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The Legacy of Apartheid: Racial Inequalities in the New South Africa

DONALD J. TREIMAN

in Unequal Chances: Ethnic Minorities in Western Labour Markets

In South Africa, 350 years of apartheid practice and fifty years of concerted apartheid policy have created racial inequalities in socio-economic position larger than in any other nation in the ... More

In South Africa, 350 years of apartheid practice and fifty years of concerted apartheid policy have created racial inequalities in socio-economic position larger than in any other nation in the world. Whites, who constitute 11 percent of the population, enjoy levels of education, occupational status, and income similar and in many respects superior to those of the industrially developed nations of Europe and the British diaspora. Within the white population, however, there is a sharp distinction between the one-third of English origin and the two-thirds of Afrikaner origin. Despite apartheid policies explicitly designed to improve the lot of Afrikaners at the expense of non-whites, the historical difference between the two groups continues to be seen in socio-economic differences at the end of the twentieth century. Ethnic penalties are especially large for people with lower levels of education. Racial differences in income are large, even among the well educated and those working in similar occupations.Less

Introduction

Simon J. Potter

in News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System 1876-1922

This chapter investigates the imperial integration and traces its emergence during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It focuses on Britain and the settler colonies — known to contemporaries as ... More

This chapter investigates the imperial integration and traces its emergence during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It focuses on Britain and the settler colonies — known to contemporaries as Dominions — of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. It shows that the distinct privileged position occupied by the Dominions in the imperial hierarchy, as component parts of what some contemporaries saw as a ‘Great Britain’. ‘Old Commonwealth’, or ‘British world’, united by a common sense of Britishness. It highlights connections between the English-language press in Britain and the colonies of settlement, but does not deny that French Canadian or Afrikaner newspapers, or papers in India and the so-called Crown colonies had an important role to play in the life of the British Empire. It aims to give a fuller and more revealing perspective on the history of the press in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Britain.Less

Rhodesia 1890–1980: ‘The Lost Dominion’

Donal Lowry

in Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas

The Natalians established a tightly knit society in Natal, similar to British settlements elsewhere in the empire. Predominantly English and middle‐class and imbued with concepts of white racial and ... More

The Natalians established a tightly knit society in Natal, similar to British settlements elsewhere in the empire. Predominantly English and middle‐class and imbued with concepts of white racial and cultural supremacy, their sense of identity was informed by Britishness. Although outnumbered by Zulus, the Natalians dominated the colony, receiving responsible government in 1893. From 1910, Natal was a province of the Union of South Africa and until 1961 the Natalians fought unsuccessfully to protect themselves and their British heritage from Afrikaner domination. Increasingly defined by what they were against rather than what they were, they developed into an idiosyncratic, separatist and impotent community with their identity defined by their province. With the advent of democracy in 1994, the Natalians lost political control of the province, undermining their sense of identity. Yet, unlike other British communities in this volume, few Natalians have gone into exile, reflecting deep roots sunk in Natal's soil.Less

“The weakness of some …”: Afrikaner civil religion and racial paternalism

Ivan Evans

in Cultures of Violence: Lynching and Racial Killing in South Africa and the American South

This chapter shows that Afrikaners developed a theology that fused a virulent racism to a ‘strong state’ which they successfully manipulated to address the ‘poor white problem’. Afrikaners, in other ... More

This chapter shows that Afrikaners developed a theology that fused a virulent racism to a ‘strong state’ which they successfully manipulated to address the ‘poor white problem’. Afrikaners, in other words, sought to protect impoverished whites by making Social Gospelism the very business of the state itself.Less

Globals, Locals, and Mobals

Harm De Blij

in The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape

Earth may be a planet of shrinking functional distances, but it remains a world of staggering situational differences. From the uneven distribution of natural ... More

