Discussion Board 6 - Paper Answers

After reviewing this week’s material, answer the following questions. Make sure your answers show direct reflection on the assigned materials. Your responses should be 4-5 sentences long.

1. Now that you are learning more about apartheid in South Africa, what similarities and differences do you see between apartheid and Jim Crow segregation laws in the U.S.?

2. Why do you think it was so important to teach young white South Africans about the apartheid system? How were young South Africans taught to follow, enforce, and uphold apartheid?

Apartheid – September 30, 1985 – Video – Films On Demand (indstate.edu)

The Heyday of Apartheid

The National Party retained control of government from 1948 until
1994, and the history of South Africa in the second half of the twentieth
century was dominated by apartheid and the resistance it evoked. But
apartheid was not static or monolithic. Each decade, broadly speaking, was
marked by differences in both the content and the implementation of the
policy, as well as in ways of resistance. In this chapter we shall examine
these changes in the heyday of apartheid between the 1950s and the 1976
Soweto revolt.

The 1950s: constructing apartheid

During the first decade of National Party government, a barrage of legisla-
tion codified and extended racial discrimination. As we have seen, much
of this had precedents in segregationist laws and practices earlier in the
century, but from the late 1940s the partial breakdown of segregation that
had taken place during the years of the Second World War was reversed,
and legislative discrimination was taken much further than before.

The cornerstone of apartheid was the division of all South Africans by
race. Malan thus moved early to ensure the compartmentalization of the
population. The prohibition of ‘mixed marriages’ (1949) and the Immorality
Act (1950) extended the existing ban on sex between whites and Africans
outside marriage to prohibit all sexual contact between whites and other
South Africans, including Indians and coloreds. Racial division in the
future was the goal. And the Population Registration Act of the same year

The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Apartheid, Democracy, Fifth Edition.
Nigel Worden.
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Worden, N. (2012). The making of modern south africa : Conquest, apartheid, democracy. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 105

enforced the classification of people into four racial categories: white,
colored, ‘Asiatic’ (Indian) and ‘Native’ (later ‘Bantu’ or African).

In subsequent years this rigid schema was extended to virtually every
sphere of human activity. Residential segregation had existed in some parts
of the country since the earlier part of the century, but the Group Areas
Act (1950) extended the principle of separate racial residential areas on a
comprehensive and compulsory basis (Mabin 1992). Its application was
particularly felt in the cities, where forced removals were often justified by
policies of slum clearance and coincided with modernist theories of town
planning that involved massive urban restructuring (Parnell and Mabin
1995). With such justifications, Indian residents were moved out of the
centre of Pretoria and Durban. Many colored inhabitants of Cape Town
suburbs were relocated in segregated areas on the fringes of the city: plans
for the demolition of the central District Six area had in fact been formu-
lated before the Second World War (Bickford-Smith et al. 1999: 152–4). In
1954 the Natives Resettlement Act gave the state the power to override local
municipalities and forcibly remove Africans to separate townships. Some
of the first casualties were the African freehold areas of western Johannesburg
such as Sophiatown, whose inhabitants were relocated to the new township
at Soweto in 1955.

The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953) enforced social seg-
regation in all public amenities, such as transport, cinemas, restaurants and
sports facilities. And educational apartheid was enforced in schools (1953),
technical colleges (1955) and universities (1959). African schooling was still
neither free nor compulsory, as it was for whites. Certainly, educational
provision for Africans before this period had been unequal and most gov-
ernment schools separated white and African pupils. However, the Bantu
Education Act (1953) brought all African schools under the control of the
Department of Native Affairs, thus phasing out the independent mission-
ary institutions which had previously led the field in African education and
were viewed as breeding grounds for African independent thinking and
protest. The Act imposed a uniform curriculum which stressed separate
‘Bantu culture’ and deliberately prepared students for little more than
manual labor. Verwoerd, then Minister of Native Affairs, commented that
many previous educators of Africans ‘misled them by showing them the
green pastures of European society in which they are not allowed to graze’
(Christie and Collins 1984: 173).

White political monopoly of power was further tightened in the early
1950s. The advisory Natives Representative Council, set up in 1936, was

Worden, N. (2012). The making of modern south africa : Conquest, apartheid, democracy. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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106 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

abolished. The Bantu Authorities Act (1951) replaced it with government-
approved chiefs in the reserves, but made no provision for the representa-
tion of Africans in the towns and ‘white’ rural areas. The system of white
parliamentary representation for Indians, established in 1946, was also
ended. The only remaining ‘non-white’ representation in Parliament was
that of coloreds in the Cape. The National Party’s electoral majority in 1948
was slender, and many marginal seats contained a number of colored voters
who had largely supported the United Party and who bitterly opposed the
discrimination of the Population Registration, Group Areas and Separate
Amenities legislation. In 1951 the government attempted to have them
removed from the voters’ roll. Such an action was only passed in Parliament
with a bare majority and was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court. The government overcame this obstacle by rapidly appointing new
senators to the upper house of Parliament who ensured the required two-
thirds majority. Despite large-scale demonstrations of opposition by both
coloreds and the white war veteran Torch Commando, in 1956 coloreds
were registered on a separate roll and were restricted to electing four white
representatives to Parliament (a system abolished in 1970). Total white
monopoly of parliamentary power was thus obtained.

Colored disenfranchisement showed that the National Party was deter-
mined to go to great lengths to ensure its electoral survival, although it
increased its majority in the 1953 election, colored voters notwithstanding.
other legislation increased government control over its non-parliamentary
opponents. The Suppression of Communism Act (1950) gave the Minister
of Justice the power to ban any person or organization he viewed as ‘com-
munist’, a broad definition which included almost all opposition to apart-
heid. Powers were developed to confine people to single magisterial districts
and to silence their writings and speeches, a forerunner of the security
legislation of later years. And the 1953 Criminal Law Amendment Act
prescribed heavy penalties for civil disobedience, a response to the organ-
ized campaigns of the previous year (see pp. 108–10).

All of these white supremacist actions met with the approval of every
sector of the broad Afrikaner nationalist alliance. A more controversial
plank of apartheid legislation in the 1950s related to control over black
labor. African urbanization and assertive labor organization had been the
main feature of the breakdown of segregation in the 1940s, and Malan’s
call for restrictions on African workers and firmer influx control attracted
much support in 1948. During the first few years of National Party power,
a number of measures attempted to put such a policy into effect. Strikes

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 107

by Africans were made illegal in 1953, and although black trade unions
were not prohibited outright, employers were not obliged to negotiate with
them and many of their leaders were banned under the Suppression of
Communism Act. Labor bureaux were established in 1951 under the
control of the Native Affairs Department to coordinate the needs of employ-
ers in particular regions and the recruitment of Africans to work in the
towns, ensuring that they did not leave ‘white’ rural areas until the needs
of local farmers had been met. Illegal ‘squatting’ in urban areas was pro-
hibited in 1951, and in 1952 the orwellian-named Abolition of Passes and
Coordination of Documents Act insisted that all Africans (including previ-
ously exempted women) carry a reference book to include an employer’s
signature renewed each month, authorization to be in a particular area and
tax certificates. Under Section 10 of the 1955 Natives (Urban Areas)
Amendment Act, rights of Africans to live in a town were confined to those
who had been born there or had worked there for fifteen years or for ten
years with a single employer. All others needed a permit to stay for longer
than three days.

As Posel (1991) has argued, the 1955 Act demonstrated the triumph of
a more pragmatic ‘practical’ approach to segregation over the ‘total’ segre-
gation of men like Eiselen, who argued that all African economic activity
and labor should be concentrated in the reserves (see p. 102). The needs of
agricultural and urban employers for a steady supply of African labor
determined government policy. Thus Africans should be permitted to move
to towns if they were genuinely seeking work, and Section 10 recognized
that ‘detribalized’ Africans had rights to urban residence whether or not
they were employed there, thus providing a ‘labor pool’ for urban employ-
ers. An example of this was Zwelitsha, near King William’s Town, which
had been established in the 1940s. Inhabitants of the surrounding Ciskei
reserve were initially encouraged to abandon farming and to form urban
nuclear families with prescribed gender roles of male entrepreneurship and
female home-making, following middle-class white norms. By the mid-
1950s such ideas were abandoned and Zwelitsha became simply a labor
pool of proletarianized workers for local industry (Mager 1999: 47–67).
Although pass laws were imposed, the labor bureaux were only partially
successful in directing labor to where it was demanded. Employers circum-
vented many of these controls when it suited them to do so.

The needs of business explain why the segregation of the 1950s remained
‘practical’, and influx control was not strictly applied. Similarly, while the
government still had a rather uncertain electoral majority and no central

108 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

control over local municipalities, it was reluctant to attempt full-scale
urban removals and the implementation of ‘total’ segregation. All this was
to change in the subsequent decade.

In the 1958 election the National Party obtained almost twice as many
seats as its opponents. Part of this increasing parliamentary strength
resulted from ploys such as the removal of the colored franchise, the incor-
poration of the white (predominantly Nationalist) electorate of South-
West Africa and the redrawing of constituency boundaries to favour rural
areas over United Party urban strongholds. But clearly apartheid genuinely
appealed to an increasing majority of the white electorate. Why was this?
Many Afrikaners approved the power exerted by a party in their name and
the moves to break with Britain, as marked by the abolition of rights of
appeal to the Privy Council (1950) and assumption of control over the
British naval base at Simonstown (1955). But it was clear by 1958 that the
Nationalists was also attracting English-speaking voters away from the
United Party. The latter saw its sixty-five seats held in 1948 whittled down
to fifty-three, most of them going to the National Party.

Most whites supported the apparent limits to African urbanization
imposed by the government and the suppression of resistance. But most
significantly apartheid policies had not interrupted economic growth, and
white living standards increased steadily. Farmers benefited from increased
produce prices and workers from racial job reservation. Although many
English-speaking manufacturers and industrialists were alienated from
Afrikaner nationalist politics, they were able to maintain and expand pro-
duction and enjoyed tariff protection. Gold production expanded mark-
edly, with the exploitation of new fields in the Free State. Foreign investment,
encouraged by cheap labor, furthered white prosperity, and there was little
external criticism of apartheid policies. only at the end of the decade did
this change, with international condemnation and the flight of capital after
the Sharpeville shootings. By then the National Party, now led by Hendrik
Verwoerd, had acquired sufficient confidence and power to ride the storm.

The 1950s: Defiance and the Freedom Charter

The 1950s saw an unprecedented upsurge of popular protest. In some ways
this was a logical development from the trends seen in the 1940s, notably
the doubling of the African urban population, employment in secondary
industry and trade union organization. But it was given a new impetus
by the imposition of apartheid laws and the social engineering of the

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 109

Nationalist government. The intransigence of influx control (and especially
the extension of passes to women), forced removals and the imposition of
Bantu Education all led to resistance in the towns, drawing in both popular
and middle classes. Despite the assault on union power, labor leaders
organized protests around issues of low wages and price increases. Nor was
resistance confined to the cities. Government intervention in reserve agri-
culture and the unpopularity of measures carried out by chiefs appointed
under the Bantu Authorities Act led to a number of rural protest move-
ments. And the international context of decolonization elsewhere in Africa
gave black political leaders hope that the construction of apartheid was a
temporary aberration soon to be swept away in the wake of popular support
for African nationalism.

