South Africa: Looking Forward, Reaching Back

1
South Africa Looking Forward, Reaching Back

• Historical Antecedents of Apartheid and the
  Struggle for Liberation
• Presented by Marleen Ramsey

2
In the Beginning

• Ancient Africa was divided into three parts.
• The northern sector, above the great desert, has
  the oldest of all recorded history
• It goes back 5,000 years to the first of the 31
  dynasties of ancient Egypt
• It is more a part of the Mediterranean world than
  Africa, with connections to the Phoenicians, the
  Greeks, the Romans, and Islam.

3
Black Mans Africa

• South of the Sahara Desert lies the real Africa
  the Black mans Africa
• Sealed off by the Sahara Desert in the north,
  dense tropical forests around its west coast, the
  Namibia, and Kalahari deserts farther south, it
  was a huge natural fortress

4
Southern Africa

• The southern sector, beyond the equatorial
  forest, was the most isolated of all
• Southern Africa appears to have been inhabited
  largely by Hottentots cattle herders and Bushmen
  hunter-gathers known as Khoikhoi and San

5
Arrival of the Dutch

• South African government propaganda tried to
  disseminate the myth that White and Black
  settlers entered an empty country from opposite
  ends at about the same time to prove an equal
  historical claim to it. Historians indicate that
  this premise is absurd
• Archeological evidence shows Blacks were in
  Transvaal dating back to at least 300-800 A.D.
• Jan van Riebeek arrived with his first party of
  Dutch settlers in 1632

6
Early Attitudes of Racial Superiority

• History records that early Portuguese navigators,
  Bartholomew Dias and Vasco da Gama, were turned
  away from the Cape sound by a fierce southeastern
  wind storm.
• Instead, they sailed on up the east African Coast
  to Mozambique
• Had the Portuguese settled in the Cape, instead
  of the Dutch, the ideology of apartheid would
  probably never have existed
• That is not to say that the Dutch were unique in
  having attitudes of racial superiority toward
  people of color
• Some anthropological historians suggest that the
  Latinos were swarthy and found it easier to mix
  with dark-skinned people.

7
Religious Underpinnings of Racial Superiority

• The Dutch held the view of a chosen people
  outlook this was deeply influenced by Calvinist
  dogma
• Implicit in this doctrine is the principle of the
  basic inequality of humans
• The belief is that there are two kinds of people,
  those who, regardless of any good or bad they may
  do in their lives, are predestined to be saved,
  and those who are dammed.

8
Arrival of the British in South Africa

• I contend that we are the finest race in the
  world and that the more of the world we inhabit,
  the better it is for the human race. Just fancy,
  those parts that are at present inhabited by the
  most despicable specimens of human beings, what
  an alteration there would be if they were brought
  under Anglo-Saxon influence Cecil John Rhodes

9
British The Third Force in South Africa

• The British arrived in South Africa relatively
  late in comparison to the early Dutch settlers
• They arrived in 1795 the arrival of the British
  on Afrikaners had an enormous impact
• The Afrikaners had lived as free men with
  virtually no administrative restraints the
  arrival of the British changed all that and
  produced a legacy of grievance that fired their
  nationalism and turned a community of
  undisciplined individualists into a cohesive
  national unity that baffled the world with its
  stubbornness.

10
The Impact on Blacks with the Arrival of the
British

• The impact on the Blacks was no less profound.
• By the time the Black tribes encountered the
  Trekboers on the eastern frontier, the Boers had
  adopted a lifestyle not much different from the
  Blacks.
• Only with the arrival of the British did the
  Blacks feel the destabilizing force of the modern
  world on their ancient institutions and
  traditions.

11
Political Comparison of British and Afrikaners

• The British settlers never cut ties with their
  country of origin the way the Afrikaners did.
• However long an English speaker or his forebears
  may have been in SA, he/she remains a member of a
  larger international community
• This means that Afrikaners view English speaking
  SA as second-class citizens and lukewarm patriots

12
Africas Stepchildren

• For 182 years South Africa was a slave state an
  experience that established the pattern of its
  labor relations, and sowed the seeds of bitter
  resentment that over time grew and was
  intensified into the fateful phenomenon of
  Afrikaner nationalism.
• The slaves toiled by day and, in the manner of
  all slave societies they were abused regularly by
  their masters

13
The Race of Colored People

• Few company officials took their wives to the
  Cape, and with thousands of sailors and soldiers
  coming ashore each year, the women in the
  companys slave lodge became the objects of
  large-scale sexual exploitation.
• So was procreated a new community of mixed blood
  the so called colored people some refer to
  them as Gods stepchildren.

14
The Great Dispersal

• By the second decade of the 19th century the
  ethnic stage was set for the enactment of an epic
  drama four groups of people emerged as actors in
  the drama of South Africas history
• Afrikaners locked in their 17th century time
  capsule, convinced of their God-given rights over
  heathens in their land
• The British - bringing with them an ambiguous
  blend of racial superiority and philanthropy as
  well as exploitation and humanism
• People of indigenous tribes proud and secure in
  their own culture
• The Khoikhoi, slaves, and colored stripped of
  their land and becoming a new racially defined
  category of servile workers.

15
The Beginnings of Apartheid

• The general election of 1948 was to be a pivotal
  change in the political landscape of South Africa
• Jan Smuts United party narrowly missed winning
  the general election to Daniel Malans National
  party
• If Jan Smuts had won the election, Afrikaner
  nationalism might never have come to power.

16
The Rise of Apartheid

• The ramifications of the Population Registration
  Act of 1950 in South Africa set the stage for the
  events that would ultimately culminate into the
  period known as apartheid
• Under this act, all residents of SA were
  classified as white, colored, or native people.
• Indians were refused recognition as permanent
  inhabitants of SA and were included under the
  category Asian in 1959.
• The Act mandated that people be classified
  primarily on acceptability within the community
• It was based upon a hierarchical system where
  people of European descent had higher status and
  greater privileges
• The Act also implemented identity cards.

17
African National Congress

• In response to the increasingly oppressive
  requirements of apartheid, leaders such as Nelson
  Mandela, Walter Sisula came forward in protest to
  the oppressive regime
• At first the struggle was peaceful, but when
  peaceful demonstrations were met with gunfire and
  death, the struggle became an armed one.
• Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for his part
  in a terrorist act against the NP

18
Pan African Congress

• A liberation movement that had its roots in
  America.
• Crushed by brutality of slavery in the America
  and Caribbean, people of African origin yearned
  for their ancestral home
• The focus since mid-20th century is the
  unification of the states of Africa the goal
  was to unite the continent of Africa and return
  the rule to African people.
• They refer to African soil as Azania

19
Black Consciousness

• You are either alive and proud or you are dead,
  and when you are dead,
• you cant care anyway.
• Stephen Biko, SA political leader who founded
  Black Consciousness
• In August 1977 he was arrested and severely
  beaten by police. He died on September 12, 1977.