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Race & ethnic relations: American and global perspectives

Marger, M. N. (2015). Race and ethnic relations: American and global

perspectives (10th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

SOUTH AFRICA CHAPTER 14 Society in Transition

Little more than twenty years ago, South Africa, in its system of ethnic relations, was unique in the modern world. As an inequalitarian pluralistic society, it had no peer. Despite persistent intergroup conflict and hostility, almost all multiethnic societies in the post-World War II era adopted policies intended to strengthen ethnic unifica - tion. South Africa, however, moved in the opposite direction, compelling greater di- visions among its ethnic populations. What made South Africa most singular among contemporary societies was that its racist system was fully legitimized and enforced by the state. South Africa, as we will see, has been a congeries of societ~l inconsisten- cies and contradictions. Throughout most of its history, however, one thing was clear and unambiguous- the dominance by whites, the numerical minority, over blacks, the numerical majority. 1 No area of South African life was untouched by the racial policies and ideology of the dominant white group.

Today, South Africa is moving on what appears to be an irreversible course to - ward a more equalitarian system. Indeed, the scope and depth of change this society ha s experienced in the past two decades would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier. South Africa, therefore, provides an instructive case of the fluidity of ethnic relations and how they can change dramatically in a relatively short period of time, no matter' how rigid and implacable they may seem. Despite the magnitude of change, however, the ultimate shape of the new South Africa as a multiethnic so- ciety remains uncertain. As a result, its racial and ethnic system will engage the atten- rion of the world for many years to come. Furthermore, although its system of ethnic separatism has been dismantled officially, enough of it endures informally to make

1 The ethnic terminology used in describing South Africa's population has not been consistent, and as in rh e United States, it has political connotations. Traditionally, black Africans were called Bantu, a name -orresponding to their languages. During the apartheid regime, they were officially called blacks but referred to themselves as Africans, a term used by most scholars as well. Some use the term black to describe the entire nonwhite population, including Coloureds and Asians, as well as Africans. Today black African or African/black is used commonly to refer specifically to Africans, and that usage is adopted in this chapter. As the new South Africa evolves, ethnic terms will likely take on new meanings see Adam, 1995; Horowitz, 1991; Lever, 1978; Thompson, 2001; and van den Berghe, 1967).

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394 PART Ill ETH NIC REL ATI ONS IN CO MP ARATI VE PERSPECTI VE

this society still an extraordinary case in its extremes of ethnic division an inequality.

As we look at South Africa, it is important to keep in mind that events of change have moved so swiftly in recent years that any description of its prevailing institu- tions risks almost immediate obsolescence. South Africa's significance as a case stu dy of race and ethnic relations, however, lies as much in its history as in its current af- fairs. Furthermore, its system of extreme ethnic separation and stratification is nor something of the distant past but has only recently been successfully challenged. Ir is fresh enough, therefore, to warrant a careful examination and to be instructive ro other contemporary multiethnic societies .

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETHNIC INEQUALIT,Y

South Africa's modern ethnic drama began to unfold in the 1980s; extraordinary so- cial and political changes have taken place continually since then. However, the new South Africa that has emerged can be understood only if these changes are po si- tioned alongside this society's long heritage of intergroup conflict. As in other multi- ethnic societies, racial/ethnic stratification in South Africa has .been the result of a historical sequence of diverse groups coming together, viewing one another ethno- centrically, competing for scarce resources, and ultimately forming a hierarchy in which one imposes its superior power on others.

WHITE SETTLEMENT

Historical evidence indicates that what is today South Africa was inhabited by Bantu-speaking peoples, the society's major African linguistic group, as early as the sixteenth century and probably much earlier (Wilson and Thompson, 1969). Mod- ern South African history, however, involving the confrontation of European and native African peoples, begins with Dutch settlement in 1652. At that time, the Dutch East India Company established a colony in Cape Town as a refreshment sta- tion for its ships traveling to and from India. The indigenous people of the area, the Khoikhoi (Hottentots) and the San (Bushmen), were unable to satisfy the labor need of the colonists who therefore began to import slaves from other parts of Africa and from the Dutch East Indies only a few years after their original settlement. The colo- nists' negative view of these slaves did not prevent widespread miscegenation; hence a mixed racial group was created whose descendants are today called Coloureds.

THE TREKKI NG M OVEMENT As the colony grew, many of the Dutch, German, and French Huguenot colonists chose permanent settlement. At the beginning of the eigh- teenth century they began to leave Cape Town, establishing farms on land farth er into the interior. Thus began the penetration of the northern and eastern frontier s a movement called " trekking." These settlers became known as Boers, a Dutch word meaning "farmers." The trekking movement lasted 150 years, with the Boers continually pushing farther and farther inland. As they moved into the interior, the major patterns developed that would ultimately affect the shape of South African society- conflict with the indigenous peoples and the emergence of a unique white South African ethnic group.

CHAPTER I4 SOUTH AFR ICA 395

The Boers came into conflict not only with native African peoples occupying these lands but also with migrating African tribes moving across the continent, west- ward and southward. These were Bantu-speaking tribes, who were well organized and who presented serious resistance, unlike the Khoikhoi and the San, who had been more easily subdued. The clashes over land and cattle that developed between the Boers and the Bantu, called Kaffir wars, lasted for many decades before the dom- inance of the Boers was finally established. The disdain for the natives based on their racial features was exacerbated by the bitterness that resulted from these encounters. Additionally, because they greatly outnumbered the Boers, the Bantu were seen as a constant threat whose suppression had to be ensured. Many of the racial attitudes of white South Africans in modern times can be traced to these initial contacts with Africans in the interior.

THE EME RGENCE OF BoER (AFRIKANER) E THNICITY The second major consequence of the trekking movement was that the Boers increasingly distanced themselves from their European roots. As the settlers pushed inland, Dutch control over them waned. The farther they removed themselves from Cape Town, the more they became "a law unto themselves" (Thompson, 1964:186). As subsistence farmers, they disengaged themselves even further from intercourse with the economic and political institutions of the colony and its civil administration.

With their economic and political isolation, the Boers developed a culture thor- oughly distinct from their European heritage. Differences were most apparent in lan- guage and religion. A unique Dutch dialect evolved over several generations, producing eventually the Afrikaans language, today only remotely related to the original Dutch. Divergent religious beliefs also contributed to the cultural distance between the Boers and their European ancestors. The Boers resisted the enlightened Protestantism that was emerging in Europe in the late seventeenth and early eigh- teenth centuries, clinging instead to a primitive Calvinism, whose ideas of predestina- tion and rugged individualism seemed a fitting complement to the pioneering conditions of life' in rural South Africa. They increasingly saw themselves in a biblical light as "chosen people," destined to conquer the frontier against the numerically superior Bantu and later the colonial British (Fredrickson, 1981). The chosen people theme continued to run strongly through the ideology of the Boers (today called Afrikaners) and was reflected in their stubborn resistance to changes that threatened to reduce their LJOWer.

By the late eighteenth century, the Boers were a unique social entity with a cul- ture and language distinct from any other. They were geographically and intellectu- ally isolated, and their European roots, notes historian Leonard Thompson, "were almost completely severed" (1964:187). Thus was born the Afrikaner ethnic group of South Africa. The Afrikaners' knowledge of and ties to Europe were so minimal that they had become, in effect, "white Africans." Unlike other European settlers on the African continent, the Afrikaners did not see themselves, nor did they even func - ti on, as colonials representing and maintaining strong cultural and political ties to a motherland.

This sense of isolation and permanence explains much about the determination of Afrikaners in later years to defend their way of life, and what they came to see as their territory, against the threat of black rule. Not until the late 1980s were the

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396 PART Ill ETHNIC RELATIONS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Afrikaners compelled to alter that view. As we will see, Afrikaner nationalism wa tempered and finally gave way to a recognition that only by sharing societal power with those groups it dominated so completely for most of South Africa's history could it survive in the modern world.

BRITISH VERSUS BOERS

Whereas the first century and a half of modern South African history is largely a chronicle of confrontation between white and black- Afrikaner and African-the following 150 years are marked principally by the political rivalry between the Afri- kaners and the colonial British.

THE BRITISH ENTRANCE The British entered the South African scene at the start of the nineteenth century when, in a move designed to protect their colonial interests in the East, they took possession of the Cape colony. The next fifty years saw the devel- opment of a competitive and often bitterly hostile relationship between the British and the Afrikaners that, although moderated, would remain an essential element of South Africa's ethnic dynamics . The British were not a large settler group like the Boers, and they brought a strikingly different political and social temperament to South Africa, more liberal and cosmopolitan. Their values clashed with the stern parochialism of the Afrikaners, and a wide gulf opened between them.