Many of the tactics employed in this resistance, such as boycotts, staya-
ways, strikes and civil disobedience, were those advocated in the African
National Congress’s (ANC’s) Programme of Action of 1949 (see p. 95). In
1952 the ANC and the Communist Party jointly launched the Defiance
Campaign to protest against the government’s new discriminatory legisla-
tion, with the aim of mobilizing widespread defiance of unjust laws such
as curfews, pass laws and segregation of amenities. over 8,000 people were
arrested for defiance actions, mainly in the eastern Cape and on the Rand,
and during the period of 1951–3 ANC membership grew dramatically from
7,000 to 100,000 (Lodge 1987: 310). Albert Lutuli, elected ANC President
in late 1952, supported the principle of mass action in a clear break from
the more conservative techniques of his predecessors. The Defiance
Campaign was broken by the banning and imprisonment of many of its
organizers, by legislation forbidding civil disobedience (the Criminal Law
Amendment Act of 1953), and by outbreaks of violence in Port Elizabeth
and East London led by disaffected youth and women. But the impetus for
mass campaigns was clearly established. The relocation of Sophiatown,
which began in 1953, was resisted by local residents. Property owners
refused to sign away their rights and, together with other tenants who
would not move voluntarily, had to be forcibly relocated by the police. In
1954 the ANC called for a boycott of the new Bantu Education schools, an
action that achieved considerable success initially on the Rand and in the
eastern Cape. However, ANC promises of alternative informal education
were only partially fulfilled, and when the government threatened to black-
list teachers who supported the boycott and permanently to deny education
to any children not enrolled by April of the academic year, opposition to
Bantu Education collapsed.

110 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

More sustained campaigns were carried out from 1952 by women
against the carrying of passes. The Federation of South African Women,
founded in 1954, linked to the ANC but drawing on other liberal support-
ers, coordinated campaigns of non-registration, pass burning and petition-
ing, culminating in 1956 in a mass demonstration of 26,000 women from
throughout the country at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. This opposition
certainly slowed down state action in extending passes to African women,
but it failed to prevent it. The government began issuing passes to women
in remoter rural areas, and then to the most vulnerable urban workers, such
as domestic workers and nurses, the latter being threatened with dismissal
if they refused to comply.

By 1959, the anti-pass campaign was over. Women’s protest turned
instead to focus on police raids against shebeens (sites of illegal drinking
but also township sociability), which threatened the dependence of many
township women on informal beer-brewing (Mager 2010). In 1959 women
in the shanty settlement of Cato Manor near Durban and in other parts of
Natal picketed municipal beer halls, and in some cases attacked them and
destroyed brewing equipment. Police broke up the protestors, but a boycott
of beer halls followed, coordinated by the local branch of the ANC’s
Women’s League. Protest by women was an important part of popular
mobilization in the 1950s, but this was not so much a feminist attempt
to overthrow the existing social order as opposition to state interference
in the established rights and status of women. Indeed, Lodge has described
some of the goals of the campaigns as ‘highly conservative . . . though no
less justifiable for that’ (1983: 151). Edwards (1996) has argued that the
Cato Manor attacks were in part motivated by women who were facing
removal to the impoverished reserves, and who targeted local men in the
beer halls who had obtained housing in the new KwaMashu township and
were thus breaking local community cohesion.

other community-based actions emerged in the late 1950s. In 1957
buses were boycotted in the Rand township of Alexandra in campaigns
against increased fares that invoked memories of the campaigns of 1944
(see p. 71). In the wake of this, union leaders in the newly formed South
African Council of Trade Unions convinced the ANC of the need for a
wider campaign around economic issues. The £1-a-day campaign of 1957–
8 called for a minimum wage and better working conditions, but its tactics
of stayaway, combined in 1958 with protest against the white election of
that year, met with only limited success. Police were readily able to identify
those who remained at home, and dismissals for absenteeism from work

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 111

took place. Moreover, as Feit has pointed out, the campaign was untimely.
Wage levels were not noticeably lower than usual, and a number of urban
workers were earning more than £1 a day (1967: 17). And the white election
was of less immediate concern than day-to-day issues in the townships.
Campaigns of this kind were difficult to sustain. Specific and limited targets
were better supported.

Perhaps the most successful mass campaigns of the decade took place
not in the towns but in the countryside. Impoverishment was increasing
in the reserves, accentuated by the impact of migrant labor and overcrowd-
ing. In the Transkei and Ciskei, young men were unable to obtain cattle
and so establish homesteads, and instead asserted their masculinity through
age cohort organizations and competitive fighting (Mager 1998). Rural
conflicts around issues of impoverishment and state intervention were not
new, but they rose to new heights in the late 1940s and the 1950s (Chaskalson
1988). Attempts by the government to improve reserve agriculture, by ‘bet-
terment’ schemes of cattle culling and limitations on grazing were particu-
larly threatening to men who controlled livestock and were fiercely resisted
at a time when the sole means of survival for many homesteads was access
to such land and stock (Mager 1999). Moreover, the Bantu Authorities Act
made local chiefs responsible for these measures, as well as for tax collec-
tion. By implementing state policies many of them forfeited local recogni-
tion of their powers, and their appointment by the government further
undermined their authority in such situations.

Attacks on local chiefs took place in the northern Transvaal (Soutpansberg
and Sekhukhuneland) in the 1940s and again in 1958. In Witzieshoek, in
the northern Free State, cattle were seized by reserve inhabitants before they
could be culled, fences were torn down and clashes with the police took
place. In Zeerust in the western Transvaal in 1957 chiefs appointed by the
Bantu Affairs Department were deposed, and similar actions took place in
both Natal and the Transkei. In Sekhukhuneland returning migrants joined
local residents to form the Sebatakgomo organization, at least partially
linked to the Communist Party and the ANC. They attacked chiefs who
accepted the authority of the Bantu Affairs Department and their sympa-
thizers (Delius 1996). In Pondoland in 1960 a major revolt took place
against government chiefs and agents. Many of these uprisings used tradi-
tional symbols and appeals. But they were by no means all ‘backward-
looking’ peasant revolts. Links were made with urban protests especially in
regions where migrants brought news of other campaigns, such as those
against Bantu Education or passes for women. But in general, although they

112 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

did succeed in stalling state interventions, rural protest movements
remained parochial in impact (Lodge 1983).

Indeed, all the popular struggles of the 1950s failed to realize their
potential fully in challenging the state. one of the reasons for this, much
debated by historians, was the nature of the relationship between mass
mobilization and the leadership of the national organizations, in particular
the ANC. Was the ANC now converted from the elitist and essentially
conservative body of the 1930s to a new and mass-based movement with
more radical goals and heightened impact? Some writers have argued that
this was indeed the case, either in coordination with the labor movement
as the political base for a new class consciousness heralded by the 1946
mine workers’ strike (o’Meara 1976), or in the broader sense that the ANC
acted as the vanguard party planning and sustaining all popular move-
ments of the decade (Pampallis 1991: 191–211).

But other historians have pointed out the limitations of these argu-
ments. Links with trade union branches were made, but the middle-
class leaders of the ANC were still uneasy in a proletarian alliance and
local campaigns often went beyond the calls of ANC leadership, or else were
not supported at all by the organization (Lambert 1981; Fine and Davis
1991). Broader populist causes rather than class-conscious action domi-
nated ANC activities. Feit (1971) goes further, arguing that ANC leader-
ship was detached from any popular base, that communication and
coordination of actions were at best patchy, and that many campaigns failed
as a result.

For instance, in Sophiatown the ANC appeared more concerned with
the rights of property owners than with the plight of the larger number of
tenants or the wider issue of forced removals, and it was divided over how
far to resist legal eviction orders. Leaders were also split over how far to
take the school boycott and were often unaware of the extent of local com-
munity support. During the Alexandra bus boycott, Congress’s acceptance
of the compromise by which employers could obtain transport rebates to
pass on to their employees rather than lowering fares for all was rejected
by many in the community as a sell-out. And only gradually did the urban
leaders of the ANC come to recognize the importance of the rural areas.
Although there was some linkage with the Sekhukhuneland revolt of 1958,
it was not until the uprisings in Pondoland in 1960 that they accepted
the full potential of rural mobilization (Bundy 1987a). In general, the
1950s seems to have been a decade of heightened defiance, but also of lost
opportunities.

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 113

Some of these debates show as much about the political sympathies and
priorities of the writers in later years as they do about the nature of political
mobilization in the 1950s. Clearly, the ANC failed to mobilize and coordi-
nate widespread unified protest, as much because of its limited financial
and administrative resources and heightened state repression as because of
the conscious alienation of its leaders from popular or working-class inter-
ests. Lodge, however, has pointed out that the situation was more complex
(1987). ANC leaders were not merely ‘middle-class’ professionals alienated
from popular issues. With the segregationist thrust of the 1950s, African
experiences were widely felt across class lines, and issues such as Bantu
Education or passes for women affected everyone.

Case studies have shown that particular local circumstances need to
be considered when assessing the effectiveness of campaigns and of
national leadership. Thus in East London, active support was obtained for
the Defiance Campaign by the dynamic local youth League, which also
drew in migrants from the surrounding Ciskei reserve, but the lack of a
large urban proletariat led to emphasis on communal rather than class
issues in later years (Lodge 1987). By contrast, unionized textile workers in
Benoni organized a number of strikes and stoppages; but organizers had
difficulty in linking these up with the interests of the unemployed, who
were more concerned with general survival than specific issues, and
mobilized around gangs split on ethnic lines rather than labor or national
organizations (Bonner and Lambert 1987). In Brakpan, stronger cross-class
unity took place around issues of Bantu Education, curfews and pass
laws, but these tended to be focused around locally elected councilors
rather than national leaders, who failed to realize the extent of local feeling
(Sapire 1989a).

The opposition movements not only faced difficulties of tactics and
popular mobilization. They were also increasingly divided in terms of ide-
ology. Some of these divisions were rooted in the differing organizations
of the 1940s. For instance, the Non-European Unity Movement stressed the
importance of tactics of boycott and non-collaboration, which had an
impact on some of the defiance campaigns, particularly in the rejection of
Bantu Education schools.

But its theoretical focus on the interests of the working class and its
refusal to recognize race as a valid category of political organization alien-
ated it from the ANC, which it believed advocated ‘pro-capitalist, anti-
working class . . . bourgeois social democracy’. The Unity Movement’s
strength lay in the western Cape, but although it was strong on theory,

114 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

advocating a Trotskyist line, it never mustered the degree of numerical
active support obtained by the ANC (Nasson 1990).

But there were also divisions within the ANC. The crucial issue was
whether Congress should link up with other organizations opposing apart-
heid, such as the radical white Congress of Democrats, or whether it should
follow a strictly Africanist course, rejecting association with all non-African
associations, ranging in political terms from the moderate Liberal Party to
the Communist Party. Under Lutuli the former policy triumphed. In the
aftermath of the Defiance Campaign, and in the face of government
banning of civil disobedience, plans were made to bring together oppo-
nents of apartheid in the hope that sheer numbers and force of moral
argument would lead to its overthrow.

