1653-1910

1660 and beyond

The Dutch Origins

In 1660, Jan van Riebeeck, the leader of the first Dutch settlers, planted a hedge of wild almond trees. The bushes were planted to keep the Khoi Khoi (the indigenous population of the Western Cape) and their cattle out of the tiny European settlement. These wild almond trees (in many cases toxic) still stand near Table Mountain and for many symbolize the bitter harvest that segregation and apartheid created among the peoples of Southern Africa. To Allister Sparks (1990, p. xvii), these bitter almonds are symptomatic of “the division that runs through the psyche of the nation.” This division was defined by the myth of origins that started with that planting.

Two Dutch Governors, a father and son, defined Company rule in the Cape. Governor Simon van der Stel served from 1679-1699 and his son, Willem Adraan van der Stel served from 1699-1707.

Within a decade of his appointment, Simon van der Stel faced the first of many revolts against taxes and corrupt practices against government authority in the Cape. Van der Stel senior modified the wine concession to his advantage. Burgers (citizens) sent a protest petition to Amsterdam signed by 63 free settlers. This was followed by a counter petition with 240 signatures. The Company supported the Governor’s decision against the Burgers.

Resistance against the authority of the Governor followed. In 1705 Adraan van der Stel was driven out of the Cape by a successful colonial revolt amid accusations of corruption. In 1707, the Company directors dismissed Van der Stel (the son) and proclaimed that Company officials could not own land or trade. Nonetheless, by the 18^thcentury corruption had become a way of life within the Dutch East India Company. 

The pattern continued into the 19^thcentury. In 1821, the local Landdrost(district administrator), Jacob Cayler, used his office both to acquire land and slave labor and to obstruct justice. In the Cape, Thompson (1995) notes, such corruption carried on well into the early British period. Both the Cape as well as the interior Boer republics were well known for their high levels of patronage and corruption. Many administrators in the nineteenth century saw patronage and corruption as part of the privilege of high office.

1847

 Intimate Administration and the Red Blanket People

In racial terms, South Africa evolved as part of the British Empire. Imperialism as a set of attitudes began to develop almost from the beginning of British contact with Bantu speakers and especially the Xhosa. In 1847, a colonial officer, Sir Harry Smith, who later served as Governor of the Cape, “seized the opportunities of the British Empire…to satisfy an infatuation with the romance of personal kingship in isolation from close vigilance and interference” (Mostert 1992, p. 762). In his arrogance, Smith demanded to be addressed as “Inkosi Inkhulu,” or Great Chief, a pattern that would be passed down later to South African rulers until the early 1980s.

 Sir Harry Smith took it as his special task to break the power of the chiefs. In order to demonstrate his power over Xhosa society, “Smith used to make black leaders kiss his feet as a mark of respect. The Amakhosi [chiefs],” Holland (1990, p. 17) writes, “…were outraged that white men thought themselves superiour and viewed the Xhosas as savages.”

Many Xhosa in the early nineteenth century resented the “dictatorial manners” of the British and memories lasted a long time on this incident. According to No Ta Tsumbana in 1990, a then 78- year-old cousin of Nelson Mandela, an image of Xhosa chiefs kissing Smith’s feet was passed on to the future South African President by his grandfather (Holland 1990). Among others, the Cape authorities had deposed Mandela’s father (a local chief) for “insubordination” and a lack of respect for authority (Ottaway 1993).

To the district officer in the Eastern Cape, all Natives fit into two categories, “school” people and “red blanket” people. “School men,” as opposed to “red men,” attended schools and “took their place in the European scheme of things” (Welsh 1999, p. 292). Red blanket people represented the un-educated traditional rural dweller in the Transkei (Roux 1964). They were red because they covered their whole body, including their hair and their cloaks, with ochre clay. To the colonial administrator, the tribal authority was organic and “the tribal unit originate[d]…by continual biological and spiritual cohesion around an inner core” (Tomlinson 1955, p. 175). For many administrators, the red blanket people represented the native at his best. School people, on the other hand, represented assimilated Africans, a group held suspect by many whites. McLoughlin (1936, p. 88) makes this distinction:

The red native (as often as not a better man socially, morally, and a better citizen than some inferior example of a class that prides itself on superior attainments–as often as not only a matter of dress and mock piety), is the backbone of native society: he and his people under good leadership are as capable of progress as any other section.

1914  

Rebels but not Revolutionaries- Victorians and the African Middle Class 

Middle class urban professionals, most of whom were educated in South Africa in missionary schools, founded the South African Native National Congress in 1912. Among them was Dr. Pixely ka Izaka Seme, a graduate of Columbia University. In Bloemfontein, at the ANC’s founding convention in 1912, the delegates were clothed in top hats, morning coats, and spats. Dr. Seme established a legal practice in Johannesburg in 1906. Six years later, mortified by the segregationist nature of the Union constitution, Seme called together delegates from all over South Africa, including teachers, clergymen, businessmen, clerks, journalists, and builders, to form the organization that would later be renamed the African National Congress. Negotiations after 1990, when they occurred owed much to the British values represented by Pixely Seme, SolomanPlaatje (see below), and the other Victorian era nationalists and their spiritual descendants such as Nelson Mandela (Meredith 1998).

Tiyo Soga, another early activist in the ANC, was a Xhosa commoner who returned from Britain with a Scottish education and a Scottish wife. Soga was an early product of missionary efforts. Upon his return to South Africa in 1896, Soga embarked on a career in the civil service of the Cape Colony at a time when there was no official ban against blacks in responsible government jobs. But Soga soon discovered that there was an unofficial color bar that blocked his advancement to positions for which he would have been qualified had he been white. He resigned angrily from the civil service in 1898.

Soga then began to work as a missionary for the Presbyterian Church. In his campaign to evangelize for the church, Tiyo Soga argued that the Xhosa had to adapt to their condition as a conquered people. He is quoted by Leonard Thompson (1990, p. 80) writing:

The country of the kafirs is now forfeited and the greater part of it has been given out in grants to European farmers. I see plainly that unless the rising generation is trained to some of the useful arts, nothing else will raise our people, and they must be grooms, drivers of wagons, hewers of wood, or general servants. But let our youth be taught trades, to earn money and they will increase and purchase land.

Land ownership was essential, he went on, for “[w]hen a people are not land-proprietors, they are of no consequence in this country and are tenants on mere sufferance”(Thompson 1990 p. 80). Soga went on to edit Iswi Labantu, “Voice of the People,” an early African nationalist magazine (Fredrickson 1995).

Solomon Plaatje illustrates the background of the first generation of black activists. The well-known author, activist, and journalist, was born near Kimberley in 1876. Early in his career he joined the post office, which, in a Victorian liberal gesture, hired a number of black graduates. He became a court interpreter in Mafeking (northern part of the Cape Colony) in 1898, where he served during the siege of Mafeking at the time of the Anglo-Boer War. He left the civil service in 1902 feeling that his options were blocked by segregationist policy (Beinart 1994).

Plaatje was both an activist and a writer,earning a living as a journalist. He spoke nine languages. He was a prolific writer of both non-fiction and fiction. His novel, Mhudi, was published in 1930 (Plaatje 1978). He wrote mostly about indigenous culture and values, and the clash between European culture and the Baralong, a Setswana speaking people living in the Northern Cape. Most importantly, his writings and his activism focused on the injustice of the 1913 Land Act.

He also was one of the founders of the South African Native National Congress. In 1912, he went to Britain as part of a Congress delegation to protest against the impending passage of land legislation. He stayed in England for several years and from there he went to Canada and the United States, where he lived for two years prior to returning to South Africa in 1924. Plaatje died suddenly of pneumonia in 1932.

Z.K. Matthews (1981, p. 39), a longtime leader of the ANC in the 1940s and 1950s, has been described by Slovo as a “man with a shadow,” and is most identified in collaboration with the white liberals in the interwar period.He belonged to that generation of moderate African leaders who functioned within the confines of the Union’s segregated structures. As an anthropologist, one of Matthews’ concerns was the resolution of the conflict between Roman-Dutch law and traditional law. Unless the conflict between African law and Western law were resolved, he concluded, the best elements of Ubuntu would be lost (Paton 1965).

 Prior to its banning, ANC leadership could be broadly defined as liberal. Chief Albert Lithuli, the Nobel Prize winning president of the ANC, was a political moderate and an outspoken liberal who believed in the liberal view of non-racialism as an ideal and the optimal future for South Africa (Meredith 1998; see also Vigne 1997). An example of Chief Lithuli’s liberalism was his socio-political work which in turn was an extension of his Christianity (Pillay 1993).

South African elites have long been “Anglophone–articulate, cosmopolitan, and broadly liberal and attractive to Westerners” (Cartwright 1996, p. 138). After the ANC was banned, within the “ANC leadership, there [was] an intimate knowledge of British life.… The upper echelons of the ANC exiles [were] far more sophisticated and worldly wise than the home grown [white Afrikaner] politicians” (Waldemeir 1997, p. 50). Many of the leaders of the ANC had a cosmopolitanism entirely lacking in the National Party (Cartwright 1996). Many became comfortable with Western liberals in exile.

