Afrikaner/English squabbles, he wanted to place the Afrikaners on an equal footing to the Anglos - which they were not (even if Hertzog’s government had promoted Afrikaans and civil service bilingualism) in the 1940s.

The Smuts-Hertzog alliance did not last long. In 1939, Hertzog advocated neutrality against Nazi Germany, a position opposed by the UP cabinet and a narrow majority in the House. The UP pushed him out in favour of Smuts, leading Hertzog to rejoin the NP - rebranded as the Reunified National Party (HNP). But within the HNP, Hertzog’s moderate nationalism was viewed with suspicion by the Malan radical ethnic nationalists. Hertzog was marginalized and died in 1940, reasserting the predominance of Malan’s anti-British and pro-Nazi Afrikaner nationalism in the HNP. During the war, the Malanite NP had a brief flirtation with local Nazi and anti-Semitic groups, such as Ossewabrandwag (OB) or New Order (NO). Two future NP prime minister, HF Verwoerd and BJ Vorster actively participated in these organizations and openly backed Nazi Germany.

Malan and the Afrikaner nationalist elite’s goal was to build a cross-class Afrikaner alliance. In this goal, it was helped along by influential and powerful economic or cultural organizations, first and foremost the Broederbond. Like the Nazis, the NP made use of anti-capitalist rhetoric to feed its voters and to keep the Afrikaner working-class (those most ‘at risk’ of being ‘lost’) from falling into the hands of non-racial or left-wing unions. In reality, the NP was not anti-capitalist but rather anti-English capital. In 1940, mining, finance, commerce, manufacturing were all dominated heavily by English capital while the Afrikaners were largely farmers or petit bourgeois (teachers, clergy, lawyers, traders). The NP sought to break the monopolistic concentration of capital in English hands. As early as the 1940s, the NP was closely tied to (nascent) Afrikaner capitalists and big business (ex: Sanlam). The NP’s other goal was to protect white jobs and fight non-white job competition (through policies such as job reservation, the colour bar, lower wages for non-whites).

The HNP won the 1948 election. Actually, it didn’t really win the election. But, on the other hand, it did. The NP - allied with the moderate Hertzogite Afrikaner Party led by Nicolaas Havenga - won 70 seats (+9 for the AP) against 65 for Smuts’ UP and 6 for the SALP. However, the UP won around 49% of the vote against only 41.6% for the NP-AP alliance. Malapportionment, resulting in the overrepresentation of Nat-voting rural areas, favoured the rural-based NP. The NP’s campaign was centered around apartheid, institutional racism/racial segregation. Race relations played a major role in the election. Smuts had always favoured white supremacy and racially discriminatory policies, but he was more pragmatic and open-minded on the issue in the long run than Malan or the NP. The Fagan Commission, appointed by the UP, stated that black urbanization was a reality which had to be accepted and accommodated, hinting towards less discriminatory and racially inclusive policies in the long-run. The NP ran a very adroit campaign, exploiting white fears with slogans such as swart gevaar (black peril). Its apartheid policies also appealed to farmers and the working-class.

Grand Apartheid: Malan, Strijdom and Verwoerd (1948-1966)

In power, the NP set about implementing its apartheid policy. In 1949, it banned interracial marriage. In 1950, it registered every individual on the basis of race (white, black, Coloured; the Indians were not counted as a race because NP policy was still to send them back to India). In 1950, the Group Areas Act institutionalised residential segregation by designating different areas for different races (townships for blacks etc), forcibly removing those who lived in the ‘wrong’ area (the Coloureds of District Six in Cape Town). In 1953, the Separate Amenities Act segregated public amenities/buildings/transport between races, with the provision that amenities needed not be equal.  The NP’s power was not seriously challenged in the whites-only elections until the late 1980s, as the UP slowly fell apart because of its ambiguous and ambivalent attitudes towards apartheid (pro-apartheid conservatives, anti-apartheid liberals led by Harry Schwarz’ Young Turks). The NP paid lip service to democracy (whites-only) by changing the rules of the game in its favour, sidelining parliament and stacking the courts.

The 1951-1956 coloured vote crisis is the best example of the NP’s disregard for democracy. In 1951, the legislature passed a bill which removed Cape coloureds from the common voters roll, placing them on a separate roll with the right to elect a few white members to the assembly. The South Africa Act of 1909 had entrenched the Cape Qualified Franchise, meaning that it could only be overturned with a two-thirds majority. Challenged in court, the Appeal Court ruled the 1951 law unconstitutional. The NP was incensed at an ‘unelected court’ poking its nose in its business, and passed a bill turning the legislature into a high court with the power to overturn court decisions it disagreed with it. It did so, but the high court bill was struck down by the court. Undeterred, the NP, now led by Transvaal hardliner JG Strijdom, had another trick up its sleeve. It packed the Appeal Court and expanded the Senate to pack it with Nats, which duly passed the original bill with a two-thirds majority. Even in the face of significant opposition from whites and the courts, the NP showed that nothing could stop it.

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The old myth about apartheid, propagated by the NP to justify its policies, is that apartheid was merely a policy of good neighbors and ‘separate development’ which ‘respected’ the ‘special abilities and nature’ of the blacks. Most NP leaders ran with the myth that blacks were inferior to whites, and that they had an inferior nature/abilities which meant that they could not fit in with the white norms of ‘civilization’ and needed to ‘develop’ their nature on their own. In reality, even NP leaders admitted, in private, that blacks were not inferior and their inferior socioeconomic status was the result of discriminatory and racist policies.

In line with this longstanding policy, the NP government’s strategy was to segregate the blacks into the native reserves. HF Verwoerd, a smug and arrogant hardline racist ideologue who was Prime Minister between 1958 and 1966, developed this policy. It has been said that Verwoerd is the only NP leader who had a clear conception of what apartheid meant as an end and what it entailed, and that this vision of ‘grand apartheid’ disappeared when he was assassinated in 1966. In 1959, the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act was passed, which divided blacks into eight fairly artificial and arbitrary ‘ethnic groups’ and allowed for the transformation of reserves into fully-fledged independent Bantustans/homelands. The goal was to segregate all blacks onto homelands, strip them of their South African citizenship even if they didn’t live in the homelands (this happened in 1970) and only allow blacks into ‘white South Africa’ to cater for white labour needs. This policy was not, in reality, attainable. The Bantustans turned into embarrassments for the NP, because none of them were economically self-sufficient and relied almost entirely on tribute. Their governments were corrupt, mismanaged, illegitimate with most blacks and authoritarian. No other state recognized the four homelands which gained ‘full independence’ between 1976 and 1981. Verwoerd rebranded his policies as ‘separate development’.

As noted above, the NP, pre-1948, made use of anti-capitalist rhetoric to whip up support with the Afrikaner working-class. In government, the anti-capitalism was quickly dropped, showing that the NP’s anti-capitalism was rather opposition to monopolistic English capital. Their policies aimed to materially benefit Afrikaners by expanding Afrikaners’ place in major industries and businesses; all while building friendly relations with English capital. NP economic policies - based on ISI theory - proved successful at advancing the standing of the Afrikaner, who made major gains in terms of income and socioeconomic status. They also produced strong economic growth and affluence for whites until the mid-1970s. Clearly, apartheid - with its misery wages for non-whites, influx control, labour restrictions - was, at the outset, lucrative and favourable for business.

However, Verwoerd’s relations with capital were not always cordial. Verwoerd was a hardline racist segregationist who subordinated economic considerations to his plan for grand apartheid. Successive NP leaders would place economic considerations above racist apartheid dogma. Verwoerd had several clashes with big business, notably with Anton Rupert and Henry Oppenheimer.

