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The
Voewoed Government 1958-66
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·
In 1958, Hendrik Verwoerd had become
Prime Minister on the death of J.O. Strijdom. He immediately announced that
South Africa would become a Republic.
·
Verwoerd split the old Native
Affairs Department into two-the Department of Bantu Administration (AD) and the
Bantu Education Department (BED).
·
The term Apartheid was no longer
used officially but replaced by 'separate development'. The promotion of Bantu
self- Government Act of 1959 then paved the way for the creation of 'independent'
Bantustans and a south African-led 'common wealth '.
·
The year 1960 was 'the year of
Africa’ which brought confrontation to the boil between African nationalism
and white supremacy in South Africa. This continued on until 1968 under Vorster
government.
·
With African discontent rising in
both urban and rural areas, the ANC and PAC competed with each other in
militant but peaceful boycotts and deliberate breaking of unjust laws.
·
In South West Africa, SWAPO, SW ANU
under influential personalities like Toivo Herman Ja Toivo, Sam Nujuma, Clemens
Kapuuo and thousands of combatants who chose armed struggle to liberate
Namibia.
·
Verwoerd recognized that expanding
industries in ‘white areas' needed an expanding black labor force.
·
He predicted that black urban population
would begin to fall in the late 1970's, by which time apartheid would have
succeeded in developing the black rural reserves as alternative areas of
employment.
·
Verwoerd saw total separation
between white and black societies as the final aim of Apartheid. Lack of labor
in white societies was like 'donkeys, oxen and traitors,' which could
someday be replaced by other machinery.
·
The J. G.
Strijdom Government 1954-58
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·
The National Party of South Africa
won the 1953 general elections with an increased majority of members of
Parliament.
·
The government's firm action against
the ANC's Defiance Campaign had won it much support from the electorate. Its
apartheid programme could now go ahead without effective parliamentary
opposition.
·
In 1954, the aged Dr. Malan was
replaced as Prime Minister by J.G. Strijdorn, the leader of the Transvaal
branch of the National Party.
·
Strijdom was a blunt and
uncompromising supporter of the apartheid laws. These were pushed through
parliament by his deputy Hendrik Verwoerd the minister of Native Affairs, which
became the Bantu Affairs Ministry.
·
In 1954, the government reintroduced
into parliament, the Separate Representation of Votes Bill to eliminate colored
voters from white constituencies. This was three years after the South African
Supreme Court had declared it illegal
·
When it failed again to achieve a
two-thirds majority of the two houses of parliament, sitting together, Strijdom
pushed through the Senate Act in 1955, which allowed government to appoint more
senators to give it a certain two-thirds majority in Parliament.
·
The Separate Representation of
voters Bill was then reintroduced for a third time and passed with a two-thirds
majority. Meanwhile Strijdom had appointed pro-government judges to the Supreme
Court. When the law was challenged as unconstitutional eleven out of twelve
Supreme Court judges ruled in the government's favor. In 1958, the senate Act
was withdrawn because it had fulfilled its function.
·
Strijdom great personal ambition was
to make South Africa into a Republic and to remove the last remains of British
sovereignty by replacing the governor-general by a state president. In 1957
Strijdom banned the flying of the British flag and the singing of 'God save
the Queen' on official occasions.
·
In 1958, Strijdom died before he
achieved his final goal of a Republic. Between 1953-58, Strijdom and Dr.
Verwoerd, introduced the long and complex series of apartheid laws for example
the Bantu Education Act of 1953, the Extension of University Education Act of
1957, the Native Tenant and band Amendment (Squatters) Act of 1954, the Native
Resettlement (Western areas) Act of 1954.
·
·
Dr. Daniel
Malan and the National Party Government 1948-53
·
·
The National Party won the 1948
general election in South Africa by promising Apartheid to the electorate.
Apartheid or 'apartness' meant total separation between white and black
in politics. education and home territory.
·
It aimed to preserve white supremacy
or baaskap or boss-dom forever from the threat of black majority
rule.
·
Apartheid was to tighten up the
racial segregation already achieved in South Africa at a time when segregation
was being loosened or at least challenged elsewhere in Africa and Asia.
