Apartheid & Intl Org

Richard E Bissell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429726552
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The historical controversy over South Africa's policy of apartheid has not been without effect on that country's participation and status in the international system. The black African states have been particularly inclined to use the public forums of intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations and the specialized agencies to press f

1
Origins of the International Dispute over Apartheid

South Africa has traditionally seemed an anomaly to Western civilization: hot in December, cold in July, and blooming with spring flowers in October. It is an outpost of industrialization in a largely underdeveloped part of the world. And it pursues a policy of racial segregation, at a time when the rest of the world is moving in the direction of colorblind societies. The result, as is well known, has been conflict and tension between South Africa and the rest of the world, particularly over its racial policies, collectively known as apartheid.

We need not linger long on the nature of apartheid. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines it as “the policy of strict racial segregation and discrimination against the native Negroes and other coloured peoples as practiced in South Africa.” More suggestive of the word’s connotations, however, is the literal translation of the Afrikaans word apartheid, which means apartness. The racial policies that we call apartheid are in fact simply means to ensure the separation of the races, that separation being a moral or ethical value accepted by many South Africans. These racial policies touch upon all aspects of life in South Africa, and are recognized by most as not being ends in themselves.

The origins of South Africa’s present racial policies antedate this century. The colonial traditions of Holland and Great Britain included varying forms of racial discrimination, and after formal slavery was banned in 1834, it was succeeded by other forms of white supremacy.

Many factors conditioned the settlers of southern Africa in the direction of apartheid. In the nineteenth century, much of the most “advanced” thought in all of the world was devoted to demonstrating the irreconcilability of different cultures. And in the resulting contest between cultures, it was natural that the social Darwinism of the latter part of the nineteenth century was used to justify the exploitation of the non-white peoples in southern Africa.

A second factor in the growth of apartheid as an accepted value was the chronology of the arrival of racial groups in southern Africa. When the Dutch settlement was established at the Cape in 1652, the only native peoples present were Hottentots and Bushmen in scattered, very small villages. The Hottentots gradually disappeared as a result of demographic pressures and diseases brought in by the Dutch, so that today the only group left with better claims on the Cape region than the Dutch is the Kalahari Bushman society of the northern Cape Province. The white settlers did not encounter organized groups of Bantu tribesmen until areas inland were occupied in the nineteenth century. In fact, Bantu groups were in a long-term process of migration southwards, and they could not have arrived in the territory of what is today South Africa much before the Dutch. Thus the Boer farmers of the nineteenth century felt little compunction about competing with the Bantu tribes, and, later, excluding them from the fertile lands of the Transvaal. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that the South African government continues to describe the black population as “natives” in its legislation, as if to concede some form of right of prior presence to the black population.

A third factor was the value of self-reliance, built into early Boer society, and cultivated as a complement to apartheid. The Boer settlers did not use many slaves. They were fiercely independent, and relied to a large degree upon their families for farm labor. In that way, they avoided dependence upon black labor, and eschewed contact with the black tribes. The ethic of self-reliance was difficult to maintain after diamonds were discovered at Kimberley in 1866, for a great deal of human labor was required for their recovery. British entrepreneurs, with ample sources of capital and little reluctance about using native labor, naturally took the lead in exploiting the mineral riches of the Transvaal.

The fourth important factor that impelled South Africa toward an acceptance of apartheid was the demographic reality of four roughly identifiable racial groups (native, white, coloured,^* Asian), of which the whites were only the second largest. Several events made the whites sensitive to that reality. The first Parliament in Cape Colony met in 1854, and self-government was granted to that colony in 1872. It was apparent that universal suffrage would result in a loss of power for the white political groupings. As they moved toward a modern industrialized society, too, the whites of South Africa found that they could avoid dealing with all non-whites as an aggregate unit. In other words, the “divide and rule” policy of British colonialism was particularly appropriate in South Africa. The coloured population was dependent upon the whites for its cultural identity, whereas the Asian and Bantu groups boasted many leaders intent on maintaining traditional cultures, kinship ties, and political structures. Thus a four-way division of the population was a logical policy for the ruling white groups to embrace, using the coloured population as allies in keeping the Bantus and Asians separate.

The description of these four factors from the colonial period is not meant to exclude others that influenced the development of apartheid. Indeed, traditional analyses of apartheid have dwelt upon the Calvinist religion that dominated the Africaners’ lives, and Marxixt analyses have dwelt upon economic factors, with an emphasis on the exploitation of the black masses.¹ Both approaches have some validity but have generally been overstated because of a need for an ideological explanation of the development of South Africa’s extraordinary racial policies.

The evolution of the structure of South African law to its present inclusion of apartheid legislation in all aspects has been gradual. It is true that the word apartheid has been used only by the National Party, in power since 1948, but the racial policies of apartheid have been in effect for centuries. What the National Party rule has been notable for is a willingness to voice its commitment to white supremacy. Previous governments had described themselves as trustees for the black peoples, within one South African nation. The National Party has dropped all pretense of favoring eventual integration of racial groups. Of salience, then, are the means by which the successive governments of South Africa have maintained the separate and inferior status of non-white citizens.