1933

Settlers and Society

Externally, especially in terms of social relationships, Afrikaner authority and dominance was assumed. As one Afrikaner legislator, Van Nierop, put it in the early 1930s, “[T]he white man has come to South Africa to rule, and… the white man is not going to allow that right, which is his prerogative, to be taken away from him by any other section of the population” (as quoted in Lewson 1988b, pp. 78-79).

Stories of the ridiculousness that flowed out of apartheid practices abound (Welsh 1999).  In one incident, a Mr. Herman Otto [owner of a farm at Hartebeespan] had permitted his servant to celebrate the wedding of his servant’s daughter on his property. The father therefore killed a couple of oxes, and his invited friends helped in cooking. However, despite getting permission the result was “A tragedy! We were all arrested through the permission of the magistrate of Maquassi.… We were taken in front of the magistrate, and no question was asked to anyone about us about her or his guilty. 7 days [in jail] 10 shillings was the fine.…” (Van Onselen 1990, p. 227). A subsequent investigation confirmed the story (Van Olselen 1990, p. 228)                      

Though the host had received permission from the landlord and the manager of the nearby diffings [farm] to hold a “wedding feast,” and though he had the necessary permit to brew beer [the police] … had raided because the document had not been “ratified” by the police and some of those at the gathering had been guilty of defaulting on tax payments, or of being without appropriate passes. Those arrested…appeared before the Native Commissioner on a range of charges.

1939: Intellectuals as Elites-Academics, Writers and Their Work

Academics as Architects

Prior to World War II, a number of prominent Afrikaner intellectuals studied in Germany during the period when Hitler and the Nazi party were gaining prominence. These included W.W.M. Eiselen (the son of German missionaries who later became Secretary of Native Affairs and Bantu Education), Piet Meyer, and G.D. Scholtz (editor of the Transvaalerfor many years). Many in the Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret society of Afrikaner elites who formulated apartheid policy and were considered the power behind the National Party, including Verwoerd, were strongly influenced by German thought during this period. (Picard’s Research Diary, Personal Communication, Hannes Mentz, March 6, 1999).

Among the most important Afrikaner intellectuals to define apartheid was Dr. Geoff A. Cronje, a University of Pretoria sociologist. His writing is often seen as providing intellectual justification for apartheid. In 1945, Cronje published a book that tried to put racial segregation into a broad perspective as a political ideology. In his book, ‘n Tuiste vir die Nageslag,“Cronje…made full use of the term [apartheid], also its alternative – separate development. With great thoroughness he had also examined all the logicalities of the new concept”(De Klerk 1975, p. 229).

Paul Oliver Sauer came out of an old South African liberal family and was said to be a personable and genial man. By 1948, he was also a firm believer in apartheid and a member of the National Party. Sauer was not a Broederbond member, though he was a leader of the Cape National Party, and he often expressed his dislike of secret organizations. He owed his political influence directly to his friendship with Dr. D.F. Malan, the leader of the National Party and the new Prime Minister. Sauer stated his view of race relations in South Africa in a legislative debate in 1948 (Lewson 1988, pp. 54-55):

I consider that the European position in South Africa was that of a Herrenvolk. We are a superior race in South Africa. We have 2,000 years of civilization behind us. We have the Western civilization and the Western way of life. That in itself constitutes us as the Herrenvolkin South Africa as long as we can, and as long as we are justified in remaining it. 

The formula would await the influence of three South Africans, Professors Henrick Verwoerd, W.W.M. Eiselen, and F. L. Tomlinson. It would be up to Tomlinson to define and provide spatial assumptions for apartheid as it was implemented.

Hendrik Verwoerd was European born and, in large part, European educated. He was imbued with the Afrikaner mythology, but was also influenced by European, particularly German, views on race and politics. He returned to Stellenbosch from Germany in the mid-1920s at the age of 26 to take up the Chair in Applied Psychology. He was appointed Professor of Sociology and Social Work in 1933. Increasingly, he found himself drawn into the problems of white poverty and was involved in the Carnegie investigation on poor whites from 1929-1932.^[1]From the time he first involved himself in politics, Verwoerd’s ultimate objective, as he explained it, “was total territorial separation between white and black” (Meredith 1988, p. 70-71).

Verwoerd soon found intellectuals, civil servants, and other political leaders who shared his ideas on how blacks should be ruled. These included Dr. Werner Willi Max Eiselen, who had been a colleague of Verwoerd in his Stellenbosch days, lecturing in anthropology and sociology. Gann and Duigan (1981, p. 21) summarize the National Party goals defined by Afrikaner intellectuals:

Afrikaners were determined to resist being Anglicized; they meant to survive as a white island in a black sea; they meant to remain a separate nation. Once in power, the National Party embarked on a vast scheme of human engineering designed to reconstruct South Africa on the basis of separate nations ‑ Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, and so forth. South Africa, the National Party believed, had to be reconstituted on the basis of apartheid; separate development for the various races was to give each of these nations its proper place in a homeland. But as industrialization proceeded, the ‘white’ areas grew increasingly ‘black’. The social composition of the Afrikaner nation itself began to change. Afrikaner society became socially more differentiated; the Afrikaners produced a substantial bourgeoisie and a substantial intelligentsia.

 It was W.W.M. Eiselen, later to be the National Party government’s Secretary for Native Affairs, who articulated the policy of “total segregation” after 1948. Micro-level apartheid, later called petty apartheid, legislated the social behavior of individuals and groups. At the level of local government, Meso-apartheid was aimed at the separation of blacks from white residents in the urban areas. Macro-apartheid was directed toward the creation and future coexistence of the ethnically homogenous homelands that, it was claimed, would ensure the future coexistence of different racial and ethnic groups.

From October 1950, when Verwoerd took over as Secretary for Native Affairs, he began introducing the euphemisms that have defined the apartheid system ever since. As Hepple (1967, p. 114) notes, from the beginning Verwoerd

…replaced the crude professions of apartheid with the more defensible philosophy of separate development, in which he envisaged a number of ethnic African homelands, gradually evolving into independent States, which would eventually link up with white South Africa in a confederation of self-governing units.

Verwoerd had a strong concern for “logical explanation, systematic theory, and social engineering” (Beinart 1994, p. 140). Planners, within the National Party, were concerned with spatial division, planning, and social control. As a result, Verwoerd increased centralization of power in the South African government and apartheid laws required a large complex bureaucratic and security structure. Despite Verwoerd’s “rationalism,” however, there were contending social and political interests within the National Party as it implemented apartheid (O’Meara 1994).

^[1]The Commission’s findings were published in 1932. See Report of the Carnegie Commission1932

1952: An Agronomist from Cornell

Professor F.R. Tomlinson was an agricultural economist who taught for many years at the University of Pretoria. Tomlinson was American trained with a Ph.D. from Cornell University.  As chairman, Tomlinson made his Commission play it straight. His analysis of the partition option occurred a scant five years after the partition of British India into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India and the partition of Palestine.

The freshness of those developments might in part explain the seriousness with which Tomlinson took his responsibility. Economically, partition seemed a viable option from the Commission’s perspective. For Tomlinson and his fellow commissioners, the key to separate development was investment in the homelands. Without massive investment, both public and private, there would be no possibility of success.

1960 Communism and Political Ideology Barely legal and Underground

Ruth First and contractions within theSouth African Communist Movement

Ruth First served as representative of white middle class members of the CPSA and later the SACP. In the late 1950s, she worked as a radical journalist documenting conditions of black poverty and repression, particularly in rural South Africa. Her perspective was both that of a Communist Party activist and of “an educated white woman who was both an observer of the life around her and a social participant in that which she observed” (Pinnock 1997, p. 28).

The daughter of two life-long Communists, she “hated dogma and empty displays of revolutionary fervour”(Slovo 1997, p. 23). She hated “apparatchiks”^[1]  and publicly opposed the SACP on a variety of issues.According to her daughter, its was First’s “sharp tongue…[which] had so often gotten her into trouble in the movement to which she had dedicated her life” (Slovo 1997, p. 23).According to her husband, SACP leader Joe Slovo, “Ruth’s kind of ‘deviationism’ was an important obstacle to the resurgence of blind cult worship…in the socialist movement.”(Slovo 1996, p.39).

Ruth First’s biography was similar to many of those who held membership in the SACP in the 1950s. She came out of a secular Jewish background. Both of her parents (and her husband, Joe Slovo) had migrated from the Baltic States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1950s, she was a mother, a privileged South African white, and a high profile activist in the Communist Party.  Her membership in the movement, to quote from a film about her life, kept her in “a world apart” (Slovo 1996, p. 39).^[2] 

There was paternalism among many on the left that came out of the “strange mix of intimacy and inequity that characterized the nature of South African domestic labour [in] a pattern familiar to many left and liberal [white] homes”(Clingham 2000, p. 171). Ruth First’s parents, both of whom were Communists, always hired a white nursemaid from London to look after baby Ruth. According to her mother, their children “always had a white nurse…we didn’t have coloured people in the house…whites were better educated” (Pinnock 1997, p.6).

