continue unless their black inhabitants consented
to incorporation in the Union. This the popula-
tions did not want and Britain rejected South
African attempts to incorporate them. They even-
tually became independent – Basutoland as
Lesotho and Bechuanaland as Botswana in 1966,
and Swaziland in 1968 – though all three countries
are nevertheless wholly dependent on the South
African economy. The limited voting rights (they
entitled black people to white representation only)
which black and coloured people enjoyed in the
Cape province, as confirmed by the Act of Union,
were abolished for black Africans in 1936 and for
the coloured citizens, in practice, in 1955.
Whatever differences existed between the
white political parties in other matters, in their
attitudes to non-whites they were broadly similar.
They abhorred intermarriage between the races;
they were determined to maintain white domina-
tion and government; the black African was to be
denied equal political and economic rights; his
role was to serve the white state.
The policy followed was called ‘segregation’, a
forerunner of apartheid. Early in the history of the
Union, legislation was enacted which made it clear
that the path of South African development would
not be towards common goals for all its peoples
without regard to colour. The 1913 Native Land
Act made it illegal for black people to buy or lease
land outside the overcrowded designated African
reserve areas. In the greater part of South Africa
they were thus deprived of a fundamental right of
all citizens of a country, ownership of land. The
Act was not rigidly applied, except in the Orange
Free State, but the principle of such discrimination
was here clearly enshrined in law. The Native
Urban Area Act ten years later segregated the
black from the white population in towns. It had
been prompted by the unsanitary conditions of
black housing and the fear that disease would
spread to whites. But, in laying down the govern-
ment’s right not only to segregate but to control
the numbers of black people allowed to live in
towns, it formed the basis, together with the Land
Acts of 1913 and 1936, of the whole post-1948
apartheid structure.
The year 1948 marked a turning point in
African politics. Before the Second World War,
from 1933 to 1939, the radical and the more mod-
erate wings of Afrikaner politics had come together
to create the United Party, which formed a
government. The prime minister was General
Hertzog, and the statesman General Jan Smuts
was a deputy prime minister. Not all Afrikaners
accepted the fusion. A small group led by F. Malan
formed a ‘purified’ National Party in 1934, to
which the racist ideology of Hitler’s National
Socialism particularly appealed. Afrikaner national-
ism was strengthened by the Second World War.
Hertzog split the United Party in 1939, because he
wanted to opt for neutrality, while Jan Smuts nar-
rowly carried parliament into entering the war with
the other Commonwealth countries. The war itself
obscured the strength of Afrikaner nationalism.
Some extreme pro-German Afrikaners were
interned, but the majority of South Africans,
Afrikaner and English, fought against the Nazis.
Smuts seemed completely dominant. Yet Malan,
with considerable skill, nurtured a small reunified
National Party. Once the war was over, the unam-
biguous race policy of the Afrikaner National Party- the policy of apartheid – confronted the liberalis-
ing sentiments of Smuts’s United Party and gave
the Malan party a bare majority in the 1948 elec-
tion, despite Smuts’s enormous prestige. Smuts
died in 1950 and the United Party fell into a
decline. The Nationalist Party’s majority increased
with every election until the 1980s. After 1948,
the political, social and economic development of
South Africa was (until 1990) based on apartheid,
which had the support of a large majority of the
white population but was opposed with increasing
vehemence by black people.
For sixteen years Dr Henrik Verwoerd was the
architect of the apartheid structure, first as minis-
ter of native affairs from 1950 to 1958 and then
as prime minister until 1966. He elaborated and
adjusted to modern conditions the laws under-
pinning the maintenance of white supremacy in a
society that was segregated with increasing strict-
ness. He, in turn, after his assassination by a
crazed white, was succeeded by B. J. Vorster, who
remained prime minister until 1978. Proponents
of apartheid even claimed that the system was
supported by the law of God, according to the
teachings of the Dutch Reformed Church. Each