Political rights of non-whites have traditionally been restricted. After 1854, non-whites had the right to vote only in the Cape Province, and even there they did not have the right to sit in Parliament after the South Africa Act of 1909. The franchise was limited for all races, however, for under the Parliamentary Registration Act of 1887 and the Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892, voting qualifications in the Cape had been raised, with the object of excluding both non-whites and poor white Afrikaaner farmers.² Under the so-called “entrenched clauses” of the South Africa Act of 1909, non-whites were assured the maintenance of their existing political rights unless unusual circumstances should arise. Until the crisis of 1951 arose over that issue, only symbolic damage was done to non-white political rights, as in the Representation of Natives Act of 1936 and the Indian Representation Act of 1946.

In 1951, the issue of non-white political rights precipitated a serious constitutional crisis.³ The government forced through the Parliament a Separate Representation of Voters Act, which changed the method of black representation in Parliament. Such a move was in direct contravention of the South Africa Act of 1909, since the Voters Act carried by a simple majority and not by a two-thirds majority. The crisis eventually tested the role of the South Africa Appeals Court as a judicial review body independent of the Parliament, when the court judged the act to be unconstitutional. The constitutional question was not resolved for several years,⁴ but in the process the non-white voters lost their representatives in the Union Parliament.

The thrust of South African legislation has thus been in the direction of ending all political rights for non-whites. The major black parties, the African National Congress and the Pan-African Congress, were banned in 1960, and even the Natives Representative Council, composed of government-appointed chiefs, has been abolished.

Related to political rights are various activities necessary to a free political system, and they have also been limited. Under the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, the Minister of Justice was given the power to ban organizations, newspapers, periodicals, gatherings, or persons that threatened public order.⁵ The government obtained even, wider rights under the Public Safety Act of 1953 and the Criminal Laws Amendment Act of 195S, under which the maximum penalty for breaking a law to protest that law was increased to a £300 fine, three years’ imprisonment, and ten lashes. In this way, the avenues of legitimate protest became severely restricted, for white and non-white alike.

Alterations in the system of justice and prison management were related to the perceived need for greater public order. The government has followed two lines in dealing with black South Africans. On the one hand, it has attempted to rejuvenate traditional tribal institutions of justice.⁶ On the other hand, however, as many blacks have refused to accept judgments of the Native Courts, the burden has inevitably fallen on the regular court system of South Africa. Under white justice in South Africa, the black citizens have fared badly, and yet, in another sense, they have found their principal protector in the white society. In the-latter sense, the judges at the lowest level often dismiss petty charges against blacks; after all, the prisons are overcrowded and fines are often uncollectable. For that reason the judiciary is sometimes considered the non-whites’ best friend in South Africa.

In general, however, non-whites are not equal with whites before the law. Laws of detention have been used almost exclusively against blacks. The General Law Amendment Act of 1966 provides for interrogation and detention of up to fourteen days. The government, however, found that provision inadequate and obtained the Terrorism Act of 1967, which provides for indefinite detention. The latter act is supposed to be used only when the detainee is a suspected terrorist or has information about terrorists; it has clearly been overused, although its use is declining. In 1963, about 3,400 men and women were held under various detention laws,⁷ and the annual figure is now in the hundreds.⁸

Prison sentences and the death penalty seem to be imposed selectively on the blacks, judging from ample documentation on these issues.⁹ One remarkable illustration of the non-whites’ situation lies in the 1970 statistics on persons shot by police in the line of duty:¹⁰

	Killed	Wounded
White	2	5
Coloured	15	51
Black	37	93

The statistics for total numbers of sentenced prisoners admitted to prison during 1970 show a similar pattern:¹¹

	Male	Female	Total
White	7,906	502	8,408
Asian & Coloured	55,344	11,385	66,729
Black	335,012	74,512	409,524

Rather than speculate upon the reasons for the seeming proclivity of the non-white population to run afoul of the law, suffice it to say that the penalties of the law fall more heavily on non-white than white citizens. The burden of the law is even clearer in the statutory limitations on the social and economic rights of non-whites.

Central to a person’s social rights in South Africa is the provision of the Population Registration Act of 1950 that requires the classification of every individual as to race and, if applicable, tribe. It is on the basis of a person’s classification as white, Asian, coloured, or native that the quality of his existence depends. This act has been the basis of continuing disputes in the courts, as the individual, not the state, is required to furnish the proof for a change in classification. Thus, a coloured person who believes himself to be white must provide an irrefutable genealogy for the courts. Successful appeals are rare, since sufficiently complete birth records are lacking in many parts of South Africa.

The effort to preserve the purity and separateness of the white race has included measures to prevent the birth of more children from unions of whites with non-whites. As early as 1927, the Immorality Act prohibited sexual contact between whites and Africans. Under National Party rule, the government went further and banned all racial intermarriage, as well as any sexual contact between whites and non-whites, in the Immorality Act of 1950 and the Mixed Marriages Act of 1949. These acts have been fully implemented, and now even apply to South African male citizens outside South Africa.¹² The limitations on behavior outside South Africa have been consistently ignored, however.

Race classifications were also basic to the reduction of contact between the races. Most obviously, segregation has been imposed in public places. The Railways and Harbours Amendment ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. Origins of the International Dispute over Apartheid
• 2. From International Concern to Increasing African Opposition
• 3. OAU Momentum and the Retreat of South Africa
• 4. Counterattack by the South Africans
• 5. A Diplomatic Plateau
• 6. From the Present to the Future
• A Note on Sources
• Notes
• List of Books Written under the Auspices of the Center of International Studies, Princeton University
• Index