White South Africans in the SACP had little day-to-day contact with Africans other than a limited spectrum within the leadership of the ANC. Ruth First noted, speaking of her mother, “I wonder what it was that fueled her stern contempt of them [blacks]” (Pinnock 1997, p. 78).A more objective view suggests that Communists in the ANC operated from a variety of motives and came to take divergent positions on issues ranging from racial perceptions, to the use of violence and to the shift to negotiations. By 1990, for many activists, the SACP label came to have little meaning in an ideological sense.

Rather than abstract theories, First documented social forces and the institutional forms that those social forces took. First wanted to know “how institutions worked, who they were composed of, where the power lay, who benefited from them and how they impacted upon individuals.” (Slovo, G 1997, p. 39. Her independence and non-conformity separated Ruth First from many of her contemporaries, including her husband Joe Slovo, during the 1950s and 1960s. Though there was a resistance to new ideas within the underground movement, Ruth First was known for her openness. During this period, there were many in the movement who found her constant search for new ideas very threatening. (Van den Berghe, 1977).

The mental terror of a South African prison was graphically portrayed in Ruth First’s book, 117 Days. In prison, First said, “I could now see unraveled the campaign of attack against me. Solitary confinement for an indeterminate period was the basic requirement” (First 2009,pp. 135-136). As did many, shortly after her release from prison, she went into exile, she became an academic and author, writing several books on South Africa, Namibia, Libya, and on African politics and international relations.

For First, exile was a “disillusioning experience. She found that for many of those who had left South Africa the dynamics of an exile life had taken over–the posturing, the politicking, even a kind of lethargy and lack of urgency” (Clingman 1998, p.  382). In 1970, she moved to Mozambique as Director of Research in the Institute of African Studies at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. As was the case with so many activists during this period, she was assassinated, by a parcel bomb on August 17, 1982.

Ronnie press 

Ronnie Press, an SACP member and South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) activist, spent many years in exile in Britain (Slovo 1995). Press (1929-2009) held the PhD in Chemistry and was recruited to the communist movement by Michael Harmel. He was a strong trade unionist serving as Secretary General of the Textile Workers Union. He had helped create explosives for the ANC in the 1960s and eventually went into exile living the rest of his life in the U.K.

Press retained his commitment to socialism through the 1990s and looked to South Africa as the socialist beacon of the future. The influence of SACP members in the ANC would remain very important after 1990. Much the same language could be used to describe socialist assumptions about planning between 1990 and 1994. Critics of the ANC expressed a fear that the ANC’s ideology would control their philosophy of government after the elections. For a flavor of the views of white communists of the period it is worth examining Press’s views in 1990 in some detail.

According to Press, “In addition, communists as such have great standing within the movement. They are still there. So the ANC cannot discriminate against communists (for example, the attempts by De Klerk to keep Joe Slovo out of the ANC negotiations delegation). In other African revolutionary movements there were no communists who openly identified themselves. In South Africa it was different. This made it less likely that the ANC could adopt an anti-workers stand” (Interview with Press, 1990). What socialists feared above all else was cooptation of the political leadership by middle class values.  This was the real danger for Press:

There is a danger of cooptation with a non-racial government. People are human. Revolutionaries change overnight when they get into government. The ANC is a loose coalition anyway. The early organization was one of chiefs. Later it became a mass organization. Over time it has adopted the ideas of socialism. It has as its stated goal the nationalization of major industries, social welfare, etc. Ordinary ANC members have some socialist orientation (Interview, 1990).

The key according to Press was to avoid exploitation by the middle classes. To Press (Interview, 1990):

The present political stage is a similar one to that we find within the trade union movement. You cannot contain the ANC though they will try to absorb it into a middle class system. A black prime minister will be acceptable as long as they can control him. Coopting political leaders will be an extension of the goal of absorbing trade unions. There will be new state jobs, new local authorities. There will be some middle class cooptation.  The question is, will the new non-racial South Africa be a partnership between exploiters and exploited? I think they will be disappointed there. I’ve not seen such a high level of political understanding as exists in South Africa anywhere else.

The debate over the economy was a defining point between the exiles and those inside the country after 1990. According to Press (Interview, 1990), “[T]here will be a problem between the exiles and those in the country on this both within the ANC and COSATU. Internal values will be growth oriented. What people will look for is a better life. They will not see long term problems such as ecology. The problem is how to marry the two sides together.” From this perspective, only the socialist revolution could prevent cooptation: 

I should note that six months ago, I would have said that the democratic revolution in South Africa would immediately be followed by a socialist revolution. Now because of Eastern Europe the change process and the time table has been altered. There will be socialism but now there is another scenario. It will be evolutionary. There will be votes for all with some special dispensation for whites. There will be land for the peasants. I can see the breaking down of the land question on a piecemeal basis. They will give them some unused white land in the Transvaal. The economy will not have changed (Interview with Press, 1990).

Michael Harmel

Michael and Ray Harmel were stalwarts of the South African Communist Party from the 1960s until his death in 1974 and her death in 1998. Both served as full time party activists, with little in the way of salary,but trying to maintain a middle-class life style at least from a family perspective. Michael Harmel in large part defined the end of the non-violence period and in a document on May 1, 1960 stated that the movement would now have to defend itself. After 1962, they spent the rest of their life in exile. He worked as a writer for socialist journals and as an agent for the movement. She worked on union and later in a support position within the exiled SACP. The Harmels, like other members of the SACP (black and white) sacrificed significantly for a movement they would not be able to influence after the transition.

^[1]The Russian term for a Communist Party Bureaucrat, often used in a negative sense. Slovo 1997, p. 240.

^[2]A World Apart, a 1988 film.  The script was written by Shawn Slovo, another of Ruth and Joe Slovo’s daughters. Their other daughter, Gillian (Slovo, G 1997) wrote a family history.

1963: Beyers Naude- The” Liberals” and the Volk

The “Liberals”

Liberal academics advocating adaptation included Lucy Mair, Monica Hunter, and Ellen Hellman (Rich 1984). These individuals, and a number of other liberal intellectuals in the newly formed South African Institute of Race Relations and in the liberal wing of the United Party, moved cautiously towards an integrationist approach to the “native problem”. These neo-assimilationists became the primary antagonists of the new National Party ideology during and after World War II.

It has been argued that settler society in South Africa represented a liberal slice of the much broader conservative-socialist spectrum that was reflective of Europe. Forced moderation formed the basis of colonial style white paternalism in South Africa. “White South Africans are born paternal,” a colleague told one of the authors in 1988 (Picard, Research Diary, October 10, 1990).^[1]  Rian Malan (1990, p. 34), in his autobiography, defines this paternalism from his childhood. Speaking of the family servants of his childhood, he says:

I loved them all, indiscriminately: Lena, Johannes, Piet, James, Betty, Miriam, Miriam’s children and teeming grandchildren, the other Piet, who worked next door, the waiters in the hotel down the road, John’s boys – all of them.

On the liberal side in South Africa, the author, Alan Paton, and the Anglican priest, Father Trevor Huddleston, best represented this liberalism in the 1940s and 1950s (Kanifer 1993). Liberal values were embedded in the non-racial Liberal Party, founded and led by Paton, that included a number of militants, including a small group that later opted for violent opposition to the regime. The Liberal Party, led throughout much of its short period of existence (1953-1968) by Duncan and the author Alan Paton, though it attracted some black followers, remained white dominated, “a mark of the acute ethnic imbalance of the…party” (Vigne 1977, p. 21).

Over the years, the term non-racial eclipsed multi-racial as the normal term for the external opposition in South Africa (Horowitz 1992).

Beyers Naude was an earnest but humorous man with a self-depreciating sense of humor; he was intelligent, quiet spoken, and fluent with a round open face (Drury 1968). Naude came from the Afrikaner establishment, was a minister in the Dutch Reform Church and for many years had been a member of the Broederbond (Brotherhood, the secret Afrikaner society which developed and supported apartheid). 

In 1963, Naude broke with the National Party and resigned and left his white congregation. The same year, he became the Founder-Director of the Christian Institute, an anti-apartheid group that also developed close ties to Biko’s Africanist organizations. His shift from the Broederbond to the head of the liberal Christian Institute represents the rare Afrikaner elite member who came to identify with the anti-apartheid movement. For several years the Christian Institute was harassed by the government and in 1977 the Institute was closed down; Naude was banned for five years.

In 1984, Naude was appointed Secretary-General of the South African Council of Churches and became active in the UDF. Speaking in 1990 of the impact of the Christian Institute, Naude said:

The most important contribution of the Christian Institute was that it was able to destroy the NGK’s (Dutch Reform Church) biblical justification of apartheid. Second, it was able to build a concept of social justice with white involvement. Thirdly, it was able to create a measure of trust between the historical Christian churches and the Africanist independent churches. Finally, politically it accepted the black consciousness movement and made itself available to teach whites that their future role in South Africa would have to be a complicated one (Interview with Naude, 1990).

^[1]An English speaking South African academic, Richard Humphries made this comment.

