April 1, 2022

History / American history

Please review the two attached readings and video and answer the two questions. thank you.

After reviewing this week's material, answer the following questions:

1. Briefly describe the "total strategy" that was implemented in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Why do you think the implementation of "total strategy" led to an intensified fight against apartheid?

2. Like we saw in the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-apartheid movement relied on coalition building among various organizations and on the mobilization of the youth. Why was it so important for there to be collaboration of different anti-apartheid groups and why was it imperative that youth be included in the fight against apartheid?

Nelson Mandela: The Freedom Fighter – Video – Films On Demand (indstate.edu)

The Decline and Fall of Apartheid

In the course of the late 1970s and the 1980s the rigid Verwoerdian model developed during the heyday of apartheid began to break down. The National Party government experimented with a number of reforms designed to adjust apartheid to changing economic and social circum- stances, while still retaining a monopoly of political power. But the spiral of resistance and repression intensified. By the mid-1980s virtual civil war existed in many parts of the country, with the army occupying black townships and surrogate vigilante groups adding to the conflict. The state retained control with military power, detentions and increased repres- sion; but the vast majority of South Africa’s population was alienated from the state to an unprecedented degree. Meanwhile, international condemnation grew and economic sanctions began to bite. The impasse was broken only when the exiled ANC and PAC were unbanned in 1990 and the new State President, F.W. de Klerk, made a qualified commitment to meaningful change. Negotiations between the state and the newly unbanned movements, although accompanied by violent conflict and widespread suspicion of state intentions, finally led to the creation of a new democratic constitution, and the election of an ANC-led government in 1994. The collapse of apartheid and the avoidance of a prolonged racial bloodbath was one of the major success stories of the late twentieth century, although economic and social problems remained overwhelming in magnitude.

Worden, Nigel. The Making of Modern South Africa : Conquest, Apartheid, Democracy, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/insu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=822664. Created from insu-ebooks on 2020-10-27 21:32:22.

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132 ThE DECLINE AND FALL oF APArThEID

‘Total strategy’

In the late 1970s a number of factors led to a change in the policy of the South African state (Moss 1980). First, highly capitalized manufacturing industry now dominated the economy, using complex technology and requiring semi-skilled permanent workers rather than unskilled migrant laborers. In these circumstances, segregation and apartheid, so crucial to the earlier development and growth of industry, were no longer appropri- ate to the needs of South African capitalism (Lipton 1988; Feinstein 2005: 188–93).

Economic change also affected the class base of support for the National Party. Afrikaner business interests were now fully integrated into the monopolistic structure of South African industry, while full-scale mecha- nization of white agriculture produced ‘check book farmers’ linked to busi- ness interests rather than struggling producers competing for a limited labor force with urban employers. The cross-class Afrikaner nationalist alliance of the 1940s and 1950s was fracturing: many English-speaking middle-class voters now supported the National Party, while Afrikaner workers and small-scale traders and farmers were marginalized. After Vorster’s resignation in 1978, following major government financial scan- dals, the new Prime Minister, P.W. Botha, introduced changes favoring business interests and widened the divisions in the traditional support base of the National Party. The split came with the formation of the right-wing Conservative Party under Andries Treurnicht in 1982, which drew many white working-class and blue-collar supporters away from the government (Gilioinee 2003: 606–7). In these circumstances, Botha was obliged to forge a new kind of strategy.

Thirdly, the labor and urban resistance of 1973–7 had caught the gov- ernment unprepared. It became apparent after Soweto that repression was not enough. Attempts were made to recapture the initiative through reform, particularly by encouraging the development of a black middle class and attempting to win over township residents from African nationalist or radical sympathies.

A final factor explaining the reforms was the unfavorable international response and the threat of sanctions in the aftermath of Soweto, as well as the change of governments in states bordering South Africa, from allied interests to potentially hostile opponents: Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe, with a similar threat in Namibia as conflict grew between South African forces and guerrilla troops of the South-West African People’s

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ThE DECLINE AND FALL oF APArThEID 133

organization (SWAPo). In these circumstances the South African state needed to reassess its public image and its policy strategies.

The outcome was a series of developments between 1979 and 1984 which collectively formulated the policy known as ‘total strategy’. Some hint of reform had been given earlier. Prosecution for pass law offences had dropped in number after 1973 at the request of business organizations, including the Afrikaanse handelsinstituut, although the principle of African labor regulation remained intact (hindson 1987: 81). Funding for African education had also increased, although insufficiently to prevent student dissatisfaction in 1976. But ‘total strategy’ went much further. Its rationale was that South Africa was the target of a ‘total onslaught’ by revo- lutionaries from inside and outside the country, who could only be com- bated with a ‘total strategy’ that ‘combin[ed] effective security measures with reformist policies aimed at removing the grievances that revolutionar- ies could exploit’ (Swilling and Phillips 1989: 136). It also aimed to restruc- ture society in ways required by industry, thus combining the economic interests of business, the political interests of the Botha administration, and the security interests of the military and security forces: ‘an attempt to reconstitute the means of domination in terms favorable to the ruling groups’ (Swilling 1988: 5).

