Surrender without Defeat: Afrikaners and the South African "Miracle"

During the final months of the 1980s one of the last developments that pundits would have predicted for South Africa was that the ruling Afrikaner group would give up power more or less voluntarily, to be replaced by a stable, inclusive democracy. Over the longer run the more common prediction for the country was that of a low-level insurgency ending in a full scale civil war and a racial conflagration. For the short to medium term most serious analysts anticipated power shifting from the existing Afrikaner monopoly to an Afrikaner-led, multiracial oligarchy ruling as coercively as the apartheid regime. In 1988, Ken Owen, a respected Liberal editor, commented on the white-black struggle: "Barring massive external intervention I would put my money on any alliance dominated by Afrikaners. They have the capacity to devastate the region and yet to survive"

Eighteenth Century Cape Society and its Historiography: Culture, Race, and Class

The revisionist literature of the 1970s approached social stratification in South Africa with the insistence that proper 'weighting' of the race and class factors should occur. Arguing that class and not racial consciousness was the key determinant of social structure in pre-industrial South Africa, it concluded that eighteenth century Cape society in certain areas of the colony was characterised by greater fluidity than the caste system of the AmericanSouth or industrialised South Africa. George Fredrickson's comparative analysis of American and South African history rejects the first mentioned approach but agrees with the conclusion. This article argues that Fredrickson erred by characterising Cape society as being largely based on class and a permeable colour line. The extent to which Cape Town or frontier society can be categorised as such was limited,while the agrarian Western Cape, in terms of manumission rates and the incidence of mixed marriages, was one of the most rigid caste societies in the world.The article concludes by observing that only by studying how political and class relationships reinforced each other can the full complexity of eighteenth century Cape society be revealed

True Confessions, End Papers and the Dakar conference: A review of the political arguments

As a social critic Breyten Breytenbach published two books of political commentary and political analysis during the mid-1980s without the opportunity of engaging with commentators at home. While True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist is part autobiography and part searing comment on prison life, End Papers is a more detached dissection of the major political and cultural issues confronting South Africa. Breytenbach was now one of the respected international voices on the political crisis in South Africa. The violent break-up of apartheid had changed Breytenbach’s social criticism. In the place of the earlier rejection and denunciation had come a willingness to engage and reason with his audience. The Dakar conference of 1987, which Breytenbach co-organised, offered an ideal opportunity for this. The conference was given wide publicity and was seen by some as the catalyst that broke the ice for the negotiations between the government and the ANC two and a half years later

Rebuffing Royals? Afrikaners and the royal visit to South Africa in 1947’

This article traces the responses of Afrikaners to the symbolism and political purposes of the 1947 royal visit to Southern Africa, the first post-war royal tour and the first visit of a reigning sovereign to the Union of South Africa. Taking place in the aftermath of a war that had caused bitter political divisions within Afrikaner ranks and stimulated radical populist nationalism, a royal tour intended to express the crown's gratitude for South Africa's participation in that war was bound to be contentious. Drawing on press accounts, biographies, autobiographies and archival sources, this article argues that the layered reactions of Afrikaners demonstrate that, even on the eve of the National Party's electoral victory on a republican and apartheid platform, attitudes towards monarchy and the British connection were more fluid and ambiguous than either contemporary propaganda or recent accounts have allowed. The diverse meanings attributed to this iconic royal tour reveal a process of intense contestation and reflection about South Africa's place in an empire that was in the throes of post-war redefinition and transformation, and confirm recent characterisations of the 1940s as one of manifold possibilities such that outcomes, like the electoral victory of the National Party in the following year, was far from pre-determined

Mandela and the last Afrikaner leaders : a shift in power relations

CITATION: Giliomee, H. 2015. Mandela and the last Afrikaner leaders : a shift in power relations. New Contree, 72:69-96.Original publication is available at http://dspace.nwu.ac.zaThe stability of the apartheid system and the Afrikaners’ monopoly of power have been the subject of exhaustive scholarly analyses; by contrast, there have been few in-depth analyses of the unexpected transfer of power by the National Party government between 1989 and 1994.There is a strong tendency to present the Afrikaner leadership from Hendrik Verwoerd to PW Botha as being so beholden to the apartheid ideology and so intransigent that they missed all opportunities to negotiate a more balanced political settlement. Virtually no attention has been given to the informal attempts the leadership on both sides made to initiate talks about an alternative to white supremacy. The treatment of Nelson Mandela in the literature represents almost the complete opposite to that of the NP leaders. He has been presented as strongly committed to a nonracial democracy and a market-oriented economy. A reassessment of Nelson Mandela’s career has only just begun.http://dspace.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/14987Publisher's versio

Bantu Education: destructive intervention or part reform?

The introduction of public education for blacks in 1953 and the withdrawal of state subsidies from mission schools were among the most controversial measures that the National Party (NP) government took. In introducing Bantu Education the NP government was within the broad parameters of white interests and thinking at the time. There was no strong support in either the NP or United Party (UP) for large scale state spending on black education, no real demand from employers for well-educated black workers and a general concern among whites that educated blacks would become politicised if they were unable to find appropriate work. The state’s priority in introducing Bantu education was to reduce widespread black illiteracy. While Minister of Native Affairs Hendrik Verwoerd spelled out in crude and offensive terms that blacks would not be able to perform high-level jobs in “white South Africa”, it is wrong to assume that this was based on the assumption of black intellectual inferiority. Bantu education always lagged far behind white education with respect to per capita spending and the ratio of teacher to pupils in the class room. After 1994, ANC (African National Congress) leaders criticised the introduction of Bantu education in ever more strident terms, suggesting that it should be considered as a destructive intervention. The article argues that, viewed against the state of education that existed before 1953, it can be considered as part-reform in that it brought primary education to a far greater number of black children than was the case before 1953. The extensive use of mother tongue education was contentious, but several comparative studies show that the use of such a system in at least the first seven or eight years of the child’s education is superior to other systems. The school-leavin

The uses of history.

• Opsomming: Op drie maniere kan die studie van geskiedenis tot nut van mense wees. In die eerste plek kan dit hulle help om `n behoorlike besef te kry van hul onderskeie afkoms en erfenis. Geskiedenis leer mense nie hoe om op te tree of suksesvol te wees nie, maar wie hulle is. Die artikel onderskryf hierdie standpunt maar ondersoek ook ander moontlikhede om die waarde van geskiedenis te bepaal. Die een is dat die geskiedenis politici kan help om hardnekkige probleme op te los wat hul wortels in die geskiedenis het. Die probleem hiermee is dat maghebbers die geskiedenis verwring om hul eie siening van historiese probleme af te dwing. Historici moet hierdie taktiek aan die kaak stel. Derdens is daar die geloof dat geskiedenis kan help om beter toekomstige ontwikkelinge te antisipeer. `n Studie van die geskiedenis kan ook mense help om meer voorbereid vir die toekoms te wees. Die geskiedenis is egter nooit voorspelbaar nie. Mense word telkens verras deur onverwagte wendinge. Die bespreking wil hierdie hindernisse in die waarde van geskiedenis uitlig