Verwoerd’s clashes with capital highlights one of the questions which increasingly divided the NP after 1948, which went back to the 1934 Malanite split. What policy should the NP adopt vis-a-vis business and capital? Should economic considerations receive priority over ‘petty apartheid’ racism? What relations should the party maintain with capital, particularly English capital, long styled as the enemy? NP leaders, especially after Verwoerd, decided the third question in favour of closer relations with English capital. In the 1948 election, the NP-AP won only 13% of the vote in Natal against 61% for the UP. Anglo South Africans, at the outset, heavily favoured the pro-British and more clearly capitalistic UP over the republican and Afrikaner nationalist NP. The English, especially in Natal, were concerned about the NP’s republicanism.

In 1960, under Verwoerd’s leadership, South Africa narrowly voted to become a republic, with 52% voting in favour of the republic. But 76% voted against in Natal. Over time, the NP mended bridges with English capital and expanded their appeal of English voters, who, like Afrikaners, were comforted in a dominant and hegemonic position by NP policies and increasingly supported the conservative status-quo of apartheid against ‘decolonization’ and liberalism. The NP’s breakthrough with Anglo voters began in 1966, after the republic debate had passed, when the NP surged from 17% in 1961 to 41% support in Natal; nationally, the NP increased its vote share from 46% in 1961 to 58% in 1966. Over the years, with right-wing dissidence to the NP growing with Afrikaners, the NP would be winning roughly equal support with Anglos than with Afrikaners.

First Cracks: Vorster (1966-1978)

After Verwoerd’s assassination in 1966, BJ Vorster, a dark-horse compromise candidate became NP leader and Prime Minister (1966-1978). Vorster was fairly hardline as well, but unlike Verwoerd his support for capitalism and capital was far less ambiguous and he proved more receptive to piecemeal reforms of apartheid laws to accommodate the demands of capitalism in the mid-1970s (at the end of his term, commissions recommended the legalization of black trade unions and the end of job reservation for whites, recommendations implemented by his successor PW Botha). Vorster, on the other hand, also signaled the rise of technocrats and ‘securocrats’ to powerful positions within the NP State (further eroding the power of parliament, NP caucus and even cabinet). Large-scale repression, flagrant human rights violations and a militarist ‘total strategy’ to destroy opposition (the ‘terrorists’ of the ANC) began in earnest as opposition to apartheid grew in the 1970s (black labour strikes in 1973, the big Soweto riots in 1976).

Vorster’s rule also saw the first ideological divisions within the NP, which would deepen in the 1980s and culminate in a major split in 1982. The party was internally divided between the verligte (literally ‘enlightened’) and the verkrampte (literally ‘constipated’ or ‘cramped’). The former, predominantly middle-class and linked to business in their social makeup, were the ‘liberal’ wing, less attached to the racist dogma of apartheid and willing to reform the system to meet the demands of liberal capitalism in the 1980s. They were not, for that matter, racial liberals. They still supported white supremacy, but wished to strengthen the system by co opting pliable non-whites. The verligte represented the Cape NP, the faction of the party which had always been closely tied to Afrikaner business interests. The latter, drawn from the rural and conservative Transvaal and OFS branches of the NP and more lower middle-class in their social makeup, were the hardliners who opposed any changes or evolution on the racial question. Many of them remained supportive of Verwoerdian grand apartheid and opposed placing economics over racial privilege and racism. Verwoerd and Strijdom predated this ideological split, but both of them were precursors of the verkrampte.

In contrast, Vorster was more verlig (which should tell us the limits of their alleged liberalism). In 1969, Vorster clashed with the verkrampte, and hardline leader Albert Hertzog - the son of Barry Hertzog and one of the few actual anti-capitalists within the NP. Hertzog remained hostile to the English, and strongly opposed any changes on racial policy - in this particular case, over visiting sports team (the New Zealand rugby team had Maori players). At a Transvaal NP congress, Hertzog and Jaap Marais were expelled from the NP, and founded their own party - the Reconstituted National Party (HNP). Seeking to shortcircuit the NP, Vorster called an election in 1970. The NP won a reduced majority but the HNP won only 3.6% and no seats. But the NP was obsessed with neutralizing the nationalist challenge on its historical turf, and moved to the right itself to counter the HNP.

In 1977, the Muldergate/Information Scandal caused Vorster’s downfall. Information minister Connie Mulder, a verkrampte, set up a slush fund (with Vorster’s blessing) to launch propaganda campaigns to improve the country’s image. Vorster resigned in 1978 to become the ceremonial state president, but was forced to resign from that position in 1979. Considered the favourite to succeed Vorster, Mulder lost the close leadership battle to PW Botha, a moderate conservative; while verligte foreign minister Pik Botha, seen as Vorster’s favourite, placed a distant third.

[Simfan34]

This is amazingly informative,  Hash, I hope you continue.

[RogueBeaver]

This is amazingly informative,  Hash, I hope you continue.

[Platypus]

Excellent tone, clarity, and info, Hash. A really good read, looking forward to the next instalments.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

As a novice follower of South African history and politics, this interests me.

I'm very excited to see what you have to say about the ANC's time in power. Over break, I read a thorough review of the post-apartheid era written by a liberal with clear ties to the DA that was scathing yet I felt that the tone was inflammatory and that the author showed a tone deafness in understanding the plight of the marginalized Blacks. It'd be nice to read an objective summary of the ANC's governance.

[Kitteh]

I'm sorry to interrupt this, but I was browsing through South African topics on the internet today because I have no life and I found a paper written about South African opinion polling. It talks about the first opinion polls ever taken in South Africa, both taken by major South African newspapers in the lead up to the 1970 elections. They had a question about what people saw as the benefit to apartheid, the results of which I found interesting and sorta funny:

Social separation of races is good - 19.7%
Apartheid is wanted by all races - 15.4%
Keeps a pure race - 13.5%
"Segregation" - 10.3%
Safeguards whites - 9.5%
Keeps racial peace - 5.0%
Teaches "Bantu" self reliance - 4.7%
Prevents inter-racial marriage - 4.3%
Keeps schools separated - 4.3%
Provides "homelands" (bantustans) - 4.0%
Ensures white supremacy - 2.8%
Keeps non-whites in their place - 2.7%
Provides "Bantu" more opportunity - 2.5%
Keeps towns clean - 0.9%
Other - 1.9%
Total some benefit: 78.0%

No benefit - 22.0%

I found it hilarious that the second most cited reason for supporting apartheid was that blacks want it too. Quite a case of buying your own propaganda.

The poll was of registered voters, which in 1970 obviously meant whites only. Done by direct interviews with a pretty big sample size.

Here's the paper itself, for those who have access to JSTOR (I do through my college).

[traininthedistance]

Bravo, simply bravo.

I look forward to the rest of this.

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Botha's Total Strategy: Cooptation and Repression (1978-1989)

Botha was a different kind of leader who took the apartheid regime in a different direction. To begin with, Botha, clearly a verligte, was a world away from the early NP leaders - Strijdom and Verwoerd. Botha sought to maintain the apartheid regime by co-opting pliable non-white elites, a response to the economic crisis which had begun in the mid-1970s as the racial economic policies which had until that point benefited both the working-class and big business showed major, structural weaknesses. Botha reinvented and reformed apartheid by latching on to the trends of the late 1970s-1980s: anti-communism and neoliberal capitalism.

To justify the continuation of apartheid, gain Western support for his policies and protect his apartheid model; Botha developed the ‘total strategy’ idea which placed the struggle against the ANC and anti-apartheid activists in the broader Cold War context of the Western capitalist struggle against communism. SADF theory painted South Africa as the front in the Cold War against communism, leading the NP State to engage, covertly or sometimes overtly, in foreign conflicts. In 1975, the SADF invaded Angola without the knowledge of cabinet or caucus. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa funded, trained and actively support right-wing/anti-communist rebels such as UNITA and RENAMO. This era marked the dominance of the securocrats, the unelected technocrats in charge of South Africa’s military and internal security - with the blessing and connivance of the ministries of defense and security (as well as Botha’s office). Methods and strategies such as random hit squads, proxy groups doing your dirty work, torture, disappearances, targeted assassinations/murders and so forth were tested abroad, in Angola, SW Africa or Mozambique, before being ‘imported’ to South Africa after 1985 against opponents of the regime and apartheid. Botha denied knowledge of these methods, but the top guns in his cabinet/the securocrats clearly gave their orders to the security forces who carried them out. Contrary to Botha and the NP’s assertions, the ANC posed no military threat to the regime, the ANC’s armed wing (MK) was disorganized and fairly weak.