Not long after their arrival in South Africa, the British instituted liberalized poli- cies regarding race relations, which exacerbated the already strained relations with the Afrikaners. The British attitude toward the native Africans was no different from the Afrikaners' in its substance-white dominance. But the British saw black Africans in a more paternalistic frame, whereas the Afrikaners saw them as a threat to their ultimate survival as a people. "The abstract difference between British imp e- rial and Afrikaner republican conceptions of how to rule Africans," explains histo- rian George Fredrickson, "might be described as a conflict between the trusteeship ideal and what the Boers called baaskap- which in essence meant direct domination in the interest of white settlers without any pretense that the subordinate race was being shielded from exploitation or guided toward civilization" (1981:193). The practice of white supremacy by the Afrikaners was thus consistent with their fu n- damental belief that force and exploitation were perfectly legitimate means to protect their group interests.

THE SECOND TREKKING MovEMENT In 1834, slavery was abolished throughout the British empire. This act was followed during the next two decades by the lifting of other legal restrictions against nonwhites. These radically new racial policies acted as a major incentive for the second and far more substantial migration of Boers into the interior. In 1836, a sweeping movement was launched in which one-quarter of the entire Afrikaans-speaking population would eventually set out on their own into the interior (Robertson and Whitten, 1978) . This was the commencement of the Great Trek, comparable in many ways to the westward movement of Americans in the nineteenth century. As the western frontier had served as a kind of social safety valve in the United States, the Boer trek northward and eastward after 183 6 provided a means of escape for those who found the British presence a constant source of anguish.

CHAPTER 14 SOUTH AFRICA 397

These Voortrekkers, as they were called, were doggedly pursued by British colo- nial advances, however. After fierce battles with the Zulu tribe in 1838, Boers fo unded the republic of Natal, which was subsequently annexed by Britain in 1843. Pushing farther northward, the Voortrekkers founded the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, which were eventually recognized as independent states by the British. These states became the heart of the Afrikaner culture, and within them the sense of autonomy and group solidarity was developed to its fullest. In both, the notion of white supremacy was a fundamental principle.

THE BoER WARS The discovery of diamonds around Kimberley in 1867 and of gold in the Transvaal in 1886 once again spurred British advances. Britain had earlier at- tempted to extend its influence into the Transvaal, resulting in the first Boer War. Although the Boers successfully resisted at that time, the influx of British railroads, mining interests, and workers following the gold discovery led to a more serious challenge to Boer autonomy. The British finally intervened with military force, pro- voking the second Boer War in 1899, a conflict that would leave permanent scars of bitterness between the two groups . The Boers used guerrilla tactics against the larger and superior British forces; in response, the British interned the Boers in concentra- tion camps where twenty-six thousand, including women and children, died of dis - ease. This is an event of enormous significance in Afrikaner history, symbolizing the martyrdom of the Boer people and their determination to survive against all odds. This second encounter with the British was a key factor in the subsequent develop - ment of militant Afrikaner nationalism. As we will see, though they were defeated in war, the Afrikaners eventually asserted political ascendancy and eme..rged as South Africa's dominant ethnic group.

Unlike the Afrikaners, the British never coalesced into a nation-like unit in South Africa. Their loyalties were fragmented between South Africa-and the British Com- monwealth (Thompson, 1964). As a result, Afrikaner dominance- though repeat- edly diluted by British incursions in education, immigration, and especially the economy throughout the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth-was eventu- ally entrenched and solidified. Although they had been militarily successful in the second Boer War, the British began to lose influence afterward and reached a tenu- ous political compromise with the numerically superior Afrikaners.

In 1910, the four territories of South Africa-the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Tra~svaal-were merged into a union, at which time the foundation of the society's racial laws was secured . Although the subordination of blacks had al- ways been informally understood and enforced, during this period a succession of government policies institutionalized many segregationist and inequalitarian prac- tices, particularly those regarding participation of Africans in government and the economy.

THE AFRIKANER ASCENDANCY

The modern period of South African history can be said to have begun in 1948 with the political victory of the Afrikaner-led National Party. This ended the almost half century of delicate balance between British and Afrikaner interests and established the Afrikaner political ascendancy. The National Party represented the most extreme

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398 PART III ETH N IC RELATIONS IN COMPAR ATIVE PERSPECTIVE

element of Afrikaner nationalism, viewing itself as the spearhead of a God-ordained mission to shape South Africa in the interests of Afrikaners and to throw off the yoke of British influence. With the withdrawal of the Union of South Africa fro m the British Commonwealth in 1961, South Africa's British ties were severed once and for all.

Most important, the Afrikaner-dominated government began to formally erect an institutionalized system of white supremacy, called apartheid, the dynamics of which we will look at shortly. While other African nations of the post-World War II era were moving toward national unification and a breakdown of tribalism, South Africa was moving in the opposite direction, creating a social order of strict separa- tion between whites and blacks and encouraging the retention of tribal cultures among the African populace. In the modern period of South African history, the Afrikaner-led whites presented to the world a system of formalized e.thnic separatism unmatched in rigidity and scope.

ETHNIC STRATIFICATION

In no other modern multiethnic society was ethnic stratification as clear-cut as in South Africa, and in no other was it so inflexible. Until the official demise of apart- heid in the early 1990s, the boundaries between ethnic strata were, by law, relatively impermeable. South Africa's racial system was castelike, sustained by endogamy and by the maintenance of separate institutional systems for each ethnic group. Only in the larger economic system did the different ethnic groups come together, and there, as in all other societal areas, the intergroup relations were grossly inequitable. In - deed, along with its rigidity, the other major feature of the South African system of ethnic stratification was the enormous gap between the dominant white group and the several subordinate black groups- a gap that, as we will see, remains very much in evidence today . South Africa, then, was the prototypical inequalitarian plu- ralistic society, in which only the economic system served as a kind of social glue holding the various groups together.

Undergirding and enforcing the system of ethnic inequality was the South Afri- can state- dominated by whites, specifically, the Afrikaners. So complete was white control of the society's political apparatus that blacks were allowed no meaningful participation and were accorded few legal rights. Pierre van den Berghe (1978) re- ferred to the South African sociopolitical system as a Herrenvolk democracy: a state that provides most democratic features of political rule to whites while ruling blacks dictatorially. Others described the system as a "race-oligarchy" (Adam, 1971b) or a "pigmentocracy" (Thompson and Prior, 1982) . All these appellations denote the fact that skin color was the single overriding criterion of societal power in South Africa.

As was explained in Chapter 2, in almost all multiethnic societies, ethnic status is a significant factor in the distribution of life chances. The allocation of justice, health, occupation, education, living quarters, and so on depends, to some degree or another, on one's ethnic classification. But in no modern society has that classifi- cation been so critical in determining people's social place as it was in South Africa under apartheid. To ensure white dominance in all areas of social life required a formal division of the population into specific ethnic categories- whites, Coloureds,

CHAPTER 14 SOUTH AFRI CA 399

Asians (mostly Indians), and Africans. Though no longer officially recognized, these categories, informally, continue to divide South Africa.

THE WHITES

Whites (or Europeans) constitute less than 10 percent of the population (Table 14.1) but, until 1994, completely dominated government. As the only group with effective political rights, whites for decades filtered all social rewards, siphoning off their dis - proportionate share before distributing the remainder to the three subordinate groups. Although they no longer dominate the political system, whites continue to maintain key positions of power in the economy and own most of the society's wealth. In an economic sense, they remain the dominant group despite the fact that they have been displaced as the political ruling group.

T HE WHITE E THN IC D IV ISION As previously noted, however, whites are by no means a culturally or even politically unified group. Rather, they comprise two major ele- ments: Afrikaners and the English-speaking, most of the latter of British origin. The two major white subgroups differ not only in language and culture but also, to some degree, in class status. With the victory of the National Party in 1948, Afrikaners for almost four decades dominated all aspects of the political system. The English- speaking whites traditionally maintained the strongest influence in the society's economic institutions- trade, finance, mining, and manufacturing. The English, compared with the Afrikaners, traditionally occupied higher-rankin~jobs, were bet- ter educated, and were in general wealthier (Adam, 1971b). These discrepancies, however, have diminished in recent years.

The English, whose South African roots do not extend as far back as the Afrikaners', are less cohesive and do not display the same sense of ethnic solidarity. Moreover, though most are of British origin, among the English-speaking whites there are also other, smaller, ethnic groups of European origin, including a Jewish community (Shimoni, 2003 ).

