Jamie Miller. An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival.

Abstract

Jamie Miller’s analysis of apartheid diplomacy in the 1970s, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival, delivers two important points: that local political agendas mattered to the global history of the Cold War and that international developments prompted ideological reassessment in Afrikaner nationalist circles. To make these points, Miller looks closely at B. J. Vorster, a prime minister of South Africa (1966–1978) whom historians have generally relegated to shadows cast by his predecessor, H. F. Verwoerd, and successor, P. W. Botha. Verwoerd was the intellectual force behind “separate development,” the form of white supremacy that purported to promote ethnic self-determination. This policy remained in place after his 1966 assassination, when Vorster assumed the office. Botha, who succeeded Vorster in 1978, became nearly as influential as Verwoerd: he redirected focus from ethnic politics toward averting a “total onslaught” from communism and African nationalism. He dedicated the state to a “total strategy” that combined political reform with military aggression and police crackdowns.