By the 1970s, apartheid’s racially discriminatory economic policies were no longer benefiting capital and allowing for solid economic growth. This crisis went alongside the 70s stagflation, but it was locally exacerbated by apartheid. The ISI system suffered from a lack of competition, an artificially limited consumer market, weak manufacturing, an industry overly dependent on imports of capital goods, the shortage of skilled labour, excessive restrictions on the movement of black labour and its inability to absorb surplus labour. Pure apartheid was no longer lucrative, in fact from a purely technocratic standpoint it had become costly. Black urbanization, which had more than double between 1950 and 1970, also posed problems for the regime. The 1976 Soweto uprising and subsequent urban unrest in 1977 showed the despair of urban blacks and their opposition to the regime’s policies. By the time Botha became NP hoofleier (leader), big business - Afrikaner and English alike - were increasingly concerned by the survival of capitalism. In 1977, Oppenheimer and Rupert’s Urban Foundation sought the creation of a black middle-class to strengthen capitalism. Big business and capital, backed by their verligte allies in the NP, were clamoring for reforms to apartheid (though not majority rule or anything of that sort). They found their ideal candidate in Botha, who as a Cape Nat, was closely linked to capital and receptive to their concerns.

Botha abandoned the old cross-class white alliance which had been built by Malan in favour of a strategy to co-opt pliable conservative non-white elites, and setting up the bases of shared rule under white hegemony. The two commissions implemented by Vorster in 1979 recommended the legalization and control of black trade unions, scrapping white job reservation, urban black property rights, higher wages, better housing and education and the relaxation of influx control. At the same time, they suggested cracking down on ‘illegal’ blacks without property rights in ‘white South Africa’ (again with the aim of shoving the unwanted masses into the moribund homelands). Botha implemented most of these recommendations: phasing out job reservation starting in 1981, finally accepting the reality of black urbanization (accepted by the UP in 1948...) through the right to own immovable property and relaxing influx control (1986). Policies such as the ban on interracial marriage, miscegenation, interracial sex and separate amenities are the symbols of the evil of apartheid, but they were not the cornerstones of apartheid - they are counted as the ‘petty apartheid’ laws. They were not needed for Botha’s revamped apartheid regime. The laws which prohibited interracial marriage and sex were repealed in 1985.

Botha’s early reforms proved far too much for the NP’s verkramptes. The idea of power sharing and any changes, even cosmetic, to the old structure of apartheid was unpalatable for the party’s hardliners, led by Transvaal NP leader and cabinet minister Andries Treurnicht (a former DRC clergyman). His Verwoerdian position was challenged by Pik Botha and FW de Klerk at a Transvaal NP congress in 1982, and their moderate line won out over his uncompromising stance. In March 1982, Treurnicht resigned from cabinet and from the party. With 16 other MPs, he founded the Conservative Party (KP or CP). The KP flatly rejected any kind of power sharing and supported the old Verwoerdian apartheid system of racist laws.

The KP represented the first viable challenge to the NP’s hegemony over South African whites-only politics. It was certainly a more serious threat to NP power than the even more radical HNP was (though the HNP won 14% in 1981). It was also a more serious of a challenge than that posed by the liberal parties after 1974. In 1974, the UP had won 41 seats, but the party was in a state of collapse. In 1975, Harry Schwarz’ liberal Young Turks faction split from the party and joined up with the Progressive Party, an earlier splinter from the UP (in 1959) which had held a single seat (Helen Suzman in Houghton) since 1961. Eventually, the two groups formed the Progressive Federal Party (PFP), which had a strong base with affluent English suburbanites in the Cape, urban Transvaal and Natal - accounting for about 40% of the English vote - but which never seriously threatened the NP’s dominance because the PFP barely registered with Afrikaner voters. In 1977, the UP’s conservative wing had attempted to recreate itself as the New Republic Party (NRP) on a platform calling for separate legislatures for coloureds, Indians and urban blacks. But the NRP won only 10 seats in 1977, fell to 8 seats in 1981 and only a single seat in 1977. Squished between the NP and the PFP, the NRP stood no chance.

[Hash]

The 1983 Constitution was a reflection of two Botha strategies. Firstly, it symbolized Botha’s attempt to reform apartheid by co-opting the non-white elites (coloured, Indian, urban black and Bantustan leaderships) into the system, while those who were not to be integrated into the system (ANC ‘terrorists’, anti-apartheid movement) would be dealt with by the militarist aspects of the total strategy. The rationale for this was to create a non-white bulwark against resistance. In the 1983 constitution, a ‘tricameral parliament’ was created. The Parliament would be composed of three chambers: one elected by whites, one elected by coloureds and one elected by Indians. Whites, of course, still had the final say; and blacks were not integrated into this scheme. At the top, the president’s cabinet was ‘multi-racial’ (though only 2 were non-white) and dealt with ‘general’ affairs (defense, security, economy, foreign relations, blacks) while uniracial cabinets dealt with ‘own’ affairs (education, local authorities). Botha sold the scheme as power-sharing, but in reality it was unequal power-sharing heavily dominated and conditioned by the NP and whites. The whites and the NP could not be outvoted by the two non-white legislatures, and in the electoral college (88 members which elected the president) or president’s council (non-elected chamber which replaced the senate with power to decide on disagreements between the three houses) either.

The 1983 constitution also reflected Botha’s autocratic and centralist tendencies. The office of Prime Minister was abolished and its authority was transferred to the State President, which had been the republican equivalent of the Governor-General since 1961, but became the dominant head of state and government after 1983. The President had wide powers, and he was barely accountable. He was elected by a multi-racial/white-dominated electoral college chosen by parliamentarians, but he was not accountable to the legislature and could only be removed from office by the electoral college. He did not have to chose elected MPs to form his cabinet, he could turn to the rubber-stamping president’s council and in the process, overrule the opposition of parliament. This was accompanied, naturally, by the rise of the securocrats and neoliberal technocrats, accountable to no-one and with the ability to spend how they pleased and do what they pleased.

Voters ratified the new constitution in a referendum in 1983. Even Botha’s elite power-sharing under white hegemony was far too much for the KP, which opposed the constitution and tried to link Botha’s power-sharing experiment with the power-sharing experience in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (1979-1980) in which the whites ultimately lost everything. The liberal PFP also opposed the constitution because it lacked a non-racial bill of rights and excluded blacks from power-sharing - the PFP supported a negotiated settlement with blacks, including some kind of minority protection and power-sharing arrangement. However, some in the English press and within the PFP supported the constitution, as a step in the right direction. The constitution passed with 66.3% in favour.

Blacks were not integrated into Botha’s new arrangements. By 1983, however, even Pretoria had realized that the Bantustans were an embarrassing disaster. Four homelands - Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei - had been granted full independence by the end of 1981, but no other state recognized them as independent nation-states and they remained - perhaps with the exception of Bop - totally unviable on their own. But Botha and the NP were still selling the propaganda that blacks could exercise their ‘rights’ within these homelands, which the government was now trying to integrate into a broader confederation of southern African states, linking them with new local government structures for blacks within the RSA proper. Between 1977 and 1988, Botha and the NP tried their hands at various measures to defuse urban black opposition and co-opt pliable conservative elites. Like with Verwoerdian homelands, the strategy here was indirect rule: divide the blacks into tribes and ethnicities (in contrast with the ANC’s non-racial and cross-tribal character), find conservative black elites willing to play along with the NP’s games (in return for tribute) and impose them as the state-sanctioned ‘black leaders’ to contain opponents. This failed in the homelands, it was meant to fail outside of the homelands with black local government in the 1980s.

