Contextualising Apartheid at the End of Empire: Repression, ‘Development’ and the Bantustans

TLDR: The authors examines the global dynamics of late colonialism and how these informed South African apartheid and locates the programmes of mass relocation and bantustan self-government that characterised apartheid after 1959 in relation to three key dimensions.

Abstract: This article examines the global dynamics of late colonialism and how these informed South African apartheid. More specifically, it locates the programmes of mass relocation and bantustan ‘self-government’ that characterised apartheid after 1959 in relation to three key dimensions. Firstly, the article explores the global circulation of idioms of ‘development’ and trusteeship in the first half of the twentieth century and its significance in shaping segregationist policy; secondly, it situates bantustan ‘selfgovernment’ in relation to the history of decolonisation and the partitions and federations that emerged as late colonial solutions; and, thirdly, it locates the tightening of rural village planning in the bantustans after 1960 in relation to the elaboration of anti-colonial liberation struggles, repressive southern African settler politics and the Cold War. It argues that, far from developing policies that were at odds with the global ‘wind of change’, South African apartheid during the 1960s and 1970s reflected much that was characteristic about late colonial strategy.

Full text

Contextualising Apartheid at the End of Empire:
Repression, ‘Development’ and the Bantustans
EVANS, Laura <http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2471-7439>
Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at:
http://shura.shu.ac.uk/23925/
This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the
publisher's version if you wish to cite from it.
Published version
EVANS, Laura (2019). Contextualising Apartheid at the End of Empire: Repression,
‘Development’ and the Bantustans. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.
Copyright and re-use policy
See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html
Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive
http://shura.shu.ac.uk

1
Contextualising Apartheid at the End of Empire: Repression, ‘Development’ and the
Bantustans
Laura Evans
Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University and
International Studies Group, University of the Free State
Abstract
This article examines the global dynamics of late colonialism and how these informed
South African apartheid. More specifically, it locates the programmes of mass
relocation and bantustan ‘self-government’ that characterised apartheid after 1959 in
relation to three key dimensions. Firstly, the article explores the global circulation of
idioms of ‘development’ and trusteeship in the first half of the twentieth century and its
significance in shaping segregationist policy; secondly, it situates bantustan ‘self-
government’ in relation to the history of decolonisation and the partitions and
federations that emerged as late colonial solutions; and, thirdly, it locates the
tightening of rural village planning in the bantustans after 1960 in relation to the
elaboration of anti-colonial liberation struggles, repressive southern African settler
politics and the Cold War. It argues that, far from developing policies that were at odds
with the global ‘wind of change’, South African apartheid during the 1960s and 1970s
reflected much that was characteristic about late colonial strategy.
Keywords: apartheid; bantustans; homelands; decolonisation; empire; development;
relocation; villagisation; counter-insurgency.

2
Introduction
This article analyses the South African apartheid project of repression and containment in
relation to the end of empire. In response to the emergence of a mass anti-colonial movement
during the 1950s, from the early 1960s the government intensified political repression
significantly and embarked on a thoroughgoing project of social engineering to relocate black
South Africans - particularly women, elderly, the unemployed and those deemed politically
‘undesirable’ - to rural dumping grounds in the so-called ‘homelands’.
1
This concerted effort
to impress state power, impose labour controls and bring about racial segregation was
justified in the rhetoric of ethnic national self-determination: ten ethnic ‘homelands’ or
‘bantustans’ were to be led to a flimsy political independence. The mass relocation of black
South Africans to rural relocation areas in the bantustans was a cornerstone of this policy. In
the twenty year period from 1960 to 1980, more than 3.5 million South Africans were
relocated, while at least a million people (likely many more) were moved to rudimentary
townships in the bantustans.
2
These relocations were widely condemned by activists and
scholars, who described them as the ‘dumping grounds’ of apartheid.
3
In spite of its concerted
efforts, the South African government eventually failed to gain international acceptance for
its bantustan scheme at the United Nations, where it was widely rejected as a farce.
4
The bantustan scheme and apartheid population relocation have been understood by
historians as a product of the racial and class project of the white supremacist state, designed
to cement the migrant labour system underpinning white prosperity; to entrench the project of
racial segregation and to undermine African nationalist mobilisation.
5
While the continued
assertion of settler colonial racism in South Africa after 1960 diverged clearly from the