The Afrikaner-British conflicts of the nineteenth century left a residue of inter- group animosity that continued to manifest itself for much of the twentieth century. On the one hand, Afrikaners resented the economic role of the English, and anti- British sentiment. was a staple of Afrikaner nationalism for many generations. On the other hand, the English-speaking whites viewed the Afrikaners as parochial and unenlightened. Other than business and politics, social contacts between the two groups were minimal (Brown, 1966; Lemon, 1987; Thompson and Prior, 1982).

Language was a particularly important factor in separating the two white groups. Afrikaans, the language of the Afrikaners, traditionally was established

TA BLE 14. r I ETH NIC POPULATION OF S OUTH AFRI CA

T otal Population Black African Coloured Indian/ Asian White

53,000,000 79.8% 9.0% 2.5% 8.7%

Source: Statist ics South Africa (2013) .

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400 PART III ETH N IC RELATI ONS IN CO MP ARA TI VE PERSPE CTI VE

throughout the state school system, and when Afrikaners dominated South Afri politically, it was the language of government and politics. But in business and indus- try, dominated as they were by the English, the predominant language was English. The language division, however, transcended politics and commerce. For Afrikanec . it was a vital component of Afrikaner nationalism (Lemon, 1987).

THE CONVERGENCE OF WHITE I NTERESTS The class, status, attitudinal, political, and lin- guistic divisions between the Afrikaners and the English should not be overstated. First, with the ascendancy of the Nationalists in 1948, a significant closing of the gap in wealth and economic influence between the two groups gradually occurre (Vanzyl Slabbert, 1975). Class differences, though real, were minimized by the pri- mary importance of one's racial classification. Second, both grdups benefited fr om the castelike system and were united in their desire to preserve white rule. This com- mon interest was strong enough to override the political differences between them. Thus English opposition to apartheid stemmed mainly from the view that it wa economically impractical and inefficient, not that it was morally objectiona ble (Banton, 1967; Lewin, 1963; van den Berghe, 1967). Although the social gap be- tween the English and Afrikaners remained evident, the politicai differences between them diminished as white dominance was challenged (H orowitz, 1991).

AFRIKANERS AS A N Ew MIN ORITY Today, with apartheid ended, the political and cultural power of th~ Afrikaners is in decline. Afrikaners no longer play a major role in government, and the Afrikaans language is under attack in the schools and media. where English is now preferred (Vestergaard, 2001). 2 The civil service, once a stronghold of Afrikaners, now hires mostly blacks (Daley, 1998a). Clearly, this fo r- merly dominant group has been transformed into a minority. And that minority sta- tus has fundamentally affected the very self-identity of Afrikaners, many of whom no longer even define themselves in this ethnic fashion. In his fieldwork in South Africa. Mads Vestergaard found that "[w]hen asked, individuals who formerly might have called themselves 'Afrikaner' now increasingly define themselves according to their profession, their geographical location, or simply as 'South African'" (2001:30). A one journalist describes them, many present-day Afrikaners "seem to be searching for a comfortable place in a black-majority society and still have not found it " (Wines, 2007b:A1) .

THE COLOUREDS

Out of the sexual and sometimes marital unions of whites and blacks during the early settlement of the Cape was created an intermediate racial group called Colour- eds. During the nineteenth century, the Cape continued to evolve along different so- cial and political lines from the frontier settled by the Voortrekkers. As a result, fo r a long period following the abolition of slavery in 1834, the legal system of the Cape was essentially color-blind, allowing for a great deal of racial intermixing

2 With the fall of Afrikaners as the dominant political group, Afrikaa ns is increasingly being displaced by English and African languages in all areas of social and political life (Giliomee, 2004; McLarin, 1995; Swarns, 2002 ).

CHAPTER 14 SOUT H AFR ICA 40 1

(Fredrickson, 1981; Mason, 1970). Today, almost all of South Africa's nearly five million Coloureds live in the Western and Northern Cape provinces.

The Coloureds are perhaps the most peculiar element within the South African ethnic system because in all ways except their physical features, they are thoroughly Europeanized. Most speak Afrikaans, are Christian (mostly Protestant), and are in other cultural ways barely distinguishable from the Afrikaners. The sole, and obvi- ously critical, distinction between the two groups is skin color. Many Coloureds, of course, are even physically indistinguishable from the Afrikaners.

The position of the Coloureds has been marginal to both whites and Africans not only physically but also politically and economically . During the apartheid re- gime, Coloureds maintained a few political privileges that-limited though they were- placed them apart from the Africans. The economic position of the Coloureds has also been somewhat privileged by comparison with that of Africans, though well below the white standard. Most are part of the unskilled proletariat, in both agriculture and industry, though there is a substantial middle class.

The facts that they are thoroughly Europeanized and under apartheid held at least a few token privileges created feelings of marginality to both white and African groups. As Dickie-Clark (1972) has noted, through apartheid they lost their earlier legal equality with whites but gained a somewhat more advantageous position over Africans and Indians. This accounts in some measure for their reluctance to identify or interact more closely with the Africans (Adhikari, 2005; Gevisser, 1994) .

THE ASIANS

The bulk of South Africa's Asian population is made up of Indians, mostly descen- dants of indentured workers brought from India in the late nineteenth century to work in the sugarcane fields of Natal. Following their term of service, many re - mained and became traders, shopkeepers, and workers at various skill levels (Hart and Padayachee; 2000). Most still live today in Natal, in and around Durban, the province's largest city. Within the South African system they are, like the Coloureds, a marginal group- part of neither the white nor the African populations.

Ethnic Indians in South Africa are a complex group in both culture and class. They are of several linguistic origins and are further divided along religious lines. Within the Indian population is an entire range of classes, from wealthy merchants to unskilled agric ultural and industrial workers. All, however, exist in the context of an institutionally separate community. Indians generally occupy a more privileged economic position than either Coloureds or Africans (in most occupational sectors, they earn more than Coloureds and far more than Africans), but most rank well below whites.

South Africa's Indians have functioned as a classic middleman minority. In Chapter 2, such minorities were described as occupying an intermediate economic status between dominant and subordinate ethnic groups. Anthony Lemon has writ- ten that "European attitudes to Indians have been characteristically ambivalent; em- ployers found their labour useful, but traders and businessmen feared competition" (1987:245). For a long time the permanence of Indians in South Africa was ques - tioned by the white power structure. Moreover, prohibitions on their movement in South Africa as well as against further immigration limited their size. At the same

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402 PART III ETH NIC RELATI ONS IN COM PARATIVE PERSPECTI VE

time that Indians have been viewed suspiciously and with derision by the whites. they have been seen by Africans as exploiters. One scholar, in fact, asserts that in general "Indians are more resented by most Africans than are Whites" (Moodley. 1980:226). By the same token, many Indians expressed fear of black rule following the demise of white rule, and tensions between the two groups have remained evidem (McGillivray, 2006; Noble, 1994; Swarns, 2002).

THE AFRICANS

As part of the South African ethnic composition, the African population is by far the largest, almost 80 percent. Although all Africans historically shared a common soci- etal powerlessness, they are not a single culturally unified group. Rather, they derive from several Bantu tribes, the largest among them the Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho. Even though almost all Africans still speak a native tongue and retain certain other uniquely Bantu traits, the tribal culture for most is residual. Except for those who remain in rural areas, they are assimilated culturally into Western ways. They are at least nominally Christian and in urban areas speak either English or Afrikaans in ad- dition to their Bantu language. Within the urban environment, tribal or subethnic boundaries become indistinct, and the common political and economic oppression they suffered in the past has impelled the formation of an encompassing black African ethnic group .

A crude economic hierarchy is evident among Africans, just as it is among the other three ethnic populations. Occupational differences are particularly acute be- tween those li\ring in urban areas- mostly industrial workers- and those living in rural areas- mainly subsistence farmers or agricultural workers . In addition, a sub- stantial number of migrant laborers from neighboring African nation-states work in the gold and diamond mines.

Most Africans have occupied the lowest-ranking jobs in the labor structure those requiring little or no skill. With the end of the official policy of racial discrimi- nation, however, this traditional pattern is changing. Job opportunities for Africans have opened in significant numbers, and they have been afforded increasing access to higher education. As a result, the African middle class, growing even before the end of apartheid, is expanding rapidly.

These marked improvements in the status of black Africans, however, should not disguise the fact that, as we will see in a later section, the economic differences between blacks and whites remain vast. As one observer of South Africa described it not long after the end of apartheid, "[P]erhaps no country on earth has cultivated such a wide gulf between the country-club, luxury-car, boutique life style of white privilege and the wretchedness of black denial" (Keller, 1995:A6). That description continues to hold true today.

PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

In Chapter 4, inequalitarian pluralistic systems were described as having several key traits- separation and duplication of institutions among the society's various ethnic groups, extreme polarization between dominant and subordinate groups, high levels of prejudice and discrimination, and a vastly inequitable distribution of wealth .