March 1, 1975

It’s always 1959 in Settler Africa: Life Magazine and the Readers Digest

 Even within the British Empire, South Africa was special. In white South Africa in the post-World War II period, there was “a more or less generically Western [way of life], unfolding in generic white suburbs where almost everyone subscribed to Lifeand Reader’s Digest, and to the generic Western verities they upheld” (Malan 1990, p. 46).

There was a callousness to life in apartheid South Africa. While you drank your morning tea, the radio listener might hear, that “a family of four died in a road accident on the Durban-Johannesburg highway this morning. Their dog spot was also killed. Four Africans were also killed in the accident” (Picard, Research Diary, 1981). It was this “unreality” that defined the post-war generation of South Africans and as R.W. Johnson (1977, p. 289) has put it speaking of the debates about apartheid:

The unreality of the very terms of such debates is, perhaps, due to the fact that there is no white South African alive who has not lived his or her entire life within the comfortable security of white supremacy. Upon this fundamental fact a vast social and ideological superstructure has been erected which, it sometimes seems, has become more important than the base itself.I first crossed over to South Africa, in March of 1975, the year before Soweto.  I crossed at Zeerust, a small town about 70 kilometers Southeast of Gaborone, Botswana.  I was an Afrikaner town with its black reserve areas behind the Bophuthatswana border. It projected itself clearly as a “readers digest” small town.

January-June 1984

May 1, 1984

May 17, 1984
This section of my research diary begins with notes taken during my 1984 visit to South Africa. The first note is on the Winterveld and is dated May 17, 1984. The Winterveld was and is a huge squatter area in what was then Bophuthatswana. At the time I started my research it represented many of the dilemmas of squatters in South Africa who had accumulated behind homeland borders. It was a job access area. In 1984, there appeared no one responsible for it. An intergovernmental commission had been established to investigate.

The Winterveld consists of miles and miles of tattered shacks and cardboard shelters. At issue in 1984, was whether to focus on the whole Pretoria region or on the Winterveld alone. In Winterveld, plot holders have freehold tenure and were leasing out to tenants. The area was opened to freehold ownership in 1939 and 1940. It was only in December of 1983, that South African officials began to try to deal with the problem and moved away from the bulldozer approach to urban density. South Africa agreed to fund some upgrading, and agree to investment based on the recommendations of the National Building Research Institute.

There is a very high percentage of sub-letting in the PWV area. Sub-letting is much less in the Winterveld. The goal of the government is to restructure the housing patterns and introduce squatter renewal. The problem is that 90% of the squatters and 84% of the land owners are not Setswana speakers. About 77% of the men are involved in the economy of the PWV.

In Mabopane, the new technical college brought in in Phase 1, R32m and in Phase 2, R100m. The goal is to have 5000 students enrolled. Half are on campus each term. It should be up to full capacity in 1988.

1981

The Weichers Commission

In 1981, a Commission on Local Governmentin Bophuthatswana, chaired by legal scholar, Marinus Wiechers, published one of a series of reports on homelands’ constitutional and administrative development. Wiechers was a specialist in constitutional law who wrote a number of core documents and the draft consitutions for several homelands’ governments. He was a co-author of the Namibian constitution, and helped draft the South African Interim Constitution. Wiechers was a constitutional specialist who spent many years teaching at the University of South Africa and served as a “moderate” reform advisor for the governments of South Africa, Rhodesia and Namibia.

The geographical decentralization of authority to regions, according to the Wiechers Commission, was based upon the view that the geographical segments of Bophuthatswana were land “islands” within South Africa (Wiechers 1981). A detailed examination of this report, one of many Commissions set up in the last days of apartheid, can give us a deeper understanding of both the folly of the apartheid administration, the thinking of Afrikaner leaders, and the failed ideological legacy of homeland structures (which would be left behind after non-racial elections in 1994). Despite its flaws as a homelands policy document and the political naivetyof its authors, it provides a sketch of the grassroots reality of the late apartheid period.

The Wiechers Commission was created (only six years before Nelson Mandela was released) because the then Bophuthatswana President, Lucas Mangope, had very little coordination or control of tribal authorities and little ability to control events outside of the Mafikeng/Mmabatho enclave. Throughout the Commission Report, there is a mythology of traditional life in homelands policy. According to Wiechers, “An important aspect in rural [tribal] areas which must be taken into account with development in general, and particularly with institutional development, is the diffused [integrated] nature of rural [tribal] communities” (as noted by Jeppe in his discussions with Picard, Research Diary, July 8 and passim, 1984. See also Jeppe 1983a and 1983b).

An examination of a contemporary civics text in Bophthatswana defined the authority of regional governors and magistrates better than any other public document published in the 1980s. The magistrate functioned with judicial and civil authority; supervised tribal administration both in terms of finances and personnel; supervised the collection of revenue; and, overall, served as the administrative head of his district (Motlhaga, n.d.). The need to examine the future of traditional authority would become part and parcel of the debate over the replacement of homeland governments by provincial authorities after 1994. Addressing the question of prefectoral authority, as the apartheid system was breaking down, would be a difficult matter.

The Wiechers Commission played it straight in its technical approach and was no whitewash of the technical problems in the homeland. It described traditional leadership as both a tool of the Government of Bophuthatswana and of the White Government in South Africa (Wiechers 1981).The report suggested that the traditional system was discredited as a result of its association with, and subordination to, the South African government. The result was that the constituent tribal authorities were unable to function (Wiechers 1981). This ambiguity about the role of traditional leaders would characterize the post-apartheid administration in part because of the ambiguity of the relationship defined by homeland authorities.

Wiechers found far too much centralization of authority in the homelands system and suggested that the system be rationalized, including land consolidation (Interview with Wiechers, 1990). The Commission, in the mid-1980s, saw Bophuthatswana serving as a workshop for a broader non-racial provincial system and saw a federation system in the future being part of a black-ruled state with non-scattered, contiguous boundaries (Interview with Wiechers, 1990). However, the Commission did not support what Mangope called the “super-state”; i.e. a non-racial South Africa. In this they were not entirely off the mark given the time frame.

The Commission recommended that government should establish bureaucratic structures at both the regional, district, and tribal level. There would be regional level portfolios and, at the tribal level, extension agents and district administrators to ensure law and order. In Bophuthatswana, control was the key since

[a]s if the extraordinary powers granted chiefs and headmen and the regulations governing illiterate voters were not enough, even further skepticism surrounded the August [1977] elections. This related to other special powers which enabled the authorities to ban all meetings unless expressly authorized by the local magistrate; to prohibit any person or categories of persons from entering or leaving defined areas; and to detain people without trial (“Bophuthatswana: Growing Conflict” 1980).

From within Bophuthatswana there were demands to abolish all Presidential nominations among traditional members of the national assembly. The commission recommended that the election process be introduced into the regional assembly, town councils, and, possibly, traditional authorities. Traditional authorities were essential but should be eliminated from non-traditional structures. It is hard not to conclude that there was a deliberate attempt by Mangope to keep government administrators out of rural Bophuthatswana and traditional leaders out of the leadership of the homeland.

The Wiechers Commission also raised questions about the future of the magistrate relevant for South Africa as a whole. According to Wiechers, the magistrate should act as a controlling agent over government staff on behalf of President Mangope’s office but be given de-concentrated authority over development policy. Yet, localization of the Magistrate’s cadre was slow and almost all were white South Africans. There were only two African magistrates in Bophuthatswana in 1984 (Interview with Vieviers, 1984).

The commission advocated an integrated prefectoral system in Bophuthatswana, with strong control functions over revenue, expenditure, and the allocation of land. “Fiscal matters are in a shambles,” the Commission concluded. “There is much private use of public funds” (Interview with Wiechers, 1990). The Commission looked toward a regional director or governor to coordinate magisterial districts and take over local government management functions. Wiechers did see the regional level paramount chief as providing a communications link with central government (Interview Wiechers, 1990). For development purposes, the Commission advocated integrated government at the regional and district level and strong prefectoral supervision over all development departments.

Below the region, each district would continue to base governance on the prefectoral authority of the magistrate. At the sub-district level, primary administration would still operate through chiefs and a traditional court system (Jeffery 1993). However, a Commission chaired by Marinius Wiechers redefined traditional authorities and recommended an activation of traditional authorities within the homeland political structure.

Local level bureaucratic structures, ideally, should have been in line with those of the Bophuthatswana public service. They were not. The Wiechers Commission drew attention to the issue of the local level of administration in the districts and the regions and to the confusion over the number of districts and regions scattered among the “islands” (Campion 1977). But, where should the focal point of district administration be?With regard to coordination, the Commission was clear: it should be prefectoral and “development and administrative functions of such regional and local authorities should be controlled and monitored by a senior government official with devolved powers stationed in the region. [T]ribal and community authorities are at this stage generally incompetent and ill-equipped to undertake development projects” (Wiechers 1981, pp. 64-65).

There were differences over the whole question of regionalism identified in the report. As one observer noted in the early 1980s:

The proposal emphasizes regionalism for development with maximum coordination and participation at the level where size, viability, and representation is probably optimal for handling development needs. The recommendations provide for the retention and activation of tribal authorities to continue their dual roles as traditional institutions coupled with subordinate administrative, planning, advisory and control functions (Jeppe 1983b, p. 10).

