Reviews for Apartheid and social research

The average rating for Apartheid and social research based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-09-30 00:00:00 Ross Pinky Why should I read a book by a foreign journalist on the history of apartheid? I lived through apartheid, from beginning to end. I have an honours degree in history. So why read a popular, non-scholarly book about it? The main reason was that I wanted to refresh my memory on the topic, because of two old lies that have resurfaced and seem to be increasingly circulated on social media nowadays. These two lies were: 1. That it was "the British", and not Dr Malan's National; Party, that had introduced apartheid. 2. That the Dutch landed at the Cape in 1652 before there were any black people living in what later became South Africa. I knew from my historical studies that these were lies, and so I read this book in order to refresh my memory, and I found that the book was remarkably good. It's not a scholarly work. It has no footnotes or citations. It's short, and tells the bare bones of the story. There is a lot more that could be said, but as a layman's introduction it really is pretty good. What were the aims of the apartheid policy and the apartheid laws? They were basically three: 1. To ensure white supremacy (baaskap) over nonwhites (blacks, coloureds, Asians) 2. To ensure white Afrikaner supremacy over other whites 3. To ensure National Party supremacy over the white Afrikaners. Those three aims of the National Party remained consistent from 1948 to 1990, when they gave up. In that period they sometimes tinkered with the means, but never altered the final goal until in 1990 most of the NP leaders realised that the game was up. To suggest that "the British" introduced this is absurd, and Brian Lapping pretty clearly explains why. I found only one significant anachronism in the book. Lapping described one of the effects of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 as a drop in the value of the South African currency, the Rand. But the Rand was only introduced in February 1961, and until 1966 its value was fixed at R2.00 to the British pound. And in 1967 it was the pound, not the Rand, that dropped in value. Otherwise, the book seemed pretty accurate and informative to me. And it nails both the lies in current circulation.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-20 00:00:00 Rob Gorman This particular book is about an obviously delicate subject, namely the system of racial segregation and superiority that was set up by the Dutch starting in the 1940's when the South African legislature began to be dominated by a particularly white nationalist party.  What this book does in addressing the subject of apartheid is that it manages to condemn the practice without being too harsh on white South Africans and by recognizing the legitimacy of Afrikaaners as key elements to the success of South Africa.  It is hard for some people to express hatred for racism without being racists themselves against other racists, a problem that is not too difficult to find in such works.  Similarly, it is hard for many people to recognize the way that racism tends to be most virulent among those for whom racial identity is a key means of providing positive self-image, a problem that can be seen from any variety of backgrounds.  Those who have enough other positive sources of identity need not harp on race so much, but for those who have little else, racial identity is of extreme importance and that was sadly the case for many white South Africans in the postwar period. This particular book is almost 200 pages long and is divided into fifteen chapters.  The author begins with a list of maps, illustrations, acknowledgements, an introduction, and some tables on the population of South Africa.  After that the author discusses the history of South Africa beginning with the arrival of the whites (1), the Great Trek to avoid British domination (2), the presence of diamonds and gold that made controlling the Boer republics a "vital" British imperial interest (3), and the Boer war and its aftermath (4).  This leads to a discussion of the parallel nationalist movements of the Afrikaaners (5) as well as the blacks (6), in the period from 1910 to the 1930's, as well as two leaders in the 1930's (7).  The author discusses the by-products of World War II (8), the end of acquiescence (9), and the struggles of the apartheid election (10) from 1946 to 1948.  After that the author discusses the Afrikaaner search for baaskap over the English and blacks (11), the defiance of blacks (12), the establishment of nominally free bantustans (13), the police state (14), and the author's correct understanding of the beginning of the end of the Apartheid state (15) in the face of international disapproval, after which there is a book list and an index. One thing that is notably striking that applies not only to South Africa but to other areas where ethnic tensions are high (including the United States) is that liberalism is a luxury that can only be enjoyed by those who are comfortable in other forms of superiority that they feel over others, be it intellectual, economic, or moral.  Those who feel themselves to be threatened by the elevation of others and for whom their ethnic identity and cultural pride is of vital importance in providing for a positive self image are less able to be tolerant about having their social position eroded.  Coming from a poor rural white American background myself, I can greatly understand the sort of insecurities that drove the average Afrikaaner to be increasingly more hostile to blacks in the aftermath of the Boer War, World War I, and World War II, especially in the face of British snobbery.  As someone who can relate to the Boers and to their desire to preserve a position of social dominance in the face of demographic and social threats, I feel it is deeply unfortunate that their solution was so ill suited to maintain their dignity for the long run, even if they do not come from ground terribly different from my own.