C HAPTER I4 SOU T H AFR I C A 403

The coordinating mechanism of such systems is the absolute authority and power of the dominant group. Under apartheid, the South African system epitomized all of these characteristics .

Starting in 1948 and for the next four decades, political policies of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party were designed to create and sustain inequality among South Africa's four ethnic populations. These policies were grounded in two overriding principles: (1) the subordination of nonwhites in all areas of social, politi- cal, and economic life; and (2) the maximum physical and social separation of the four groups, particularly the two major groups, white and African. The latter princi- ple was justified by the premise that peace and order could be ensured "only if peo- ple of the various colours mix as little as possible" (Wiechers, 1989:8). So great was the incompatibility of black and white ethnic groups, it was felt, that contact between them could lead only to conflict; hence, minimizing contact would be the logical solution to this perceived problem.

THE DYNAMICS OF A PARTHEID

Apartheid provided specific legislation mandating the residential separation of the racial groups, the maintenance of separate social institutions for each, and eventually the formal division of South Africa into separate and independent white and black nations. Indeed, so blatant and uncompromising was the South African system that the very term apartheid has, in recent times, come to be applied commonly outside the South African context, used to signify any rigid and durable type of ethnic separation and inequality.

In 1994, the Nationalist regime relinquished power in a pea~eful transfer to a democratically elected black-dominated government. This officially ended apartheid. Although it is no longer formally in effect, examining this system of ethnic separation today is instructive in that we may see how extreme inequalitarian pluralism oper- ated in a modern society. Based on an ideology of ethnic incompatibility, this was a complete system of ethnic separatism that shaped all aspects of social life. There have been few comparable cases in the contemporary world.

With the advent of black African political dominance, apartheid was officially dismantled, but its basic principles and underlying framework continue, in large measure, to guide interethnic relations unofficially and informally. Let's look more closely at several of the most important measures that shaped the apartheid system.

RACIAL CLASSIFICATION Where physical distinctions among people are not clear-cut, ethnic boundaries are difficult to define and enforce. To create a classification system that could be used to distinguish the racially dominant and subordinate groups, the Nationalist government soon after it came to power in 1948 installed several formal measures .

T he first cornerstone of apartheid was the Population Registration Act of 1950, providing for the official racial categorization of all persons . Questionable cases were decided by race classification boards, made up of whites, who ruled on the identity of such people. Although the registration system was technically applied to everyone in South Africa, it was designed primarily to monitor the movement of Africans and was enforced mainly against them. A "passbook" comprising detailed

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404 PART llI ETHN IC RELAT IONS IN COMPARAT IVE PE RSPECTIVE

identification papers was required of all Africans, and failure to produce it on de- mand was an automatic assumption of criminal status. Over the years, eighteen mil - lion arrests were made for passbook violations (Lipton, 1987) . The passbook system was a particularly odious element of apartheid for Africans and was a constant re- minder of their almost total subordination (Klaaste, 1984). The pass laws were ab ol- ished in 1986. Most important, the Population Registration Act was repealed in 1991, removing one of the fundamental legal props of the apartheid system.

PETTY A PARTH EID Physical contact between blacks and whites was minimized through a system of petty apartheid, or what van den Berghe (1967, 1979a) called "micro segregation," consisting of dozens of laws and mandates designed to maintain ethnic separation in almost every conceivable area of social relations. Restaurants, hotels buses, trains, public toilets, waiting rooms, hospitals, schools, parks, beaches, thea- ters, and the like were for the most part segregated. Moreover, these separate facili- ties were invariably unequal in quality and quantity. Crowning the rules of petty apartheid was a policy of strictly enforced endogamy, prohibiting interracial mar- riage and even sexual intercourse between whites and blacks. In the realms of social life where people come into physical contact with each other, the South African apartheid system was strikingly similar to the Jim Crow system of segregation en- forced in the pre-1960s American South. Unlike the Jim Crow system, however there were no pretensions of "separate but equal."

Most of the measures of petty apartheid were officially repealed beginning in the 1980s. Neighborhoods, hospitals, public transportation, parks, beaches, and other public facilities >were desegregated. But these official changes have not been imple- mented uniformly, nor have social attitudes, cast by decades of socialization to apartheid, been easily reversed. As a result, petty apartheid continues to guide many areas of social life. "To the casual visitor," noted a study group to South Africa in 1986, "apartheid may appear to be on the way out. In its essential ele- ments, it remains very much intact" (Commonwealth Group, 1986:33). Today, that observation still seems valid. Increased interracial encounters do take place in work school, and other public places, but these do not usually lead to social interaction at any but a formal, superficial level. Social behavior continues to be shaped by group stereotypes and traditional beliefs engendered by years of apartheid (Finchilescu and Tredoux, 2010; Gibson and Claassen, 2010; Lefko-Everett, 2012).

R ES IDENTIAL SEGREGATION A more fundamental and significant level of apartheid con- cerned the maintenance of separate living areas for whites and nonwhites. Officially mandated residential segregation, then, became another cornerstone of apartheid.

-. Through the Group Areas Act of 1950, each racial group was assigned specifically demarcated living areas. Any area might be proclaimed "reserved" for a particular group, after which residents not belonging to that group had to move elsewhere. As a result, depending on their skin color, people might be arbitrarily removed and sem to their "appropriate" area. Because this measure was designed to assure racial in- tegrity of white areas and to displace nonwhites from them, over the years its effects were felt primarily by the latter.

The designation of specific areas for each ethnic category was closely related to the South African labor system. Africans functioned as the country's unskilled

CHAPTER 14 SOUTH AFRIC A 4 0 5

industrial proletariat, and because South African industry was located in tradition- ally white areas, this spurred the migration of African workers into white neighbor- hoods. Because the industrial economy could not function without them, some provision had to be made to accommodate Africans without upsetting the ethnic pu- rity of white residential areas. The solution was a migrant laboring system in which Africans were permitted to enter white areas to work but would be housed in sepa- rate communities, called townships, adjacent to the white cities. These townships served, in effect, as dormitories for Africans who labored in white areas. Africans who lived in the townships were officially only "temporary" residents or migratory workers, even if they were born in the urban areas and their ancestors had lived there for generations.

The township of Soweto, adjacent to Johannesburg, is perhaps the epitome of this purposefully designed system of residential segregation. Constructed to house Johannesburg's African migrant laborers, Soweto was actually larger than the white population of Johannesburg itself!

Years of restricted movement of Africans created severe social disruption among the urban African populace. In a classic illustration of the self-fulfilling prophecy, so- cial conditions were produced among urban Africans that inevitably led to the deca- dent behavior commonly attributed to them. Forced to migrate to the cities to find employment, African men lived in squalor and were forbidden to bring their families with them. Demoralization and alienation consequently thrived among them, in turn leading to high rates of crime, violence, and alcoholism in the townships.

Restricting the movement of blacks into white areas was referred to by the Nationalist government as "influx control," and the passbook system was a key de- vice in enforcing this policy. The system, however, failed to stem the urban flow of Africans, and the policy was scrapped in 1986. Nonetheless, residential segregation today remains the norm, in large measure because blacks in general lack the means to acquire housing in what have been traditional white areas (Christopher, 2005; McClinton and· Zuberi, 2006).

THE HOMELANDS As the Nationalist government shaped apartheid, it envisioned the culmination of this racially divided system as the complete separation of the ethnic populations in independent nations. This policy of ultimate exclusion, or what van den Berghe (1iJ67, 1979a) called "macro segregation," entailed the division of the society into geographic areas corresponding to race and ethnicity. As a result, certain areas, variously called "homelands," "Bantustans," or "black states," were set aside for Africans, based on the Nationalist version of historic tribal areas. Each homeland roughly corresponded, in this view, to an area originally inhabited by a particular Bantu tribe. The areas set aside for Africans were less than 14 percent of the land area of South Africa, leaving more than 85 percent for whites . All Africans, regard- less of where they resided or where they were born, were declared "citizens" of one of the homelands, based on their ethnic or tribal origins. This included those living in officially designated white areas-the majority of the African populace.

When the homelands policy was formulated, the Nationalists expected that eventually all Africans in South Africa would live in one of these areas, each of which would be granted independence. Once this grand design was fully realized, it would be possible for the South African government to declare that there were no Africans

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406 PART Ill ETH N IC REL ATI ONS IN CO M PARATI VE PERSPEC TI VE

in South Africa, only "guest workers" temporarily living in the remaining (white areas of the country. In short, until all Africans could be "repatriated to their home- lands," those remaining in the white areas were to be considered transient laborers. migrants entitled to few legal rights or privileges. Sebastian Mallaby referred to the homelands as "the most ambitious injustice that apartheid ever devised" (1992:26 ).