The late 1970s and 1980s saw a bewildering array of black local government institutions come and go. The state created local councils, directly elected by urban blacks, which had limited authority and resources but which, the NP hoped, could absorb and defuse discontent. All of them failed, one after another. The tricameral scheme also failed. Black turnout in local elections was extremely low, and the elected co-opted councillors had no legitimacy with ‘their’ constituents; many of them were killed in attacks. Turnout for the coloured and Indian parliament was very low in 1984, and neither enjoyed much legitimacy with their voters. Opposition movements, community organizations, non-racial trade unions linked up to form the United Democratic Front (UDF), allied with the ANC, in 1984 and the UDF urged a boycott of the first elections for coloureds and Indians.

The situation deteriorated after 1985, by which time Botha’s power-sharing and co-option had failed. The ANC/MK stepped up its armed campaign, the UDF increased its non-violent civil opposition. The NP responded to the crisis by stepping up armed repression against opponents of apartheid. Botha declared a state of emergency in certain regions in 1985 and extended it to the whole country in 1986, it was only lifted in 1990. This gave security forces even more sweeping powers against their opponents. The orders to kill, eliminate and cleanse came from above - from the State Security Council (SSC), chaired by Botha, and from the associated securocrats; and were executed by the security forces in full impunity and with the backing of the highest levels of the state.

In the process of this violence, the regime made active use of proxy forces, a strategy it had first developed in Angola, Mozambique and SW Africa in the 1970s. A close relationship existed throughout this period between the NP State and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), a Zulu nationalist party led by KwaZulu homeland strongman Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Buthelezi had originally been a close ally of the ANC, but throughout the 1970s, Buthelezi actively played to both sides. On the one hand, he participated in the Bantustan system along the NP’s tribal lines. On the other hand, Buthelezi repeatedly rejected offers of ‘independence’ for KwaZulu and participated in various reformist initiatives in the 1970s (Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith with Harry Schwarz in 1974, rejected the president’s council opening, proposed consociational government). The IFP was the type of conservative black elite group which the NP under Botha tried to co-opt and turn into bulwarks against black resistance and the ANC. The IFP rejected violence and international sanctions against South Africa, it organized along narrow ethnic/tribal lines like the NP had wanted, and had a more free-market orientation than the socialist ANC (which was closely allied to and heavily influenced by the South African Communist Party, SACP).

During the crisis years of the 1980s and beyond, the IFP engaged in a low-level civil war against the ANC/UDF in KwaZulu and Natal province. Part of this was ‘black-on-black’ violence fueled by various factors. However, this violence was in good part encouraged by the NP, which actively used the IFP as a proxy group in its fight against the ANC/UDF. The most famous example of this proxy war was Operation Marion, in which the apartheid government trained Zulu IFP militias in the Caprivi Strip (SW Africa) for use as hit squads against the ANC. Some of them were involved in the KwaMakutha massacre in 1987, in which 13 people were killed. In Natal, the police turned a blind eye to the violence perpetrated by the IFP, and when it did intervene, it was to arrest UDF or ANC activists.

At the same time, South Africa’s economy deteriorated badly. Because of its repressive apartheid policies, the government was increasingly shunned by the international community (the US Congress adopted trade sanctions against the RSA in 1986, over Reagan’s veto). Capital flight had begun following the Soweto uprising in 1976, and accelerated in the 1980s. Foreign investment dried up. After 1982, the IMF, under international pressure, withheld any more loans to South Africa. To make matters worse, as Pik Botha was grooming the world for a momentous announcement by Botha in August 1985, PW Botha scrapped that and instead let his inner reactionary get the better of him. This so-called ‘Rubicon speech’ worsened the country’s economic situation. PW Botha did not have much clues about economic policy, and let his policy be dictated by “whoever left his office last” or by his own whims. The NP had shifted away from state capitalism and interventionism in favour of neoliberal technocratic reforms in the Botha era, including privatizations, cuts in public spending, removing exchange controls and deregulation. However, at the same time, Botha was being pulled in two directions as his finance ministry (under Barend du Plessis, a verligte and supporter of Thatcher’s policies) and big business clashed over economic policy. Botha let himself be influenced by big business’ protectionist impulses because he enjoyed a close relationship with firms such as Sanlam, but big business protectionism often collided with Barend du Plessis’ neoliberal reformism.

[Hash]

the last part cut off by the word limit:

In February 1989, Botha attempted a brash power-grab. He announced his resignation as NP leader, but in a break from tradition, he would be staying on as State President. His apparent goal was to unshackle himself from whatever was left of caucus oversight, and exercise unfettered power as President. The NP was not very pleased by Botha’s actions, and it backfired against him. There were four candidates in the leadership race: FW de Klerk, the conservative Transvaal NP leader; veteran verligte foreign minister Pik Botha; Botha stooge and constitutional development minister Chris Heunis (also acting president); and Barend du Plessis, the neoliberal verligte backed by Botha. In the third ballot, the field was narrowed to the conservative de Klerk and the verligte/‘Bothan’ du Plessis. de Klerk, whose relations with Botha had been cool at best, won narrowly, 69 to 61 votes. The newly elected leader, backed by the NP caucus and cabinet, insisted that Botha - who had suffered strokes in 1989 - resign from the presidency. He finally resigned in August 1989, passing the presidency to de Klerk, ostensibly the conservative candidate in the battle for the hoofleierskap and until then a loyal Nat.



Any comments? Questions? Recommendations? Anybody still have the courage and strength to read through this?

[RogueBeaver]

I'll keep on reading.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Please continue Hash. This is very good stuff.

[Velasco]

I've just finished to read this thread tonight. I've learnt a lot, but I'd like to know what happened with de Klerk. Hope that you'll continue.

[Hash]

It returns!

Transition South Africa: Negotiations and Violence (1989-1994)

The NP held an early general election in September 1989. The party campaigned on the basis of a five-year plan for a ‘new South Africa’. For the NP, the new South Africa needed to be a consociational democracy where no one group should dominate or be dominated. Coming from a party such as the NP, this was, of course, pretty rich; but by this point in time, the NP saw that a reform of the system and some kind of democratization was inevitable, and it now sought to protect the white minority and its own partisan interests. Arguing that majority rule in a racially diverse and polarized society such as the RSA would lead to the domination of one group (blacks) over the others (whites). The NP’s reformist agenda at this point did not go very much beyond tweaking tricameralism by fulling integrating blacks with a veto mechanism (which others quickly called the ‘white veto’), a rotating presidency, parliamentary representation still based on race and decision-making split along Botha’s lines (own affairs vs general affairs). This was, more or less, what the PFP had been advocating since the 1970s (it supported power-sharing, a bill of rights, an independent judiciary and federalism). To differentiate itself from the PFP, the NP stressed that such negotiations could only take place in the absence of unrest, violence and terrorism. It still viewed the ANC as a dangerous and violent organization which could not be trusted to run loose. It accused the PFP, now renamed the Democratic Party (DP), of being soft on the violence and open to negotiating with the perpetrators of such violence (again, pretty rich coming from the NP). In 1989, the NP openly campaigned on a negotiated settlement and democratization, but they sweetened this with reassurances that they would respond to the ‘terrorists’ and safeguard white domination or white rights in any new system.

