Race, Science, and the Legitimization of White Supremacy in South Africa, 1902-1940

Abstract

Ideas of race in South African history have usually been seen in the context of the rise of white nationalism and apartheid. This has led to a focus upon the internal dynamics of Afrikaner political mobilization organized by such bodies as the Dutch Reformed Churches, the Broederbond, and the National Party.1 More recently scholars have begun to examine the role of British racial ideas in South African politics. Leonard Thompson has shown in a recent study of the role of historical mythology in the development of apartheid ideology that some British notions of social Darwinism and race fitness were taken up in South Africa by both English- and Afrikaans-speaking race ideologues in the early years of the twentieth century.2 Thompson's study did not pursue in any detailed manner the influence of British and United States racial ideology on the emergence of white South African racism, which was mainly seen through the development of Afrikaner nationalist consciousness. Radical scholars have also begun to stress the importance of ideas generated in the imperial metropolis seeping through into South African political debate before and after Union in 1910. In the 1970s Martin Legassick began a reassessment of the British ideological impact at the time of the reconstruction in the Transvaal after the Anglo-Boer War. Legassick emphasized the role of class rather than ethnic divisions in white politics as an ideology of segregation began to be mobilized in defense of white settler power. He saw racial ideas as important in transcending Afrikaner-British divisions, since they underpinned a segregationist ideology that was an instrument of white mining interests bent on mobilizing cheap black labor.3 In a series of unpublished seminar papers, Legassick's work was significant for directing attention to the role of English race theorists in systematizing a doctrine of racial segregation in order to rationalize a policy of perpetuating pre-capitalist economies in the African reserves. The research was strongly influenced by the sociological model of Harold Wolpe that explained the transition from segregation to apartheid in South Africa as a result