Week 7: Apartheid & Segregation

Apartheid & Segregation: the United States & South Africa, Comparisons and contrasts

Similarities: • Both former British colonies. • Both are democracies. • Southern US and SA pursued similar racist policies. ‘Apart/heid’ has a sinister mystique to it, but it translates as segregation (or ‘separateness,’ the state of being apart). • South African political disenfranchisement went further formally, but America achieved much the same informally through literacy tests, ID requirements, voter registration requirements, redistricting, racist violence (beatings, murders, including lynching), and of course, the segregation of schools, public transportation, toilets, water fountains, parks, hotels, theatres, and restaurants.

Differences between the US and South Africa

Black South Africans stripped of citizenship, pushed into townships. An odd indigeneity argument was used: legislation in 1951, 1953, 1969, and 1970 defined Black South Africans as ethnic groups, assigned them homelands (where they had often never lived), and forced ‘self-government on them. • Occurred at the national level in SA; the state level in the US. • Demographics: the US was majority white, SA majority Black. • Trendline: US desegregation tracked the postwar arc of rights, coming under greater pressure in the 1950s and insurmountable pressure in the 1960s; US civil rights movement was the trailblazer for later social movements – secondwave feminism, gay rights. • 1970: Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act stripped them of citizenship. • South Africa bucked the trend; apartheid was introduced after, not before, the war. Rights were withdrawn as they were extended elsewhere. • How did this happen?

Sources of segregation

Systemic racism in both countries; societies and institutions were shot through with it. Formerly, a:

• Scope condition.

• Lecture will explore the institutional factors that helped racism to triumph

US segregation

Enabled by the courts and federalism. • Louisiana 1890s. Federal troops occupied the state from end of the war until 1877.

• Federalism: when federal troops pulled out, the state instituted segregationist policies. 1890, it passed the Louisiana Separate Car Act.

• The courts: In 1892, in a test case, Homer Plessy, 7/8 white and 1/8 Black, purchased a first-class ticket for a local East Louisiana train. Organized by the Civil Rights Group, Comité des citoyens.

• On the train, Plessy confirms he is “colored” and is forcibly removed from the train and charged.

• Case arrived at the Supreme Court. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the court ruled that “separate but equal” did not violate the Constitution and implied a “merely legal” [as opposed to constitutional] distinction between white and Black people. Only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented.

• P v. F provided the legal cover for segregated transportation, schools, libraries, theatres, and other entertainment venues, state public buildings, lodgings, restaurants, parks, hospitals, toilets, and public telephone booths.

Federalism did the rest…

While the federal government was also an agent for segregation (in the armed forces, penitentiaries, public housing; see King, Separate and Unequal), segregation is inseparable from federalism and the power of the states.

• Sixteen states operated mandatory segregation policies; only seventeen forbade them.

• Segregation correlates strongly with violence.

Historical causes

Post-1865 expansion of the union supported by Republicans in order to dilute the power of the Democratic, slave-owning South [Heather Cox Richardson].

• It backfired: it brought states that either adopted segregation (Oklahoma) or that allied with former slave states in order to oppose immigration: New Mexico, Nevada, California.

• Result was a dilution of the power of the northeast and Midwest and a solidifying of a ‘states’ rights’ coalition that provided thin cover for segregationist policies.

• Were legal until Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (1954). Lasted in practice until forced federal desegregation.

Forceful Federalism

A prerequisite historically to desegregation and today to racial justice.

• Necessary because of (a) state powers and (b) racial inequality’s self-reinforcing character: low-income = poor neighborhoods = low or no home ownership and wealth building = poor schools = poverty trap = no or inadequate health care.

• Forceful federalism required (i) coercive state power [Eisenhower’s reluctant federalization of the Arkansas national guard and despatch of 101st airborne in 1957, Kennedy’s more enthusiastic despatch of federal troops to the University of Mississippi in 1962], (ii) new federal standards [Civil Rights Act, 1964, Voting Rights Act, 1965, Fair Housing Act 1968], and hybrid forms [withholding or rendering contingent federal funding].

Segregation today?

Formally: no. Of course not.

• But: subtler forms of exclusion: voter registration laws, gerrymandering are efforts at Black disenfranchisement.

• Segregated suburbs, clubs, golf courses. • Republicans are now a white supremacist party. Voter integrity laws and rantings against critical race theory are new wine in very old bottles.