The NP suffered a major setback, one of its biggest electoral setbacks since it had won power in 1948. The party won only 48% of the vote against 31.5% for the KP and 20% for the DP. It lost seats both to its right - to the KP (which won 41 seats, up 19) and to its left - to the DP (which won 34 seats, up 15). The DP, formed by the merger of the PFP with two liberal NP splitoffs led by Denis Worrall and Wynand Malan respectively, performed well, but the major winner of the 1989 election was rather the far-right KP. For white Afrikaners, the KP provided psychological security and harked back to the familiar and comforting rhetoric of white supremacy and Afrikaner self-determination.

By 1989, Malan and the early NP’s cross-class Afrikaner alliance was clearly no more. In fact, the NP did better with English-speakers (50%) than with Afrikaners (46%). The KP, who appealed largely to the Afrikaner lower middle-class and working-class in the conservative rural Transvaal and OFS, won 45% of the Afrikaner vote (but only 7.5% of the English vote). The 1982 split and the creation of the KP marked the end of Malan’s cross-class Afrikaner alliance, and its replacement by the alliance of the Afrikaner and Anglo upper middle-classes and elites. This process had begun in earnest after Verwoerd’s death, when the state cozied up to Anglo capitalist interests (even if some, like Rupert or Rembrandt, always remained wary of the NP). The DP, in the footsteps of the UP, won 42% of the English vote and 9% of the Afrikaner vote. By and large, the DP (like the PFP before it) was the party of the affluent liberal Anglo suburbanites, in Cape Town or the PWV (Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging).

FW de Klerk, who nevertheless read the 1989 elections as an endorsement of his reformist agenda, made a momentous announcement on February 2, 1990. He announced that the ANC’s iconic leader, Nelson Mandela, would be freed; and, the ban on the ANC, SACP and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) would be lifted. Nelson Mandela was released on February 11.

The baby steps towards this major announcement had actually been taken under Botha’s presidency. Botha’s justice minister Kobie Coetsee and intelligence boss Niel Barnard had held secret meetings with Mandela beginning in the mid-1980s, and intelligence officials had met with the ANC’s Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma in Dakar in 1989. Still, coming from de Klerk, somebody who had a conservative reputation and the image of a party loyalist, such a big leap was quite surprising. What factors influenced him?

-By 1989, the NP had very few options (or ideas of its own) on the table. It was in a political impasse. Botha’s first strategy, co-opting pliable non-white elites, had failed. His repressive and militaristic ‘total strategy’ had also failed. The NP could sustain white minority rule through intensifying repression and slowly move South Africa towards an autocratic regime. The state had the power and resources to keep its enemies from seizing control by force, but the economic crisis and the nature of the upheaval meant that it would have been a daunting task. The NP caucus and de Klerk rejected the militarist strategy and, pragmatically, resigned themselves to democratization.

-Related to the above, the fall of communism and the USSR in the same era meant that the NP could no longer tie itself to the Cold War struggle against communism. The West had no reason to back a NP regime, especially as it became clear that the ANC would not threaten foreign business interests in the RSA.

-The ANC was in a weak position in 1989. The fall of communism meant the loss of an ally for it, in addition to its growing military weakness and internal disorganization. De Klerk and the NP wanted to control the transition process and negotiate a deal with the ANC on their own terms, they thus needed to do it from a position of strength.

-South Africa’s economic isolation and economic crisis was deepening. Given that the NP, by 1989, was very much oriented towards big business and neoliberal capitalism, they were very concerned by this situation. Recovery meant lifting international sanctions and gaining access to foreign credit/investment, this required signals that Pretoria was inclined to democratization.

-de Klerk was far more concerned by legitimacy than Botha ever was. By 1990, apartheid had become a moral aberration rejected by the entire world. After becoming President, de Klerk quickly dismantled the remnants of apartheid. The Population Registration Act and the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act were both repealed in 1990; racial restrictions on land ownership and residential segregation (including the Group Areas Act) were finally repealed in 1991.

[Insula Dei]

I leafed trough the autobiography of Ben Schoeman, who was minister of Labour/Transport in the 1950/60/70s, in a second-hand bookshop the other day. I found it somewhat ironical that in a 400-500 page book that presumably deals with quite a bit of relatively uncontroversial material, I should immediately happen onto the description of an execution of 6 common law black criminals which Schoeman was present at. I take away from it that he thought hanging a humane method and his colleague a weakling for not liking the sight.

Also, and it may just be that I do not have an ear for Afrikaans, but Schoeman does seem to write really atrocious prose.

[Hash]

De Klerk had to tread carefully, so as to not alienate the conservatives within his own party and the white far-right outside the NP. The government was also at pains to sell the reforms to the (white) electorate, which had been fed NP rhetoric about minority rule and the evilness of the ANC for decades.  As a conservative within the NP, de Klerk had the advantage of being fairly well regarded by the conservatives who more or less trusted him. Either to co-opt them, to placate them or to better control them, de Klerk’s cabinet included many conservatives: Kobie Coetsee (justice), old securocrat Magnus Malan (defense), George Bartlett (transportation), Adriaan Vlok (law and order), Hernus Kriel (planning and provincial affairs); although the key constitutional development portfolio (in charge of the negotiations) was given to Gerrit Viljoen, a verligte and former head of the Broederbond.

At the same time, the NP needed to sell their reformist package to their (white) electorate, large segments of which either opposed de Klerk’s reforms outright or were at least quite reticent towards them at the outset. The NP continued to campaign for change using old rhetoric about civilization, civilized norms, Christian values and safeguarding white minority interests. The NP’s original proposal rejected traditional majority rule out of hand and supported power sharing/protecting minority rights/consociationalism. While it supported full and equal franchise, it wanted checks on the power of the majority (read: the blacks and the ANC which would obviously dominate any multi-racial election). It proposed a cabinet representative of the various major parties, a rotating presidency, a senate which represented ethnic groups (which would seemingly hold equal power to one another, regardless of actual weights), federalism and decentralization (quite a turnaround coming from the NP!), decision making based on consensus with high thresholds (two-thirds) for approval of parliamentary and cabinet decisions, a bill of rights to protect group and individual rights and an independent judiciary (pretty rich coming from them). To ensure that they would hold disproportionate influence and power over the transition process, the NP insisted that the constitution be drafted before an election - a constitution drafted by an elected legislature representative of actual political support would not work for the NP.

Getting the ANC to agree to their power sharing scheme or their constitution-before-an-election idea would be an uphill battle. The ANC supported traditional majority rule, with a proportional representation system which they felt would offer sufficient safeguards against excessive majority domination. They also opposed decentralization of powers. Even the international community (including more sympathetic states like the US) rejected the NP’s idea of minority rights/white veto. The NP was already beginning to lose their precious edge in the negotiations.

The transition process, from 1990 to 1994, took place in the context of ever-increasing violence, bloodshed and wanton murders, particularly in the black townships and in Natal. 3,600 people were killed in the violence in 1990, 2,700 people in 1991, 3,550 in 1992 and 4,450 in 1993. As in the Botha years, much of this violence opposed the IFP and the ANC in the PWV townships or Natal. Many suspect that the government was playing a double strategy between 1990 and the summer of 1992; negotiating the end of apartheid on the one hand while encouraging ‘third force’ IFP or police violence against the ANC/UDF to weaken its opponents. These suspicions came to be confirmed in July 1991 when the details of Operation Marion (when the government and SAP trained IFP militias and KwaZulu police in the 1980s) were revealed to the public (the Inkathagate scandal). Inkathagate became a major embarrassment for the government and lent credence to the ANC’s claims that the government was covertly backing ‘third force’ violence. Through relations between the NP and the IFP would later sour, in the first years of the negotiations - before CODESA - the NP did maintain very warm relations with Buthelezi and the IFP, an attempt to save its skin by striking an alliance with conservative black leaders like Buthelezi or the (discredited) homeland leaders.