Earth may be a planet of shrinking functional distances, but it remains a world of staggering situational differences. From the uneven distribution of natural resources to the unequal availability of opportunity, place remains a powerful arbitrator. Many hundreds of millions of farmers in river basins of Asia and Africa live their lives much as their distant ancestors did, still remote from the forces of globalization, children as well as adults still at high personal risk and great material disadvantage. Tens of millions of habitants of isolated mountain valleys from the Andes to the Balkans and from the Caucasus to Kashmir are as bound to their isolated abodes as their forebears were. Of the seven billion current passengers on Cruiseship Earth, the overwhelming majority (the myth of mass migration notwithstanding) will die very near the cabin in which they were born. In their lifetimes, this vast majority will have worn the garb, spoken the language, professed the faith, shared the health conditions, absorbed the education, acquired the attitudes, and inherited the legacy that constitutes the power of place: the accumulated geography whose formative imprint still dominates the planet. The regional impress of poverty continues to trap countless millions who are and will be born into it and who, globalization notwithstanding, cannot escape it. The “wealth gap” between the fortunate and the less fortunate, still largely a matter of chance and destiny, evinces a widening range resulting from the perpetuation of privilege and power in the so-called global “core” and its international tentacles. Those disparities, represented at all levels of scale, will entail increasing risk in a world of rising anger and weapons of growing destructive efficiency. At the same time, the notion that the world, if not “flat,” is flattening under the impress of globalization is gaining traction. As noted in the preface, the idea that diversities of place continue to play a key role in shaping humanity’s variegated mosaic tends to be dismissed by globalizers who see an increasingly homogenized and borderless world. “Flatness” is becoming an assumption, not merely a prospect, as implied by the titles of numerous books and articles of recent vintage (Fung et al., 2008). Less

Rian Malan’s: My Traitor’s Heart

Gal Beckerman

in Second Read: Writers Look Back at Classic Works of Reportage

This essay reviews the book My Traitor's Heart, by Rian Malan. First published in 1990, My Traitor's Heart is an autobiographical account of Malan's return to South Africa from several years of ... More

This essay reviews the book My Traitor's Heart, by Rian Malan. First published in 1990, My Traitor's Heart is an autobiographical account of Malan's return to South Africa from several years of exile. Malan's project was no different from that of fellow South African writer J. M. Coetzee. He meant to answer the question posed in his epigraph: “How do I live in this strange place?” My Traitor's Heart was as much the result of Malan's character as Coetzee's work was the result of his. Malan wrote his book at the age of thirty-five, after years of traveling the world and living a hobo's existence. He belongs to a prominent Afrikaner clan that included Daniel François Malan, the South African prime minister who was a chief architect of apartheid.Less

The challenge of Afrikaans language rights in South African education

Michael Bishop

in Human Rights and Equality in Education: Comparative Perspectives on the Right to Education for Minorities and Disadvantaged Groups

This chapter explores how the unique South African context affects the way one evaluates the right to own-language education of the White Afrikaans minority. International human rights law affords ... More

This chapter explores how the unique South African context affects the way one evaluates the right to own-language education of the White Afrikaans minority. International human rights law affords linguistic minorities the right to education in the language of their choice. However, for one particular minority community, the Afrikaners, the protection of that right is complicated by South Africa's history of racial inequality, particularly in the area of education. As such, the chapter argues that it is not possible to apply the ordinary principles concerning minority languages to Afrikaans. However, that does not mean that Afrikaners are not entitled to some protection for their language. Rather, it requires looking for compromises and innovative solutions that acknowledge both the position of privilege built on a history of racial discrimination and the legitimate demand for protecting Afrikaans-language education.Less

Afrikaner and Französen

Derek R. Mallett

in Hitler's Generals in America: Nazi POWs and Allied Military Intelligence

Chapter 1 relates the Allied capture of the German general officers who were eventually held as prisoners of war in the United States. The chapter begins with the first large group of generals who ... More

Chapter 1 relates the Allied capture of the German general officers who were eventually held as prisoners of war in the United States. The chapter begins with the first large group of generals who surrendered in Tunisia; hence the captors referred to their prisoners as Afrikaner. The chapter proceeds to recount the capture of the next large group of German generals to fall into Western Allied hands, the Französen, those captured following the successful Allied invasion of northwest France. The chapter examines the British relationship with these men, the interrelations of the prisoners themselves, and British perceptions of the prisoners’ respective political loyalties. It serves as a lens of comparison through which the American treatment of these prisoners can be viewed.Less

Forgeries of History: The Poor White Study

Tiffany Willoughby-Herard

in Waste of a White Skin

“Forgeries of History: The Poor White Study” dispenses with the key frames put forward within the Poor White Study in order to situate the failure of domestic policy in South Africa to shore up white ... More

“Forgeries of History: The Poor White Study” dispenses with the key frames put forward within the Poor White Study in order to situate the failure of domestic policy in South Africa to shore up white wages and white quality of life for poor whites. If domestic South African civic associations and state pressure could not secure the global color line, in what ways might other forces—especially race-relations technicians like E. G. Malherbe—catalyze a transformation in the conditions of the South African racial labor hierarchy?Less

The Visual Culture of White Poverty as the History of South Africa and the United States: Repetition, Rediscovery, Playing with Whiteness

Tiffany Willoughby-Herard

in Waste of a White Skin

“The Visual Culture of White Poverty as the History of South Africa and the United States: Repetition, Rediscovery, Playing with Whiteness,” examines the depictions of poor whites to demonstrate how ... More

