A Brief History of Apartheid: Contentious Histories

Abstract

In this introductory chapter, the aim is not to provide a full and exacting account of apartheid in South Africa. Various versions of this history have been provided many times over in different forms and shapes.² The history of South Africa and the analysis of apartheid have filled the shelves of libraries around the world. In part, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) itself is a way of creating a fuller, more precise, more accurate account of the misdeeds of the system of forced segregation between different races and the horrors and atrocities it spawned. In that sense it sees itself as a society-sanctioned narrative of the past aimed at achieving historical truth or to come as close to this goal as possible. What I am interested in here is providing a brief overview of apartheid and the different historical interpretations that accompanied it in order to illustrate the different versions of the country’s history. If the philosopher Santayana was right when he argued that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, then we can pragmatically argue that we need to examine those aspects of the past in order to learn from mistakes and avoid repeating them in future.³ Unfortunately the history of humanity is littered with examples which show that the latter view never really quite corresponds to present or future realities.