However, while we can contend that Botha and his top brass knew of the violence and murders perpetrated by the security forces, there are some reasons to believe that de Klerk and parts of his cabinet were not personally aware of or at least directly responsible for some of the violence committed by the security forces, which could have been the work of ‘faceless elements’ who had close links to white far-right organizations.

Inkathagate further strengthened the ANC’s hand against the NP, and forced de Klerk to placate the ANC. Adriaan Vlok and Magnus Malan, the hardliner law and order and defense ministers were demoted to lower positions in 1991. In December 1991, right before the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA I) was set to open, de Klerk made another momentous announcement: he yielded to the ANC’s demand that an elected government should draft the final constitution. This was a bold move, albeit one rendered necessary by the NP’s domestic and international opposition, its crisis of legitimacy, and a desire on their part to come to deal with the ANC before it was too late.

CODESA I lasted a few days and broke off into various working groups. CODESA marked the first formal negotiations between the various parties and the government, but it had been preceded by informal contacts and meetings between the NP government and the ANC in 1990. In May 1990, at Groote Schuur, the two parties agreed to a vague commitment of ending violence and peaceful negotiations. In August 1990, following the Pretoria Minute, Nelson Mandela announced that the ANC was ending the armed struggle and disarming its military wing, the MK. The government, the NP, the SACP, the IFP, the DP, various smaller parties and the leaders of the TBVC states (the four ‘independent’ homelands) sent delegations to CODESA I, while the KP and the PAC boycotted it.

The second plenary session, CODESA II, took place in May 1992. Parties sought to agree to basic principles which would be contained in an interim constitution, on the basis of which free multi-racial elections would be held. The NP, which had conceded to a final constitution drafted by an elected legislature, tried to salvage as many concessions as possible from the ANC in the interim constitution. At CODESA II, the NP and the government (two separate delegations) had the power to block anything on which they disagreed, much to the ANC’s frustration. The NP wanted a fairly thorough interim constitution which would contain key safeguards for the NP (and its electorate) against future ANC domination. It insisted on a high threshold (70%) in parliament for the final constitution to be ratified, a bicameral interim legislature, a senate representing regions with the power to block decisions and a rotational presidency. The ANC were, naturally, at odds with the NP over this. The ANC feared that the NP was trying to seal the deal and finalize the constitution at CODESA by insisting on very high thresholds for any future post-election amendments. The ANC wanted, instead, a document enunciating broad principles rather than the stringent principles the NP were trying to impose on them. This was a clash between two visions: the ANC supporting traditional majority rule with protection for individuals rather than groups; and the NP’s power-sharing plan with decentralized provincial government, minority/group protections and a consociational coalition government. The IFP, which supported federalism, backed the NP’s demands.

[Talleyrand]

Thank you for writing this, Hashemite. It's deepened my understanding of South African history and politics deeply. I hope you continue doing this.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I have to read this when I have the time. I really HAVE to.

[MaxQue]

Great!
It answers one question I always asked myself about South Africa.
Why NP stopped apartheid at a point.

[Hash]

By 1992, there were clear signs that the government was losing the support of the (whites-only) electorate. Originally told that the government would negotiate a power sharing deal favourable to white’s interests, many conservative white voters woke up to a transition process which was quickly slipping out of their (and the NP’s) hands. Years of propaganda vilifying the ANC as a terrorist organization and the work of the devil also had their effect on voters, many of whom were dismayed and angered at the sight of their government negotiating with the ANC. In 1991, the NP lost two seats to the KP in by-elections.

On February 19, 1992; the KP gained Potchefstroom, a provincial town in the Transvaal which had been a NP stronghold since 1948, in a by-election. Both the NP and the KP had invested significant resources into Potchefstroom, with both parties viewing the by-election as a crucial test for de Klerk’s policies. The KP’s opposition to the negotiations and their calls for a ‘white homeland’ which would cooperate with ‘black nations’ played well with many Afrikaner whites in provincial towns and rural areas in the conservative Transvaal and OFS. The NP’s defeat in Potchefstroom was a major rebuke for de Klerk’s policies and his government. In a calculated move to legitimize his policies and shortcircuit the KP’s momentum, de Klerk called a (still whites-only) referendum on his policies for March 1992.

The NP was putting its agenda to the people, seeking a clear popular mandate for the negotiations. If the voters rejected the government’s policies, de Klerk said he would resign and a general election would be held - like the KP had been clamouring for since Potchefstroom. The NP government did everything in its power to ensure a favourable campaign. It drafted a deliberately vague and open-ended question (Do you support continuation of the reform process which the State President began on 2 February 1990 and which is aimed at a new Constitution through negotiation?) which did not mention power-sharing, minority rights/majority rule or any specifics. The NP said that it would interpret a positive result as a mandate to reach a binding agreement with the ANC. Its promises to its voters included a bill of rights, separation of powers, an independent judiciary, decentralization and bicameralism. It did not expressly promise power sharing to avoid getting dinged by angry whites down the road (many whites later claimed that they had not gotten what they had voted for and that the NP had betrayed them). The YES campaign, backed by the NP, DP, the international community, the media and big business, overwhelmed the KP-led NO campaign, which was much less resources. The result of the NP’s skillful political calculations and the massive YES campaign was a resounding endorsement of the government’s policies. 68.7% of white voters voted in favour, only 31.3% voted no.

Violence - and a low-level civil war in Natal - continued unabated during this time. Once again, the proliferation of violence and bloodshed throughout the transition begs the question: was the NP deliberately playing a double strategy? De Klerk and his former government continue to claim to this day that they never played a double strategy and that they never endorsed the violence. The ANC and Mandela claimed, during the negotiations, that the government was secretly backing the violence - much of which opposed the IFP (whose training and weapons were provided to them by the government) and the ANC. The government may very well have supported violence - direct or by proxy - to weaken its opponents while continuing the negotiations, or to keep an alternative ‘escape route’ on the table if the negotiations collapsed completely.

Even if the government did not support the violence themselves, the violence clearly received institutional support. De Klerk had dismantled some of Botha’s total strategy/securocracy structures, but many remained in place and continued their operations without the government being necessarily aware of their actual behaviour. The government placed restrictions on covert operations, but they tolerated them and often turned a blind eye to the violence. Sections of the security forces, steeped in the old Botha total strategy model, believed that they were defending a legitimate state and took matters into their own hands. They developed a life of their own, which meant that de Klerk never had full control of the security forces and its myriad of structures.

However, even if the ANC feared a backlash from the security forces, the top echelons of the SADF and the SAP were largely supportive of the transition process from start to finish. There was no military revolt against the government’s policies at any time, even after De Klerk dismissed over 20 SADF officers in December 1992.

However, as aforementioned, parts of the security forces developed a life of their own and carried out actions without any sort of mandate or authorization from the government. White far-right and separatist organizations became increasingly powerful and many of them had links and connections to the security forces or retired military officers. Some organizations of the white far-right were racist, white supremacist militant (quasi-terrorist) organizations such as Eugène Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB, Afrikaner Resistance Movement) which had been founded in 1973 and violently opposed the NP’s policies. Other organizations of the white far-right were more moderate, with their main interest being the creation of an Afrikaner/white volkstaat (people’s state) and self-determination for the Afrikaners. In May 1993, the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF) was founded by retired SADF General Constand Viljoen and three other retired military officers. The AVF was a slightly more serious organization than the AWB, which was a rag-tag (but quite dangerous) bunch of racist buffoons; however, both the more militant far-right (AWB) and the far-right linked to the security forces (AVF, parts of the KP) used violence to destabilize the negotiations and had plans to seize power by force in last-ditch attempts to safeguard white minority rule.