It was also felt necessary to demonstrate multiracial unity to counter
charges made by the state that racial segregation was natural and desired
by all. The example it frequently gave of the dangers of inter-racial contact
was the violent conflicts between Africans and Indians that took place in
Durban in 1949, in which 142 people were killed, over a thousand injured,
and many trading stores and houses looted. In this case ethnic tension had
been heightened by specific local circumstances (Webster 1977). Africans
were denied trading licenses and the right to own freehold property, both
of which were obtainable by Indians. Indian monopoly over commerce,
transport and property ownership (many African tenants had Indian land-
lords) gave an ethnic focus to economic grievances at a time of increasing
prices. Moreover, the verbal assault of the state on Indians, including the
argument that they had no place in South Africa and should be returned
to India, encouraged some Africans in the belief that the government would
approve of attacks on their property.

The 1949 Durban riots, coming at the very start of the period of National
Party government, were an important weapon in claims that South Africans
of different ethnicity could never co-exist peacefully. It was thus crucial for
those opposing apartheid legislation to demonstrate that this was not the
case. In 1953 the ANC made links with the Congress of Democrats, the
Indian Congress movement and the South African Coloured People’s
organization (the successor to the APo) in order to launch a National
Congress of the People. Local committees collected lists of grievances and
demands, which were then drafted by a central committee into the ‘Freedom
Charter’. This was accepted unanimously by the 2,844 delegates who gath-
ered at Kliptown near Johannesburg in June 1955, and was later endorsed
by all member organizations and by the South African Communist Party.

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 115

The government was unable to prevent such a gathering since the
Congress of the People did not contravene existing laws. However, in
the following year 156 of its leaders were arrested on charges of treason
and ‘conspiracy to overthrow the state’, and the Congress was labeled a
Communist movement. After lengthy proceedings, the state’s case was
overturned by the Supreme Court in 1961, an action which played an
important part in the government’s determination to rule without legal
restraint (see p. 117). But the Treason Trial served to publicize the cause of
the ‘Charterists’ more widely, both at home and abroad.

Charterism became the foundation of ANC ideology and the Freedom
Charter remained a benchmark of opposition to apartheid into the 1990s.
There has therefore been much debate about its meaning. Its clauses
stressed that

South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and no govern-
ment can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the
people . . . the rights of the people shall be the same regardless of race, color
or sex

and it demanded that ‘all apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside’. It
called for equal access to health, education and legal rights. Its vision of a
future South Africa was thus strongly democratic and multiracial (Williams
1988). But its commitment to meaningful social and economic transforma-
tion was less clear. Trade unionists were dissatisfied with its lack of refer-
ence to worker control or the right to strike. It called for ‘public ownership
of mines and banks’ and the re-division of land ‘amongst those who work
it’, but it fell short of a clear commitment to socialism. It was adopted by
the Communist Party, which by the late 1950s had come to accept that a
national-democratic stage of revolution had to precede socialist transfor-
mation (Hudson 1988). This was sufficient to ensure objection to the
Charter by the Liberal Party, which steadfastly opposed any links with a
radical strategy. But on the other hand, the Charter has been rejected by
other left-wing organizations for its lack of radicalism.

But the main opposition to the Freedom Charter among the nationalist
organizations in the 1950s came from the Africanists. Charterism rejected
Lembede’s belief that only Africans owned South Africa (see p. 94). After
his death in 1947, Africanist ideas were taken up by other younger members
of the ANC, especially in the orlando branch under Potlako Leballo. Their
publication, The Africanist, stressed the need for closer links with mass

116 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

protests, and it rejected Congress alliances with organizations such as the
Indian Congress and the Communist Party. It viewed the Freedom Charter
as a ‘political bluff ’. In 1958 tensions between Africanists and Charterists
within the ANC reached a head, and after failing to capture control of the
Transvaal executive a number of Africanists formed a new organization,
the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), in 1959 under the presidency of Robert
Sobukwe, with the slogan of ‘Africa for the Africans’.

Africanism was aided by a number of factors. It reflected the impatience
of a younger generation with the liberal style of such men as Lutuli. It was
part of a wider African assertiveness in this period, marked locally by
increased support for the African independent churches, and more widely
by the strength of African nationalism elsewhere, as shown by the 1958
Accra conference. Moreover, Africanists could point to the failure of the
Charterists in achieving any success at halting the tide of discrimination,
let alone driving it back (Gerhart 1978).

PAC membership numbers were lower than those of the ANC, but it
captured the sense of township frustration in the late 1950s, especially
on the Rand but also in the western Cape, where influx control was
stringently applied and Section 10 rights strictly limited. The PAC was
determined to capitalize on this advantage. In December 1959 the ANC
announced a series of single-day anti-pass marches. By contrast the
PAC called for a more sustained campaign, involving refusal to carry passes
and mass presentation at police stations to demand arrest. This was the
background to the peaceful march to the police station at Sharpeville in
March 1960. Constables alarmed by the size of the crowd panicked and
fired. Sixty-nine people died, many shot in the back, and 180 were wounded.
A large crowd also marched from the Langa township into central
Cape Town, although it disbanded without bloodshed when its leader
Philip Kgosana was falsely promised an interview with the Minister of
Justice.

The Sharpeville shootings marked a dramatic turning point in South
Africa’s history. Strikes and stayaways followed throughout the country and
the government declared a State of Emergency, detaining ANC and PAC
leaders and then banning both organizations. Sharpeville revealed the
failure of non-violent resistance and forced a new approach from oppo-
nents of apartheid. And internationally the 1960 shootings had a major
effect. Currency controls were introduced in an attempt to stem the flight
of capital. Serious calls for economic sanctions against South Africa were
made at the United Nations, although they were vetoed by Britain and the

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 117

United States, who continued high levels of investment in South Africa
throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Just one month before the Sharpeville shootings, the British Prime
Minister, Harold Macmillan, had addressed the South African Parliament
in Cape Town. Following a tour of Africa during which he had been
impressed by the power of African nationalism, he warned that the ‘winds
of change’ were sweeping through the continent, and that Verwoerd’s apart-
heid policies would find no support from a Britain now committed to rapid
decolonization. Verwoerd had already mooted the possibility of forming a
republic independent of the Commonwealth. Later that year, following
heightened criticism of his policies at the Commonwealth conference,
Verwoerd withdrew South Africa from the organization. The path was set
for increasing isolation from the political trends elsewhere in Africa and
the world at large in the decades ahead.

State control and separate development:
apartheid’s ‘second phase’

After the steady consolidation of National Party electoral power in the
1950s, the following years saw the entrenchment of state control and new
methods of dealing with opposition. The 1960s have therefore been labelled
the years of apartheid’s second phase (Posel 1991).

International condemnation after Sharpeville was firmly rejected by
Verwoerd, who turned his back on the ‘winds of change’ sweeping Africa.
The police force was increased in size and the new recruits were almost
entirely Afrikaners. In the face of determined opposition campaigns, the
General Law Amendment Act (1963) gave police powers of detention
without charge and of solitary confinement. The banning of the ANC and
PAC was accompanied by increasing numbers of such detentions and ban-
nings of individuals. These tactics were to be the mainstay of internal
repression into the 1990s. As Wolpe (1988: 88–9) has pointed out, after
Sharpeville wide-ranging arbitrary powers provided a new means of state
control, circumventing judicial intervention. Repetition of the state’s defeat
in the Treason Trial was not to be permitted.

The early 1960s also saw a more determined application of African
urban influx control. A change of policy from that of the 1950s now led to
attempts to remove rights of urban residence from all Africans, including
those previously accepted under Section 10 of the Natives (Urban Areas)
Amendment Act of 1955 (Posel 1991). This was caused by several factors.

118 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

The state was alarmed by the increase in urban protest, which had
reached a climax at Sharpeville. Attempts to curb the urban radicalism of
the 1940s had clearly failed. Moreover, local municipalities were either
unwilling or unable to control urban influx, as shown by the Durban
Council’s admission during the Cato Manor upheavals of 1959 that it ‘has
been defeated . . . and cannot restore its authority without the fullest co-
operation and most active assistance of the government’ (Posel 1991: 237).

New voices were heard within the Afrikaner nationalist alliance. The
Broederbond had actively campaigned for Verwoerd’s succession to the
Party leadership in 1958, and now held a much stronger position behind
the scenes of decision making. Its members, already influential in many
branches of the government, infiltrated the Native (renamed Bantu) Affairs
Department (BAD) and also won over the South African Agricultural
Union by advocating the limitation of urban African workers. In this
context the stricter segregationist ideals of the Broederbond overrode the
‘practical’ segregation of the 1950s. In the months after Sharpeville, the
BAD drafted a bill advocating the ending of Section 10 rights, the fixing of
regional labor quotas by the Department with no reference to employers,
and the preference to be given to industries willing to relocate to areas near
the reserves.

The bill was fiercely opposed by commercial and industrial employers,
including the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, and the government backed
down. However, in the 1960s efforts were made by the state to enforce
influx control more strictly, and although Section 10 remained on the
statute books, the rights of urban Africans were increasingly restricted. For
instance, in 1964 the Bantu Labour Act prohibited Africans from seeking
work in towns or employers from taking them on unless they were chan-
neled through the state labor bureaux. Urban housing construction for
black families almost came to a halt, thus causing major shortages. And in
1968 Africans were forbidden from holding freehold property in townships
but were obliged to become tenants in council-owned housing.

The opposition of urban employers to total urban influx control by the
state raises the question of the relationship between apartheid policy and
capitalist interests. Certainly in a broad sense apartheid did not limit eco-
nomic – particularly manufacturing – growth in the 1960s. Despite loss of
foreign investor confidence after Sharpeville, local capital filled the gap, and
the comparative calm of the 1960s saw an economic boom with increased
foreign trade and industrial growth, although black wages remained low
and racial disparities of wealth increased still further. This has led many to

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 119

argue that apartheid, like segregation before it, favored capitalist growth,
particularly since it ensured a continued supply of cheap labor. But as Posel
has argued, ‘apartheid neither automatically nor uniformly promoted capi-
talist interests’ (1984: 2). Manufacturers needed a skilled and permanent
labor force, and opposed stricter influx controls and total segregation. In
the 1970s the disjuncture between capitalist needs and apartheid ideology
grew wider (see p. 132).

The tightening of influx control and attempts to revoke Section 10 rights
were part of a broader plan of political and social engineering that was
implemented under Verwoerd and his successors. This was ‘Separate
Development’, a policy by which the reserves served a political rather than
a purely economic purpose, as Bantustans to which African political rights
were confined.

The Bantustan strategy was only gradually developed. The 1951 Bantu
Authorities Act had attempted to co-opt a local elite with limited admin-
istrative powers. The Tomlinson Commission, set up to enquire into the
economic viability of the reserves as self-contained units on the strict seg-
regationist model, reported in 1955 that this could only be achieved with
massive state funding, a commitment which Verwoerd refused to accept.
But increasing political pressure from Africans gave strength to the idea of
locating African political rights away from the urban centers to the periph-
eries, thus counteracting the nationalist goals of organizations such as the
ANC and PAC. The 1959 Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act set up
eight (later extended to ten) distinct ‘Bantu Homelands’ out of the existing
reserves, each with a degree of self-government. Not only did this greatly
extend the powers of co-opted local chiefs, but it established the principle
of ethnicity as the basis of the homelands. Africans were divided up into
distinct ‘nations’ based on their ‘historic homelands’. Ethnic homeland
loyalty was to replace national political aspirations in a move which the
state hoped would defuse calls for the moral necessity of African self-
government within South Africa itself.