3
emergence of African nationalist regimes to the north,
6
the policies of relocation and partition
that the South African government pursued from the early 1960s are much less peculiar to
this context than the existing literature on apartheid might suggest.
7
This article places these
policies in their global milieu, while considering them in relation to the regional dynamics of
southern African settler colonialism.
8
It is not the intention of this paper to flatten local specificities in favour of an
homogenising global narrative, but, rather, to trace the ‘global in the local’,
9
connecting
South Africa’s history of segregation and apartheid to the global histories of the end of
empire and late colonial ‘repressive development’.
10
A full explanation of the multiple global
influences on South African apartheid demands thorough research in archives across the
world including the United Nations (and League of Nations), other international organisations,
and, of course, state archives in Pretoria, London, Washington and Lisbon. This article is the
result of a more modest project. By bringing primary research and the South African
historiography into conversation with an illuminating swathe of literature on late imperialism
and the history of colonial development planning that has emerged over the last decade, this
article locates the characteristic policies of ‘high apartheid’ - mass relocation and the ‘grand
apartheid’ bantustan scheme - and their antecedents in a global frame. Inevitably, it leaves
loose ends and raises new questions.
I argue that South African apartheid drew much more on global ideas about colonial
development and imperial statecraft than has generally been recognised. It has been well
documented that state policy and practice were shaped by competing domestic interests
within the settler alliance - of ‘maize and gold’;
11
farming and industry
12
- and by a
blundering praxis that weighed Afrikaner nationalist ‘visionaries’ against ‘pragmatists’.
13
While these influences at the national level have been relatively well examined, the moulding
of state policy and practice by global processes and imperial debates has been little explored.

4
The ‘high apartheid’ policies of ‘separate development’ and ethnic self-determination that
characterised the administrations of H. F. Verwoerd (1958- 66) and B. J. Vorster (1966- 78)
were not novel: they picked up a policy trajectory of indirect rule and trusteeship that had
been set out during the interwar years under Jan Smuts (1919- 24; 1939- 48) and J. B. M.
Hertzog (1924- 39).
14
There is little evidence to suggest that the two supposed South African ‘traditions’ of
segregation - liberalism and Afrikaner nationalism - developed as distinct ways of thinking or
in isolation from one another. Apartheid was not a monolith, and historians should remain
cautious of ideological determinism as an explanation for apartheid policy. We must be wary
of historical explanations that place too heavy an emphasis on ideologies and their ‘origins’:
ideologies are rarely coherent or unchanging; nor are they secluded from external (global)
influences. The philosophical and theological traditions of the Dutch Reformed Church have
underpinned dominant historical explanations for apartheid policy: Giliomee argues that the
philosophy of apartheid was distinct from earlier segregationist ideas and policies.
15
Meanwhile, Dubow argues that ‘Christian National theory, volks nationalism, and cultural
relativist ideas’ supported and justified the ‘ideology of apartheid’ that was pursued by
Verwoerd, yet he rightly argues that historians should be careful not to assume that there was
continuity between Afrikaner nationalist policy pronouncements of the 1940s and the
promotion of ‘self-governing homelands’ in later decades.
16
Historians have tended to
emphasise the role of Verwoerd, the ideological coherence of his project and its centrality in
shaping state praxis.
17
Yet, as the work of Deborah Posel has shown, analyses of ideological
justifications for state policy do not necessarily offer the most revealing window onto
blundering state praxis: the two are not inextricably or even necessarily connected.
18
Governments do not do as they say they do, nor do states (in all their complex forms,
institutions and guises) necessarily do what their governments say they do. As Dubow

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Contextualising apartheid at the end of empire: repression, ‘development’ and the bantustans" ?

This article examines the global dynamics of late colonialism and how these informed South African apartheid. Firstly, the article explores the global circulation of idioms of ‘ development ’ and trusteeship in the first half of the twentieth century and its significance in shaping segregationist policy ; secondly, it situates bantustan ‘ selfgovernment ’ in relation to the history of decolonisation and the partitions and federations that emerged as late colonial solutions ; and, thirdly, it locates the tightening of rural village planning in the bantustans after 1960 in relation to the elaboration of anti-colonial liberation struggles, repressive southern African settler politics and the Cold War. 

Q2. What are the future works in "Contextualising apartheid at the end of empire: repression, ‘development’ and the bantustans" ?

Villagisation underpinned and promised to extend the segregationist regime of land governance under apartheid by facilitating removals from ‘ white ’ areas. Rural planning cemented the future of white supremacy in South Africa, amid growing challenges to colonialism, within and beyond South Africa. In particular, British and Portuguese imperial strategies of ‘ development ’ and resettlement were adopted and adapted by the apartheid state and were employed to pacify resistance as well as to extend and entrench the settler colonial project as it came under increased pressure. The significance of debates about self-government and development in Central Asia among elites in Asia and Africa demands further research in terms of how it shaped South African bantustan policy. 

Q3. What was the dominant view among global politicians?

The imperative of protecting minorities was overwhelmed by the belief in geopolitical solutions: by the middle of the century, the dominant view among global politicians was that conflicts could be prevented only through controlled migration, population transfers and political, territorial partitions. 