The NP-ANC talks at CODESA II collapsed in June 1992. The clashing visions of the two main parties involved played a role in the breakdown of negotiations, but the immediate event which precipitated the ANC’s walkout was the Boipatong massacre that month, in which 49 people at a squatter camp in the Vaal Triangle (southern PWV) were killed by IFP militias (allegedly helped by security forces). Incensed and suspecting the government’s involvement, Mandela and the ANC walked out of CODESA II. The ANC turned to a strategy of mass action, aimed at destabilizing the government and potentially bringing it down. In the face of a worsening economic crisis (recession, capital outflow) and international pressure, the ANC’s new strategy was a nightmare for the NP verligtes, who were eager to resume talks.

In the meantime, the NP’s chief negotiator and minister of constitutional development, Gerrit Viljoen, resigned from cabinet. De Klerk chose a young liberal-reformist, Roelf Meyer, to replace him as minister (and chief negotiator); choosing Meyer over Viljoen’s sidekick at CODESA, the conservative Tertius Delport. De Klerk, the pragmatist, saw the verligte approach (endorsed by Meyer) as the only solution (the verkrampte clung to the hope of safeguarding white minority rule or schemes of racial self-determination). Furthermore, the ANC’s chief negotiator, former trade union leader Cyril Ramaphosa, made it clear that he could not work with Delport. Meyer and Ramaphosa developed a close working relationship, which led to significant progress.

The ANC’s strategy of mass action ended tragically in early September 1992. The ANC staged a demonstration in Bisho, the capital of the nominally independent Ciskei, ruled by Oupa Gqozo, a dictator who opposed the transition and the reintegration of the homelands into South Africa. Gqozo’s military forces opened fire on the ANC demonstrators, which included Ramaphosa and SACP leader Chris Hani, resulting in the death of 28 ANC demonstrators. The Bisho massacre reminded the ANC that the alternative to negotiations involved violence.
 
The negotiations got back and track, and, on September 26, the NP and the ANC agreed on a landmark ‘Record of Understanding’ (ROU) which dealt with an interim government, the constituent assembly, release of political prisoners (both on the white far-right and apartheid opponents), amnesty, traditional weapons and hostels. For the NP, the ROU marked the triumph of Meyer and the verligtes over the verkramptes. It finally dropped its power sharing/group rights plans and adopted individual rights and traditional liberal democracy in its stead. For the ANC, the ROU represented an acceptance of constitutionalism (the primacy of the judiciary/constitution) on their behalf.

The ROU also signified the rise of bilateral rather than multilateral negotiations. Feeling marginalized and betrayed by the NP, Buthelezi was incensed and the IFP started breaking all ties with the NP. The verkramptes (Delport, Coetsee, Kriel) were cold, at best, towards the ROU and decried the alienation of Buthelezi by the verligtes Meyer and Leon Wessels (negotiator, minister of local government and housing). Buthelezi – along with Gqozo (Ciskei) and Lucas Mangope (Bophuthatswana), who supported ethnic federalism and hated the ANC, got along well with both the verkramptes and the white far-right (especially the KP and the AVF) who shared the hatred and suspicion of the ANC, as well as the strong support for federalism/regionalism. Ultimately, however, the verkramptes never did gather the courage to oppose the ROU and they reluctantly went along with it at the last minute.

To calm the NP’s fears of losing power and a transition process which was going too quickly for them, the ANC agreed to the ‘sunset clause’, an idea originally proposed by SACP leader Joe Slovo. Slovo’s sunset clause guaranteed the formation of a government of national unity for five years after the election, and a general amnesty in return for the full disclosure of crimes committed (by both the ANC and the NP). After the ANC agreed to the sunset clause, the NP committed itself to a time frame which would end with free elections in April 1994.

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A multiparty negotiating forum opened in March 1993, including even the KP and PAC which had boycotted CODESA. The NP team was made up entirely of verligtes, which meant that the verkramptes’ insistence on minority interests was effectively forgotten by both parties.

The forum was disrupted by several events which threatened the transition process. The biggest threat came in April 1993 with the assassination of Chris Hani, the general secretary of the SACP. His assailant was a far-right Polish immigrant, but the assassin’s gun belonged to former KP MP Clive Derby-Lewis, a racist even by the KP’s standards. Hani’s cold-blooded murder, organized by the KP, threatened to incite racial violence. However, Nelson Mandela and the ANC’s appeals to calm and justice following Hani’s assassination prevented any large-scale racial violence.

In June 1993, the AWB stormed the convention centre where the negotiations were taking place. However, the AWB’s attack also revealed them to be little more than racist buffoons: they rammed a car through the glass windows, shouted racial abuse, sang the anthem, prayed and urinated in the building.

In July 1993, the armed wing of the PAC attacked St. James Church in Cape Town, killing 11 white and coloured churchgoers.

The NP and ANC (or, rather, Meyer and Ramaphosa) had developed a close working relationship and both parties committed themselves to the timetable. Together, they were able to override the opposition of the KP, IFP and other parties. In June, the NP and ANC agreed to the formation of a committee which would draft the interim constitution. Following this defeat, the IFP, KP and other parties walked out of the negotiations.

While conservative whites would later contend that they got shafted at the negotiating table and that the NP had surrendered to the ANC and betrayed whites by not delivering on power-sharing, the NP was able to get the ANC to agree to major ‘constitutional principles’ in the interim constitution which could not be amended by the permanent constitution. These principles included the acknowledgement and protection of linguistic and cultural diversity, decentralization of powers to provincial and local governments, an independent reserve bank and a provision on the right to self-determination of a territorial basis by cultural or linguistic minorities.

From a left-wing or Marxist perspective, while the NP had not been able to impose power sharing or the infamous white veto, it had been able to negotiate an ‘elite compromise’ with the ANC in which the ANC accepted liberal economics (free and private enterprise, property rights, fiscal discipline, strict monetary policies). Such a settlement is not surprising considering that the NP, especially after CODESA II, was driven by the verligtes who had little appetite for minority rights or white self-determination and whose main concern had always been economic. The same Marxist perspective would argue that the ANC sacrificed the notions of equality and reducing poverty in favour of an ‘elite compromise’ with the whites in which the ranks of the property-owning middle classes and capital were deracialized and opened to a black elite – judging by the private business success of prominent ANC leaders, including Ramaphosa, since 1994, this perspective holds some value.

The verkramptes were bitter at the end of the process, feeling that they had not gotten what they had signed up for and that de Klerk had surrendered to the ANC in return for vague concessions and guarantees which would come back to haunt the NP. However, they were not in control of the process – de Klerk was not a verligte, but he trusted the verligtes because only the verligtes had a clear idea of where they wanted to take things, unlike the verkramptes. The verkramptes’ lack of alternative ideas (besides the white self-determination silliness) and their internal divisions (Coetsee, for example, did not have many friends in the NP caucus) prevented them from playing a larger role in the process. At the end of 1993, they had their chance to stop the process before it went any further. Tertius Delport, ostensibly backed by NP backbench rebels, threatened to join with the KP to defeat the interim constitution in the white parliament. However, in the end, he did not have the stomach for such a dangerous move and backed down at the last minute. The recriminations of the verkramptes would continue after 1994.

The date for the first election was set for April 27. However, the election faced two major immediate challenges: Buthelezi and the IFP, peeved at their exclusion from the forum, had shut the door on the negotiations and were going to boycott the election. Given Buthelezi’s weight and importance in South African politics, an IFP boycott would have diminished the election and the new assembly’s legitimacy. Mandela and the international community (including Kissinger) rushed to get Buthelezi to back down. Mandela offered the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, a guarantee that traditional rulers would be recognized by the constitution; while he promised to Buthelezi that Zulu demands for autonomy would be examined.