From the outset, the homelands were fictional creations, constructed essentially to provide South Africa with a continued flow of cheap, exp loitable labor and to serve as a convenient dumping ground for unemployed, aged, and infirm Africans (Carter, 1980) . None of these areas was economically capable of sustaining itself independently of the South African economy. Moreover, Africans living in South Africa's cities had no cultural or even social ties to their official homeland. The N a- tionalist government acknowledged these facts by encouraging and even subsidizing industries to locate in adjacent border areas or in the homelands 'themselves so th at jobs could be created for Africans living there (Stultz, 1980). None was ever recog- nized by any international body or nation outside South Africa . W ith the advent of a black-dominated government in 1994, the homelands as political entities were offi- cially abolished.

APARTHEID AND E CONOMIC INEQUALITY

One of the cruel ironies of apartheid is that it was financed primarily by its victims. All nonwhites-Africans, Coloureds, and Indians-were discriminated against, yet they had to underwrite the oppressive system by accepting artificially low wages and seriously deprived working and living arrangements . Plainly, apartheid enabled whites to live at a level of comfort they would not otherwise have enjoyed.

Joss AND WAGES Discriminatory occupational and wage policies guaranteed to whites the higher-ranking jobs and dictated grossly discrepant wages between blacks an d whites. 3 As a means of ensuring the most desirable occupations for whites, a system of job reservation was established whereby no black could advance above a white in the same occupational area. In certain areas of work, blacks were totally excluded. To complete the system of labor exploitation, trade union activity and strikes by African workers were forbidden.

The requirements of South African industry forced the circumvention of these measures, however, and dictated official policy changes. Whites were unable to fill all higher-skilled jobs, and the movement of blacks into these positions therefore was necessary. In 1969, for example, only 3 percent of professional and managerial positions were occupied by blacks, but by 1989 blacks accounted for 14 percent of them (SAIRR, 1992) . With the end of apartheid, many companies have adopted affirmative action policies and are making efforts to employ more blacks at the managerial level.

THE SOCIOECONOMIC REMNANTS OF APARTHEID In the post-apartheid period, the economic gap between whites and blacks has declined, but huge discrepancies remain. The unemployment rate is almost six times higher for Africans than for whites , an d

3 With the end of apartheid , the protection afforded poor, unskilled whites no longer prevailed, and many of these people became economically desperate (Arnold, 2000).

CHAPTER 14 SOUTH AFRICA 407

white household income is more than five and a half times what Africans receive (Figure 14.1). In all occupational areas, the wage gap between whites and blacks re - mains wide. In fact, the degree of economic inequality in post-apartheid South Africa is one of the highest in the modern world (Economist, 2012; Leibbrandt et al., 2010; SAIRR, 2010). Despite the growth of a black middle class, the overwhelming major- ity of the poor in South Africa are black and the majority of the black population is poor.

The results of the huge discrepancy in resources allocated to blacks and whites during the apartheid era are most apparent in education. Under apartheid, white schools were funded many times higher than black schools. Not surprisingly, the illiteracy rate among blacks is significantly higher than among whites. Although in the post-apartheid era funding no longer favors white schools, black schools con- tinue to experience serious problems including poorly trained, underqualified tea- chers; lack of resources; and lack of student discipline (Asma! and James, 2001; Dugger, 2009; Fiske and Ladd, 2004; Nattrass and Seekings, 2001; Wines, 2007a). Although schools are increasingly integrated, many whites have abandoned the pub- lic educational system in favor of private schools (Daley, 1998a; Swarns, 2000). In brief, racial parity in education remains a distant goal. As seen in Figure 14.2, the percentage of whites with at least a high school diploma is double that of Africans.

At the university level, movement toward greater equality has progressed more quickly. The composition of the student population has changed dramatically in the years since the end of apartheid, with Africans now a majority of students in South African universities (Cloete and Moja, 2005). However, there is a very limited num- ber of students that South African public universities can accommodate (Polgreen, 2012), and despite the increase in African enrollment, there remains a huge discrep- ancy with whites. In 2011, whereas less than 9 percent of Africans had attended col- lege, 38 percent of whites had done so (Statistics South Africa, 2012a). And, despite

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~ 200,000 u c

150,000

100,000

50,000

Black African Coloured Indian/Asian White

FIGURE 14.r I AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD INCOME, SOUTH AFRICA (RAND) Source: Statistics South Africa (2012b).

Total

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4 0 8 PART III ETHN IC RE LATIONS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

the introduction of affirmative action measures, Africans are proportionately under- represented in universities (Dugger, 2010).

E NFORCEMENT OF APARTHEID: COERCION

As noted in Chapter 4, all societies are characterized by elements of order and con- flict. Social control is therefore always a combination of consent and coercion. In a society in which the majority of the population does not accept the legitimacy of the prevailing system, however, coercion becomes the more common of the two . South Africa under apartheid, where four-fifths of the population rejected the system of white domination, illustrated this dramatically.

The South African criminal justice and legal institutions tradi}ionally provided for suppression of any challenges to white rule. Indeed, the use of terror against the African population was routine. Writer Mark Mathabane recalls his own experience: "I remembered the brutal midnight police raids launched into the ghetto to enforce apartheid; the searing images of my father's emasculation as he was repeatedly ar- rested for the crime of being unemployed; my parents constantly fleeing their own home in the dead of night to escape arrest for living together as husband and wife under the same roof" (1994:38) . Police violence against Africans was so pervasive and routine, explains political scientist Gwendolyn Carter, as to be almost unnotice- able except when a well-known person was affected or the circumstances were " so unusual as to attract attention" (1980:12).

The preparedness of the Nationalist government to use force in averting change in the distribution of power was demonstrated repeatedly. At Sharpeville in 1960, the police fired on a crowd of Africans peacefully protesting the pass laws, killing sixty-nine. South African legal expert Albie Sachs pointed out that the Sharpeville massacre, though the best-reported incident of its kind, was "merely one in a series

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Black African Coloured Indian/As ian White

F IGURE 14.2 I H IGH SCHOOL GRADUATES, SOUTH AFRICA Source: Statistics South Africa (2 012a).

CHAPTER 1 4 SOUTH AFR ICA 4 09

of characteristically South African episodes in which police fired on crowds of blacks that were either totally unarmed or armed only with sticks and stones" (1975:227). A second well-reported incident occurred in Soweto in 1976. What began as a stu- dent protest against inequalities in the educational system culminated in the slaugh- ter of more than six hundred Africans. Thousands were injured in the disturbances that followed, and schools and universities were closed and industries shut down by strikes. This event represented a spontaneous protest against the entire apartheid system and afterward took on great symbolic importance among the African populace.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created in 1995, revealed the system- atic nature of human rights violations that were committed by the Nationalist gov- ernment in enforcing apartheid. Testimony given by perpetrators as well as victims demonstrated that during the apartheid regime the police considered brutality, torture, and even murder as legitimate tools in stifling political opponents (Daley, 1997; Handley and Herbst, 1997).

SOCIALIZATION TO APARTHEID: IDEOLOGY

South Africa under apartheid is a marvelous illustration of a dominant group's ef- forts to uphold a system of ethnic supremacy using not only the power of raw force and political manipulation but also material, psychological, and ideological commit- ment. As in any multiethnic society, most members of the dominant group in South Africa were effectively socialized to accept and justify the prevailing system of ethnic inequality. Socialization to apartheid was especially pronounced among Afrikaners. Traditionally, in every institution- family, school, church, govemment- the values of Afrikaner nationalism and white dominance were reinforced.

T HE R ACIST BELIEF SYSTEM South African whites, particularly Afrikaners, believed them- selves to be natural overseers of primitive Africans, whose shortcomings were not likely to change significantly. White rule, therefore, was seen as a kind of paternalis- tic relationship in which more intelligent and civilized peoples asserted their domina- tion over inferior peoples in the interests of both (Mulder, 1972). In this view, notes Leonard Thompson, "It was the duty of the Whites, constituting the civilized, Chris- tian race, to use their control of the state to prevent racial friction and racial bastard- ization by ens,uring that the races would be separated from one another" (1985:190).

This essentially racist ideology underwent alteration during the apartheid re - gime. Although the crude belief in biological superiority was by no means unvoiced, the white resistance to changes in the system of racial inequa lity was based mainly on the notion of cultural inferiority and ethnic incompatibility (Adam, 1971a, 1971b; Thompson, 1985; Welsh, 1975). The cultural gap between the races was so vast, it was claimed, that blacks were simply incapable of operating the institutions of a modern industrial society (Schlemmer, 1988). Hence, the continued domination of the society by the white numerical minority was, in this view, essential.

