Basic HTML Version
1652-1820
OUTCH
BRITISH
MEETING OF
ANO BLACKS
1750-1770
comprise severa! dis–
tinctive peoples. each.
with its own language,
culture and customs.
A Venda. for ex–
ample. is as distinct
from a Zulu as a
Swede is from an ltal–
ian. The most impor–
tant of these tribal
nations a re the Xhosa
and the Zulus- both
nearly 5, 000,000 in
population.
the White South Afri–
can, and the Afrika–
ner in particular, has
faced in recen
t
decades is this: how
best
to
preserve his
own identity and cul–
ture and yet provide
for the aspirations of
the various and highly
divergent Black peo–
ples in his midst.
whose u/limate politi–
ca/ future was never
determined when the
old Brirish-formed
Union was designed
back in 1910.
FRENCH ANO
GERMAN PIONEERS
BLACK TRIBES -
EUROPEAN MIGRATION
Americans and
others outside South
Africa find it hard to
understand tha
t
not
all Black people are
alike, just as not all
White people are
alike. Blacks in Amer–
ica, having been re-
A recent editorial
in
Die Burger,
the
prominent Cape
Town Afrikaans-lan–
guage newspaper, de–
scribes this dilemma
best:
In South Alrica. neither lhe Whites nor any of the Black tribal nations has a
prior claim to all of the land. Historically, the various Black peoples settled in
different regions where they established their own social and cultural systems
and triba l organizations. lt was not until 120 years alter the first Whites
came to South Atrica that there was any appreciable contact between
Whites and migratory Blacks.
"South Africa's survival cns1s
LS
also in its deepest sense a crisis in
the heart of the Afrikaner Nation–
alist.
"The main theme of our history,
as we ourse!ves have chosen it , is
national freedom. Our most glorious
hour was the Boer Republics' lost
battle against British imperialism
because morally the vanquished
were the victors.
"After the victory of 1948 [when
the current ruling Nationalist Party
carne to power] the Afrikaner con–
science, as embodied in Afrikaner
Nationalist intelligentsia and clergy,
was confronted with the problem of
Black freedom.
"How would the White man in
South Africa retain his freedom if
the Black man must also be freed?
T he answer was territorial separa–
tion, or separate freedoms-terri–
torial demarcation .... The in–
telligentsia and clergy posed the in–
escapable moral alternative: 'We
either lead the Black nations along
the road of their own freedom. or
they gain freedom
in
the long run
within the united political commu–
nity enforced by Britain on South
Africa'!
"We chose the first because the
second would mean the downfall of
the Whüe man and with it chaos
and Black tribal tyranny wilJ fol–
low!"
Separate Development
This policy of separate devel–
opme n t, which was thus imple–
men t ed. is based on severa!
fundamental considerations. The
first of these
is
the fact that through–
out their history of three centuries
the peoples living in South Africa
have never comprised a single ho–
mogeneous nation. The roughly
4,250,000 people of European
stock-though divided into the Afri–
kaans- and English-speaking cul–
tures- are held to be a nation in
their own right. The 18.000,000
Bantu people (Blacks), however,
moved from the i r
or iginal tribal or na–
tional roots- and a tr ibe is a na tion
for all practica) purposes-have be–
come essentially one classification of
people. This is not true anywhere in
Africa.
T he government of South Africa
holds that history has shown a ll na–
tionalisms to be exclusive: that one
is not readily or peaceably blended
with another. South Africa's various
Black African peoples have so far
refused to become pseudo-Euro–
peans- as any trip into one of the
homeland areas quickly confirms.
The government points out that
Black and White elements have no–
where
in Africa
been combined to
form a new "Afro-European" com–
muni ty.
Advocates of separate devel–
opmen t (originally referred to as
aparrheid,
an Afrikaans word
roughly equivalen! to "separate–
ness") believe that if all South Af–
rica's diverse peoples were to share
one política! system. domination of
one or more groups over all the
..Most of the people abroad who push advice at South Africa
would not have to live with
sorne
of the
probable consequences of what they propase."
Jerome Caminada,
South Africa lnternational, October 1976
8
The
PLAI N TRUTH April 1977