race should be kept pure and allowed to develop
its own national existence. But the assumption
behind all this was that the different races were
not of equal worth. The White Afrikaner
belonged to a Herrenvolk. What made apartheid
so offensive and unacceptable to world opinion
were the lessons learnt from the actions of that
other prophet of a master race, Adolf Hitler. His
master race had murdered and enslaved millions
belonging to ‘inferior’ races. It would not be
accurate to claim exact parallels between the poli-
cies followed by the governments of South Africa
and Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, after the events
of the Second World War no ideology of unequal
races could win respect. UN membership is com-
posed largely of non-white nations, as is the
British Commonwealth. Paradoxically, by insist-
ing on separate black and white development,
apartheid stimulated black nationalism and
encouraged the development of a separate black
power base. When in 1990 the white political
leadership recognised this danger and opened the
National Party to black membership, it was too
late to undo the harm done by the decades of
racially divided political power.
The doctrine of apartheid went far beyond
political segregation, of course. Blood laws very
similar to the notorious Nazi Nürnberg laws of
1935 were passed in 1949 and 1950, forbidding
mixed marriages and sexual relations (outside
already existing marriages) between whites
and non-whites. In parallel, the Population
Registration Act of 1949 classified each individual
into his or her racial group – white, black, coloured
or Asian. The Nazis, to distinguish Jews from
Aryans, focused on the religion of the four grand-
parents. But since the black Africans were as
Christian as the whites, the South African
Nationalist Party could make judgements only
according to appearance: the curl of the hair, the
colour of the skin. Some ‘doubtful’ cases slipped
into a ‘better’ category, and every year there were
appeals for ‘regradings’. One reason for this cate-
gorisation in 1949 was that such ‘slippage’ could
be controlled once everyone had been duly classi-
fied according to race. The pass laws were also
tightened in 1952. Every non-white was obliged to
carry a pass indicating his or her race and where he
or she was authorised to work and live. Black
people were not allowed to live in white towns
unless born there or unless they had worked there
for a number of years already. Illegal squatters in
town and country could be forcibly removed. In
1953 the Bantu Education Act separated black
education and prescribed a schooling suitable for
the lowly positions black citizens could occupy in
South African society. Many of the segregationist
laws also applied to Indians and coloured people.
To enforce all the apartheid laws, large and small,
the government needed to control the population
and crush opposition. By the Suppression of
Communism Act 1950, the government virtually
turned South Africa into a police state. The label
‘communism’ could be stretched almost infinitely
to encompass opposition to government policies.
For instance, it enabled the government to move
against multiracial trade unions even before they
were banned in 1957.
Black, coloured and Asian people had been
organising themselves into protest movements
since early in the twentieth century. In 1912 the
African National Congress (or ANC – so named
in 1923) was founded by Pixly Ka Izaka Seme, a
Zulu lawyer educated at Columbia and Oxford
Universities and the Middle Temple. His voice
was one of moderation and reason, not seeking
confrontation but confident that the franchise
would be extended to the relatively small number
of ‘civilised’ black Africans. It was not. During the
depression between the wars the ANC backed
black strikes and launched protest movements
against the pass laws. But the government was too
strong and was able to emasculate the ANC by
mass arrests. There were also congresses of unity
between the non-white organisations; tragically
there has also been much tension and conflict
between black people and Indians. In 1942, a
section of the ANC – the Youth League –
adopted a more militant outlook. In the early
1950s, Indians and black people once more coop-
erated in defiance of the unjust laws. But the gov-
ernment always had the political strength to put
down strikes and mass protests by using force and
arresting and trying thousands. This simply
increased militancy. While the ANC continued to
cooperate with Indians and communists and
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