South Africa 1909-2009: Two faces of nationalism

An important question about South Africa that is rarely discussed, is when did South Africa become independent. This question is often dismissed as too pedantic for words and only worthy of primary school history textbook writers. The reality is that it is an emotive issue linked to the complex race issues that define South Africa. And without deciding when South Africa regained its ability to decide its own affairs, it is not possible to understand the political, economic and social processes happening in South Africa today.

To me South Africa became independent 100 years ago this month. This was in September 1909 when the British king signed the South Africa Act into law thus passing political authority over South Africa from the British Parliament to the Parliament of the Union of South Africa.

Nationalism in South Africa

During the next 100 years South Africans made their own history. It can be summed up as the history of nationalist rule between 1910 and 2009. The first period of nationalist rule started in 1910 and ended 84 years later in 1994.

During this period, South Africa was ruled by the two main factions of Afrikaner nationalism, the accommodationist faction of Anglo- Boer War generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts and by the more anti-British faction spanning the era from General James Hertzog to FW de Klerk.

The second period of nationalist rule commenced in 1994. This was the era of rule under black nationalism. Interestingly, black nationalists did not have the strong factional divisions found among Afrikaner nationalists. Black nationalism was, and is, predominantly accommodationist both to the British, who remain major investors in the country, and to South Africa’s economic oligarchy, the mineral energy complex which, with finance capital, controls the commanding heights of the South African economy.

South Africa’s two main nationalist movements had one thing in common, they were both movements of elites that sought to be included in the social, economic, cultural and political systems created by British colonialism.

The Afrikaner nationalist elite were predominantly private landowners who controlled vast tracts of undeveloped land that they had expropriated during several wars from indigenous populations in the interior of the country.

At the Western Cape was another, more settled, group of farmers descended from slave owners. Slavery was introduced at the Cape in the mid- 17th century by the Dutch East India Company and was abolished by the British in 1834. Black nationalism was a movement of the small westernised black elite that emerged during the era of British colonialism.

This elite was prominent in the Eastern Cape and in Natal. Many of them had fought on the side of the British against independent tribes and in the process had converted to Christianity. The British built schools for these groups to introduce them to Western arts, crafts and science. When slavery was abolished some of the descendents from artisans among former slaves became part of this black elite as independent craftsmen. Towards the end of the 19th century yet another group, descended from among non-indentured Indian professionals and merchants that paid their way to South Africa, added to the black elite.

When the British decided to give up political control of South Africa after over a century of trials and tribulations, they therefore had a choice as to which of the two nationalist elites to hand over power to – the black elite or the Afrikaner elite.

The two elites offered the British different models of how they would rule South Africa, and at the same time how they would protect and advance British economic interest.

Black nationalism offered a democratic model of rule along the lines that the British themselves had introduced at the Cape Colony in the middle of the 19th century.

Afrikaner nationalism, on the other hand, offered a model that excluded blacks from political power but would mobilise the blacks as cheap labour for British diamond and gold mining companies.

The British had no trouble deciding; they chose the Afrikaner nationalist model, to whom they handed control of South Africa in 1910.

Industrialisation

The Afrikaner nationalist model was clearly built on a defective foundation. It however surprised many by lasting for 84 years before the rulers were obliged to hand power to black nationalists. What accounted for Afrikaner nationalists’ staying power?

This can be answered with one word – industrialisation.

The main agenda for Afrikaner nationalists was firstly to improve their agricultural expertise and to get their products to markets in the mining towns.

Secondly, it was to ensure that Afrikaner people caught up with English-speaking South Africans.

Thirdly, it was to reduce the influence of the British government over South Africa.

To achieve these objectives, Afrikaner nationalists used the State to develop transportation and communication infrastructure and to establish a vast network of State-owned enterprises – as well as to support Afrikaner entrepreneurs. These objectives were reinforced by massive education drives to raise the technical skills of the Afrikaner population.

While consolidating the cohesion of the Afrikaner population under their leadership, Afrikaner nationalists embarked on a massive drive to disrupt the cohesion of the black community. Their main instruments were the migrant labour system, single sex hostels, forced removals, stripping blacks of whatever assets they had and blocking them from acquiring new ones.

The purpose of these measures was to atomise the black population so that it could not resist.

All these methods exposed the black population to being exploited as cheap labour. It, therefore, took the blacks many years before they could recover sufficient cohesion to mount meaningful opposition.

The rule of Afrikaner nationalism had, however, a built-in contradiction that ultimately led to its undoing. This was political and economic disempowerment of the blacks, which eventually resulted in endless conflict between the Afrikaner nationalist-controlled State and the black population. And so was born democracy in South Africa in 1994.

Black nationalist rule

As a political system, democracy has certain universal attributes. These are: universal adult suffrage; elections at fixed regular intervals; equal chance to win for all contestants; and the winner having the right to form the government which must last for a specified period. Notwithstanding these common attributes, no two democracies are the same. Each country’s democracy is a product of that country’s social and economic structures, as well as a result of the balance of power of the various social groups in that particular society.

While South Africa’s black nationalists were an elite, as we have seen, they were an elite that did not own property. This was to be a crucial factor in determining the characteristics of South Africa’s democracy, especially the nature of its internal contradictions.

Two questions therefore faced the new black elite when it gained control of State power in 1994.

Should it use the newfound power to enrich itself? Should it use the new power to enrich the people who had been exploited for the best part of a hundred years? Should it do a bit of both? What about the wealth of South Africa’s rich whites – should they be allowed to keep it; should it be nationalised; and should it be taxed, and to what extent?

South Africa’s big business had anticipated all these questions and came up with its own solution. It offered to transfer a small part of its assets to individual leaders of the black resistance movement in return for them leaving the country’s business environment essentially as they found it.

The leaders found this offer of instant wealth hard to resist.

This came to be known as Black Economic Empowerment, or BEE.

With the wealth of the whites thus protected through BEE, the only sources of enrichment of the new black elite available – besides old-fashioned hard work, that is – were State revenues. This has proven to be the central internal contradiction of the era of black nationalist rule.

This contradiction can be summed up as follows: Who gets what share of State revenues between the elite’s private consumption, the poor people’s welfare consumption, investment in social and physical infrastructure, as well as payments to other claimants such as workers in the public sector.

Competition between these claims on State revenues has become increasingly explosive. South Africa is therefore now entering a new phase of conflict – between the black nationalist elite and the black masses over how to distribute State revenues between them. This struggle is commonly referred to as a struggle over service delivery which, in a limited way, it is.

ANC president Jacob Zuma once predicted that the ANC’s rule would last until the second coming of Jesus Christ. At the rate at which conflict is growing, Jesus may find South Africa a burnt out shell when He returns. - By Moeletsi Mbeki

• Moeletsi Mbeki is deputy chair of the South African Institute of International Affairs, an independent think-tank based at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is author of Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing