Affirmative Action versus Nonracialism in the New South Africa

Abstract

ast year, a distant cousin, who also happens to be a white South African, sent me a fascinating article from her local newspaper. The article was about her husband's family, the Moores, and specifically about a claim the family made recently with South Africa's Commission on Restitution of Land Rights (see Segar 2003). The claim is remarkable, because it has been one of the few lodged by white South Africans to obtain compensation for land that was taken from them under the apartheid regime. It seems that in 1965, several trading stores that had been owned by the Moores since the 1880s were confiscated by the South African Bantu Trust because they stood on land that was to become part of the independent black homeland known as the Transkei. The confiscation and the family's eviction from the area were deeply traumatic-they were uprooted from their home, separated from friends and loyal customers (including Xhosa), and forced to witness the end of a family tradition. But the Moores had no choice, and the government offered them only one-third of the real value of the property as compensation. Today the family is seeking restitution, but as with most of the injustices perpetrated under apartheid, there is little that can be done to restore a way of life that was destroyed long ago. The story of this land claim attracted my attention because, as a historian of South Africa in the twentieth century, I only rarely come across evidence of ways in which whites were harmed by government policy, or ways in which blacks benefited. We all know that the usual "script" for South African histo-