The other threat came from Bophuthatswana, one of the independent homelands, ruled by Lucas Mangope, one of the hardline opponents of the transition process (and erstwhile NP ally). Set to be reintegrated into South Africa, Mangope’s government announced that it would not allow the elections to take place on its territory and would remain outside the new country. Facing a general strike and civil unrest in March 1994, Mangope allied with Constand Viljoen, who had a powerful paramilitary force at his disposal, to save his head. On March 10, with his government collapsing, Mangope fled the country and called on Viljoen to intervene to restore order. Mangope had requested Terre’Blanche’s racist thugs (AWB) not to get involved. However, the reckless and bombastic AWB had other ideas in its mind and joined the AVF column in the invasion. The AWB’s racist thugs went on a shooting rampage in downtown Mmabatho (the capital of Bop), shooting indiscriminately at black civilians. The most publicized event was the killing of three wounded AWB members at point-blank range by a Bop police constable. The mediatized image of three AWB members pleading for their lives, the humiliation suffered by both the AVF and the AWB and the hooliganism of Terre’Blanche’s group marked the end of the white right’s military opposition to the transition. The ANC and Mandela were surprisingly eager to integrate the conservative Afrikaner nationalists into the transition process, promising to consider a volkstaat on the condition that it received sufficient support. Viljoen, the more moderate of the conservative/far-right Afrikaner nationalists, dropped his military opposition and entered his name for the April 1994 election, for the Freedom Front (FF/VF) party.

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The 1994 Elections

There were various outbursts of violence (by the white far-right or the IFP) in the run-up to the April 1994 elections. The violence, murders and the far-right’s attempts to disturb the organization of the elections did not keep away many voters. Turnout was 87% (and 85% of the VAP). The ANC won 62.6% of the vote and 252 of the National Assembly’s 400 seats. The NP won more votes than it had at any point before, but with a much larger multi-racial electorate, it represented only 20.4% of the vote and won 82 seats. Buthelezi’s IFP won 10.5% and 43 seats, Constand Viljoen’s FF-VF won a paltry 2.2% (9 seats), still placing ahead of the DP (1.7%, 7 seats) but nonetheless soundly defeated and marginalized. The other main force of the anti-apartheid struggle, the more radical PAC, won 1.2% and 5 seats – a monumental failure for the party.

Unsurprisingly but ominously, the 1994 elections were a “racial census” election whose results closely resembled the racial composition of the new ‘rainbow nation’. The ANC, which had been the most visible, prominent and legitimate opponent of apartheid since the 1950s, won over 9 in 10 black voters outside KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The NP, which had made serious efforts to drop the image as the ‘party of apartheid’ and deracialize its ranks by reaching out to coloured voters (notably through a merger with the coloured Labour Party), retained the support of most whites but, rather ironically, drew a majority of the coloured and Indian vote; meaning that the party of apartheid and HF Verwoerd had, in 1994, the most multi-racial electorate. The NP, which by the end of apartheid had bought into its own propaganda, had deluded itself into thinking that blacks would vote for them out of some sort of loyalty, gratefulness or tradition. That didn’t play out – the NP got only 3 or 4% of the black vote, mostly in the PWV conurbation.

The ANC was victorious in seven of the country’s nine new provinces. In the Western Cape, where coloureds and whites are a majority, the NP won 53% of the vote in the provincial election (against 33% for the ANC) and were able to form a majority government under Hernus Kriel, a NP hardliner. In KwaZulu-Natal, the IFP was victorious with a bit over 50% of the votes in the controversial provincial election, against 32% for the ANC. In KZN, the IFP drew very heavy support (70-90%) in the former KwaZulu homeland, while its support was markedly in urban areas such as Durban (around 15% of the votes) or Pietermaritzburg.

The map of the 1994 elections replicated the division between coloureds (in the west) and blacks (in the east). West of a nearly straight line running from Humansdorp (EC) to Gordonia/Upington (NC) – corresponding to the apartheid regime’s Coloured Labour Preference Area, the NP, with its coloured and white support, won strong majorities nearly everywhere outside black townships. East of this line, where the population is largely black, the ANC won over 60% of the vote, oftentimes over 70% of the vote.

Proving that the NP’s attempts at divide-and-conquer and indirect rule (trying to divide black South Africans by playing on tribal and ethnic affiliations) was a total and utter failure, the ANC won over 95% of the vote in all the homelands (except KwaZulu) – regardless of the dominant ethnic group. The NP regime’s black stalwarts were widely regarded as traitors, crooks or illegitimate puppets; the homelands were undeveloped and unsustainable arid backwaters; and the homelands had been populated through forced removals and the concentration of huge populations into small, squalid parcels of land.

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Contemporary South Africa: 20 years of ANC rule (1994-2014)

Commentary on the first 19-20 years after the fall of apartheid and the ANC's successive governments is almost inevitably tinted by the commentator's political perspective but also race. Politically, the 'rainbow nation' is little more than a myth. Race plays a major role in almost every aspect of South African politics: party platforms, governance, public policy, vote choice and political discourse.

Therefore, one's race will certainly play a major role in determining one's view of the ANC's record since 1994 and the fate of South Africa after the fall of apartheid. Blacks remain cautiously optimistic about their future, and almost all agree that their life has been better under multiracial democracy than under apartheid and white minority rule. Whites are the most pessimistic about their country's future, and many feel that they had it better under apartheid. Whites, even more politically liberal ones, will probably brand the ANC as an incompetent and kleptocratic party which has brought increasing crime and lawlessness, discriminatory policies and entrenched putrid corruption at the highest levels of power.

Which is not to say that their appraisal of the ANC is entirely wrong, far from it. Many observers, regardless of race or ideology, agree that the ANC - by and large - has fallen far short of expectation, and their leaders and policies deserve part of the blame for the failures of South Africa since 1994. Many on the left decry a party which has abandoned its own (poor) electorate in favour of a small black clique, and has adopted neoliberal economic policies which have increased income inequality in one of the world's most unequal societies. Others on the right decry a corrupt, incompetent and autocratic party which is unable to deliver services competently and whose policies have had a disastrous impact on the country's economy and society.

Supporters of the ANC, however, will argue that their party has nevertheless made remarkable achievements in building a multiracial, liberal democratic state and has made significant progress in alleviating poverty all while managing the economy competently. They will also point out that the ANC faced and continues to face a task of gargantuan proportions. Racially discriminatory policies since colonization, brutal use of violence by the state and rule by a select few on the basis of race created a society marked by huge income inequality conditioned by race, a society with a history of state-sanctioned violence and repression, and a racially divided and polarized society. Many ANC supporters will contend that the opposition and criticism of the ANC's record are nothing more than the bitter recriminations of a white minority which lost their privileged position as the sole political and economic elite in South Africa. The ANC loves to use the race card on their opponents and apartheid's legacy as a justification for their policies, oftentimes in an abusive fashion. But to a certain extent, their view that criticism of the ANC is tinted by bitter recriminations of a white minority holds weight. ANC policies which sought to redress decades of institutional racism and major racial inequalities in all walks of life were bound to be opposed by a once-dominant white minority which felt that they were being discriminated against by the new powers that be.

The point is that an appraisal of the ANC's government is bound to be biased in one way or another. I was reading the description of South Africa's Brave New World, and it more or less proved my point. Without having read the book, the comment that "new leaders (...) tried to impose decrepit, Eastern Bloc political ideas on a world that had long moved on" is absurd given the ANC's economic policies and the universality of political corruption; similarly, the conclusion that "(fmr President Thabo) Mbeki may have contributed more than anyone else to bringing South Africa close to failed state status, but he had plenty of help" is ridiculous. Mbeki may have been an unmitigated disaster and the country may be going downhill, but South Africa isn't close to a failed state status - unless countries which isn't going all that well and whose governments we hate are all failed states. I'm not the greatest fan of the ANC out there, far from it (for the sake of disclosure in this thread, I support the DA); but I don't want to see South Africa - of all places! - in black and white (no, that wasn't supposed to be a pun).

My commentary on South Africa since 1994 will touch on several major issues and events which have marked the past 19-20 years. It will be chronological, though less focused on particular events and incidents than the previous history section.