coloured and Asian people were needed both in
skilled labour, in trade and in the professions,
because there were not enough whites to run a
modern industrial country and serve its economic
needs. The better-educated and better-organised
of the non-whites, with higher aspirations, were
able to compare their quality of life with that of
the whites, a comparison that created bitterness
and conflict. It made their exclusion from trade
union and political rights increasingly impossible
to justify. Internationally, too, a modern economy
interacts with the world economy, making it
impossible for a state to ignore world opinion or
the economic pressures exerted by sanctions.
More important even than sanctions was the
judgement of foreign businessmen that a polit-
ically unstable South Africa, possibly heading
towards revolution and bloodshed, was not a
good country to invest in.
Nevertheless, the white South African govern-
ment was able to hold up progress towards equal
black political rights for so long thanks to its own
armed strength, economic power and independ-
ent status. Unlike in Rhodesia, Britain had
retained no reserve sovereign powers. At the turn
of the century (1899–1902), it had fought the
two Boer Republics, the Orange Free State and
the Transvaal, to affirm imperial paramountcy; it
was a war of supremacy between whites. To the
Liberals in Britain the Boers had been wronged
and they wished to make amends when they came
to power. The Union of South Africa was formed
in 1910, granting the whites independence as a
Dominion within the British Empire. But bitter
memories of the camps into which Boer families
had been forced during the war, many dying from
disease, continued to affect relations between the
more nationalist Afrikaners and the English until
the middle of the century. As for the black
Africans, the Boer War did not help them. Their
enfranchisement was dependent on the white
majority. Deprived of adequate land, Zulus
rebelled in 1906, only to be bloodily suppressed.
Protest and the expression of independent black
opinion found a focus, just as in the southern
states of America, in black churches. They have
played an important role during the twentieth
century, and as religious institutions enjoy some
protection. The Asian, mainly Indian, commu-
nity, meanwhile, had found a brilliant spokesman
and organiser in a young lawyer, M. K. Gandhi.
When in 1910 the existing self-governing
colonies, the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State
and the Transvaal, formed the Union of South
Africa, they did not federate, but became provinces
of a central union. No non-whites could be elected
to parliament, and the franchise was left as it had
been before the Union; this allowed some voice to
the coloured and black population in the Cape, but
none elsewhere. In London, a black and coloured
delegation, which had raised objections to the
political colour-bar, was listened to with sympathy,
but the constitution of the Union was seen as a
question to be decided by South African whites.
There were some prominent white South African
politicians who opposed the colour-bar in politics;
indeed, throughout twentieth-century South
African history there have been a number of dis-
tinguished whites, from Walter Stanford early in
the century to Mrs Helen Suzman in our own
time, who have spoken for the rights of the other
races in parliament, but they have been a small
minority. The only safeguards London had pro-
vided for black people when the Union was formed
was to retain British protectorates over Basutoland,
Bechuanaland and Swaziland, which were to
1
SOUTHERN AFRICA 763
Population of South Africa (millions)
1911 1951 1970 1980 1992 2004
Black 4.0 8.6 15.1 19.0 29.1
White 1.3 2.6 3.8 4.5 5.0
Coloured 0.5 1.1 2.0 2.6 3.3
Asian (mainly Indian) 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Total 6.0 12.7 21.5 26.9 38.4 46.4
