Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0319/03192.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 20KB | 325 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03192}
$Pretitle{293}
$Title{South Africa
Introduction}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Harold D. Nelson}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{south
africa
white
black
political
apartheid
world
british
countries
efforts}
$Date{1980}
$Log{}
Country:     South Africa
Book:        South Africa, A Country Study
Author:      Harold D. Nelson
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1980

Introduction

     Most countries and their societies possess attributes, whether physical
or cultural, that form the basis of their international reputations. In some
cases a state may possess the wealth of vast natural resources and the proven
potential for expansive socioeconomic development, factors sure to win the
envy of less endowed countries and attractions likely to assure a favorable
role in foreign trade. In other cases their political and social orders earn
some countries a pariah status in the eyes of the world. The Republic of South
Africa-the Saudi Arabia of mineral wealth and the land of apartheid-occupies a
position of prominence in all of these categories.

     As it enters the 1980s, South Africa has a well-publicized image as one
of the richest countries in Africa and certainly the most economically
developed. Yet it is equally well-known as the only country in the world
where a White minority maintains total political, economic, and social control
over a preponderantly non-White-largely Black-majority. This domination is
ensured by effective police action against any organized opposition that
questions the basic assumptions of the system and by the imposition and
enforcement of laws, regulations, and discriminatory practices that equate the
rights of inhabitants to the color of their skin. Such are the generally
recognized marks of South Africa's uniqueness.

     All citizens of the country are subjected to a system of racial
classification that designates them officially as White, Coloured, Asian, or
Black. Roughly 60 percent of those classified as Whites are Afrikaners, who
are descendants of early Dutch and assimilated French Huguenot and German
settlers-an ethnic stock that in 1980 had thrived in the area for roughly 325
years. The second largest element of the White group are English speakers,
most of whom have British forebears. The Coloured classification is applied to
people of mixed ancestry. The Asian group consists largely of people whose
ethnic origins are in the East Asian subcontinent. Most of them are Indians, a
term that has gained wide use in societal transactions; a small number of
Chinese also fall within this official classification.

     For most of the White population, living conditions and the quality of
life in general terms compare favorably with those of the more developed
Western nations. Most people in this category characterize themselves as
sturdy and independent, fond of outdoor living and sports, hospitable, and
free and easy in ordinary social intercourse. A wide disparity, however,
exists between the standard of living of most Whites and that of most Blacks-a
function of both income patterns and opportunity. Living conditions for the
Coloureds and the Asians range somewhere between these two extremes. Marked
racial disparity exists in income, housing, education, levels of health and
nutrition, medical facilities, public amenities, social welfare, and leisure
activities.

     South Africa in the late twentieth century is an enigma, and explanations
of its underlying motivations have largely been limited to racial terms that
describe a Black-White confrontation. In light of the discriminatory practices
that pervade their daily lives, most Black South Africans tend to agree with
this explanation. Although racism undeniably plays a decided role in the
functioning of the society, a fuller understanding requires an examination of
other factors, mainly the role played by the insistent drive of Afrikaner
nationalism, a phenomenon that has struggled to achieve and consolidate
political power over the last century.

     To understand the impact of this nationalism on South African society, it
is necessary to recall the climate of conflict that has been endemic
throughout the country's history. Beginning in 1652, when representatives of
the Dutch East India Company established a station at the Cape of Good Hope to
reprovision its international trading fleet, the southern tip of Africa became
the scene of conflict of one kind or another between the Whites and the
indigenous peoples of the area. With the establishment of British colonial
rule in the early nineteenth century, discord arose between different segments
of the White population: the English speakers and the Boers (ancestors of the
present-day Afrikaners). Some of the English-speaking Whites officially
represented the British Empire in its colonial quest for territory. Others
were permanently settled in the area to exploit the newly found vast deposits
of gold and diamonds and to control the production effort. The Boers
(Afrikaans for farmers) were agriculturalists who devoted their efforts to
raising crops and livestock. The English speakers tended to gravitate toward
an urban environment, and their presence gave rise to a growing number of
towns and cities. They imported and established systems of education and
justice based on the British model and attempted to implant them among the
rural Boers. The differences in language, patterns of living, and cultural
heritages rapidly gave rise to feelings of superiority among English speakers,
who regarded the farmers as an inferior lot. The Boers, aware of the growing
discrimination, regarded the English speakers as a threat to the survival of
their culture, and the lines of battle were drawn.

     The ensuing struggle in Cape Colony led to the Great Trek northward-a
move by Boer pioneers who sought a new land of their own, a land in which they
would be free of British interference. Their quest for cultural preservation
in time led to the creation of the two Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange
Free State, but their clashes with the British were not ended. By the time of
the second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) the indigenous Black population had
already been subjected to White rule and had ceased to be the prime goal of
the subjugation efforts. The British won the bitterly fought conflict,
subjecting the stubborn but outnumbered Boer forces to ultimate defeat on the
battlefield and thousands of their women and children to inhumane treatment in
the world's first concentration camps, where many of them died.

     Although the country remained a British dominion when the Union of South
Africa was established in 1910, it enjoyed full internal self-government. The
arrangement, confirming White domination and permitting Afrikaner nationalism
to reassert itself, was to result eventually in Afrikaner political control.

     Custom and law had defined race relations and established White social,
economic, and political dominance in the heterogeneous society long before the
Afrikaner-based National Party came to power in 1948. Most White South
Africans, whatever their language or origin, accepted the prevailing pattern.
But there were occasional gaps in the structure of written and unwritten rules
that limited the rights and opportunities of non-Whites and the relations
between members of the different races. In 1948, however, a tightening-up
process began as the National Party-supported by most Afrikaners and actively
opposed by only a few Whites-introduced a systematic effort to organize the
relations, rights, and privileges of the races through a series of
parliamentary acts and administrative regulations. The Nationalist government
gave its policy an Afrikaans name-apartheid (separateness)-based on the
principles espoused by a leading Nationalist newspaper editor, H.F. Verwoerd.
The policy was to serve as the cornerstone in the master plan of Afrikaner
nationalism.

     During the period in which apartheid was developed as an idea and
implement