In 1963 the Transkei Constitution Act set up the first homeland legisla-
tive assembly, significantly in the area most recently convulsed by rebellion
and one where Pretoria was anxious to rid itself of the responsibility of
keeping control. In 1970 homeland citizenship was imposed on all Africans
throughout South Africa, and self-government was given to the other
homelands in 1971. Nominal independence was given the Transkei in 1976,
followed by Bophuthatswana (1977), Venda (1979) and Ciskei (1981). By
this process, citizens of the ‘independent’ homelands lost their South

120 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

African nationality, although the homelands were not recognized as inde-
pendent by any other country.

Clearly, the political significance of Separate Development was more
important than the economic motives of earlier segregationist policies.
Economic self-sufficiency was never a viable or desired option. Verwoerd
refused to permit industries to be developed within the reserves that
would risk the emergence of a stable and politically dangerous proletariat.
Instead, he encouraged them to set up on the borders of the home-
lands, where they were removed from the urban centers of South Africa
but had access to cheap migrant labor. The focus of Separate Develop-
ment was ‘political independence with economic interdependence’
(Giliomee 1985).

The homelands policy had fundamental implications for modern South
Africa. Firstly, it led to the forced relocation of Africans on an unprece-
dented scale. The Group Areas Act produced urban removals and dispos-

Map 4 The Bantustans (Homelands)
Source: J. omer-Cooper, 1987: History of Southern Africa. London: James Currey, 214.
© 1987. Reprinted by permission of James Currey Publishers, an imprint of Boydell &
Brewer.

Port Elizabeth

East London

Port St Johns
Umtata

Durban

PietermaritzburgBloemfontein

Johannesburg

Mafeking
Pretoria

KWANDEBELE
LE

BO
WA

VENDA

GAZANKU

TRANSVAAL

NATAL

KW
AZU

QWAQWA

BOPHUTHATSWANA

TRANSKEI

CISKEI

CAPE PROVINCE

Indian
Ocean

Atlantic
Ocean

O
R
A

GE
FRE

E STATE

BOTSWANA

ZIMBABWE

SWAZILAND

LESOTHO

O
ZA

M
B
IQ

U
E

K
AN

GW
ANE

Cape Town

East London
Port St Johns
Umtata
Durban
PietermaritzburgBloemfontein

Kimberley

Johannesburg
Mafeking
Pretoria
KWANDEBELE
LE
BO
WA
VENDA

GAZANKULU

TRANSVAAL
NATAL
KW
AZU
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QWAQWA
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TRANSKEI
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Port Elizabeth
Indian
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Atlantic
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O
R
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E STATE
BOTSWANA
ZIMBABWE
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LESOTHO

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O
ZA
M
B
IQ
U
E
K
AN
GW
ANE
Cape Town
N

0 200 400 km0 200 400 km

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 121

Map 5 Forced removals
Source: A. J. Christopher, 1994: Atlas of apartheid. London: Routledge. Compiled from
information in the regional reports of the Surplus People Project. © 1994. Reprinted
by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.

East London
Kamaskraal

Port ElizabethCape Town

Sada
E

Thornhill

Bloemfontein
Onverwacht

Durban

Compensation
Sahlumbe

Mzimhlophe

Johannesburg
Pretoria

Restaurant

Mohodi

Rooiground

Kwaggafontein

East London
Kamaskraal
Port ElizabethCape Town
G
Sada
E
Thornhill
Bloemfontein
Onverwacht
Durban
Compensation
Sahlumbe
Mzimhlophe
Johannesburg
Pretoria
Restaurant
Mohodi
Rooiground

Removal
Homelands
1970
Major
Resettlement
Camps

Elakhanyeni
Glenmore

E
G

0 100 200 km

Kwaggafontein

session. Separate Development extended this by removing into the
homelands the sizeable number of African tenants, freeholders and squat-
ters who were still in ‘white’ rural areas. Many of them were no longer
required on farms which had mechanized. Kas Maine, who had survived
as a tenant and sharecropper since the 1920s on over fifteen white-owned
farms in the Transvaal, was finally forced to move to an impoverished
reserve in 1967. Even there he was not left in peace: his grazing land was
expropriated by the Bophuthatswana homeland government in 1979 to be
set aside as a tourist game reserve near the Sun City casino complex (Van
onselen 1996). Thus the process begun in 1913 was brought to its logical
conclusion. Between 1960 and 1983, an estimated 3.5 million people were
relocated under Group Areas and Separate Development legislation (Platzky

122 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

and Walker 1985: 10) (see Map 5, p. 121). During the 1960s the population
of the Bantustans rose by 70%, while those of African townships actually
fell (Lodge 1983: 321). Forced removals on such a massive scale were the
crudest sign of state power over black lives. In most cases those relocated
to homelands were consigned to barren areas far removed from employ-
ment or adequate resources. For instance, between 1979 and 1986
Botshabelo (‘place of refuge’) emerged on barren land 60 kilometres away
from the nearest place of employment in Bloemfontein (Murray 1992:
204). A rural dumping ground of half a million people forced out of towns
and farms in ‘white South Africa’, it was declared part of the newly created
Bophuthatswana homeland. Critics of apartheid labeled such actions as
tantamount to genocide.

Secondly, Separate Development stimulated and entrenched ethnic divi-
sions by its attempts to ‘retribalize African consciousness’ (Molteno 1977:
23). To succeed, such a policy had to be built on existing perceptions and
ethnic division could not be simply imposed from above. Certainly, differ-
ing historical experiences and traditions existed. yet as recent work has
shown, tribal identity was not a fixed constant (Vail 1989). The experience
of conquest, proletarianization and social dislocation shattered pre-colonial
polities and the identities that came with them. Tribalism was remolded
and consciously shaped by new forces. The linguistic and cultural tribal
divisions of modern South Africa were in large part defined by outsiders
in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Missionaries established
written norms for Bantu languages, usually based on particular dialects of
regions in which their printing presses were located. Anthropologists and
historians identified distinct tribal cultures and traditions in the model of
European ethnology and national histories. In the circumstances of the
1920s and 1930s, these notions found fertile ground among ‘native’ admin-
istrators concerned to bolster ‘traditional culture’ and to overcome class
divisions (see pp. 85–6). They also appealed to local chiefs as a means of
bolstering their position, and to some middle-class African teachers and
intellectuals who adopted the role of interpreters of ‘tribal tradition’. This
combination of administrative and local interests in the making of new
tribal identities was most apparent in Natal, where Zulu ethnicity was
strengthened by an alliance of state, landowners and the black middle
class (see pp. 90–1). Tribal identity was given further emphasis by the
experience of migrant workers, whose ethnic roots were reinforced by their
dependence on the reserves and by competition in the workplace. Even
those imbued with class or wider national political consciousness meshed

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 123

these identities with a degree of ethnic particularism (Beinart 1987).
However, as Mager (1999) has shown, identities forged by migrants were
masculine and strongly patriarchal to the exclusion of women’s perceptions
and experience.

Thus the concept of separate ethnic identity drew on a lengthy process
of created tribalism. In some cases such as Zululand or the Transkei, the
argument that the Bantustans were the rightful historic home of a particu-
lar ethnic group coincided with common perceptions. Elsewhere this was
not so. Bophuthatswana, for instance, was a cobbled-together collection of
seven widely scattered areas of land, all of them undesirable for commercial
agriculture. Its historical heritage was tenuous to say the least. And even
the most ardent advocate of tribalism had difficulty in justifying the exist-
ence of two distinct Xhosa homelands, the Ciskei and the Transkei (Mager
1999: 112–17).

Nonetheless, a sense of homeland identity did take root, even in
Bophuthatswana. This was the result of the third lasting legacy of Separate
Development in modern South Africa, the creation of new classes in the
homelands. In a continuation of the policy of co-opting local chiefs,
the Bantustan strategy gave Bantustan administrators’ considerable
wealth, patronage and power. This served the dual purpose of creating local
representatives of the state with vested interests to control popular opposi-
tion of the kind that had emerged in the 1950s, and of hopefully defusing
critics by devolving political power to African authorities. This is not to say
that homeland leaders were all absolute puppets of Pretoria. Matanzima,
ruler of the Transkei, was critical of Bantu Education and of the way in
which forced removals dumped people into his territory, but his general
support of Separate Development earned him financial and military
backing from the South African government, and also attracted allegiance
from the educated elite in the rapidly growing homeland bureaucracy
(Southall 1982).

In addition to bureaucrats and politicians, a class of African traders and
entrepreneurs also benefited from the Bantustan strategy. As Molteno
(1977) has pointed out, whereas in the early part of the century the govern-
ment aimed to undermine an African middle class, by the 1960s it was
trying to create one, albeit dependent on South African capital and support
as a means of linking it to apartheid structures and policies. Loans and
grants set up local capitalists, and many also benefited from the departure
of white traders from the homelands, giving the ‘new African trading class
a stake in the political order’ (Stadler 1987: 139).

124 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

Separate Development was thus a bold attempt to break down a broad
African nationalism and to replace it with tribal identities, led by new
classes of collaborators. It could only be achieved with systematic and ruth-
less state intervention. How far it succeeded in achieving its goal remained
to be seen.

After Sharpeville: decade of quietude?

In comparison with the resistance of the 1950s and with the upheavals of
the 1970s and 1980s, the 1960s appears to have been a decade in which
protest against apartheid was relatively muted. The banning of resistance
organizations, increased police powers of detention, and heightened state
control over publications, broadcasting and all forms of dissent were clear
reasons for this. And the ruthless policy of forced removals weakened the
potential for urban resistance, while the Bantustans provided one outlet for
the previously frustrated careers of the African middle class.

Another factor that may explain the relative quiescence of the 1960s was
economic. Despite the crisis of investor confidence immediately after
Sharpeville, the decade was one of unprecedented economic growth for
South Africa. The gross national product grew at over 5% per annum, and
average real wages increased at a steady level (Feinstein 2005: 184–8).
Certainly, the benefits of this were limited primarily to the white popula-
tion, and the racial disparities of wealth were enormous. yet in contrast to
the periods of labor resistance and protest in the post-war years, or those
that were to come in the 1970s and 1980s, levels of black unemployment
in the 1960s were relatively low. overall, it appears that less than 10% of
the economically active population as a whole were unemployed during
the 1960s. The figure was to rise to 20 % and above in the subsequent
decades (Wilson and Ramphele 1989: 84–5). Relative economic stability, as
well as state oppression, explains the comparative lack of oppositional
protest during the 1960s.

However, the lack of overt resistance on the scale of previous years
should not be seen as a sign of acquiescence. Less visible developments were
taking place which provided a crucial background to the renewal of overt
protest in subsequent years.