The Commission had also recommended the creation of district development committees (Wiechers 1981). These committees, controlled by the magistrate, would need a full-time salaried chairman, who would also be the chief administrative officer of the regional authority. The idea of a regional assembly, with cabinet portfolios at an intermediate government level, was also discussed. The Bophuthatswana government’s attitude towards the recommendations contained in the Wiechers report was illustrative of the dilemmas facing the Mangope regime in the waning days of apartheid:

The recommendations in respect of its [regional government body] powers, functions, duties, composition, and the selection of its staff were strongly supported. The Committee, however, did not agree with the recommendation regarding the amalgamation of the regions as suggested…. It was felt that the status quo should be retained (Report of the Commission1984, p. 76).

The role the magistrate was to play in day-to-day government in Bophuthatswana was limited by the fact that Mangope, as President of the Bantustan, presided over an internally highly centralized system. There was very little decentralization (even of a de-concentrated variety) to the district level during the Mangope period, from 1972 to 1994 (Interview with Moody, 1984).  In 1984, according to another source in Bophuthatswana:

It is not unfair to say that there just isn’t very much government in the districts or below. You have the magistrates of course but with the development of departments they have been stripped of much of their authority. On the other hand, most departments don’t have much representation at the district level. What government is here is in Mmabatho. Government may go out to visit for the day but it comes back here [Mmabatho] at night (Interview with Boerter).

The statistics on district level administration illustrate these limits. A total of 152 people were paid to work at district level in Bophuthatswana in 1981. In addition, 62 chiefs and eight headmen were also salaried (Wiechers 1981). By comparison, Botswana’s Unified Local Government Service had over 1,800 people employed in district government in the same year, a figure that grew to 2,700 by 1980-81 (Picard & Endresen 1981). Administrative level structures at the district level were totally lacking in the 1980s.

Mangope’s inability to organize at the grassroots level exemplified the problems that homelands had in establishing a political identity. There were elaborate proposals about a sub-national structure for the homelands, but all came to naught. As Butler et al. (1977, p. 63) had noted “Mangope’s predicament exemplified the problems that self-government [the homeland system] has created for African leaders: it removes whites as targets and places unpleasant administrative tasks in black hands.”

Mangope feared local governance. So apparently did Wiechers. The Wiechers Commission noted that the dangers of development in the urban areas included “a leaderless, structureless proletariat which it will be most difficult to control… a rabble” (Interview with Vieviers, 1984). There was strong resistance to the idea of devolution of authority from the president’s office. One senior advisor pointed out, “the proposed reforms on local level structures are not appropriate for tribal authorities but only for township authorities and Municipal governments. The President feels very strongly about this. The rural people are not ready for local government or democracy” (Interview with Vieviers, 1984).

At the same time, the relationship between chiefs and government was often very uncomfortable in Bophuthatswana, since even traditional authorities could be threatening to the President. The top authorities in Mmabatho were very wary of removing the chiefs from the Parliament and creating even a toothless House of Chiefs. As negotiations approached in the early 1990s, President Mangope feared representative government at the regional or district level. Most significantly, Mangope worried about local government in the squatter areas and the urban settlements of the greater Pretoria area. As the apartheid regime approached negotiations with the ANC, there was a fear in both South Africa and Bophuthatswana that the demise of traditional authorities would lead to a destabilization and weakening of the government as a whole, as well as a wholesale disruption of community life (Wiechers 1981).

The attitude of the Bophuthatswana government towards the Weichers’ recommendations was contained in the government white paper report. According to the government response, “In this regard the committee came forth in strong support of the findings and recommendations made by the commission. These recommendations were that tribal authorities be regarded as appropriate institutions to administer tribal affairs” (Interview with Vieviers, 1984). For all of its faults from a technical perspective, commissions, such as that chaired by Weichers, contain much that is important to implementation of regional authorities. However, this report, and similar reports and papers, would not have much impact on provincial realities in the post-apartheid period.

In the end, it appeared that the Mangope and South African governments accepted the principles embodied in the Wiechers Commission, but they saw “difficulties of impracticability and therefore of implementation” (Interview with Weichers, 1990).Ultimately, the Mangope government was very skeptical with respect to any participatory local government in rural areas. However, despite the utility of the technical analysis, Weichers would have little impact on political or economic debate. Six years later, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and these debates were transferred to the negotiating table (Picard & Mogale 2015). 

Critics, in testimony before the Commission, complained of authoritarian, patronage appointed, regional governors and argued that there was at best a weak regional legislative process. As a result of the Wiechers Commission, The Mangope regime decided to strengthen the second tier or regional level (the islands) in Bophuthatswana. The Wiechers Commission recommended a regional administration with cabinet portfolios, a regional executive committee, a regional assembly, and a separate department of local administration. To quote the Commission, “Regional government [using the land islands] is, to the mind of the Commission, the strongest single factor which can achieve a stable, well organised and viable system of decentralization” (Wiechers 1981, p. 4).

The Hoexter Committee^[1]

G.G. (Gustav) Hoexter Chaired a commission in the early 1980s that investigated the structure and functioning of the courts and introduced reforms including the use of district level magistrates as both administrators and judicial officers. Commission Report which addressed the responsibility of magistrates and judges in South Africa, Hoexter 1983. The reforms were designed to limit magistrates to judicial responsibilities. They were never fully implemented because of the rapidly changing political situation at the time. Magistrates, the commission found, were utilizing their dual role to regulate the movement and behavior of black South Africans. Many of the magistrates were blatantly political in their loyalties and behavior.

^[1]Commission Report which addressed the responsibility of magistrates and judges in South Africa, Hoexter 1983. The reforms were designed to limit magistrates to judicial responsibilities. They were never fully implemented because of the rapidly changing political situation at the time.

1982 

The Yankees- Americans in  South Africa- Made in Harvard

Samuel P. Huntington

Social scientists from the United States, as will be seen below, provided much of the language of P.W. Botha’s policy of “Total Strategy,” a term that had been widely used in Vietnam.

Most significant for South African social scientists was the work of Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard.  Throughout the 1980s, Huntington served as an advisor to the South African security services under the Presidency of P.W. Botha.

National Party reforms were based on the Huntington article in the South African political science journal, Politikon. He argued that in order to move away from a limited uni-racial society to a multi-racial democracy South Africa would have to go through some form of autocracy (Swilling & Philips 1987). Huntington argued, “authoritarianism and controlling participation was essential to modernizing regimes” (Huntington 1981, pp. 8-9).

An American political scientist, Huntington, was soft spoken but intense. His writings, while generating controversy, have had a profound impact on government reform in many different parts of the world. Reaction to his ideas is often negative in LDCs. An exile Ethiopian publication, The Ethiopian Review, criticized what it called “The Huntington Doctrine,” a gloomy polemic on the The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Huntington 1996) and what they called a “racist theory.” The journal went on to note that Huntington had no background in Ethiopian studies. Huntington “did not make any secrete (sic) about his direct knowledge and his short sojourn to Ethiopia. To be exact, Huntington stayed in the country only for 5 days” (Roble 1996, p 20). Huntington conceded in the introduction ofClash of Civilizations, that this book was not social science, nor was it based on detailed area knowledge, but rather is an “interpretation” and an attempt “to present a framework, a paradigm” (Huntington 1996, p. 13).

On September 17, 1981, Huntington addressed the Political Science Association of South Africa. His address, later published, had an enormous impact on the policy dialogue in South Africa and represented the most direct involvement (though ultimately unsuccessful) of a foreign academic in South African policy-making during the apartheid period (Lelyveld 1975).^[1]His remarks deserve considerable attention, for it was a significant event in the evolution of National Party political thought.

Huntington argued for a controlled reform model in South Africa that was based on limiting participation in the short run. Reform should be introduced strictly on the basis of a corporatist/consociational model. Centralization of authority, he said, would be necessary for the P.W. Botha government to maintain control over the political conflict that could develop with the introduction of political reforms. Following from this, reforms should be based on a more consociational model that gradually would expand political participation to other ethnic political movements, such as Inkatha, which were compatible with the National Party (Huntington 1981). The political institutions for such a system should take the form of those proposed by the theorists of consociational democracy. The goal for negotiations should be a grand coalition representing all racial groups. There would need to be a mutual veto that could be exercised on policies by each group proportionally in the distribution of governmental office and power. There should be a depolitization of issues and high levels of autonomy for each group to deal with its internal affairs.  This would build up various forms of mutual concessions and compromises.

Huntington’s thesis (1981, pp. 8-9) was that the current South African government had the capacity to maintain itself in office:

…with only modest changes for the rest of this century. The key elements in these arguments…revolve about: (1) the unity of the whites…; (2) the demonstrable superiority of the whites in the organized ability to apply instruments of coercion against both internal and external enemies; and (3) the fragmentation of the black opposition and the ability of the government to co-opt some black leaders.