The need to maintain white rule, based on the understood cultural superiority of whites, was thoroughly incorporated into all institutions, especially the school and the mass media. Through the Bantu Education Act of 1953, complete control of black education was given to the central government, thereby ensuring that the

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41 0 PART llJ ETHNI C RELATIONS fN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

history and social science taught would reflect the Nationalist ideology. Blacks, it was thought, would be trained to accept their subordinate position in the society. Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd articulated this view:

The school must equip the Bantu to meet the demands which the economic life of South Africa will impose on him .... There is no place for him in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. Within his own community, however, all doors are open .... Until now he has been subject to a school system which drew him away from his own community and misled him by showing him the green pastures of European society in which he is not allowed to graze .... What is the use of teaching a Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? (quoted in Harrison, 1981:191)

The separation of white and black was deemed necessary to p.rotect whites fro m cultural pollution by an obviously inferior people. A schoolbook, for example, de- scribed the differences between white and black: "The White stands on a much higher plane of civilisation and is more developed. Whites must so live, learn and work that we shall not sink to the cultural level of the non-White" (quoted in Harrison 1981:204).

In addition to the rationale based on economic and political efficiency, an ele- ment of religious mission infused the determination of the Afrikaners, particularly the zealously nationalistic element among them, to maintain white supremacy. As al- ready noted, the Afrikaners traditionally invoked a biblical analogue to portray their place in South Africa, and their self-image of a chosen, superior people is strongly expressed in v;arious aspects of Afrikaner culture and social life. The Dutch Re- formed Church served as an integral part of Afrikaner nationalism. For many, the church was the focal point of Afrikaner culture and the religious expression of its nationalism. Unlike most English-language churches, it maintained a close link with the Nationalist state and abided apartheid.

To better comprehend the determination of Afrikaners to preserve their power and, in so doing, their ethnic culture, one needs to keep in mind the unique status of the Afrikaners on the African continent. Unlike traditional European colonial groups in Africa, Afrikaners have no cultural or political ties to a European home- land. Generations of Afrikaners have known nothing but South Africa, and there is no thought of returning to a society of origin, for there no longer is one. The Afrika- ners are, in all ways, a group sui generis. The prevailing belief among them was that their way of life would be submerged and ultimately dissolved if the numerically dominant nonwhite populace were afforded equal access to social and political institutions .

THE PRACTrCAUTY OF RACISM Although these beliefs were the ideological bases of the apartheid system for a large element of the Afrikaner populace, the practical founda- tions of the system lay mostly in the resolve of the dominant whites, most Afrikaners and English alike, to sustain their supremacy. Whites well understood that a truly democratic political system would inevitably produce an African-dominated govern- ment, given the numerical imbalance between the two groups. This, in turn, woul d spell the end of white economic and social privilege.

CHAPTER I 4 SOUTH AFRICA 4 I I

Whatever their psychological and ideological commitment to white supremacy may have been, for most whites social pressures ordinarily compelled conformity. As noted in Chapter 3, prejudice and discrimination are most effective and self- sustaining where such thought and behavior are socially expected and rewarded. The economic benefits that flowed to whites from black exploitation were, as we have seen, enormous. Even those who may have been bothered by feelings of moral contradiction would therefore have been reluctant to call for the total dismantling of a system from which they greatly profited.

Even nonresidents of South Africa, used to more fluid social relations, might eas- .. ily be caught up in the everyday workings of a system of extreme social inequality and separation that may at first have been repugnant. One American sociologist studying in South Africa in the 1970s reflected with astonishment on his own behav- ior: "One falls in with the culture and those with whom one must cooperate in as- sumptions and behavior. Even in my short stay I could observe the process occurring in myself: by the time I left I was beginning to unconsciously accept condi- tions that I found shocking when I first confronted them" (Mechanic, 1978:137).

Not only is it difficult to resist patterns of thought and behavior that reward conformity so generously, but it is especially hard to question a system of exploita- tion that, so far as it is recognized at all, is perceived from a distance. Because for whites the standard of living has been so comparatively high and the political order essentially democratic, there can arise among them only a limited understanding of black economic and, until recently, political deprivation. Adding to the incompre- hension has been the essentially separate societies in which whites and blacks have lived. For the most part, whites have seen blacks only as workel's and servants, not as neighbors and schoolmates. Few whites speak any of the various African lan- guages, and few ever venture into black townships. PuLsimply, blacks and whites in South Africa have in the past lived in different worlds and, for the most part, continue to do so .

BUILDING A NEW SOCIETY

In the last two decades, the ethnic makeup of South Africa has not basically changed, but the relationship among its groups has been altered in a fundamental way. Indeed, if during the apartheid era one were to have suggested the scope and depth of change in the ethnic •system that has taken place in South Africa since 1989, that person might have been seen as hopelessly naive. The unimaginable, however, has occurred. Today, the government is led by blacks, and the most egregious policies of racial sep- aration have been repealed. Official apartheid has ended-an entire generation has now grown up not ever having experienced it- and the society is moving, however tortuously, toward ethnic democracy. What propelled this amazing change m a system so seemingly uncompromising in its commitment to ethnic inequality?

FORCES OF CHANGE

South Africa's panoply of internal contradictions- social, economic, and political- brought the society to a watershed beginning in the late 1980s. A sociopolitical sys- tem enforced by coercion no longer seemed viable, and major reforms were now

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412 PART III ETH NIC RELAT IONS IN COM PARAT IVE PE RSPECTIVE

proposed. Much of the impetus behind the reforms was provided by a newly elected president, F. W. de Klerk, who acknowledged the failure of apartheid. As Mallaby describes him, "de Klerk had finally abandoned whites' hopes of extending their pri- vileges beyond the colonial age" (1992:78). In 1992, de Klerk basically declared an official end to the apartheid system. Referring to his National Party, he stated that "[f]or too long we clung to a dream of separate nation states when it was already clear that it could not succeed. For that we are sorry. That is why we are working for a new dispensation" (SAIRR, 1993:25).

The radical transformation of South Africa that began in the late 1980s, how- ever, did not emerge suddenly. Its roots reached back at least a decade when it be- came evident to the white power structure that changes in the apartheid system would have to be made if the society were to avoid a bloody confrontation. Former prime minister P. W . Botha had publicly declared in 1978 that South Africa must "adapt or die," and reforms in petty apartheid and in the labor system instituted in the 1980s were manifestations of that view. In a desperate effort to preserve white rule, a new constitution was adopted in 1983, creating a tripartite parliamentary body, representing whites, Coloureds, and Asians. But the new constitution was rec- ognized as a sham, giving Coloureds and Indians a few privileg~s but making no provision at all for the representation of Africans.

I NTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS f<ND C IVIL UNREST The exclusion of Africans from the constitu- tion was one of the precipitating factors in the civil unrest that occurred in the 1980s (Adam and Moodley, 1986; Dugard, 1992; Mallaby, 1992; Vanzyl Slabbert, 1987). Widespread vio1ent protests took place in black townships , the target of which was the system of black local authority. Black officials in the townships were seen as col- laborators in the oppressive system and were driven from their communities, force d to resign, and in some cases even murdered. In addition to the violence in the town- ships, nationwide marches, rent strikes, consumer boycotts, student agitation, and labor protests became commonplace (Meredith, 1987; Murray, 1987). In attempting to control the protests, the government responded with force, using the South African Army as well as the police, who were given broad discretionary powers. Hundreds of blacks were killed in government actions to reassert control in the townships, and in 1985 a state of emergency was declared, providing for arrest an d detention without trial and searches without warrant.

I NTERNATI ONAL P RESSURES Throughout the Nationalist ascendancy during which apart- heid was at its peak, most nations viewed South Africa as a kind of pariah state. Nonetheless, South Africa remained strategically important as a source of vita l minerals as well as a major link in the worldwide production and distribution net- works of multinational corporations, most of them based in Britain or the United States. Thus, although the apartheid system was condemned, economic relations be- tween South Africa and the Western industrial nations generally were unaffected.

The often brutal suppression of the black protests starting in 1984 led to a stepped-up international campaign that included calls on multinational corporations to divest their interests in South Africa and to force Western nations to impose trade sanctions. Although these measures seemed to only minimally affect the ability of the South African economy to function, they contributed to economic uncertainty and ,

CHAPTER 14 SO UTH AFRI CA 413

combined with the civil unrest of the late 1980s, induced the South African business community to call for greater and more rapid social reforms (Blumenfeld, 1987; Harari and Beaty, 1989).