The banning of the ANC and the PAC after Sharpeville did not lead to
their eclipse, but to a necessary change of strategy. Attempts to organize
stayaways and strikes were weakened by the difficulties of underground
organization. At the end of 1961 armed struggle was therefore proposed as

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 125

an alternative tactic. Some ANC leaders, including Mandela, Sisulu and
other ex-youth League organizers, were determined that direct action
should begin. Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) was founded as
an underground guerrilla army, and a number of sabotage attacks on power
stations and government installations were made over the next three years.
At the same time, a small group of predominantly white radicals known as
the National Committee of Liberation (later renamed the African Resistance
Movement) planned a sabotage campaign and planted bombs in Cape
Town and Johannesburg. And in the western Cape, where PAC support was
strong, an underground movement known as Poqo (‘Pure’ or ‘Alone’ in
Xhosa) emerged, with rather indiscriminate plans to provoke a general
uprising by killing police, suspected informers and government agents as
well as whites. Some attacks of this kind occurred in Langa township near
Cape Town, and a short-lived uprising took place in the rural town of Paarl
in November 1962. Poqo also worked amongst peasants in the Transkei,
where it acquired a quasimillenarian character, and some attacks on col-
laborating chiefs took place.

Davis and Fine (1985) have stressed that the move to armed struggle
was a decision of leaders of the nationalist movements but had in fact
already been affected by popular actions. Armed resistance had taken place
prior to 1961–2, as in Pondoland in 1960. Hopes of mobilizing a general
uprising were not fulfilled. And all of the early underground movements
were broken by police arrests. Aided by the British colonial police in
Basutoland who seized membership lists from the PAC office in Maseru,
many PAC activists in South Africa were detained in early 1963. In July of
that year the headquarters of Umkhonto at Rivonia were raided, and its
leaders captured and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island.
The African Resistance Movement was infiltrated and broken up. Although
the Non-European Unity Movement was not itself banned, it was unable
to fill the vacuum created by the repression of the other liberation organi-
zations and was split by ideological division, with some of its members
leaving South Africa and others being arrested on charges of sabotage
(Davies et al. 1988: 313). By 1964 leaders of the resistance movements were
either in prison or had escaped to exile abroad.

Both the ANC and the PAC faced major difficulties as exiled organiza-
tions in the 1960s. Although they found bases in friendly countries, the
ANC in Zambia and the PAC first in Lesotho and then in Tanzania, they
were isolated from developments within South Africa. It was difficult to
mount infiltration campaigns into the country, given its terrain, the strength

126 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

of the defense forces and the ring of surrounding countries allied to
Pretoria. Attempts at coordinated campaigns were made between ANC
cadres and Zimbabwean guerrillas and by the PAC in Swaziland, but they
failed to penetrate South Africa. only with the collapse of white rule in
Angola (1974), Mozambique (1975) and Zimbabwe (1979) did greater
opportunities for guerrilla action emerge. Many of the rank and file
members of the organizations were frustrated by inactivity in isolated and
poorly equipped training camps.

Ideological and personal rifts also weakened both bodies, especially the
PAC, whose goal of Africanist struggle was difficult to maintain out of its
South African context. The ANC was in general more successful in obtain-
ing international support, although it was still treated warily by the Western
powers. Both the PAC and the ANC survived in early exile, ready to take a
more active role in the later 1970s and 1980s, but during the 1960s and
early 1970s their influence within South Africa was much reduced. The
expectations of mass confrontation raised in the early 1960s did not
materialize.

What did emerge in the later 1960s was the powerful new ideology
of Black Consciousness. Although at this stage Black Consciousness
was more of a philosophical movement than an active political program,
it did fill some of the vacuum created by the banning of the nationalist
organizations.

Black Consciousness ideas originated amongst university students. The
creation of new segregated universities led to a marked increase in the
number of African students after 1958. Some were particularly influenced
by American developments in black theology, and formed the University
Christian Movement. There was growing awareness of the ideas of black
separatism which took institutional form. Many African students were
frustrated by white domination of the National Union of South African
Students, and in 1969 they split away to establish the all-black South African
Students’ organization (SASo), under the presidency of a student from the
segregated medical school at the University of Natal, Steve Biko.

Although SASo was a student organization its members encouraged
blacks in other contexts to break away from white-dominated liberal organ-
izations. The Black Communities Project was formed to encourage and
support black self-help schemes. In 1971 representatives of these bodies set
up the Black People’s Convention (BPC) to provide a political body organ-
ized along Black Consciousness principles. But this failed to gain a large
membership. It was limited by inadequate funding and state repression,

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 127

and also by the reluctance of many to be involved with an overtly political
movement, thus ‘vindicating the view held by Steve Biko and others that
black people had first to be “liberated from fear” ’ (Buthelezi 1991: 126).

It was on such psychological grounds that Black Consciousness explained
the failure of ANC and PAC tactics. Black inferiority, induced by years of
oppression and of white liberal paternalism, prevented effective organiza-
tion and resistance. Blacks therefore needed to acquire a social identity of
their own. As Biko stated, ‘what Black Consciousness seeks to do is to
produce . . . real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages
to white society’ (1978: 51). Black Consciousness was thus an attitude of
mind, a conscientization necessary for political activism to succeed.
Although Black Consciousness advocators included supporters of both the
ANC and the PAC, their political and economic program was vague. They
advanced black communalism, said to be rooted in indigenous culture and
based on the principle of sharing of wealth, although they also accepted
the need for private property. only after the banning of Black Consciousness
organizations in 1977 did its leaders advocate a more radical socialist
program (Leatt et al. 1986: 105–19).

Black Consciousness drew on a number of distinct traditions. In a broad
sense its emphasis on black pride and self-assertion was modelled on
similar developments in the United States and the experience of the African
diaspora, as well as on the ideas of such writers as Fanon and Senghor. The
American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s gave a particularly strong
impetus to increasing black assertiveness. In the South African context
Black Consciousness followed some of the arguments of the Africanist and
PAC traditions by stressing that South Africa belonged to its black people
alone and by its rejection of liberalism and white-dominated organizations.
However, Biko’s definition of black was more one of attitude than of eth-
nicity. It included all of those oppressed by apartheid, thus extending the
term to bring in ‘colored’ and Indian South Africans, but excluded those
whose collaboration with apartheid structures such as the police or
Bantustan administrations still defined them as ‘non-whites’. White oppo-
nents of apartheid had no place in Black Consciousness organizations, but
should rather conscientize their ‘racist brethren’ (Halisi 1991).

Black Consciousness also developed in the context of the international
student revolt of the late 1960s, and was a distinctly generational and intel-
lectual movement which did not penetrate far into working-class or peasant
communities. The ANC viewed it as a useful means of arousing self-
awareness but limited in its abilities to effect political action. others rejected

128 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

its philosophy. The Unity Movement disapproved of the primacy that it
gave to race over class and the ineffectiveness of ‘self-help’ organizations to
change the fundamental structure of society (Alexander 1991).

The state initially believed that Black Consciousness could further its
plans of Separate Development, but soon learnt otherwise. Biko rejected
Bantustan collaborators and refused to countenance such organizations as
Inkatha, founded by Buthelezi in 1975 and based on KwaZulu ethnicity,
despite the apparent similarity of emphasis on the distinctiveness of black
culture and the need for self-pride (Southall 1981). State harassment of
Black Consciousness leaders grew in the 1970s, culminating in the torture
and murder of Biko while under police detention in 1977 and the subse-
quent banning of all Black Consciousness organizations.

yet despite these limitations, Black Consciousness ideas did find fertile
ground in the circumstances of the 1970s. Like other developments in this
decade of quietude, it was an important part of the renewed conflicts of
subsequent years.

Towards Soweto: protest renewed

The relative calm of the period between 1963 and 1973 was underpinned
by some economic improvement in the position of Africans, albeit on a
limited scale. Between 1970 and 1972, for the first time, the gap between
black and white wages began to narrow, partly because the mines offered
slightly higher wages to attract local rather than foreign miners, but mainly
because the growth of manufacturing led to a need for skilled employment
which was met by black workers.

However, between 1973 and 1976 this process was brought to a halt. A
drop in the gold price and heightened inflation mainly caused by an
increase in the oil price introduced a period of recession. It was against this
background that black protest was renewed by labor conflict. Numerous
strikes took place, involving over 200,000 black workers, particularly in
Durban and the rest of Natal, but also in East London and parts of the
Rand. Some national trade union organization took place, but most of the
strikes broke out at local factory level in response to specific grievances.
This was particularly true in Natal, where the high incidence of strike action
was explained by low wages, bad working conditions, and ease of com-
munication between workers in different factories who commuted from
the nearby KwaZulu homeland and were supported by Buthelezi (Hirson
1979: 142; Friedman 1986: 47–8). Some worker goals were achieved: higher

THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID 129

wages and improved working conditions were granted, and the action of
these years gave impetus to later recognition of the bargaining powers of
black trade unions (see p. 133).

Some writers have argued that this increase in worker militancy explains
the township revolts that began in Soweto in June 1976 (Hirson 1979).
However, there were other more immediate causes of these upheavals. The
early 1970s had seen a major growth in the number of Africans attending
schools, although commensurate funding and equipment were lacking, and
the difficulty of finding employment after school education increased
during the recession of 1973–6. Tensions among school pupils was there-
fore already high when a new ruling decreed that half of the curriculum in
black schools was henceforth to be taught in Afrikaans. In protest 15,000
schoolchildren marched through Soweto. Police confronted the crowd,
fired and killed several students. As a result attacks were made on police,
administration buildings and beer halls. Class boycotts, school burnings
and counter-attacks and raids by police followed. Within several days the
conflict had spread to other townships on the Rand, and in the following
weeks also to Cape Town and the eastern Cape. In late August and September
school boycotters made successful appeals to workers to stay away from
work. Further conflict was caused when police encouraged migrant hostel
workers in Soweto to attack pupils who had demanded the closure of the
state beer halls. By the end of the year an official (and doubtless underes-
timated) figure was given of 575 dead and 2,389 wounded in the conflicts
(Lodge 1983: 330).

The Cillie Commission appointed by the government had a clear expla-
nation. The revolt was the work of outside ‘agitators’ and bore little relation
to real township or youth grievances. But although ANC pamphlets were
distributed in Soweto and elsewhere, and the exiled organization later
claimed that it had played a major part in organizing the revolt, there is
every sign that it was taken by surprise by the events of 1976–7. The deten-
tions and bannings that followed led many township youth to flee from
South Africa and join ANC and PAC camps outside the country, but it was
only then that active involvement in the nationalist organizations could
take place.

The student leaders of Soweto were much more influenced by the Black
Consciousness movement, which was particularly influential amongst
teachers and student groups in the early 1970s, and this was certainly pow-
erfully expressed in the protests of ‘colored’ students in the western Cape
in 1976 (Lodge 1983: 333). As Biko said, evidence that Black Consciousness

130 THE HEyDAy oF APARTHEID

was a force to be reckoned with was ‘In one word – Soweto!’ (Leatt et al.
1986: 112).