• As argued, turn occurred from the 1960s in response to Reagan’s race-baiting success in California, the reaction to the civil rights movement, and the Nixon and Reagan presidencies.

• Forceful federalism peaked in the 1970s, and in the 1980s the Republicans launched a war on the federal government’s role in civil rights, education, and housing, while expanding its role in security, defence, narcotics, border control, and prisons.

• Withdrawal from the field of racial justice occurred at a time when South Africa made it a global cause.

• 2025: The Trump administration claims that white South Afrikaners are the victims of racism.

• A terrific exaggeration that builds off two facts: (i) the Expropriation Act of 2024 and (ii) the rhetoric of the Economic Freedom Fighters.

South Africa

Regional hegemon.

• Among the wealthiest countries in subSaharan Africa, after Gabon and Mauritius (US$ 5,000 GDP per capita; $11,870 PPP).

• Achieved a double transition: to full democracy and from apartheid without internecine violence or revolution.

• Institutions have proved resilient in the face of great inequality, mass unemployment and HIV/Aids.

Before colonization

In the 15th century, southern portion of African continent occupied by mobile hunter-gatherers, pastoralists herding sheep and cattle, and settled mixed farmers (owned cattle & sheep & grew crops).

• Country’s current Black-African inhabitants are mostly descendants of these mixed farmers.

• South Africa attracted European attention because of its position on oceanic trading routes.

Capitalism, settlement, and slavery

In 1497, Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape in a storm and sailed 170 miles up the coast. Another explorer followed 5 years later, sailed up to Mombasa, then moved on to India.

• Portuguese vessels grazed the cape on Cape en route to the Indian Ocean. They destroyed Arab traders and diverted trade from the Southeast Asia-Persian Red Sea route to the Oceanic route via the Cape.

• Established slave trade from West Africa (NB: Arab traders already heavily involved), but they established no permanent presence on the Cape. • End of the 16th century, Dutch, English, and Scandinavian traders also used the route.

Dutch East India Company (DEIC)

Company, founded in 1602, was the world’s greatest trading corporation. 6000 ships and 48,000 sailors.

• It had sovereign rights in and east of the Cape.

• It established a base on the Cape; meant to be minimal and only for feeding/watering animals and landing the ill.

• But: the company released employees on the Cape as ‘free burghers;’ landed slaves & forced them to work; as the Dutch acquired territory, they gave African pastoralists who lost their land the choice of leaving or becoming servants of the Dutch.

• From 1657, the unwanted from the Netherlands – orphans, Huguenots – were sent to the Cape. From 1658, the Cape became a slaveholding society.

• The Dutch migrants and their descendants became the Afrikaner.

• Dutch racial hierarchy froze and lasted into the 20th century.

The British

British emerged as the continent’s greatest power from the French Revolution.

• 1795, they occupied the Cape (Cape Town today) to keep the French out and push the Dutch aside. Cape transferred to London as part of the 1814 settlement. • English East India Company treated the Cape as instrumentally as the Dutch had.

• 1849: attempt to offload a shipload of convicts provoked united British & Afrikaner, rich & poor, east & west; South Africa would not become another Australia.

• The Canadian or the Indian model? Opted for the former. From 1853, there was a bicameral legislature that passed laws over domestic matters; London had a veto and controlled the executive.

Toward Apartheid

1870: gold discovered, ushering in wealth and attracting further migration from the UK [occurred since 1795]. Mining, gold, and cheap labor are essential factors in South Africa’s evolution.

• By the early 20th century, British settlers monopolized the managerial, entrepreneurial, and skilled positions in every sector except agriculture. They also dominated the unions.

• Afrikaner: poor, dominated agriculture. Compare with the pieds noirs in Algeria.

• Race and class overlapped: Black South Africans were the poorest and provided a reservoir to cheap labor to whites, rich and poor.

• 1910: Union of South Africa formed.

• 1912: African National Congress founded.

• From 1910-1948, politics was dominated by Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, who had fought the British in the Boer Wars but who reconciled themselves to British power.

South African Prime Ministers

Interwar segregation

1911: strikes by African workers prohibited.

• 1913: Native Lands Act prohibited Africans from purchasing/leasing land outside reserves (7% of the country, increased to 13.6% in 1936 legislation).

• Unable to sustain themselves, reserves became supplies of cheap labor.

• Africans left for the cities, leading to pass laws.