Q4. What did the British politicians and administrators do to justify colonial rule?

96 British politicians and administrators continued to justify colonial rule by invoking a transition to ‘responsible government’ or ‘self- government’, invoking the language of self-determination and promising local control over local affairs while never conceding to a change in the imperial administration and its control over foreign policy and defence. 

Q5. What was the role of planning in the postcolonial world?

187 Planning offered a rhetoric of modernisation, given new impetus by the promise of development in the postcolonial world, and facilitated the continued re-imagination of the white settler project in the era of decolonisation. 

Q6. What did the 1960s reveal about the influence of coercion on development planning?

By the end of the 1960s, coercion had replaced paternalist developmentalism: the ‘international enthusiasm’ for ‘peasant relocation and the construction of fortress villages’ (in, for example, Mozambique, Angola, India, Vietnam, Malaya, Algeria and Southern Rhodesia) revealed the widespread influence of coercive counterinsurgency doctrines in development thinking. 

Q7. What was the focal concept in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963?

The Garveyite vision of a United States of Africa was taken up by Pan-Africanists and was the focal concept in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963. 

Q8. What was the role of planning in shaping the content of the bantustan policy?

The bantustan policy of ‘separate development’ was indeed aimed at deflecting opposition to the white regime and ‘externalising’ conflict from ‘white’ South Africa to the rural bantustans, 188 but the global politics of late colonialism and southern African settler alliances played critical roles in shaping the content and the form of South Africa’s strategies of villagisation and ‘repressive development’. 

Q9. What was the role of population transfer in the colonial period?

44 The emergent acceptance in the interwar period of ethnic ‘unmixing’ and population transfer as a pragmatic policy for the protection of imperial stability informed the partitions and federations of the postwar period, most notably in India and Palestine. 

Q10. What was the idea of the federal aims of South Africa’s ‘homeland’?

During the mid-1960s, it was believed in South African foreign policy circles that the federal aims of ‘separate development’ might be further pursued through the incorporation of Southern Rhodesia into South Africa’s formal ambit. 

Q11. What is the context for understanding the framing of this policy?

The discursive and schematic practices of planning for the resettlement of refugees after the Second World War provide an important context for understanding the framing of this policy. 

Q12. What was the other consequence of establishing such sites for relocation throughout the mid-1960s?

The other consequence of establishing such sites for relocation throughout the mid-1960s, was to significantly speed up the removal of Africans from designated ‘white’ areas: the towns, cities and white-owned farmlands of the Republic. 

Q13. What was the first of its kind in apartheid South Africa?

The sites that emerged in the Ciskei in the early 1960s, including Sada, Dimbaza and Ilinge, were some of the earliest of their kind in apartheid South Africa, as the Western Cape led the way in the emerging removals strategy and as the state embarked on its campaign of repression in the Eastern Cape. 

Q14. What was the trajectory of rural planning after the Second World War?

65The South African trajectory of rural planning after the Second World War was instep with British imperial thinking around ‘development’ and reconstruction. 

Q15. What was the role of the French and British imperial regimes in balancing the balance?

Through the provision of funding for welfare in their colonies, French and British imperial regimes weighed the ‘delicate balance of exploitation and development.’ 

Q16. What was the role of Smuts in shaping global political concerns after the First World War?

33 Alongside his central role in the making of the South African state, as ‘the promoter of the transmutation of the empire into commonwealth’, Smuts was the key proponent of the South African imperial project and highly influential in shaping global political concerns after the First World War. 

Q17. What strategies were adopted by the British and Portuguese imperial states of ‘development’ and ‘re?

In particular, British and Portuguese imperial strategies of ‘development’ andresettlement were adopted and adapted by the apartheid state and were employed to pacify resistance as well as to extend and entrench the settler colonial project as it came under increased pressure. 

Q18. What is the significance of the bantustan project?

In the light of an analysis of the prevailing ideas concerning population, partition and trusteeship in the interwar years, and set in the context of the late colonial praxis of repressive state planning, South Africa’s bantustan project appears much less unique - and less distinctly emblematic of Afrikaner nationalism - than has been previously assumed. 

Q19. What was the role of the white regime in the development of South Africa?

The white regime’s internal policies reflected its continued efforts to reposition itself in a changing world; to reimagine and sustain the future of the white settler regime. 

Q20. What was the first step in the process of modernising South African rural planning?

In the wake of the Tomlinson Commission, attempts to modernise South African rural‘betterment’ planning through the policy of ‘Stabilisation, Reclamation and Rehabilitation’ (1954) echoed Smits’ proposals for thoroughgoing resettlement planning a decade earlier.