There were three components to Huntington’s change strategy. First, it was important that the state maintain a control over the change process, because,

            Effective repression may enhance the appeal of reforms to radicals by increasing the costs and risks of revolution and to stand-patters by reassuring them of the government’s ability to maintain order. The danger to the government and to the reform process comes if the government significantly loses its monopoly of counter-revolutionary violence, if armed vigilante groups, paramilitary units, out-riders of the security police begin to “take the law in their own hands,’ and attempt by their own actions to eliminate revolutionary groups. (Huntington 1981, pp. 8-9).^[2]

Second, it was necessary to keep blacks politically fragmented for “the continued fragmentation among Black groups and the rivalry among Black leaders could be used by an appropriately-minded government to enlist some measure of Black support for the reform process.” Finally, “[t]he reform process may also require at times substantial elements of duplicity, deceit, faulty assumptions, and purposeful blindness.”  (both quotes from Huntington 1981, pp. 10, 20- 21, respectively). Dirty tricks were not only allowed, but necessary. As one commentator wryly put it, “the goal of the ruling elite of the authoritarian-corporate regime in South Africa [was] to be obeyed not necessarily liked” (Adam & Moodley 1986, p. 164).

For Huntington, the reforms needed to change from vertical to horizontal group dynamics. He argued, “In a vertical or hierarchical system, ‘stratification is synonymous with ethnicity’; in a horizontal or parallel system, different ethnic communities coexist side-by-side” (Huntington 1981, p. 9). During the apartheid period there had been an overemphasis on ethnic identity.

Those things that are shared in common, particularly among elites, contribute to the success of the negotiations process. As Huntington (1981, p. 9) put it, “[m]ulti-ethnic societies often combine elements of both hierarchy and parallelism and over time one type of system may change into another.” Reform, to Huntington, would have a short life span. In his 1981 (p. 19) speech he argued that,

[r]eform governments are most likely to engage them in constructive negotiations in the interim phase of their growth, when they can sense the satisfaction of power but cannot expect to achieve it on their own terms…. The hardest lesson…is the importance of introducing reforms from a position of strength.

Reform would play itself out over the next few years, Huntington went on, as government found itself in a weakened situation since the goals of reform were limited. For the South African political solution to move in a different direction it would have to

take off from the existing racial structure of South African society and attempt to develop a political system in which all four racial communities would play appropriate roles… The shift from a 4×1 system to a 4×4 system would involve primarily a change in political institutions… It would be, in all probability, the least difficult of the alternatives, including maintenance of the existing system, to realize in some workable form (Huntington 1981, p. 13). 

In South Africa, Huntington’s ideas “helped to write the script of the Government’s 1980s reform strategy….”  The South African reforms, according to one observer were “Made at Harvard” (Van Heerden 1988, p. 2). To another observer, the National Party as a “modernizing oligarchy owed much to the writings of…Samuel P. Huntington” (Marks & Trapido 1989, p. 28). The Huntington thesis became the model for a state-centric reform process that began with the introduction of the new South African Constitution in 1983. What is surprising about the Huntington thesis, however, is how much of it continued to survive in National Party proposals as they approached the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) talks in December of 1991.

^[1]Gann and Duignan are two other Americans who have advocated a corporatist/consociational approach. Their approach is to put, “quiet pressure for change with the hope of gradually dismantling apartheid and creating a consociational, not a consensus society,” Gann and Duignan 1981, p. 1.

^[2]The speech was reprinted as Huntington (1981). All cites are from thisversion.

June 22, 1984

Traveled to Ulundi,Kwa Zulu and had an interview with Mr. H. Khumalo, Administrator, Inkatha National Office in Ulundi. He stressed his concern about violence. He was very anti-violence. He had a positive view of the possibilities of political change. He stressed the importance of communication, media and especially the role that Television might play in influencing white opinion. He said he was anti-United Democratic Front because the have rejected Inkatha.

 July 21, 1984
There is some discussion of the so called transfer issue or the “Ngwavuma and KaNgwane transfer problem”. At the time the transfer was announced, the magistrates offices in this area were localized. I was able to interview two of the homeland magisgrates. All of the whites were pulled out and Inkatha paid a great deal of attention to this area.

A great deal of Swazi transfer money from South Africa was said to be put into education, health and social services. The local population was the unexpected beneficiary of this. Below is the Ngwavuma River which forms a boundary with Swaziland and the area which was to be transferred.

Civil service personnel in the homelands often reflect the attitudes of the South African National Party value system. “These people are not ready; it will take a long time before they will evolve.” This value system may be in conflict with the political leadership within the homelands and this was certainly to be the case in KaNgwane. There remains a generally positive view of Buthelezi however in the Ngwavuma area.

June 22, 1984
Traveled to Ulundi,Kwa Zulu and had an interview with Mr. H. Khumalo, Administrator, Inkatha National Office in Ulundi. He stressed his concern about violence. He was very anti-violence. He had a positive view of the possibilities of political change. He stressed the importance of communication, media and especially the role that Television might play in influencing white opinion. He said he was anti-United Democratic Front because the have rejected Inkatha.

 July 21, 1984
There is some discussion of the so called transfer issue or the “Ngwavuma and KaNgwane transfer problem”. At the time the transfer was announced, the magistrates offices in this area were localized. I was able to interview two of the homeland magisgrates. All of the whites were pulled out and Inkatha paid a great deal of attention to this area.

1984: Willem De Klerk

One must not underestimate the influence of F. W. de Klerk’s brother Willem de Klerk. His book, De Klerk 1984, predicts many of the reforms of the De Klerk administration. Though sometimes inaccurate, polemical, and apology for National Party policy, the book describes the “enlightened” position of Afrikaner intellectuals in the 1980s. Willem de Klerk later resigned from the National Party to help form the opposition Democratic Party (DP). After his brother’s appointment as President, he resigned from the DP to serve as an informal advisor to his brother.

A great deal of Swazi transfer money from South Africa was said to be put into education, health and social services. The local population was the unexpected beneficiary of this. Below is the Ngwavuma River which forms a boundary with Swaziland and the area which was to be transferred.

Civil service personnel in the homelands often reflect the attitudes of the South African National Party value system. “These people are not ready; it will take a long time before they will evolve.” This value system may be in conflict with the political leadership within the homelands and this was certainly to be the case in KaNgwane. There remains a generally positive view of Buthelezi however in the Ngwavuma area.

1990:

John Kane-Berman

Political negotiations, for John Kane-Berman, were the end of the process of that change rather than the beginning. The new, non-racial South Africa was already there in 1989. The transfer to a post-apartheid government was an aftermath to what had already occurred through changes in the behavior patterns of South Africa’s people, black and white. The economy was rapidly integrating. Urbanization was the great equalizer for blacks and whites and made the negotiations process inevitable (Kane-Berman 1990b).

The retreat from immovable apartheid, Kane-Berman went on, pre-dated the outbreak of political violence in the 1980s. Instead, socio-economic changes were based on the need for skilled black labor when the surplus of skilled whites ended in 1970. The beginnings of reform, and the split between the reformists and the purists in the National Party, occurred in 1969 over the issue of an integrated visiting sports team. An attempt to accommodate black demands rather than resisting them began at this time when the surplus of whites ended. From 1970 to 1990, the changing socio-economic patterns in South Africa occurred as a result of the unyielding behavior patterns of hundreds of thousands of black South Africans as they resisted pass laws, influx control, and job reservation. Political changes followed. The “nation-building ideas of Aggrey Klaaste of the Sowetan newspaper [were] based on this principle” (Kane-Berman 1990b, p. 44).

1990:

Fanie Cloete

After the declaration of the state of emergency in mid-1986, the Department of Constitutional Development and Planning (and indirectly National Party reformers) were stripped of influence and respect (Swilling & Phillips 1989). By the end of 1988, the influence of reformers had reached a particularly low ebb as the state security apparatus, in an infamous case, removed innovative constitutional experts, Korbus Jordaan and Fanie Cloete, from office for security reasons (over the head of the then constitutional minister, Chris Heunis) (Interview with Cloete, 1990).

1990: Chris Fismer

In 1990, Chris Fismer was the Parliamentary Whip of the NP and a member of the “left wing” of the verligte group of the parliamentary caucus sometimes referred to as the “New Nats.”. His views on governance were shaped as much by black resistance as by the larger nationalism of the earlier generation of Afrikaner nationalists. After 1990:

The [National Party] caucus had a strong influence on the state President [F.W. de Klerk]. We [the caucus had the power to] select and in effect vote him out. The P.W. Botha example is clear here. P.W. did not move from the 1987 election but more than 50 percent of the caucus was new after 1987 (Interview with Fismer, 1992).

Fismer, balding, “slightly hesitant and bespectacled,” discussed his frustration with the Botha regime and its insensitivity to the realities of South Africa’s new politics (Harber & Ludman 1995, p. 38). Speaking of the ANC in an interview with one of the authors in 1992, Fismer opined, “The ANC has very capable people. It contains talented and shrewd negotiators.” Fismer was one of the rising stars of the party and went on to be F.W. de Klerk’s chief administrative aide in the crucial years of negotiations with the ANC. He later served in the Mandela cabinet during the period of NP participation in the Government of National Unity (GNU) and later went on to chair the South African Gambling Board.

