NGK-State Relations during Apartheid’s Height (1962–78)

Abstract

The successful attainment of Afrikaner nationalist goals, a relatively stable political-economic environment, and moderate external pressure set the context for a situation of collaboration between the NP-dominated state and the NGK in South Africa from 1962 to 1978. Collaboration assumes individuals, groups, or entities are working together in a combined intellectual, political, or social effort. During the era of collaboration, factions and individuals ruling the NP-dominated state and the NGK were committed to the maintenance of three socio-political goals: (a) white, mainly Afrikaner, dominance in the political and social arena, (b) economic prosperity through the protection of capitalist interests, and (c) the implementation of a racial policy that maintained ethnic purity and overcame the criticisms of ‘negative’ apartheid. As leaders within the NGK and the state collaborated with one another, the two entites’ perspectives on race policy became almost indistinguishable, but it was the official leadership of the NGK which followed the ‘state’s’ perspective on race policy because of the state’s dominance and power.¹ The relationship of collaboration between a state and civil society institution is rare because it rests on a high level of official interaction and policy collusion. Before describing the political-economic environment that nurtured the era of collaboration, it is important to discuss the two major groups within the Afrikaner establishment that shaped this particular NGK-state relationship.