·
The United Nations (UN) and India
had criticized South Africa under smuts. In 1948, the government under Dr.
Malan believed in segregation, unlike Smuts who talked about human rights. The
world therefore came to see what Afrikaners saw as the triumph of nationalism
of anti-black racism.
·
Afrikaner nationalists therefore
developed a grievance against the world for misunderstanding them.
·
The first problem of Malan's
National Party government was to increase its slender majority in parliament
over the opposition parties. It achieved this in 1950 by bringing into
parliament representatives, all as members of the National Parry, of the white
population of South West Africa. It also recruited members of parliament from
the Afrikaner party the followers of Hertzog who had broken away from the
National Party in 1941.
·
The government also halted the plans
of the previous government for mass immigration from Europe, particularly from
Britain in order to preserve the Afrikaner majority in the electorate. But
Malan abandoned his previous idea of breaking away from the British Common
Wealth to make South Africa a Republic.
·
Between 1949-52, the Malan
government programme was to strengthen the segregation of the Hertzog bills of
1920's and 1930's. The first law was the prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of
1949, the 1950 Immorality Act, the 1950 Population Registration Act, the Group
Areas Act of 1950, and the Prevention of illegal Squatters Act of 1951. In 1952
it also passed the Native Abolition of Passes Act, the Native laws Amendment,
the Separate Representation of Voters Act of 1957.
·
The Nationalist Party under Malan
entered the 1953 general elections determined to eliminate opposition both
inside parliament and outside it, where black protest against Apartheid was
growing. In other words it was determined 10 promote white supremacy and
economic prosperity.
·
·
Hertzog-Smuts
'Fusion’ Government 1933-38
·
·
The 1932 political crisis over the
gold standard brought out new political divisions and rivalries. Some Afrikaner
nationalists moved closer to Smuts’ South African Party, while most Labor Party
members had withdrawn support from the Pact government in 1931.
·
In 1933, therefore, Hertzog
approached Smuts to form a government of national unity after the 1934
elections as Smuts agreed. In 1934, the SAP African National Party joined
together as the United South African National Party, soon known simply as the
United Party.
·
Hertzog became, Prime Minster with
Smuts as his deputy in the 'Fusion’ government 1934-39. But some people
felt Hertzog and smuts had betrayed their followers.
·
Supporters of British imperialism,
particularly in Natal broke away from the SAP to form the Dominion Party.
Afrikaner nationalists who refused to join the United Party formed the purified
National Party under D. F. Malan.
·
Hertzog in alliance with Smuts
carried on his agricultural and segregation policies but they also placed new
emphasis on foreign capital to invest in mining and manufacturing.
·
During the 1930's Afrikaaners
pressed for the incorporation of South West Africa into the Union of South
Africa, the strongest opposition came from German settlers.
·
Nazism became open among German
settlers between 1933 and 1939 who were anti Afrikaner as well as anti-British.
Only later after the defeat of Germany in the Second World War did German
settler nationalism became reconciled with Afrikaaner nationalism.
·
On 3rd September 1939.
France. Britain. Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany. This led to
the split of the fusion government.
·
Hertzog wished South Africa to
remain neutral in the war to show its independence from British imperialism.
Smuts wished South Africa to join the war against Germany and talked of
supporting democracy against dictatorship in Europe.
·
In 1939, Hertzog was forced to
resign as the fusion government was at an end; the United Party government
under Hertzog and the New 'Purified' Party under Malan eventually came
together in the Reunited National Party (RNP) in 1940.
·
The Fusion Ministry ended in 1938 as
Smuts became Prime Minister up 0 1948.
·
·
The 'Pact’
Government 1924-33
·
·
Hertzog’s National Party allied with
the South African Labor Party and took power from Smuts in the 1924 general
election to form the Pact government.
·
This government pushed forward a
political programme of economic nationalism and further segregation between
white and black.
·
It continued to encourage capitalist
farming but tried to include smaller-scale Afrikaner farmers of maize and
cattle as well.
