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The most important of them have been an intensive study of a small Natal community where I have used standard anthropological methods of field work; hundreds of formal and informal interviews with persons from all walks of life and from all major ethnic groups; close contact with numerous South African academics in both Afrikaans- and English-speaking universities, extensive travels and visits of schools, police stations, hospitals, mining companies, slums and "model" housing, urban "locations" and "Native Reserves"; direct observation of day-to-day racial interaction, including police behaviour during and after the emergency; more detailed questionnaire studies of racial attitudes, miscegenation, the Hindu caste system, and social distance; a close study of South African dailies and periodicals during my period of residence in the country; and attendance at political rallies, meetings, protest marches, and the like.
The problem of objectivity is, of course, especially crucial and difficult when one deals with a country like South Africa, where the central conflict impinges so directly on one's own values. To pretend Olympian detachment would be both foolish and dishonest on my part. It would be foolish because my writing would quickly reveal my position, and dishonest because I am anything but detached.
Obviously, I am writing from the colourblind viewpoint of a universalistic ethos of equality of opportunity and legal rights, of freedom, and of self-determination. While I shall endeavour to present the facts as objectively as possible, I cannot help but find the policies of the government and the attitudes of most South African Whites distasteful in the extreme. It is for the reader to decide to what extent my. My only claims are that my account is factually correct in every major respect though minor inaccuracies may have slipped in inadvertently , and that most sociologists would have reached substantially the same conclusions as I did.
To most White South Africans, and, indeed, to other White supremacists, this book will necessarily, and, from their point of view, rightly, appear biased. It may even seem slanted to many Western scholars who, without being racists, still accept implicitly the ethnocentric myths of European colonialism concerning Africa, such as those of the "civilizing mission of the West" and African "primitivism.
A similar problem arises concerning the choice of words in speaking of South Africa's indigenous black inhabitants. The country's Whites almost always refer to their black fellow citizens as "Bantu" or "Native. The terms "Bantu" and "Native," while not directly insulting, have a derogatory connotation, and are resented by many Africans.
The word "Bantu" is also used by anthropologists to designate a large group of peoples speaking related languages. Except in quotations, official titles, and documents, or in the linguistic context, I shall only use the term "African" in this work.
The term "South African," when used by Whites, refers almost invariably to Whites only. The non-Whites are by implication denied common citizenship with the Whites. I shall always use the term "South African" in the generic, and only meaningful sense, except when otherwise indicated by quotation marks.
I have also avoided a presentation of South Africa as a White man's country with a colourful backdrop of "savages" who occasionally intrude into the foreground during "Kaffir Wars" and more recently during "disturbances. Finally, a fallacious impression which some readers might get from this book must be dispelled at the outset. Nowhere do I mean to suggest that White South Africans are peculiarly perverse, or that their colour attitudes and policies are unique.
On the contrary, my argument is that South African racialism is a product of a historical tradition constantly reinforced by the social environment. In retrospect, the development of racism seems completely understandable, and, conversely, it becomes difficult to explain why not all Whites are prejudiced. Furthermore, racialism is by no means a South African monopoly, although its presence in the United States, Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere does not justify it in South Africa.
Only during the last two decades have they grown increasingly at variance with the policies of all but. I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office.
I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and as much as any other man I am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. It is thus essential that the reader keep South Africa in the broader perspective of Western imperialism, although it would take us too far afield to do so explicitly at any length here.
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To conclude these considerations about the problem of objectivity in South Africa, I should like to quote at some length Danziger's perceptive remarks:. In the South African case it would require an extraordinary intellectual feat to arrive at some synthetic perspective which combines the partial historical insights of Afrikaner nationalists, English liberals and African revolutionaries. Such a synthesis would simply constitute the philosophy of the bystander, the cognitive style of the socially uncommitted.
But where the ubiquity of social conflict excludes the possibility of non-commitment the intellectual stance corresponding to it would simply become another version of status quo ideology. The fallacy of according greater truth value to the synthetic world view is based upon a failure to recognize the active role played by cognitive patterns in the historical process. Subjective views of the social process do not merely lead to meditation, they also lead to social action. Conservative or revolutionary ideology is not merely a matter of "intellectual position," but of practical policies and social movements which seek to impose a certain image on the world.
Under these conditions social truth is created, not contemplatively interpreted, and he is nearest to the truth whose situationally transcendent ideas represent the interests of social forces which are favoured by the historical process. Many people have remarked that the "race problem" of Africa is a White one, not a Black one.
Indeed, racial prejudice and consciousness which greatly complicate and impede the present transition of African countries from subjection to independence are almost exclusively European imports. This is so much the case that there is a close relationship between the number of White settlers in any given territory, and the ease and speed of political transition.
If the apologists of the "White man's burden" were correct, the reverse situation might have been expected: the more European colonists a country has, the "readier" it should be for self-government on a Western democratic model, and the sooner and the more easily it should achieve that avowed goal of most colonial powers. The events of the last twenty years, on the contrary, confirm the axiom that Africa has much more of a White immigrant problem than a "Native" one. Previous sporadic intrusions by Portuguese sailors along the coast, starting in the late fifteenth century, have left no permanent trace.