A particular psychological impetus, especially among black intellectuals,
was the success of the anti-colonial movements in neighboring Mozambique
and Angola in the previous year, and the defeat of South African troops
who had intervened in Angola in 1975. But the Soweto uprising was not a
revolutionary movement. It lacked clear organization and leadership.
Despite some contact with workers, the students had no formal links with
worker organizations. As some writers have stressed in this regard, the
events of 1976 were a missed opportunity (Mafeje 1978).

yet, as in the case of Sharpeville, the Soweto uprising shocked both
South African whites and international opinion. Many foreigners had their
first clear image of South Africa formed through vivid television pictures
of the Soweto shootings. The anger of a new township generation was
palpable and highly threatening to the established order. This and the labor
disputes of 1973–6 were reminiscent of the conflicts of the 1940s which
apartheid was supposed to have resolved. Although state repression was
strong and continued into the next decade, the following years also saw
attempts to change the Verwoerdian model. Apartheid was beginning to
falter, although this was not fully apparent until the 1980s, and it was still
to take an unconscionable time to die.

Suggestions for further reading

Lodge, T. 1983: Black politics in South Africa since 1945. London: Longman;
Johannesburg: Ravan.

o’Meara, D. 1996: Forty lost years: the apartheid state and the politics of the National
Party, 1948–1994. Johannesburg: Ravan; Athens: ohio University Press.

Posel, D. 1991: The making of apartheid 1948–1961: conflict and compromise. oxford:
Clarendon Press.

Stadler, A. 1987: The political economy of modern South Africa. London: Croom
Helm; Cape Town: David Philip.

Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 34:690–701, 2014
Copyright © Melvin Bornstein, Joseph Lichtenberg, Donald Silver
ISSN: 0735-1690 print/1940-9133 online
DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2014.944836

“You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: How Apartheid Was
Lived and Learned on a South African Farm

Tessa Philips, Ph.D.

After apartheid ended, many White South Africans asked themselves, over and over, “Who was I
during apartheid?” and “How did I learn to live in that way?” This article is an attempt to address
those questions. In the first part, a personal example is used to illustrate a life lived during the heyday
of apartheid. There was a great silence between the races about race. In the second part, I discuss that
life and the nature of embeddedness from a relational, hermeneutic perspective with a self psycho-
logical flavor. My doctoral dissertation, titled Race, Place and Self (Philips, 2007), was an attempt to
examine the nature and influences over the years of different countries and contexts, and disentangle
myself from the particular racialized beginnings that were uniquely mine. This article is one part of
that journey.

I was born in South Africa just before the government decreed that a system of apartheid, a
system of separate development of the races, should prevail. It was under the oppression of that
system that I attended school and university, and married. It was what I knew, but my husband
and I left the land where we were raised to try for a life elsewhere. I arrived in Sydney, Australia
in 1977 and in 1979 began what turned out to be a 14-year analysis. As astonishing as it may
seem today, my analyst and I never discussed what living under the apartheid regime meant
to me. In fact, apartheid as a system, itself, was hardly ever mentioned. How did that happen?
Although my analysis was not a casual affair, the relational hermeneutic approach had not reached
the prominence within psychoanalytic thinking that it has today. Two of the many authors who
exemplify a hermeneutic relational approach are Hoffman (2009) and Cushman (2011). This
approach claims that the individual exists and needs to be understood from within his or her own
particular social and cultural context. Even though I spoke about the landscape and people of my
world, I never told it as a racial story, which of course it was. At that time I did not see it that
way. All South African stories are racial stories. A similar silence or absence occurred when I
conducted interviews as part of my research. My interviewees were unable to remember or focus
on those shadowy racial interactions that were part of their young lives. I decided to use my own
material and, although it was initially hard, to focus on race; as I wrote, memories poured forth.

Tessa Philips, Ph.D., is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Sydney, Australia. She is on the fac-
ulty of the Sydney University Master of Medicine (Psychotherapy) Program; a Member of the International Council
of International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP); and a Board member of the International
Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP).

HOW APARTHEID WAS LIVED AND LEARNED 691

In the personal narrative that follows, I speak as one White who lived in South Africa during
the years of apartheid. I do not speak for all White South Africans, nor do I speak for Black South
Africans. Universal truths may or may not be embedded in this piece and, of course, there are as
many views as there are people.

“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT”

You’ve got to be taught

To hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught

From year to year,

It’s got to be drummed

In your dear little ear

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You’ve got to be carefully taught! (Lyrics from South Pacific by Rogers and Hammerstein, Logan,
1958)

The issue of racial prejudice is explored throughout South Pacific, most pointedly in this
song, which was preceded by one of the main characters asking if racism was in the DNA. The
author’s main point was that racism happened after you were born. Rodgers and Hammerstein
were accused by a legislator of being a threat to the American way of life by justifying interracial
marriage. They were determined to keep this song, even though they were accused of having a
communist agenda. They asserted that it represented the sentiment they wanted to convey and it
was going to stay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You’ve_Got_to_Be_Carefully_Taught).

My hope is that, in this article, through what was once inchoate, a narrative will emerge, and
that what I was unaware of at the time—the texture and feel of how ordinary Blacks and Whites
engaged—might find articulation. This journey into a micro-history will uncover details of what
was normal and usual, but in retrospect seems astonishing, in the apartheid era; the unspoken
(and perhaps unthought) customs and courtesies and silences that enabled people like my aunt

692 TESSA PHILIPS

and uncle and my parents and me to go about the routine of our privileged lives, enabled by the
system of apartheid, which we abhorred. How were we carefully taught?

LIFE ON THE FARM

My childhood times on the farm occurred long before the violence erupted. Those were the times
when White children could roam around the farm’s dusty roads, safe and carefree. They were
the years of the 1950s and 1960s, when the civil rights movements were emerging in America.
The musical, South Pacific, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its racial awareness and at the farm,
deep in the heart of apartheid South Africa, we children danced in the hot afternoons to its tunes,
perhaps understanding, but not fully, and keeping silent about the lyrics of “You’ve got to be
carefully taught.” In later years, farms were vandalized and White farmers were violently mur-
dered in their homesteads. Although this occurred mainly in the Eastern Transvaal, there were
incidents in the region of my uncle and aunt’s farm in the Orange Free State Province. By the
time I took my own children back to the farm in the 1980s, which was the decade of the fight for
liberation, the kind of safety I had felt there as a girl could no longer be taken for granted.

My parents, my sisters, and I visited my uncle and aunt’s farm regularly when I was a child.
In the early 1950s, my uncle and aunt designed their house in the Cape Dutch style, with White-
washed gables and a sandstone veranda running the length of its front. Sitting on a rise in the
midst of gently rolling farmlands, the house captured long views all around. Several spectacular
hills or koppies jutted out of this landscape, and the local village lay about five miles to the north.
Set down in the middle of all this, my uncle’s farm was very beautiful.

My uncle’s father emigrated from Lithuania in the early 1900s. The pattern of Jewish migra-
tion to South Africa, from the end of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century, was very much
like that to the United States. Most of the Jews were Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europeans fleeing
pogroms in Lithuania. In South Africa, they found whatever jobs they could. Some ran general
stores, and many moved into rural areas to farm. Jacob Cohen, my uncle’s father, first worked as
a butcher’s assistant before saving enough money to buy his own piece of land that eventually
grew to eight thousand acres. He became known, in the end, as The Potato King and has been
described in a farming journal as an outstanding example of one who promoted progressive agri-
culture. In 1928, in his busiest seasons he employed 600 Black workers, most of them women
from the neighbouring country of Basutoland, which in those days was a British Protectorate.
It became an independent state in 1965 and was renamed Lesotho. It was such a poor and arid
country that the Black inhabitants flocked over the border into apartheid South Africa to find
work. Attracted by higher wages and the company of their own people, many found their way to
the Cohen farm (in 1969 there were 78 full-time employees and they lived on the farm with their
families).

As soon as Mr. Cohen saw that he had moved to a good place, he went back home to Lithuania
where a matchmaker found him a wife whom he brought back to South Africa. Mrs. Cohen was
a wonderful cook and she taught her Black staff well. Out of her kitchen came all manner of
Eastern European food: gefilte fish, taeglach, kreplach, kneidlach, and pickled herrings, piles
and piles of it. In South Africa, such Eastern European food became known as Jewish food. Mr.
and Mrs. Cohen spoke with Yiddish accents, had Yiddish humour, and to my mind always seemed
to be kidding around. They were also fluent in Afrikaans and Sesotho. When they didn’t want the

HOW APARTHEID WAS LIVED AND LEARNED 693

children to understand something, they spoke in a mixture of Afrikaans and Yiddish. When they
did not want the Black staff to understand, they spoke in Yiddish.

Jacob sent for his relatives from Lithuania, who bought a neighbouring farm. They and their
son were part of the extended farm family. There, in the harsh environment of the Orange Free
State, the extended Cohen family was my introduction to European Jews in South Africa, a
widespread immigrant group whose stories are told in many biographies (for example, Rosen,
2006).

It was the day before Christmas on the Orange Free State farm, and the clan was gathering in
the mid-summer heat, because Christmas in South Africa falls in mid-summer. Every year at this
time, my aunt, the farmer’s wife, was hostess to her two Johannesburg sisters (one of them my
mother), their husbands, and their children. For two weeks, sometimes longer, we feasted noisily,
were pampered by the large farm staff (all Black), took a great interest in the farm activities, and
slept well until we dispersed and returned to Johannesburg’s suburbs. Because of this large staff,
there was absolutely no need for any member of the family to work or even help with anything
on the farm.

Although the car trip from Johannesburg, where I lived, was a long seven hours, we were
singing by the time we reached the huge mine dumps on the southern outskirts of Johannesburg.
Johannesburg sits six thousand feet above sea level on land that is said to contain forty percent
of the world’s gold. The scattered mine dumps are actually crushed rock, and because the gold
extraction processes were not very refined in those early days, the mine dumps glowed in the
early highveld sun as we drove south.

During the apartheid years, all the miners were Black. Because Blacks were unskilled, mining
was a steady source of work for them. The Colour Bar Act, passed in 1926, decreed that non-
Whites could only be employed as unskilled labor. It was originally designed to counteract the
force of any economic advantages enjoyed by the non-White community who outnumbered the
Whites by ten to one. This act eventually became the catalyst for the formation of the African
National Congress of which Mandela became the leader.

Along the way, we passed Blacks, often with packages balanced on their heads as they walked.
Little children, some also with their belongings on their heads, waved and shouted and we turned
around and waved vigorously through the back window as we sped past. Did we know they were
walking with their possessions because they were poor? I noticed, from the corner of my eye, that
my mother’s lips were drawn in a taut straight line as she looked down, as though she could not
bear to notice. I now wonder whether expressions such as those displayed by my mother were
signs that I understood, even back then, about the unequal lot of Blacks and Whites, something
about not looking and not saying.

The first night at the farm, after a large, noisy meal, the family gathered to wrap Christmas
presents for the farmhouse staff and to prepare gifts for each person who lived on the farm.
Although I hardly knew it, in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, this was a feudal farm. The Africans on
the farm were not slaves; they were employed, received wages, were not owned, and were free
to come and go as they pleased. But their lack of choice is what calls up images of slavery. The
oversupply of Black labor, as Berghe (1971) points out, was created by job reservation and the
poor education of South African Blacks. It served to limit job choices and prospects, forcing the
vast majority to tolerate what were often less than optimal conditions. Although some Blacks
lived reasonably well, most were poor and none was really free. The disproportionately large
number of Blacks to Whites is one of the features that made South Africa and the system of

694 TESSA PHILIPS

apartheid unique. It is important to remember that one of the major differences between the
United States of America and South Africa in regard to the treatment of Blacks was that, in South
Africa, Blacks comprise up to ninety percent of the population, whereas, in the United States of
America, Blacks make up twelve and half percent. The Help (Stockett, 2009) portrays racial life
in the American south that has many parallels with South African apartheid, but the discrepancy
in numbers represents a significant difference.