EcoNOMIC FORCES More significant changes in the system of racial inequality were im- pelled by the demands of economic interdependence. The South African economy re- quired an increasingly skilled workforce that could not be supplied by the white population alone. As noted earlier, this resulted in modifications in the job reserva- tion system, permitting more blacks to fill higher positions. In effect, the system of job reservation, for decades restricting black labor mobility, collapsed (Adam and .,, Moodley, 1986).

Labor needs also compelled relaxation of prohibitions against black trade unions and the right to strike, creating a growing and increasingly significant black labor movement (Thompson and Prior, 1982). African union membership swelled, and strikes by black workers arose frequently starting in the mid-1980s in certain indus- tries, most notably mining, a particularly critical sector of the South African economy.

INTERNAL PouncAL FORCES After the Nationalist regime came to power in 1948, oppo- sition black political organizations and movements were declared illegal, forcing them to operate underground or in neighboring African countries. The most impor- tant of these were the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist Con- gress (PAC), and the Black Consciousness Movement. In 1990, the de Klerk government restored the legality of these political organizations, providing a new element in the chemistry of change in South Africa.

During apartheid the ANC, the most significant of the black political organiza- tions, had assumed the status of "government in exile" for the African population. Its official leader, Nelson Mandela, was released from prison in 1990 after serving a sentence of twenty-eight years for antiregime political activity. Mandela's release was seen as a threshold. From that point forward, the end of white South African rule and the emergence of a black-majority government were only a matter of time. Shortly thereafter, the South African regime entered into talks with the ANC and other black groups to negotiate the entrance of blacks into the political system and to dismantle the apartheid regime. 4 The historic elections held in 1994, in which all South Africans- black and white-voted for the first time, were won by the ANC, bringing Mandela to power as the country's president. South Africa was now poised to create a nonracia l state.

LOOKING AHEAD

As political and social changes continue to unfold, the shape of the society that ulti- mately will be produced remains unsettled. All of the key issues facing South Africa today, however, in one way or another concern its movement toward greater ethnic equalitarianism.

4 An important stimulus to change was a 1992 referendum, in which white voters presented de Klerk with a mandate to forge ahead with negotiations with black leaders to ultimately construct a new multiracial constitution.

414 PA RT III ETHN IC RELA TI ONS IN COM PARAT IVE PER SPECTI VE

BLACK P OLITICA L D OM INANCE As we have now seen, the legal and structural roots of the apartheid system have been removed, and significant policy changes have muted the most blatant forms of racial discrimination. Most important, blacks have been brought into the political process. Awarding full and equitable voting rights to the black population was the major prerequisite to any peaceful solution of South Afri- ca's ethnic conflict. The great fear of whites was precisely what was enacted: a one- man, one-vote, majority-rule system that, as they realized, spelled the end of white dominance. Astonishingly, this change was brought about peacefully. In light of the generations of racial hostility and the determination of the white regime to retain power, few could have predicted that the resistance to a black-majority political system would evaporate so relatively swiftly and nonviolently.

Today, the ANC's political dominance is almost unchallenged, bqt a democratic national government now seems solidly embedded in South Africa's constitutional system (Mattes, 2002). Mandela himself retired in 1999, and as the most widely supported and admired figure in South Africa- among whites as well as blacks- he remained a unifying symbol. As one journalist described him, he served as the na- tion's "moral guide" and, given his history of personal sacrifice, was ideally suited to convince the country of the need for compromise, reconciliation, and change (Duke, 1999b).

Paradoxically, changes effected in the political status of the black population may inevitably provoke more, not less, social unrest. Now that blacks control the political system, expectations are very high that change in their economic status will follow rapidly. Th.is places great pressure on the government to provide jobs, hous- ing, and increased public services, especially education and health care, to an enor- mous part of the black population that remains impoverished. If expectations exceed the government's ability to meet them, however, blacks may become frustrated and place even greater pressure on leaders to produce economic betterment. As many have observed, it is, ironically, only after conditions have begun to improve that peo- ple may be drawn into political action (Hoffer, 1951; Runciman, 1966; Turner and Killian, 1972). Thus failure to more rapidly alleviate black-white economic dispari- ties may foment social and political unrest and place increased stresses and strains on the government.

RA CE AND C LASS Securing political equality is only a first step toward the elimination of ethnically based inequalities in jobs, education, health, and other life chances. As noted earlier, dramatically wide discrepancies remain in the socioeconomic status of whites and blacks. In general, whites continue to live at a level far above that of

-. blacks and control most of South Africa's wealth. In a very real sense, blacks and whites in South Africa live in separate, tightly sealed social worlds. In 2013, in a highly publicized case, a white middle-class couple, along with their two young daughters, left their four-bedroom house in a gated community and moved six miles to a black township. There they lived for one month in a 100-square-foot shack with no electricity, no running water, and no toilets. Their budget was $10 a day, the av- erage income of a black family. Their purpose in making this experiment, they rea- soned, was to try to empathize with the daily lives and social conditions of most black South Africans. "Like so many people in South Africa," they explained,

CHAPTER I 4 SOUTH AFR ICA 4 I 5

" we live in a bubble. We wanted to get outside that bubble" (Polgreen, 2012). Their experiment drew much attention and was met with much controversy. But, at least momentarily, it highlighted the continuing massive socioeconomic gap between whites and most blacks in South Africa.

However, viewing the relationship between race and class in South Africa today as a simple dichotomy-black/poor, white/rich- is a serious distortion. More accu- rately, the society is one in which there is declining interracial inequality but rising intraracial inequality. Specifically, South Africa is divided into three broad classes: an increasingly multiracial class of well-off families, including corporate executives, professionals, and managers; a middle class of mostly urban, industrial, or white- collar workers; and a marginalized class of black unemployed (Besada , 2007b; Seek- ings and Nattrass, 2005).

Even before the end of apartheid, blacks had been experiencing upward occupa- tional mobility. In the post-apartheid period, despite the still gross economic dispar- ity between white and black populations, there has been a narrowing of the gap, with blacks increasing their share of total income. At the same time, however, inequality within the black population has increased. The black middle class, able to take advantage of new opportunities arising with the end of racial discrimination, is rapidly growing, but in the process is leaving behind a depressed black underclass. The gap between well-off and middle -class blacks on one hand and poor blacks on the other thus continues to widen (Besada, 2007b; Mattes, 2002; Seekings and N attrass, 2005). This is not unlike the internal division within the African American population, discussed in Chapter 7, in which a growing middle class stands in sharp contrast to a marginalized underclass.

WHITE ECO NOMIC PowER Although whites have been displaced in the political realm, they continue to control key elements of the economy. They occupy most of the best jobs in the private sector and hold most of the society's wealth (McGillivray, 2006). Quite simply, as we have already noted, whites exceed Africans and Colour- eds by many times on virtually every socioeconomic measure. The ruling black re- gime desperately needs the capital and managerial and technical skills that are possessed primarily by the white community. Thus it cannot afford to alienate whites, who might threaten to leave and take with them their economic and human resources. In fact, South Africa has suffered a brain drain, particularly among medi- cal professionals. In trying to bring about a more equitable distribution of jobs, health care, housing, and land, the South African government faces the delicate task of raising public revenues-which must come primarily from white-controlled busi- nesses and the wealthier white community-to finance ambitious public projects de- signed to lift the economic and social conditions of blacks.

PRESSING SOCIAL IssuEs Failure to sharply reduce socioeconomic inequality may con- tribute to another serious problem- a dramatically high incidence of crime. The murder rate in South Africa is today the highest in the world-ten times the U.S . ra te- and violent crime in general has become rampant (Abramsky, 2005; Bearak, 2011; Besada, 2007b; SAIRR, 2003). Failure to arrest this soaring crime rate may ha ve serious economic ramifications. Those with capital may be less inclined to

4 16 PART III ETH N IC REL ATI ONS IN COM PAR ATI VE PERSPEC TI VE

invest in South Africa, and those with highly needed occupational skills may be in- duced to emigrate (Shaw and Gastrow, 2001; Sparks, 2004). 5

Another issue that threatens serious social and economic disruption in the ne\\ South Africa is the extraordinarily high rate of HIV/AIDS. One in seven South Africans is infected with the virus, more than in any other country. Life expectancy among all racial groups in the society has actually dropped in recent decades , a reflection of the brutal impact of this disease (Besada, 2007b).