Five years later some colonists were emancipated from Company service and allowed to settle as free burghers. This event became the starting point of two important facts in South African history: first, of slavery, and, second, of "trekking. Yielding to an increasing demand for cheap servile labour on the part of the Dutch settlers who quickly came to consider manual work below their dignity, the Company imported the first shipload of slaves in Through subsequent shipments, the number of slaves began to outnumber that of Whites by the first half of the eighteenth century, and the Western Cape became a firmly entrenched slave society until , when slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.
These slaves came mostly from Madagascar, Mozambique, and the East Indies. In addition, the Cape was a convenient dumping ground for political exiles and prisoners from the Indies. This early slavery situation gave rise to the first type of race relations which I have called "paternalistic," [2] and to an ideological current which has mistakenly been termed "Cape liberalism. Within a generation or so, however, colour had become the primary index of status. The Calvinist faith of the Dutch settlers probably helped this process of increasing race consciousness.
Indeed, one can plausibly extend Max Weber's argument concerning predestination to South Africa. In the case of Calvin's Geneva that sign took the form of material prosperity, hence the link between Calvinism and capitalism. Accepting the urge to seek an outward sign of salvation, skin colour seemed the most obvious, indeed the almost inevitable choice in South Africa, all the more so that practically all dark-skinned people were in fact "heathens," and that darkness was traditionally associated with sin and evil in the Christian world view.
Africans, so the argument runs, are the descendants of Ham, who was cursed by Noah, and are destined by God to be servants of servants, hewers of wood and drawers of water. By the end of the seventeenth century, in any case, a rigid system of stratification based mostly on "race" was firmly established at the Cape. At this point, we must distinguish the settled districts of the Western Cape from the frontier districts of. Tiryakian, "Apartheid and Religion"; and A.
In addition to the religious factor in the origin of racialism in South Africa, Cryns mentions that the superior technology and social status of the Whites easily led to the notion of physical superiority. He argues, furthermore, that racial intolerance had survival value under rugged frontier conditions, and that racial barriers were erected by the Whites to preserve their dominant social position as non-Whites became acculturated.
In other words, racialism became a second line of defense, when cultural and religious criteria of status no longer coincided with colour distinctions. Cryns, op. I agree with Cryns that all of these factors contributed to the development of White racialism in South Africa. The vulgar Marxist interpretation of colour prejudice as a conscious capitalist rationalization for the economic exploitation of the non-Whites is not only simplistic, but fails to account for the facts.
While White vested interests do indeed make prejudice profitable, capitalism came much later than racialism in South Africa. Hence capitalism cannot satisfactorily account for the genesis of colour prejudice. The former extended in the eighteenth century as far as Swellendam in the east and Tulbagh in the north, and included, besides Cape Town itself, Stellenbosch and Paarl as sizeable towns.
Only in that limited area, settled mostly by fairly prosperous wine, fruit, and wheat farmers living sedentarily on large autonomous farms, did the slavery system take root. The Whites were at the apex of society, and comprised transient sailors, a military garrison, employees of the Dutch East India Company, and free burghers established as artisans, shopkeepers, professionals, and farmers.
They lived together with their slaves and with nominally free Hottentots though the latter were more numerous in the frontier districts in a relatively stable symbiosis based on rigidly ascriptive ties of masters and servants. In spite of sporadic revolts of small groups of fugitive slaves repressed with great vigor, most contemporary and modern accounts agree that slavery at the Cape was a mild institution allowing for close affective bonds between masters and slaves. Lichtenstein describes that paternalistic relationship existing in the first years of the nineteenth century in the following terms:.
He [i. Milde, who, he said, took such excellent care of him though he was not able to work any longer: praises which were echoed unanimously by all the slaves. Indeed, whoever had an opportunity of contemplating.
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Nor are such instances rare. The truth is that instead of the odious representations which have been made by some persons of the behaviour of masters in this country towards their dependents. Many other documents of the period show the close affective and physical bonds that united masters and slaves. John Campbell, for example, writes in In general, the slaves are treated with tenderness in Cape Town.
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In the house where I lodged they are treated as if they were their own children, and most of them would be very unwilling to leave the family. Their children are put to school, and play about the room, where the family sit at their meals, with as much freedom, and receive as much attention as if they were their own children. During the whole evening I had seen the slaves in such good humour, and so kindly and familiarly treated, that with regard to their temporal matters at least they really seemed to be better off than many servants in Europe. Slaves then, in particular domestic servants, closely shared the life of their masters.
White and Black children played together and went in many cases to the same schools. The entire household often prayed together in the evening, although slaves were excluded from church worship; personal servants shared in every respect the intimacy of their masters' households, and lived in many cases under the same roof, as can be seen in the old town houses and farms of the Cape.
A concomitant of this close emotional and special relationship was miscegenation which, throughout this period, was not only common but condoned in the form of concubinage between White men and women of colour.
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In Mentzel writes:. Female slaves are always ready to offer their bodies for a trifle, and toward evening one can see a string of soldiers and sailors entering the slave lodge where they misspend their time until the clock strikes 9. The Company does nothing to prevent this promiscuous intercourse, since, for one thing it tends to multiply the slave population, and does away with the necessity of importing fresh slaves.
Three or four generations of this admixture. Boys who. These affairs are not regarded as very serious. The offence is venial in the public estimation. It does not hurt the boy's prospects, his escapade is a source of amusement, and he is dubbed a young fellow who has shown the stuff he is made of. Female slaves sometimes live with Europeans as husband and wife with the permission of their masters.