Around two hundred Black people lived on the farm during the 1950s and 1960s. At least
one member of each family was on my uncle’s payroll, receiving, in return for their labor, fresh
meat and corn meal and accommodation. Although their wages were higher than on neighboring
farms, they still earned very little. There never seemed to be a shortage of Blacks to help with
tasks such as milking the cows, or dehorning or branding the cattle. There were special people
to look after my aunt’s poultry, several women to sweep the lawn, water the garden, and tend the
vegetables. My aunt tried to employ as many people as possible. She and my uncle exercised a
kind of paternalistic care for the people who worked for them and lived with their families on the
farm. Their obligations may not have included paying anything resembling free market wages,
but there were obligations, and they stretched further than an owner’s to his workforce. They
were more like those of a medieval lord to his serfs, as explained by Berghe (1971) and Murray
(1992), who write that the feudal nature of this system was typical of that area at that time.

This relationship is exemplified by the way the families of the farm workers were housed in
locations on the farm and by how they lived there. The locations were also called townships;
there were three on the farm. In other countries, they might be known as shantytowns. None of
the Blacks owned property. There was no possibility of that, because of the laws of apartheid.
But they did not pay any rent. It was up to the owner of the farm to look after the inhabitants
of the farm. This meant that my uncle provided for his workers and their families, who lived
communally in locations, with building equipment, transportation to and from medical care, and
weekly rations of meat and corn meal. Some, but not all, of the huts were made of brick. Whatever
they were made of came from my uncle. Often the huts were makeshift. For example, they might
have corrugated tin roofs held in place by loose bricks or stones, and there was no electricity
supply. Open fires were used for cooking and heating and, as a result, a pall of smoke hung over
the locations in winter.

I have a video taken at the one pump that provided water for a whole location. A group of little
Black kids, smiling and laughing, dressed in ragged clothes and with long skinny legs, gathers
round the dilapidated pump getting water. The oldest child can’t be more than ten years old, and
he hangs off the pump handle, legs dangling down, and very small children squat around a metal
pot into which a thin stream of water flows.

CHRISTMAS DAY ON THE FARM

The family breakfast took place in an air of extra excitement—anticipation of the big day ahead.
But everyone managed to eat their fill from the usual lavish offerings: home-baked brown bread
and homemade jams, white cheese strung over the stove in a cheesecloth from the day before,
clotted cream, and then, of course, eggs of choice with polony. A glass of freshly squeezed orange
juice sat at every place, and three different kinds of porridge were available, Maltabela, oats, and
mealie-meal. (Maltabela is a brown sorghum porridge and mealie-meal is porridge made from

HOW APARTHEID WAS LIVED AND LEARNED 695

corn—mealie being Afrikaans for corn.) Mealie-meal was the staple diet for many Blacks, and
children raised on mealie-meal alone suffered a form of malnutrition known as Kwashiorkor, due
to lack of protein.

By mid-morning, the 200 Blacks who lived on the farm streamed up the hill from their location
toward the farmhouse. Only the essential services took place on the farm on Christmas Day—the
animals had to be fed, the cows had to be milked, and the eggs collected from the chickens—but
beyond that, the workers had the day off. When they reached the house, they sat in lines on the
lawn outside the kitchen, chatting and making jokes. They were dressed in their best, but often
ill-fitting and ragged, clothing. These were poor people. The women wore doeks or headscarves.
I had forgotten, until I looked back recently at a video someone took on Christmas morning 1970,
how many of the workers wore traditional Lesotho blankets, fastened in front with big safety pins
even though it was high summer, and we were dressed in light cotton shorts and shirts.

Soon the Blacks filled the yard and sat waiting. When my uncle, who was known to them as
Morena (chief), came out a hush fell over the group. Then he offered them all the compliments of
the season and handed out the presents. Each man received a khaki drill shirt, a pair of trousers,
and a measure of alcohol. My uncle joked and said something in Sesotho to each person who
came forward. We kids and a few of my uncle’s close helpers gave the presents to the women and
children. It was embarrassing, exciting, and exhilarating all at the same time. The little kids, often
with runny noses and in worn adult clothes rolled up at the cuffs and hanging off their shoulders,
were pushed forward by their older siblings or parents, issuing urgent instructions in Sesotho,
to receive in an outstretched hand a packet of assorted sweets, which we had wrapped the night
before. As each woman’s turn came to get a small article of clothing she would call out her size.
Each would clap her hands together and hold the left hand out for the parcel, placing the fingers
of the right hand on the left wrist as she did so. For a while afterward, little groups formed as all
compared gifts, the children keeping an eye on us, while the overexcited dogs were kept at bay.
To us, from Johannesburg, it felt very strange, even though we had been part of this ceremony at
the farm for as long as I could remember. I remember being silently annoyed with my mother as
she hovered uncomfortably in the background. Her discomfort was an unwelcome reminder that
all was not right. Gradually the knots of workers unravelled; the crowd broke up and the workers
and their families went back down the hill along the dusty road. We then returned for morning
tea that was served by Maggie, the maid, outside on the front veranda.

We would then have a swim in the pool before lunch. Some of the Black children lingered near
the house, clutching their candies, and watching us from a safe distance with wide eyes, ready
to run if one of us got too close. Some of the small children had babies tied to their backs with
blankets. We dived, splashing and shouting, into the clear pool. And they watched.

“Please come in for lunch,” my aunt called after a time from the stoep, “We want to get
finished early so the staff can go to church in the afternoon,” and in we all trooped, full of the
morning’s activities, but empty enough, again, to partake of a full three-course Christmas lunch.
There was a lot of laughter. There were jokes and protestations, groans about the amount of food
and “oh, one piece more won’t hurt!” from my aunt as she piled up the plates. The staff came in
with trays to clear away.

The piece de résistance was the rich, dark Christmas pudding served with brandy butter sauce
and farm-made ice cream and water ice. The Christmas cake had been carefully baked so that just
about everyone found a silver tickey (a threepenny bit), buried in the moist sweetness, but there
was only one silver charm for the luckiest person, who could then make a wish.

696 TESSA PHILIPS

So there we were, a big Jewish family enjoying a traditional heavy midday Christmas meal,
in the middle of a baking hot summer’s day in the Orange Free State, surrounded by poor Black
laborers and their families. It was disquieting, but not strange; we had learned to live with the
discomfort. It was what we knew.1 In a recent conversation, Lew Aron asked me if we celebrated
the traditional Passover meal at the farm. The contradictions at commemorating the freeing of
the Jewish slaves from Egypt while being served by Blacks who were not really free lay buried
somewhere in our consciousness. That experience is beyond the scope of this article, but is worth
mentioning.

OUT OF DENMARK

Then, one year, when an outsider strayed into our midst, we saw the farm through different
eyes. By this time I was at university and Klaus was an exchange student from Denmark. I had
never been outside of South Africa and it was always exciting to have an international visitor.
My mother had arranged for him to live with us during his visit. We brought him to the farm
and he perturbed the equilibrium, shaking us out of our embedded blindness. By amplifying the
contradictions in what was familiar to us, his visit unsettled an already unsteady stability.

Klaus was horrified by what he saw in the locations. It wasn’t as though we didn’t see the
contrast between the opulent household on the hill and the huts three hundred yards below, where
the occupants had no running water or electricity. It wasn’t as though we were not aware of
the skinny, ragged children queuing for water at the single pump. It wasn’t as though we didn’t
know about their meagre rations. We knew about all that and we could bear it. We understood
the contradictions, we thought, but that was life as we knew it. That was South Africa. But Klaus
could not bear, nor could he understand, the poverty of the Blacks and the inequity of it all. Nor
was he bound to be silent. He confronted us. He confronted my uncle and aunt. But we all rose
up against him, quietly but insistently. He was a guest and should not make waves, and anyhow
we all knew about the inequalities but had learned to live with them, especially at the farm. It was
all more complex than it seemed, we said. There was a whole history and politics to it. But to
each other we whispered “Gone with the Wind,” in reference to the lifestyle of the film.

Wasn’t my uncle purported to be a generous and fair boss? Better than those other farmers
down the road? Didn’t my aunt employ as many people as possible, and wasn’t she always giving
handouts? The paternalism went with the territory, much like a feudal system. We were bemused
by Klaus and his audacity, almost as though he was a naive but impetuous child. At the same
time, we knew it was a lot more serious than that. It was more disturbing than any of us would
admit to be asked to see our familiar, paradoxical world through a stranger’s eyes. It was shaming.
For some of us youngsters, it was also secretly thrilling to hear a rebellious voice politely raised
against the hegemonic orthodoxy we had outgrown. It was painful to feel implicated in a state of
affairs we all opposed. Couldn’t he see we were against all this?

So Klaus got into some arguments, not earth-shattering, but arguments nonetheless, and in
protest he slept for a night or two on the billiard table. But someone spoke to him and told him

1Suttner (1997) indicates that Jews behaved in similar ways to other White South Africans, in relation to race, at that
time. This is not to negate other ethnic and religious differences.

HOW APARTHEID WAS LIVED AND LEARNED 697

to stop. I don’t know which of the adults it was. I had the feeling it was my lawyer uncle from
Grahamstown, Chancellor of Rhodes University, or perhaps it was my father, a man who spoke
openly against the government, at least to us, but who, nonetheless, loved my uncle and aunt.
These men, like all the adults in my family, like most of us, adhered, albeit with great resignation,
to the laws of the land. And it was dangerous not to adhere to them. But in those days race and
all that we witnessed about us on the farm was something like sex—we all knew it went on, but
it wasn’t nice to talk about it, at least not at the farm.

DISCUSSION

To us children, the servants and farm hands took on the two dimensional glow of the noble
peasant; it appeared as though they were always smiling, willing and eager to offer help, warmth,
and succor. In fact, the oversupply of Black labour on top of the centuries of invalidation, lack of
support, and protection by any government meant that Black workers attempted to stay attuned
to and gratify the needs of their White employers. They were gestures of survival.

It was easy to overlook the desperate undertone, especially as it was not mirrored or articulated
in any real way. Even so, an undercurrent of anxiety ran through my childhood idyll. I felt it then,
though I pushed it aside. Now I recognize it differently. The silence around a set of irreconcilable
realities enacted for me each Christmas at the farm, the disquieting not-saying about the inequities
upon which our family’s extended happiness and prosperity depended, was so strong that it was
like a contract specifically agreed upon. When an outsider like Klaus came to the farm, he was
not bound by the shared implicit code we shared—not to react to what was before one’s eyes,
not to speak about how what one saw offended one’s moral sense. He broke unspoken rules. He
articulated the silence and he formulated what one had not known one knew. The shock I felt,
together with others of my extended family, was not the shock of the new. It was the shock of
breaking the silence of the unthought known (Bollas, 1987; this term was coined by Bollas to
denote unarticulated experience) one suddenly knew one had always known.