·
The government protected cattle
farmers in South Africa from the competition of Bechuanaland and Swaziland
peasant producers by insisting on high minimum weights of cattle exported from
those territories to South Africa.
·
In Bechuanaland the new abattoir at
Lobatse had to be closed down in 1926 because the Union to import its meat.
·
The Pact government extended the
system of agricultural export levies begun by the previous government. Food
scales in the customs union were cheap enough to compete on the world market.
·
Capitalist fanners producing for
export could expand production almost indefinitely for prices guaranteed in
advance. The state began to subsidies meat for export in 1923, wine, dairy
products and fruits in 1924-26 and in 1931 wheat and maize.
·
Imported farm products on the hand
were heavily taxed the state also assisted smaller white fanners who had
difficulties in converting to capitalist production, since these smaller
farmers were the backbone of support for the National Party.
·
Land bank loans were given to poorer
fanners who had previously been considered too risky, and more land was opened
up to ownership by former by owners.
·
In industry the Pact government
began to experiment with state capitalism in combination with private
capitalism. Manufacturing industry in South Africa was protected by high custom
duties on imported goods.
·
Between 1925 and 1929 the value of
manufacturing goods produced in South Africa increased by almost forty percent,
and opened up much new employment reserved for white workers. Advisers from
Germany prepared plans for a National Company called the Iron and Steel
Industrial Cooperation (ISCOR), to build the first modem iron ore smelting and
steel works on the continent of Africa.
·
Because overseas opposed economic
self-sufficiency in South Africa, private capital refused to invest in such a
company. In 1931 the state took over ISCOR almost entirely and used state
capital derived from the gold boom to expand it rapidly during the 1930's.
·
Hertzog's policies of segregation
were so harsh on the non-whites especially the wage Act 1925, mines and works
Act of 1926, the Native Administration Act of 1927.
·
Black trade Unionism also increased
with the activities of the industrial and commercial workers union. Black
Communism also increased.
·
Hertzog’s second government of
1929-33 recruited further support by giving the vote to all previously vote
less white adults.
·
White women gained the vote in 1930,
and those whites barred from voting under the old 'color blind'
franchise of the Cape, for being too poor or too uneducated, gained the vote in
1931. Hertzog then planned to revive his 'Native Bills', previously
abandoned. Hertzog's political plans were interrupted by the great depression
that hit the world economy in 1929-33.
·
White
Nationalism and Governments in South Africa 1910 -1994
·
·
The Bortha
- Smuts Government 1910 -1924
·
The first government of the Union of
South Africa was formed by the South African Party (SAP) under Louis Botha as
Prime Minister and Jan Smuts as his deputy.
·
The SAP brought together Afrikaner
leaders like Botha and Smuts, who were prepared to collaborate with British
imperialism, with former 'bitter - enders' like J. B. M Hertzog fighting
for Afrikaner cultural rights.
·
The SAP was voted into power by
Afrikaner burgher farmers, and was supported by the South African Labor Party
against other English - speaking parties in Parliament. But the major part of
government revenue came from taxing gold production and export.
·
Botha therefore had to satisfy the
running capitalists who otherwise backed the opposition Unionist Party as well
as Afrikaaner farmers and the white workers who voted for the Labor Party.
·
He therefore did not attack the
leading role of British capitalism in the economy, nor did be satisfy the
ambitions of all Afrikaners, especially those impoverished by the 1899 - 1902
war.
·
Hertzog quarreled with Botha's
attempts to recruit the support of English - speaking voters and was expelled
from the SAP in 1913. Hertzog founded his own National Party in 1914.
·
Botha also invaded South West Africa
and forced the Germans to surrender in 1915. Smuts also moved to fight as chief
of staff in East Africa.
·
Botha and Smuts signed the peace of
Versailles in 1919. In August Botha died. In the 1920 election, Smuts almost
lost but were saved by the support of the Unionist Party.
·
In 1924, Hertzog National Party
allied with the South African Labor Party and took power from Smuts in the 1924
general election to form continued African nationalism the rand revolt by the
Afrikaners 1920-22 and the poor white problem.
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