T HE CONTINUED SIGNIFI CANCE OF R ACIAL T HINKING The different, racially defined, social worlds to which whites and blacks in South Africa were traditionally socialized con- tinue, for the most part, to exist in post-apartheid South Africa. "Race," notes Ves- tergaard, "remains one of the main organizing principles in social life" (2001:3 0). Racial stereotypes, which formed such a basic part of the dominant ideology-that blacks simply were unable to maintain the institutions of a modern society-have not disappeared. As Vestergaard explains, more than once in his interviews of Afrikaners-after apartheid had been abolished and blacks were in control of the government-did he hear the complaint that the country's ongoing economic pro- blems were due to the fact that blacks "simply don't have what it takes" to run a modern economy. Although they are far more subtle than in the past, expressions of racial thinking continue to color whites' views of social problems such as education and crime.

In addition, in South Africa today, one's race continues to override other social identities. "Races" remain quite real to South Africans, and the four divisions of the population or1ginally created by the apartheid regime continue to identify and define people politically and in everyday social life. "While we have formally, legally dis- carded race," writes a South African social scientist, "it continues to have an often un- acknowledged and unseen power to determine perceptions, experiences an d relationships" (Vincent, 2008:1427). As noted earlier, the residue of a thoroughly seg- regated society with its racist beliefs has clearly affected current patterns of social inter- action and attitudes. A strong South African national identity has begun to emerge as the government emphasizes unity and refers to the country as the "Rainbow Nation," highlighting its ethnic diversity. However, racial and ethnic identities-and the beliefs attached to them-remain even stronger (Bornman, 2010). A comprehensive study in 2012 showed that people of all age groups continue to associate most strongly with others who share their racial or ethnic identity (Lefko-Everett, 2012).

Also, similar to U.S. patterns, whites in South Africa claim to accept racial inte- gration and efforts at creating greater racial equality in principle, but seem less will- ing to accept concrete measures designed to bring about those changes (Durrheim and Dixon, 2010). Recall the attitudes of white Americans toward affirmative action and school integration, for example, discussed in Chapter 7.

It would seem naive to assume that attitudes and ideas so prevalent among whites during apartheid would be subject to fundamental change in just a few years. As one observer of South Africa has put it, "[G]enerations of whites were brought up to be racists and they are unlikely to be able, even if theoretically willing, to change "

5 Although popular perception wou ld have it that vio lent crime in South Africa is mostly committed by Africans against whites, in fact most victims are African and poor (Shaw and Gastrow, 2001) .

CHAPTER 14 SOUTH AFRICA 417

(Arnold, 2000:18). This applies to blacks' views of whites as well, of course. The dis- trust nurtured during generations of apartheid is not likely to be overcome for many years, perhaps generations.

ETHNIC DIVERSITY In addition to the overwhelming problems of trying to create a sys- tem that will provide for a stable government and thriving economy, South Africa is faced with intraethnic diversity that was camouflaged for decades under the oppres- sion of apartheid. The split of the African population along ethnic lines carries over into the political realm. Also, many Coloureds and Indians feel marginalized by a '- government that is now led primarily by Africans (Adhikari, 2005; Duke, 1999a; M cGillivray, 2006).

Ethnic diversity is heightened also by a steady influx of workers from neighbor- ing countries seeking better opportunities in South Africa. To think of South Africa as a society neatly divided into black and white, then, is a glaring oversimplification. N othing could better illustrate this than the fact that today South Africa recognizes eleven official languages.

INTO THE FurnRE Few observers, even the most informed, were able to predict the scope and speed of the changes that occurred in less than a decade. To forecast the specifics of South Africa's future, therefore, would surely be presumptuous. The post-apartheid healing process will remain a long-term affair and will be much de- pendent on the success of efforts to bridge the socioeconomic gap between whites and blacks. As one observer has put it, South Africa since the end of apartheid has " largely achieved racial peace, but not social harmony" (Besada, '2 007b) . As change in South Africa continues to unfold, _ much of the world's attention will be focused on this society well into the twenty-first century.

Despite its lengthy history of extreme ethnic division and conflict, South Africa presents itself today as, ironically, a potential model for other multiethnic societies . If the most oppressive system of ethnic relations in the contemporary world can be fun- damentally altered in a mostly peaceful fashion, and if those changes can be sus- tained, there is strong reason to expect that comparable change can be achieved in other societies with severe ethnic divisions. Contemporary South Africa, then, is a critical laboratory for the study of race and ethnic relations.

SUMMARY

• Among multiethnic societies of the modern period, South Africa has been one of the most extreme cases of inequalitarian pluralism.

• South Africa's ethnic structure is a racial dichotomy, black and white, but there are more specific group subdivisions . The whites, roughly 9 percent of the total population, comprise two major subgroups, Afrikaners and English. Non- whites comprise three subgroups: Coloureds, a racially mixed group; Asians, mostly ethnic Indians; and black Africans of several different tribal origins. The latter are by far the largest racial-ethnic category, making up almost 80 percent of the population.

• Ethnic stratification in South Africa was traditionally a castelike system in which each ethnic group was institutionally separated by custom and by a legal code.

418 PA RT III ETH N IC REL ATIO NS IN C O MP A RATI V E PER SPE CTIVE

The system of ethnic separation and inequality, called apartheid, was designed to maintain white supremacy in all areas of social, economic, and political life. Africans were excluded from the political system and were protected by few civil rights. Coloureds and Asians were only slightly better off.

• Starting in the late 1980s, the apartheid system began to be dismantled as black protest and economic uncertainty created strong pressures for reform of the South African regime. The national election of 1994 was the first in which blacks participated as equals, and a black-dominated government, led by Nelson Mandela and his ANC, came to power for the first time. This spelled the end of the apartheid system.

• Though the official system of racial inequality has been abolished and blacks now dominate the political system, the major components of ~hite economic domination remain in place. On all economic measures, the inequality between whites and blacks remains extreme, although the gap is beginning to narrow.

• The key issues of South Africa's immediate future, therefore, concern the manner in which the tremendous economic gap separating whites and blacks will be reduced.

• Racial and ethnic categories, though officially abolished, remain potent dividers. The rigid segregation of apartheid has ended, but racial stereotypes and attitudes and patterns of intergroup relations have been only marginally changed.

COMPARING SouTH AFRICA AND THE UNITED STATES

Points of Similarity • In both South Africa and the United States, the dominant group emerged from a

process of indigenous subordination, in which a settler group subdued the native population.

• Both societies supported the institution of slavery, though far more extensively and for a longer period in the United States.

• A castelike system of separation was constructed in both societies, with a well- understood racial etiquette and an official racial classification scheme.

• Both societies developed institutionalized systems of racial separation, apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow in the southern United States.

• Both societies abolished their castelike systems but continue to struggle with efforts to fully integrate socially and economically the formerly subordinate black population.

Points of Difference • For most of its histor y, South Africa's dominant ethnic group (whites) was a numeri-

cal minority vis-a-vis subordinate Africans, along with Coloureds and Asians. In the United States, by contrast, whites were always a numerical, as well as a sociological, majority.

• The economic and socia l gap between whites and blacks is today much wider in South Africa than in the United States.

• In multiethnic South Africa, blacks today are the dominant group, at least politically. This is obviously not the case in the United States.

• The United States is an ethnically more varied society than South Africa.

CHAPTER 14 SOUTH AFRICA 419

CRITICAL THINKING

1. Was apartheid South Africa more like the U.S. ante-bellum South or like the Jim Crow era? Frame your answer in terms of the different types of inequalitarian pluralism discussed in Chapter 4.

2. Blacks are an overwhelming numerical majority in South Africa , but a numerical minority in the United States. How does that demographic fact explain different long-range outcomes in black-white relations in the two societies?

3. Sociologists and psychologists have observed that South African racial beliefs and attitudes among the different population groups continue to be prevalent, despite the end of apartheid. Consider changes in racial attitudes that have taken place in the United States since the 1960s (Chapter 7) and compare them with post-apartheid South Africa .

4. Contemporary South Africa presents an unusual case of a radically transformed ethnic hierarchy: those who had traditionally reaped the benefits of dominant ethnic status no longer do so. Why was the transformation relatively peaceful, with little conflict among the society's various ethnic groups?

PERSONAL/PRACTICAL APPLICATION

1. As we have seen in this chapter, in the era of South African apartheid, whites retained all the society's social, economic, and political advantages. If you had lived in South Africa during that time and were white, would you have had any incentive to change this system, as grossly unequal as it was? Ag a follow-up, how do you think white South Africans today feel about their newly acquired minority status? If you were white, would you have any resentment about losing your privileged status or would you accept it as simply a consequence of social change?

2. The experiment described in this chapter of a well-off white family temporarily taking up residence in a poor black township was received in South Africa with mixed views. Some saw it as a sincere and worthy effort, while others saw it as self-serving; one South African referred to it as "poverty pornography." What is your view of this affair? Do you believe that you really could empathize with families living in poverty through a short-lived experiment like this, knowin'g that you will return to a relatively comfortable lifestyle?