“The Visual Culture of White Poverty as the History of South Africa and the United States: Repetition, Rediscovery, Playing with Whiteness,” examines the depictions of poor whites to demonstrate how “vulnerable whiteness” and “whiteness in Africa” were deployed in theater, early cinema, political cartoons, and ethnographic photography. The chapter considers the enduring nature of representations of impoverished whites as a social and political crisis and as threat for the fit white nation. Afrikaner Nationalism produced a massive archive of visual cultural projections, including exemplars by E. G. Malherbe, Daniel Cornelis Boonzaier, J. F. W. Grosskopf, and Roger Ballen.Less

In the Absence of Television

in Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid

This chapter briefly sketches the mediascape of South Africa prior to the first fence post—television's introduction. By examining the positions of political parties and the resistance movements ... More

This chapter briefly sketches the mediascape of South Africa prior to the first fence post—television's introduction. By examining the positions of political parties and the resistance movements regarding television, it shows how Afrikaner political identifications imbued television with qualities that enforced its structured absence and perpetuated a separation of nearly all aspects of life between Black and White South Africans. While this absence was an explicit attempt on the part of the apartheid regime to resist transnational media flows—particularly representations of the civil rights movement in the United States—the denial of television exacerbated many White South Africans' sense of exclusion from the international community. The chapter also includes an overview of other forms of media in South Africa at the time and an analysis of why the apartheid regime finally allowed television to enter the country.Less

Orangists in a red empire: salutations from a Dutch queen’s supporters in a British South Africa

Susie Protschky

in Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empires

In 1910 the Union of South Africa became a British Dominion. However, rather than proclaim loyalty to the British monarch–the titular head of the British empire–some South Africans, notably those who ... More

In 1910 the Union of South Africa became a British Dominion. However, rather than proclaim loyalty to the British monarch–the titular head of the British empire–some South Africans, notably those who identified as Afrikaners or Netherlanders, professed loyalty to the monarch of a rival empire, the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina. This chapter examines oorkonden (decorative letters) sent to Wilhelmina from her supporters in South Africa throughout her reign (1898–1948). The letters provide new evidence of how links with a Dutch colonial past that pre-dated British colonisation were revived by a white community reeling from defeat in the South African War (1899–1902), who continued to contest certain modes of their integration into a British imperium. The letters also suggest the particular appeal of a female king to Afrikaner women in a nascent women’s movement. Finally, the letters reveal the persistence of a notional ‘Dutch world’ that exceeded the bounds of the Netherlands’ formal empire in the early twentieth century.Less

Abroad: Loyalism in comparative context

Richard Reed

in Paramilitary loyalism: Identity and change

This final chapter draws on many of the themes developed in the previous sections in the context of a number of other international groups known for extremist behaviour and views. This work advances ... More

This final chapter draws on many of the themes developed in the previous sections in the context of a number of other international groups known for extremist behaviour and views. This work advances some of the author’s recent research on historical pro-state groups in South Africa, Serb paramilitaries in the former Yugoslavia and far-right groups of the militia and patriot movements in the United States and Neo-Nazi groups in Germany and the UK. The main intention of this chapter is to ‘normalise’ loyalism, to demonstrate that the defining themes of the loyalist story are not unique to loyalism, but have been echoed in many other contexts, and thus to strengthen the argument that we need to understand the story of loyalism as a human story and not something exceptional. The comparisons are also intended to reinforce some of the key social, cultural and historical factors which influence extremist or violent behaviour in all of these contexts.Less

The Aftermath of War

John Boje

in An Imperfect Occupation: Enduring the South African War

This chapter examines the aftermath of the South African War, focusing on the period from the conclusion of peace, when Lord (Horatio) Kitchener shook hands with the Boer delegates and pledged, “We ... More

This chapter examines the aftermath of the South African War, focusing on the period from the conclusion of peace, when Lord (Horatio) Kitchener shook hands with the Boer delegates and pledged, “We are good friends now,” to the establishment of the National Party with anti-British and anti-black bias. The chapter begins with a discussion of the postwar reconstruction, the reintegration of hendsoppers (surrendered Boers) and joiners, and the consolidation of Afrikaners’ national identity. It then considers the role of the Dutch Reformed Church in rebuilding community, along with the political resurgence of the adversaries of “protected burghers” in the Free State. It also looks at the 1914 rebellion that articulated a republican protest against the modernizing state. Finally, it highlights the postwar trauma suffered by blacks, their political marginalization, and the establishment of the African National Congress (ANC).Less