• 1936: Representation of Natives Act removed the right to run for office; Africans instead given the right to elect a few white representatives and created a Native Representatives Council with African representatives to defend Black interests.

• 1939: Hertzog wanted neutrality, Smuts triumphed, and SA joined the War.

After World War II

The war drew more Africans into the cities, destroyed European colonization, and delegitimized racism; Smuts accepts that he could not stop rural-urban migration.

• Small white intelligentsia at Witwatersrand & the Institute of Race Relations urged increased wages, recognition of African trade unions & the end of the pass laws.

• Deputy PM, J. H. Hofmeyer (United Party) declares himself in favour of “the ultimate removal of the colour bar from our constitution.”

• Smuts helped draft the UN Charter, Dutch (1949) and French (1954) gave up on southeast Asia, and UK left India. • The government’s Fagan commission of 1946 recommended ending internal controls (pass laws) and allowing Africans to move freely to the cities.

• Government made a few concessions – eased pass laws, raised Black factory wages, provided meagre pensions. They had no intention of a full-scale overturning of segregation.

• But: there was nonetheless a moment where an alternative history might have been written.

• Turning points where history fails to turn (AJP Taylor) are immensely important.

1948 election

• The war and a few United Party gestures had raised liberal expectations.

• 1943: ANC adopted Africans’ Claims in South Africa; cites Atlantic Charter, calls for the abolition of discrimination, land redistribution, African participation in collective bargaining, and universal suffrage. • However: few policy changes and continued segregation frustrated the ANC and Africans, while the ANC statement frightened many Afrikaner.

• The United Party accepted the Fagan report and made vague nods towards slow and eventual racial integration. • And the National Party exploited that fear to effect: it pilloried Hofmeyr, the aging Smuts’ deputy, as a radical liberal who would “bastardize” the country.

• The National Party defined Indians (2.5% of the population) as unassimilable, called for the rigorous segregation of [mixed race] ‘Coloured People,’ the complete segregation of Africans on their reserves (except insofar as they labored on white farms), and the abolition of the Native Representatives Council and Africans’ representatives in Parliament. It also called for an end of English dominance of the civil service.

• They named this program: Apartheid.

The results

• Despite this, Smuts, the war hero and Churchill confidante, was expected to win.

• And he did: the United Party won 547,437 votes and 50.9% of the electorate.

• The National Party won 443,278 votes and 41.2% of the electorate.

• But: National won the majority of the seats. • Because of…

The plurality (FPTP) electoral system

Highly disproportionate under any circumstances, but two factors made it especially so in South Africa:

• The English population was concentrated while the Afrikaner population, a majority of the white population, was evenly distributed.

• Result: in 98/150 seats, the Afrikaner had the majority. • A districting quirk allowed constituency size to vary in either direction (by 15%); the Afrikaner opted for smaller constituencies to multiply seats in which they had a majority; National only 2 seats where more than 7,200 ballots were cast; United won more than half its seats in constituencies of over 8,000.

• Daniel François Malan formed an alliance with a Hertzogite rump party, the Afrikaner party, which it quickly absorbed.

• Malan and the Afrikaner had seized control of a country, perfectly legally, in which they were 12% of the population and following a vote in which they decisively lost the popular vote.

Implementing Apartheid

National Party eliminated every vestige of Black political participation.

• Reached its legislative peak under PMs Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (1958-1966) and B. J. Vorster (1966-1978). Apartheid involved:

• (i) Dividing the population into four racial groups – White, Colored, Indian, and African. The whites were the civilized race with absolute power.

• (ii) Whites were one nation, Africans several, which manufactured a white majority.

• (iii) Intermarriage and miscegenation made illegal (1949 and 1950).

• (iv) 1953, while the US Supreme Court heard Brown & ruled that segregation in public facilities required equal facilities; SA Parliament passed the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act to legalize separate and unequal.

Apartheid & South African institutions

There were obstacles: constitutional change required a 2/3 majority, which the NP lacked in the 1950s.

• NP packed the (appointed) Senate and Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.

• 1951: passed by a simple majority legislation removing Coloured people from the electoral rolls; the Court struck it down. The NP tried to turn Parliament into the SC, failed, then packed the Senate to achieve a 2/3 majority, passed a new act in 1956. This removed the main block on Apartheid, allowing the government to:

• Abolish in 1951 the Natives Representatives Council and group all reserves into eight (eventually 10) homelands, a process completed by 1971. As noted, it deprived the homelanders of South African citizenship as they became ‘independent.’