Two years before non-racial elections, Fismer predicted that the NP and other allied groups would gain about 30 percent of the vote, the ANC 50 percent, Inkatha 10 percent and the Pan African Conference (PAC) and other splinter groups less than 5 percent (Harber & Ludman 1995).^[1]He concluded:

In terms of my generation’s role in politics, one must think not necessarily of the direction or control of the Executive but in terms of a broad coalition, or in constructive opposition. We must prepare for when we can participate but not necessarily be in power. One needs a different type of personality and style than was the case in the old days. We need to develop a history of coalition government and of finding partners (Interview with Fismer, 1992).

^[1]In fact the ANC received slightly less than 63 percent, the National Party slightly less than 21 percent, Inkatha 10.5 percent, and the Freedom Front 2.1 percent. No other party received more than 2 percent.

1990

Nelson Mandela

Political leaders such as Nelson Mandela reflected an Anglo-Methodism and a classically liberal education (Lodge 2003). At the same time, Mandela retained an admiration of the organization and structure of traditional African society and the ascription process of kinship. Mandela, brought up as a ward of a royal regent, is portrayed as having aristocratic or even royal status, but, according to Tom Lodge (2006b), is sincere in his belief in liberal institutions. His political style was defined by a convention of good manners, mutual respect, and conversational exchanges intersecting with a rhetoric of discourse.Lodge describes Mandela as being “culturally syncretic” (Lodge 2006b, p. 79).

The Victorian influence on the ANC continued throughout the twentieth century. Of Nelson Mandela, David Ottaway (1983, p. 22) has noted:

I was reminded of how much Nelson Mandela belonged to an older generation of African leaders, but with one notable difference–his old-fashioned, almost British aristocratic air. In his extreme politeness, and carefully constructed English, he seemed to have more in common with a European aristocrat than a traditional tribal chief.

Nelson Mandela (1994, p. 263) reflects more than a passing reference to a value system that continued to define the ANC for the first decade after 1990: “I confess to being something of an Anglophile. When I thought of Western Democracy and Freedom, I thought of the British Parliamentary system. In so many ways, the very model of the gentleman for me was an Englishman.”

After a breakfast meeting with an American academic, who he had just met on December 6, 1991, Mandela withdrew from the room thanking the academic repeatedly for the “help” that he was giving to the people of South Africa. He exited the room without turning his back on the academic (Picard, Research Diary, December 7, 1991). Reflecting on his demeanor, another observer has noted, Mandela was “relaxed, dignified, courteous to a fault.…”(Hain 1996, p. 178).

The Personality of Nelson Mandela

On December 6, 1991, Picardhad breakfast with Nelson Mandela in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he made a major speech on the negotiations process.^[1]What struck one about Mandela, even in 1991 (prior to three years of negotiations and a five year presidency)  was his age. He appeared to suffer from some short-term memory loss as would be normal for a person of 74. He reminisced about the 1950s throughout breakfast. He was fascinated by then Heinz CEO, Tony O’Reilly’s rugby achievements and remembered him scoring the goal that beat South Africa in 1955. “In those days,” he said, “we used to root against anyone who played against the Springboks.”

Mandela seemed genuinely impressed with the businessmen that he met in Pittsburgh, showing the empathy for which he is well known. He was well briefed about the University of Pittsburgh’s educational linkages in South Africa and the work that it was doing at the University of the Witwatersrand. He seemed genuinely grateful for it. He went out of his way to say that “he was genuinely honored to meet me as a representative of the University of Pittsburgh. When he left the room, he repeatedly thanked me profusely for the ‘help’ I was giving to South Africa” (Quote transcribed in Picard, Research Diary, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, December 6, 1991).

The three young people, Graham Bloch, University of Pittsburgh Ford Fellow (married to Cheryl Carolus, then of the ANC working group), Sibusiso Nkomo, and Renosi Mokate (the latter two were then at – Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and attached to Departments of Economics and Political Science respectively; Lincoln had a linkage with the University of Pittsburgh working on a capacity building project in South Africa) spoke freely if respectfully to Mandela (“Tata” or “Madiba”), talking to him of large and small things, marriages and births, etc.

The two women who accompanied him, Lindiwe Mabuza, the ANC representative in the U.S., and Barbara Masekela, his Chief of Staff, took care to ensure that he had what he needed (he would announce the separation from his wife, Winnie in April of 1992). They poured his tea and put food on his plate. There was a firmness to his presence,but it was not threatening. Mandela was impeccably courteous, a Victorian gentleman. He went out of his way to depreciate his own role in events and to make a visitor welcome. He apologized that he did not have more time. When he left to pack for the next stage of his trip he exited by backing out of the room so that he wouldn’t turn his back on me.

Mandela spoke of the day of his release and the crush of the crowd on the vehicle as it drove him out of Victor Verster Prison. As he put it, “I was afraid for Winnie. Here I had been in prison for 27 years and as I was being released we were going to die.” He spoke of the “likes” of Allan Boesak, a Capetown activist “who had never done a bit of work in his life,” getting out of the car to try to push the crowd away.

Mandela spoke with respect of Bishop Desmond Tutu who was “so magnificent on the day I was released.” The people around him treated him casually, teasing him about what he could and could not eat. They also teased him mercilessly about his inability to speak good Afrikaans (“it’s so difficult to understand Dada”) or Sesotho. They also congratulated him on his speech at the University of Pittsburgh, which was “very good, and not so boring as his usual speeches.” It was a strong speech, well thought through and designed to promote business interest in South Africa.

The role of personality in politics is difficult to analyze and the current effort here will not attempt to do so. Yet it remains clear that one cannot understand the nature of the negotiating process and international involvement in it without recognizing the particular domestic and international role that Nelson Mandela and his personal (and perceived) characteristics played in the transformation of South Africa. That said, issues and events would batter the negotiations process for more than three years before a tentative settlement could be reached.

Mandela always kept in touch with the politics of the Transkei traditional leadership, even during his 27 years in prison (Ellis & Sechaba 1992). This included the pro-ANC Chief Sabata and also his uncle and former mentor, President Matanzima. Mandela was active in the negotiations with the Transkei homeland leadership to arrange for the return of Sabata’s body to the Transkei in 1989. When he was released from prison he built a home and established a presence in the former homeland.

^[1]This section is based on Picard’s research diary and five encounters with ANC leader Nelson Mandela in Umtata Transkei in June of 1990, in twice in Pittsburgh in 1991 and two encounters in ANC headquarters, first on Saur Street in October of 1990 and later in Shell House in July of 1993.

Mandela on the Homelands

Kaiser Matanzima, paramount chief of Emigrant Thembuland, a sub-region of the Transkei, and patron and friend of his nephew, Nelson Mandela, became the symbol to most black South Africans of “collaborator” with the apartheid regime (Sanders & Southey 1998, p. 110). Matanzima’s role in South African history demonstrates the complexity of social and political relationships among South Africa’s small political elite.

Nelson Mandela’s personal relationship with Kaiser Mantanzima reflects this ambiguity and Mandela has described with great sensitivity the split between himself and his uncle (and longtime patron) who later became the first President of the Transkei (Mandela 1994). During this whole period in prison, Mandela continued to follow, and at times intervened in, the affairs of the Transkei and would communicate with Matanzima on them. At the same time, he opposed the homeland system and refused to be released in the Transkei even though this meant several more years in prison.

After the Transkei Bunga voted to transform itself into a territorial assembly, in preparation for the Transkei to be transformed into a Bantustan, Nelson Mandela wrote commentaries in the activist magazine, Fighting Talk in the late 1950s. providing an acute demonstration of the dilemmas the leadership of the ANC had in their approach to the homelands. In it he suggested that boycotting such bodies might be inappropriate. “Will participation in such bodies,” he said, “not serve as a means of maintaining connection and contact with the great masses of the people in the Reserves? Should these bodies not be used as platforms to expose the policies of the Nationalist Government, and to win the people over to the liberation movement?” (as discussed in Sampson 1999, pp. 97-98). This view was later rejected, after some consideration by the ANC exile leadership and Mandela accepted this.

Despite formal ANC policy, however, political links in the Transkei remained particularly fluid. There was discussion within the ANC over whether the organization should boycott homeland elections, especially in the Transkei. Mandela, again, opposed the boycott, arguing the movement should support an anti-apartheid party led by Victor Poto.

After his release from prison, and even during his period as President of South Africa, when Mandela was in his home village of Qunu, he was “deeply embroiled in the affairs of the tiny village and the wider area” of the Transkei (Steyn & Patta 2000, p. 129). He built a house in the Transkei, where he spent time every year. He is buried in Qunu. The former homelands, still the rural areas of South Africa remain important culturally and socially to the African political leadership of the ANC.

1991

I met Thabo Mbeki in June of 1991.  I was the keynote speaker at a conference on Affirmative Action at the Graduate School of Business of the University of the Witwatersrand.  Mbeki opened the conference.