An interesting example of how lasting this state of illusion can be is to be found in the movie
Wrong Side of the Bus (Freedman, 2010), a memoir of ex-South African psychiatrist, Sidney
Bloch, who now lives in Melbourne. In the movie, Bloch, filled with remorse for living the life
of a privileged White, revisits his past and guilt in Cape Town, the city in which he was raised
and attended medical school. In one scene, hoping that his adult son might understand what it
was like during the apartheid years, he takes him to meet the now elderly Black family nanny
in her humble abode. The cameras are behind him as he knocks on her door, embraces her and,
with tears in his eyes, lets her know how much he loved her and that she was always seen as an
integral part of his family. She responds to this outpouring of emotion rather coldly, I thought,
by pointing out how hard it was to be poor while seeing others advancing and progressing in life,
just not those in her family.

As illogical as it seems, I wish I could hold the lens of nostalgia steady and keep my images
and memories of holidays at the farm in the 1950s and 1960s as paradise, as halcyon days when
Blacks and Whites lived cooperatively alongside each other; as happy times with smiling faces,
Black and White, with memories of warm interchanges with lots of laughter, compassion, and
tenderness. If I could, it would remain as my glue, an anchor for faraway places, keeping me
together when I moved far from home. Unlike many White children growing up in that era, I

698 TESSA PHILIPS

had no memory of a personal Black nanny who functioned for me like a mother, but I did have
the memory of the care exercised by, and the tenderness I felt toward, the Black servants on the
farm, and those memories, those attachments, probably had similar qualities for me. Memories
of the farm, the Black staff members, and my uncle, aunt, and cousins, kept me grounded at times
of alienation and fuelled my inner fire after I migrated to Australia. Without the farm, I had no
history. The memories became tainted and confused, a heady mix of nostalgia and trauma, love
and beneficence, and hatred and envy.

These lessons and memories did not begin and end on the farm. Life at my local (all White)
primary government school was a source of intriguing racial memories and lessons. The fact that
it was all White might have been enough, but there was more. One of the lessons that comes
to mind was the custom for each child to be given a small bottle of milk and a piece of fruit at
mid-morning intermission. A note from home was required if we did not want to partake of this
nourishment. We were told to “eat up,” as the poor little Black children in the township were not
getting this food. What was learned from this complex message? That we White children were
privileged, entitled, and superior in ways Black children were not? If we did not make use of our
privilege, in this case by drinking the milk and eating the fruit, would it not be a good thing for
poor Black children who lived in the townships?

Racial studies were taught to emphasize racial differences, for example of skin color and hair
texture. Links between class and race were underlined and emphasized, links between superi-
ority and race were demonstrated and lived in a million different ways. Historical or economic
explanations were not foregrounded explanations, instead privilege and guilt was the pervasive
unarticulated unquestioned default embedded position for most liberals.

All the Blacks in my immediate orbit were there for the purpose of service. On the surface, this
was accepted by Whites and Blacks alike. I had no experience of any White people performing
service tasks until I first journeyed out of South Africa as a university student on a boat from
Cape Town to England. When the boat stopped at Las Palmas, the capital city of one of the
Canary Islands, I was shocked to see White people sweeping the floors. It was a first for me.

Johannesburg, where I lived during term time, where I attended school and university, and
the farm where I spent the holidays, were two different and almost contradictory worlds; I was
part of both, inside and out, above and below, to paraphrase (Zeddies, 2000). Over the holiday
breaks, I absorbed the culture of farm life, and during term time I was a student at a liberal
university in Johannesburg. While there, I marched in demonstrations against apartheid and was
a participating member of the National Union of South African Students, a vocal, visible and
active antiapartheid group who took risks, often with dire consequences for its leaders. But even
within that group, and other groups of activists, many contradictions existed. One seldom heard
any suggestion of redistribution of wealth, power, and privilege. And while many activists were
out protesting, scheming, and even discussing violence as acts of liberation, their children were
being cared for at home by the ubiquitous underpaid Black nannies and their meals were being
prepared for them by their teams of Black domestic staff. With time, the contradictions amplified
by a reality, which included everyday brutality and helplessness associated with living in a police
state, the racial discrimination and guilt and fear of a revolution, caused those of us who were
able, to emigrate to other countries.

The injustice was all around us, but any feelings we might have had about it was forbidden
talk. That we buried it in the back pages of our mental newspapers was yet another example of
our sliced world.

HOW APARTHEID WAS LIVED AND LEARNED 699

It could easily be assumed that, in my search to explain the confusion of envy and love and
resentment, I would naturally turn to Kleinian based theories (Klein, 1975). The fundamental
flaw of those theories for me is the idea those feelings are innate and universal. Like Rogers and
Hammerstein, mentioned earlier, it is hard for me to believe these attitudes are in our DNA. But
nor do I believe that they arise from experience alone. I have tried to show in this article that what
is retained is what each individual brings to and makes of their experiences.

It is because I feel that experience plays such a large role that I favor a hermeneutic narrative
approach to interpretation as it examines concepts like race, place, and subjectivity from within
the contexts from in which they arise and exemplifies the belief that they are all inextricably
related (see Cushman, 1994; Philips, 2011). Over the last decade or so, these views have become
commonplace within contemporary relational and intersubjective theories which tend to support
a hermeneutic approach. Yet, I feel that for some, like Altman, (2000), who also supports Klein,
there are contradictions about what is innate and what is learned. The current emphasis is not so
much on arguing for the role of context but rather describing how context and subjectivity have
played out in different cultures, see for example the collection of papers (Brothers, 2013)

CONCLUSION

This article is a personal narrative, a phenomenological, rather than analytical, illustration of how
one may be carefully taught to be loving oppressors in the environment of a big liberally-minded,
caring family. At the same time, and even before we were entertaining Klaus at the farm, we
teenagers were planning to leave apartheid South Africa and to make lives for ourselves in other
countries. The line between victims, perpetrators, and bystanders blurs and shifts through time.
Living in the trauma zone I have described took its toll on my close family and ripped us apart.
That was one of the ways in which we were victims of apartheid. My sisters and most of my farm
cousins emigrated and are now spread over America, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The
older generation remained behind in South Africa. Being part of the Jewish diaspora themselves,
they never uttered a word of reproach for our decision to leave them although they were bereft.
They even encouraged us to leave.

I have lived in Australia for 37 years and the repercussions of that early life in South Africa still
have an impact on me and my choices. For the first years in Australia, I was largely numb to my
past. My determination to turn my back on South Africa and reinvent myself remained until the
release of Mandela and the change to democracy and the advent of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission disturbed my equilibrium. All my suppressed feelings of love, hate, and guilt toward
the old country and its people and who I was during apartheid burst forth again. My Ph.D. dis-
sertation, “Race, Place and Self” resulted from these feelings. This article is an adaptation of one
of the chapters, as is “Race, place and self” in the Experience of a Bystander (Philips, 2011).2

A trip to the Northern Territory of Australia during 2012 functioned as a catalyst that con-
tributed to my resolution to become more involved with Australian issues, instead of focusing on

2This article explains how the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission cast a spotlight on political horrors
perpetrated during the era of apartheid which led to Whites asking who they were during those years.

700 TESSA PHILIPS

my country of origin. Being up north reminded me that we have our own version of genocide and
racial problems in Australia, a topic outside the scope of this article.

In Australia, less than two percent of the population is Aboriginal and the majority of them
live in the Northern Territory. In the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, where I live and work, the
demographic is such that I hardly see any aboriginals and am not confronted by racial suffering
in any visceral regular way. It is easier to be a bystander in such a world. Australia’s legacy of
genocide and racial trauma can very easily be out of sight and out of mind. As I mentioned earlier,
I came to the conclusion that a contributing factor to the intensity of White South African guilt
was the dramatic contrast of racial demographics, as in South Africa Blacks as Blacks outnumber
Whites by ten to one, which of course affects the proximity to racial intermingling and living
conditions.

To my astonishment, in what can only be called a strange coincidence of timing, shortly after
my trip to Northern Australia, I received an invitation from Norma Tracy, CEO of an organization
called Gunawirra, to be part of a project to create a model that will reach at least a hundred
Aboriginal preschools with “art as a medium of healing trauma in the preschool child.” I accepted
the offer to supervise the researchers who supported parents and teachers of the children. It was
an opportunity to give back in accordance with my skills and training and experience.

Growing up in the system of apartheid has left me feeling uncomfortable about race, culture,
and class. It is as though I am concerned about being too friendly, too distant, too patronizing,
too uncaring. It is as if the cumulative effects of trauma, guilt, and even indignation have left me
a little raw, and even though this has eased over time, it has not completely disappeared.

The examples and narratives in this work relate to South Africa, but the principles that emerge
have far-reaching, even universal, implications. They apply to scars that are the legacy of being
raised in an autocratic state. The ramifications of being a member of the White oppressing class
by virtue of birth can never be erased, and issues of atonement, personal responsibility, culpa-
bility, and guilt endure. My aim was to examine the feelings that endure, using the tools of my
therapeutic trade.

REFERENCES

Altman, N. (2000), Black and white thinking: A psychoanalyst reconsiders race. Psychoanal. Dial., 10: 598–607.
Berghe, P. L. v. d. (1971), Racial segregation in South Africa: Degrees and kinds. In: South Africa: Sociological

Perspectives, ed. H. Adam. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 37–49.
Bollas, C. (1987), The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. New York: Columbia University

Press.
Brothers, D. (2013), Bystanders no more: Pscyhotherapeutic dialogues for the politically silenced. Internat. J.

Psychoanal. Self Psych., 1: 1–99
Cushman, P. (1994), Confronting Sullivan’s spider—Hermeneutics and the politics of therapy. Contemp. Psychoanal.,

30: 800–844.
—————. (2011), So who’s asking; Politics, hermeneutic, and individuality. In: Persons in Context: The Challenge of

Individuality in Theory and Practice, eds. R. Frie & W. Coburn. New York: Routledge, pp. 21–40.
Freeman, R. (2010), Wrong Side of the Bus. Melbourne: First Run Features.
Hoffman, I. (2009), Doublethinking our way to “scientific legitimacy: The desiccation of human experience. J. Amer.

Psychoanal. Assn., 57: 1043–1069
Klein, M. (1975), Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963, ed. M. Khan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of

Psychoanalysis.

HOW APARTHEID WAS LIVED AND LEARNED 701

Logan, J. (Director). (1958), South Pacific. South Pacific Enterprises. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
You’ve_Got_to_Be_Carefully_Taught

Murray, C. (1992), Black Mountain: Land, Class and Power in the Eastern Orange Free State, 1880s to 1980s.
Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Philips, T. (2007), Race, Place and Self . Melbourne, Australia: Deakin University.
—————. (2011), Race, place and self in the experience of a bystander. Internat. J. Psychoanal. Self Psych., 6:

405–426.
Rosen, R. (2006), The making of an Eastern European Jewish legacy in contemporary South Africa. Shofar: An

Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 25: 78–89.
Stockett, K. (2009), The Help. Melbourne, Australia: Penguin Books.
Suttner, I., ed. (1997), Cutting Through the Mountain. New York: Viking Books.
Zeddies, T. J. (2000), Within, outside, and in between. Psychoanal. Psychol., 17: 467–487.

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Abstract
“You have Got to be Carefully Taught”
Life On The Farm
Christmas Day On The Farm
Out Of Denmark
Discussion
Conclusion

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