• Crowded Africans into the homelands and ‘Coloreds’ and Indians into segregated townships. From 1960-1983, about 3,548,900 people were forcibly removed.

• Withdraw from the Commonwealth: in 1961: with Indian and Canadian support, African members had used the organization to criticize South Africa; SA withdrew in 1961 and narrowly won a referendum (white voters only) to become a Republic in that year, thus removing Crown influence via the Governor General.

The electoral system locked Apartheid in

End of Apartheid & South African institutions today

• 1980s: criticism increased, SA became the focus of campus and NGO activism, sanctions applied (sport boycott was among the most effective).

• PW Botha: PM 1978 to 1984 then State President (he transformed SA into a presidential system) was a hardliner who made only modest concessions.

Frederik Willem de Klerk

Hardliner, conservative, robust defender of apartheid.

• Elected State President in 1990 and expected to defend Apartheid. • Surprised everyone.

• Released Nelson Mandela in 1990 & dismantled Apartheid.

• In a Nixon & ‘Red China’ dynamic, he was able to bring the NP with him.

• De Klerk refused to apologize for Apartheid until 2020; expressed regret over post-Apartheid development of the country (crime, corruption; hardly alone).

South African institutions today

Mixed model – Westminster presidentialism.

• Comprise b/w outgoing NP, which wanted PR and minority representation, and the ANC, which wanted a strong central government to transform South Africa’s society and economy.

• Chief executive is the President but is chosen by the National Assembly (lower house) and can be removed through a non-confidence vote.

• Is both the head of state and the head of the government. The former gives him/her/them a prestige that is greater than that of a typical Westminster PM [used by great effect by Mandela].

• May call referenda & elections with NA support after three years.

• NA is elected for five years. There is a high degree of party discipline.

• Upper House, the National Council of Delegates, is weaker, indirectly elected based on nine provinces that send ten delegates (German system).

Judiciary vs Electoral System

2023 reform

Transformed a 2-ballot to a 3-ballot system, allowed individual candidates to run (not just parties), and introduced regionally elected MPs.

• Both party candidates (200) and regional candidates (200) sit in the NA. The party candidates are drawn from the lists; there are no independents. In the regional elections, independents may stand.

• A voter now casts three ballots: • First, for the 200 MPs from the party lists; PR, no threshold. These seats are allocated from the votes from the party ists.

• Second, for the regionally elected MPs; are 200 divided by region. Election is PR, but once a region’s seats are allocated, the remaining votes are lost (so slightly less proportional b/c, as in Spain, the NA does not expand). Ballot has both party and independent candidates. Party candidates are distributed according to the lists (that is, 43% vote for ANC = 43% of the seats). The quota is calculated by the Droop formula, and both independent and party candidates must reach it.

• This means: any extra votes for an independent are wasted, because they cannot be transferred, as party votes can, to the next person on the party list. In 2024, no independents were elected.

• Third, the provincial ballot, in which parties and candidates compete for seats in the provincial assemblies. PR, single constituency for each province (that is, no MPs).

• This video explains the new system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PkNlW9Db-Q

• There remains no threshold at all three levels.

Conclusion

South Africa certainly has its challenges: crime, corruption, HIV/AIDs crisis, massive poverty, unemployment, and, most recently economic stagnation.

• ANC’s dominance of government until 2024 led to, predictably, cronyism and corruption (today: coalition of the ANC – Ramaphosa is still president – the Democratic Alliance (Cape-dominated, white, pro-business) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (Zulu party, touchpoints with DA on taxes and labor law).

• But democracy has meant progress: Black South Africans with a formal dwelling went from 54% in 1996 to 73% in 2011; with tap water 74% to 89%; with electricity 45% to 81%; and flush toilets 78% to 90%.

• Education remains, however, a great site and source of inequality.

• The country passed through a period of massive social change without civil war or revenge killings and internecine violence on a significant scale.

• Despite a horrible history, Black South Africans express high levels of national pride and identification with South Africa.

• In that respect, they share much with African Americans: both have demonstrated a rejection (overall) of violence, a respect for due process, and confidence in and support for their countries and institutions despite the fact that, for most of their respective histories, neither those governments nor the majority of their white nationals did anything to merit.