Thabo Mbeki

Thabo Mbeki was born for leadership in the African National Congress (ANC). His father, Govan Mbeki was one of the triumvirate of younger leaders who inherited the leadership ofthe ANC in the 1950s. His mother Epainette was also an ANC activist. His primary and secondary education occurred in the Eastern Cape and he was twenty years of age when he went into exile in 1962.           

Mbeki, though pursuing his university degrees in the UK, was an activist in the ANC from the beginning of his exile. He was a key assistant to Oliver Tambo and eventually headed the vital International Affairs department of the ANC and played a key role in the pre-negotiations process between 1985 and 1990. Thabo Mbeki became one of the two Deputy Presidents in the Government of National Unity (GNU) in 1994 and continued to serve as Deputy President from 1996 to June 1999 when he was elected South Africa’s second post-apartheid president.

Mbeki and the ANC had to deal with the legacy of exile and distance that characterized the four decades between 1960 and 1990. As negotiations approached in 1990, the ANC leadership was concerned about a loss of social control in the country as a result of uncontrolled contacts between South Africans in the country and the ANC (Shubin 1999). After 1994, the military control style that the ANC had developed in exile had “become the mantra of the ANC in government: centralised decision-making, unquestioned loyalty, no public criticism and preordained election of leaders” (Gumede 2007, p. 292).

Mbeki has long been a lightning rod for criticism. His advocacy for black economic empowerment led critics (and some supporters) to consider him an “Africanist” who advocated for strong affirmative action on black empowerment. He has also been a strong supporter of African capitalism and the strengthening of a black middle class. Some of his critics have suggested that he was a neo-liberal following the Washington consensus on economic policy, that of neo-classical liberalism embracing the privatization movement and the use of contracting out of government activities.

Mbeki during his nine years as president was a vociferous reader and an avid consumer of the internet system. His long-term academic interest, from his days at university, was the evolution of societies from a historical perspective. His world view remained constant over the years, but did not have a specific ideology prior to the broad development of his African renaissance value system. According to Mark Gevisser (2009b, p. 184), “Mbeki attempted to marry his materialist understanding of history with both the liberal notions of individual agency he had acquired in Western Europe and his heartfelt commitment to the nationalist ideal of self-determination he had experienced in post-independence Africa.” Mbeki, as President, according to Gevisser, searched for technical and managerial solutions in making policy decisions.

Some feared that his upbringing would impact upon his style of government. Because of the political situation in South Africa during the apartheid period, and his parents’ activism, Mbeki was said to have “had a lonely and largely loveless childhood followed by an insecure life in exile” (Johnson 1999, p. x). As a result, it seemed, to his critics, that he could be cold, stubborn, and vitriolic in his disapproval of opportunists challenging his leadership. He was, according to Shaun Johnson (1999, p. x), “a man deeply damaged by the apartheid era, who has paid a profound psychological price and has to fight… to control his own bitterness.” Many of his critics labeled him cold, rigid, and authoritarian.

1993

Johan Heyns

Professor Johan Heyns has stressed the importance of Mandela’s courtesy in his reconciliation role after 1990. Heyns, former moderator of the Dutch Reform Church, known as the “National Party at Prayer,” led the church away from apartheid in the late 1980s. Courtesy has been one of Mandela’s trademarks he concluded. As one of Mandela’s former security officers has put it, “A product of his generation, chivalry was second nature to the President. He was a peculiar mix of Victorian gentleman and African royalty” (Patta 2000, p. 8).

Heyns attributed Mandela’s conciliatory nature towards Afrikaners and whites to the cultural influences of nineteenth century missionaries. After a 1991 interview that reflected the fragility of black-white relationships in South Africa, Heyns said privately, in a whispered voice, “You know what Mandela once told me? South African Blacks are the most developed on the continent because of our long contact with whites”(Picard, Research Diary, June 6, 1991).Heyns (who was assassinated in 1994 by members of the far right incensed by his support for negotiations) reflected the perception of many whites in South Africa, that assimilation explained much of the difference between their own country and the rest of Africa.

2001

Julius Malema

Julius Malema began his involvement with politics within the ANCYL at a young age, becoming an unofficial child fighter for the MK in 1990. He rose through the ranks of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and the ANCYL, becoming the president of COSAS in 2001, the Provincial Secretary of the ANCYL in 2003, and the President of the ANCYL in 2008. Alongside, and because of, his rise to power, the ANCYL found an influential place within the ANC (Forde 2011). Malema is said to be a master of the political process and specifically of inciting the involvement of young Africans in politics. He used populist rantings against the white population of South Africa to draw in young and increasingly unemployed voters and called, specifically, for the nationalization of the mines, in spite of the ANC continual denial of this as government policy (“The rise of Julius Malema” 2011). Malema’s ability to draw in young voters was a support for Zuma at the time of his campaign and during his court battles on racketeering and corruption, but the relationship between Malema and his followers and Zuma, in particular, would sour soon after the election, resulting in a new type of opposition for the ANC.

Julius Malema began his involvement with politics within the ANCYL at a young age, becoming an unofficial child fighter for the MK in 1990. He rose through the ranks of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and the ANCYL, becoming the president of COSAS in 2001, the Provincial Secretary of the ANCYL in 2003, and the President of the ANCYL in 2008. Alongside, and because of, his rise to power, the ANCYL found an influential place within the ANC (Forde 2011).

Malema is said to be a master of the political process and specifically of inciting the involvement of young Africans in politics. He used populist rantings against the white population of South Africa to draw in young and increasingly unemployed voters and called, specifically, for the nationalization of the mines, in spite of the ANC continual denial of this as government policy (“The rise of Julius Malema” 2011). Malema’s ability to draw in young voters was a support for Zuma at the time of his campaign and during his court battles on racketeering and corruption, but the relationship between Malema and his followers and Zuma, in particular, would sour soon after the election, resulting in a new type of opposition for the ANC.

2009

Jacob Zuma

In order to fully understand the shift from Mbeki to Zuma, it is useful to start with the then new president’s personal background. Unlike Thabo Mbeki, who came from a politically engaged family and a formal British higher education, Jacob Zuma came from a poor family and a rural area of Zululand and had almost no formal education (Gordin 2008). This fact reflects much of the difference in leadership style of the two presidents.

Where Thabo Mbeki was often characterized as controlling every aspect of the governing process, the Zuma approach was often seen as “anti-intellectual.” He has little interest in the details of policy and is content to look to others for advice. (Calland 2013; Johnson 2015). On the other hand, “His popularity [was] also rooted in a public persona constructed as a sometimes slightly gormless [stupid, dull or clumsy], but warm and accessible human being in personality and political belief” (Piper & Matisonn 2009, pp. 143-157). He was “viewed as a master of political theatre which appeals to ‘the masses’, his rallies a colourful mixture of homilies, parables, dancing and song” (Southall 2009, pp. 317-333).

There is little written about Zuma’s early years. Gordin (2008) provides us with the only Zuma biography to date and includes some information about his early years with the ANC. He was born into the Zulu clan at Nkandla and was an “impoverished son of the soil – from a family of peasants” (p. 3). Zuma’s involvement with the ANC began in 1959 when he was 17 and started working with the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), the forerunner to Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). After trying to cross the border to Botswana (then Bechuanaland) in 1963 with the ANC military group Umkhono weSizwe (MK), he was arrested and sentenced to ten years on Robben Island for conspiring to overthrow the government and for sabotage. It was in prison that his relationship with the ANC was strengthened. Gordin continues (2008, p.22):

Zuma might have come to Robben Island informed only by general political notions learned at trade union meetings in Durban, but he left the island with a clarified and focused political understanding; a resolute belief that only the ANC had the right solutions to the problems bedeviling South Africa; and an unshakable commitment to the ANC and to the discipline and ways of dealing with the struggle to which the party subscribed.

This commitment to the ANC above all remained evident in Zuma’s actions as military cadre, political leader and president and continued to fuse the notion of party and state in his persona (Booysen 2015).

After his release from prison in 1974, there is less information on Zuma’s ANC activities. Most important for understanding his rise to power, however, Zuma went in exile first in Swaziland and then in Mozambique. It was during this time that he first worked with Thabo Mbeki, who trained Zuma both in combat and diplomatic skills. Zuma, actively involved with MK, also became a part of the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in 1977. He participated in meetings with academics and activists along with Mbeki between 1987 and 1990, leading up to the February 2 announcement (Gordin 2008).

Upon returning to South Africa in 1990, he was elected as the ANC chair of the southern Natal region. Here, he worked to quell the violence in the region and bring the Inkatha Freedom Party(IFP) and ANC together in number of peace accords. He was seen as having an influence in bringing many “ordinary rural folk” in the region over to the ANC, using “the symbols of Zulu culture for political ends” (Ibid, pp. 52-55).According to Tom Lodge, his rural upbringing and polygamous household was actually an advantage, allowing him to convince Inkatha leaders that Zulu culture would be respected within the ANC (Lodge 2009). Zuma rose through the ANC ranks over the next years, beginning with his role as Deputy Secretary General of the ANC in 1991, moving to National Chairperson in 1994, then Deputy President in 1997, and finally President of the ANC in 2007 (Booysen 2015).