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Afrikaner Nationalism, Apartheid and the Conceptualization of ‘Race’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Saul Dubow
Saul Dubow
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Extract

This paper analyses the ideological elaboration of the concept of race in the development of Christian-nationalist thought. As such, it contributes to our understanding of the ideological and theological justifications for apartheid. The paper begins by pointing to the relatively late moment (c. mid-1930s) at which Afrikaner nationalist ideologues began to address the systematic separation of blacks and whites. It takes its cue from a key address given by the nationalist leader, Totius, to the 1944 volkskongres on racial policy. Here, racial separation was justified by reference to scriptural injunction, the historical experience of Afrikanerdom and the authority of science. Each of these categories is then analysed with respect to the way in which the concept of race was understood and articulated.

The paper argues that both scientific racism and distinctive forms of cultural relativism were used to justify racial separation. This depended on the fact that the categories of race, language and culture were used as functionally interdependent variables, whose boundaries remained fluid. In the main, and especially after the Second World War, Afrikaner nationalist ideologues chose to infer or suggest biological notions of racial superiority rather than to assert these openly. Stress on the distinctiveness of different ‘cultures’ meant that the burden of explaining human difference did not rest solely on the claims of racial science. As a doctrine, Christian-nationalism remained sufficiently flexible to adjust to changing circumstances. In practice, the essentialist view of culture was no less powerful a means of articulating human difference than an approach based entirely on biological determinism.

Type
Constructing Identities
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , July 1992 , pp. 209 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 This paper forms part of a broader investigation into the ‘idea of race’ in twentieth-century South Africa. I have benefited from the comments of André du Toit, Johan Kinghorn, Hermann Giliomee and John Lazar, as well as those of the anonymous readers of the Journal. Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at seminars at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, and the 1990 African Studies Association conference in Baltimore. Translations from Afrikaans are my own.

2 This argument ties in with the broad, inclusive definition of racist ideology which I have adopted. This embraces both the idea of biologically determined superiority and inferiority, as well as the notion that culture is in some sense an expression of genetic constitution.

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7 Rhoodie, and Venter, , Apartheid, 170.Google Scholar The Bond lasted for a brief time only. Its first chair was Mrs E. G. Jansen, wife of the Minister of Native Affairs from 1929 to 1933 and 1948 to 1950. The secretary was M. D. C. de Wet Nel who served as Minister of Bantu Administration from 1958 to 1961.

8 Rhoodie, and Venter, , Apartheid, 171–2.Google Scholar Hexham documents an even earlier use of ‘apartheid’ in the context of a lecture on Calvinism at Potchefstroom in 1914. See Hexham, I., The Irony of Apartheid (New York and Toronto, 1981), 188.Google Scholar

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56 The complex process according to which theological justifications for apartheid were formulated and endorsed by the DRC is discussed in detail by Loubser, The Apartheid Bible, and Kinghorn, Die NG Kerk.

57 I owe this point to André du Toit.

58 In 1956 the Federal Council of the DRC decided: ‘The Dutch Reformed Church accepts the unity of the human race, which is not annulled by its diversity. At the same time the Dutch Reformed Church accepts the natural diversity of the human race, which is not annulled by its unity.’ See DRC, The Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa and the Problem of Race Relations (n.d. [1956]), 13. The apartheid bible finally emerged in its most sophisticated and definitive form as Human Relations and the South African Scene in the Light of Scripture, and was presented to the DRC General Synod in 1974. This landmark document demonstrates a sensitivity to criticisms of apartheid by declaring itself opposed to racial injustice and discrimination. The concept of race itself is avoided through the use of its surrogate term—nation. Nevertheless, the concept of separate development is endorsed in terms of the ethnic diversity willed by God in His creation ordinances.

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72 See their articles in the first [c. 1940] issue of the journal Rassebakens.

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80 Ibid. 51–6.

81 Ibid. 61.

82 Ibid. 26.

83 Ibid. 75–6.

84 Ibid. 76ff. For a discussion of Fischer in the context of the German race hygiene movement, see Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 40ff. See also Fischer, E., Die Rehebother Bastards und das Bastardierungs Probleem bein Menschen (Jena, 1913).Google Scholar

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107 Ibid. 9, para. 71.

108 Ibid. 20, para. 20.

109 Coetzee, J. Albert, Nasie-Wording in Suid Afrika: ʼn Sleutel vir die Politieke Probleem van Suid Afrika (Potchefstroom, 1931).Google Scholar

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114 For example, the assumption that language and culture were expressions of race was an essential element in post-Enlightenment anthropological thought. Similarly, the notion that non-physical characteristics (e.g. culture) are capable of absorption and transmission from one generation to the next derives in large part from Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

115 O'Meara, D., Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934–48 (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar