Abstract
The election of 1948 marked the beginning of National Party rule. From the late 1940s to the 1980s, the NP steadily increased its control over the state and developed and implemented the policy of apartheid.1 The NGK was an important civil society institution that justified the development and consolidation of apartheid. NGK-state relations during the early years of apartheid were those of mutual engagement.
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Notes
For an elaboration of these three categories, as well as the ideas expressed in this description of apartheid, see Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer, From Apartheid to Nation-Building (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1989), 63–113.
See Robert Davies, Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa, 1900–1960: An Historical Materialist Analysis of Class Formation and Class Relations (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979)
Philip Frankel, ‘The Politics of Passes: Control and Change in South Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies 17 (1979): 199–217.
Dan O’Meara, Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948–1994 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1996), 81, 82.
Scholars have debated the significance of apartheid laws which restricted labor movement. Liberals like S.T. van der Horst, D. Hobart Houghton, and F. Wilson argued that influx control laws constrained African employment opportunities and were incompatible with economic growth in the long term because they encouraged labor turnover, low productivity, and high costs. Revisionists like H. Wolpe and M. Legassick challenged liberals with their ‘cheap labour power thesis’ which argued that labor controls ware designed to secure the economic and political conditions for capitalist expansion. For works that review these debates and offer a synthesis of the perspectives, see Doug Hindson, Pass Controls and the Urban African Proletariat in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987)
Merle Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–1984 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985)
Deborah Posel, The Making of Apartheid 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
See Merle Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid; Dan O’Meara, Volkskapit-alisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)
David Welsh, ‘The Political Economy of Afrikaner Nationalism’, in South Africa: Economic Growth and Political Change, ed. Adrian Leftwich (London: Allison & Busby, 1974), 249–86.
See Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945 (London: Longman, 1983)
Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, eds., The Politics of Race, Class, and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century South Africa (London: Longman, 1987).
William Nasson, ‘The Unity Movement: Its Legacy in Historical Consciousness’, Radical History Review 46–7 (1990): 189–211.
See Gail M. Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978).
Deborah Posel, ‘The Meaning of Apartheid Before 1948: Conflicting Interests and Forces within the Afrikaner Nationalist Alliance’, Journal of Southern African Studies 14 (1987): 123.
For an examination of the contested nature of apartheid in the first decade of NP rule, see John Lazar, ‘Community and Conflict: Afrikaner Nationalist Politics in South Africa, 1948–61’ (PhD diss., Oxford University, 1987); Alan Mabin, ‘Comprehensive Segregation: the Origins of the Group Areas Act and its Planning Apparatuses’, Journal of Southern African Studies 18 (1992): 405–29
Afrikaans text: ‘Laat ons dan ten slotte die beleid van eventuele alge-hele skeiding, apartheid, of selfstandige ontwikkeling van die onder-skeie rassegroepe bespreek as die enigste alternatief... Die beweerde besware, nl. dat dit onmoontlike is om die beleid prakties deur te voer, noem dan veral twee onoorkoomlike berge wat die pad versper, t.w. die beskikbaarstelling van genoegsame grond aan naturelle, en die uitska-keling van naturellearbeid uit die blanke ekonomie. Dit sal na die mening van hierdie mense ontsettende ekonomiese Verliese beteken en groot offers verg...’ A. van Schalkwyk, ‘Beleidsrigtings t.o.v. die Naturellevraagstuk in Suid-Afrika’, in Die Naturellevraagstuk (Stellenbosch: Pro-Ecclesia, 1950), 20–1.
The following section relies on David Welsh, ‘The Executive and the African Population: 1948 to the Present’, in Malan to De Klerk: Leadership in the Apartheid State, ed. Robert Schrire (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 137–46.
B.M. Schoeman, Van Malan tot Verwoerd (Cape Town: Human en Rousseau, 1973)
H.B. Thorn, D.F. Malan (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1980).
P.B. van der Watt, Die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, 1905–1975 (Pretoria: Nasionale Boekdrukkery, 1987), 83–6.
The report was based on E.P. Groenewald’s, ‘Die Apartheid van die Nasie’, Die Gereformeerde Vaandel 16 (1948): 9–10
Quoted in Johann Kinghorn, ‘The Theology of Separate Equality: A Critical Outline of the DRC’s Position on Apartheid’, in Christianity Amidst Apartheid, ed. Martin Prozesky (London: Macmillan, 1990), 67.
The following section relies on Welsh, ‘The Executive’, 147–52. See also J.L. Basson, J. G. Strijdom: Sy Politieke Loopbaan van 1929 tot 1948 (Pretoria: Wonderboom, 1980).
John Lazar, ‘Verwoerd versus the “Visionaries”: The South African Bureau of Racial Affairs (SABRA) and Apartheid, 1948–1961’, in Apartheid’s Genesis 1935–1962, ed. Philip Bonner, Peter Delius, and Deborah Posel (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1993), 372.
H.F. Verwoerd relied on the work of N.J. Rhoodie and H.J. Venter in his explanation of separate development. See Rhoodie and Venter’s Apartheid: A Socio-Historical Exposition of the Origin and Development of the Apartheid Idea (Cape Town: Human en Rousseau, 1959).
Alexander Hepple, Verwoerd (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1967)
Henry Kenney, Architect of Apartheid (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1980)
Johann Kinghorn, edn Die NG Kerk en Apartheid (Johannesburg: Macmillan Suid-Afrika, 1986), 119.
Afrikaans text: ‘heelhartige onderskrywing van die beleid van ons kerk soos op agtereenvolgende sinodes vanaf 1951–1958 geformuleer is... ‘n beleid van differensiasie of afsonderlike ontwikkeling, wat op die begin-sel van Christelike voogdyskap voorgestaan het.’ E.P. Groenwald, ‘Die Transvaalse Kerk en die Cottesloe-Beraad’, Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif 2 (1961): 132–3.
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© 1999 Tracy Kuperus
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Kuperus, T. (1999). NGK-State Relations during Apartheid’s Early Years(1948–61). In: State, Civil Society and Apartheid in South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230373730_4
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