Formal links between the National Party and big business were estab- lished at the 1979 Carlton Conference in Johannesburg, where Botha pledged his government to support free enterprise and orderly reform. The discourse of free market enterprise was increasingly used by the state in place of overt racial domination, partly as a means of combating the per- ceived Marxist ‘onslaught’ but more importantly as a means of establishing ideological hegemony with business support (Greenberg 1987). It marked a major shift from the anti-capitalist rhetoric of the early Afrikaner nation- alist movement, and bore little relation to the intense intervention of the state in the political economy of South Africa.

Two government commission reports in 1979 proposed changes to favor stable business development. The Wiehahn report recommended that African rights to trade union membership and registration be recognized. This was done to try to prevent repetition of the wildcat strikes of the 1970s and to formalize, and so control, the labor movement. The riekert Commission advocated that white job reservation should be dismantled while influx control was still rigorously applied. In this way it maintained the division between permanent city residents and temporary outsiders. Employer demands for greater access to a permanent workforce were thus

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134 ThE DECLINE AND FALL oF APArThEID

met, although the principle of controlled African urbanization remained. The pass laws were not abolished until 1986, by which stage a combination of employer needs, the spiraling costs of the immense bureaucratic admin- istration and the belief that repeal would appease international criticism of apartheid persuaded the government finally to remove urban influx controls (Maylam 1990: 80).

The need for semi-skilled black labor was also reflected in the de Lange report on education, published in 1981 (Chisholm 1984). This called for compulsory primary education for all as well as black technical training at secondary and tertiary level. Although the recommendation of a single education authority for all races was rejected by the government, multira- cial private schools were permitted. In this, as in other aspects of ‘total strategy’ policy, the aim was to ‘intensify class differentials while reducing racial ones’ (hyslop 1988: 190). This policy was further seen in the removal of many ‘petty apartheid’ restrictions. Public amenities in large cities, such as hotels, restaurants and theatres, were no longer compulsorily segregated and many opened their doors to all – that is, all who could afford them.

Lack of political representation remained an obstacle to black accept- ance of such reform strategies. A second phase of ‘total strategy’ therefore proposed constitutional changes in an attempt to co-opt sections of the population previously excluded from government. The 1983 ‘tricameral’ constitution created separate parliamentary assemblies for white, colored and Indian Members of Parliament. Each house controlled its ‘own affairs’, such as education, health and community administration, but all other matters were still monopolized by the white house of Assembly, which retained the overall majority of seats, and the new office of State President, held by Botha, acquired wide-ranging powers.

The tricameral constitution was clearly a means of ‘sharing power without losing control’ (Murray 1987: 112). Consequently, it was boycotted by the vast majority of colored and Indian voters. Measures which the lesser houses did promote, such as the abolition of the Immorality and Mixed Marriages Acts, were already acceptable to the ‘total strategy’ policy and indicated the clear move away from the racial control of the 1950s. As with the desegregation of public amenities, they did little to challenge the exist- ing political and social order.

The tricameral constitution made no provision for African participa- tion. The principle remained that constitutional representation for Africans was confined to the homelands. however, recognition of the permanent status of some black township residents had been given in 1977 when

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ThE DECLINE AND FALL oF APArThEID 135

Vorster introduced Community Councils to administer township affairs under the aegis of white government officials. In 1982, Botha extended this system by the Black Local Authorities Act, which gave Community Councils greater powers of administration. Elected by local residents, councilors were responsible for township administration on budgets raised by local rents and levies. Coinciding with tricameralism, this scheme hoped to create a class of willing collaborators ‘in a rather crude effort to defuse black claims to national political power through the substitution of power at grassroots level’ (Murray 1987: 123). As with the tricameral elections, town- ship Community Councils had little popular appeal.

Attempts to bolster allegiance to these policies were accompanied by a conscious effort to upgrade townships for those with permanent residence rights. The Urban Foundation, founded with business capital but sup- ported by the state, backed programs to improve housing and other facili- ties. In both townships and the rural areas the army was often deployed in community schemes in a campaign to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people’ (the WhAM policy), although this had a limited effect once the security forces began to suppress opposition (see p. 141).

The role of the army was a further important component of ‘total strat- egy’. Botha, previously the Minister of Defence, gave an important role to the armed forces within policy making as part of security against the ‘total onslaught’. The State Security Council (SSC), established in 1972 as an advisory body to the Cabinet, now gained greater powers under the new Minister of Defence, General Magnus Malan, including that of control over intelligence and security work. By 1980 it was observed that ‘in many ways [the SSC] is already an alternative Cabinet’ (Murray 1987: 40).

In addition to the WhAM campaign to stem the ‘total onslaught’ within the country, Botha attempted to defuse opposition from potentially hostile countries in the wider southern African region. his hope of creating a ‘constellation of states’ linked to South Africa by trade was foiled by the organization of the frontline states against South African influence, but the security forces then mounted a campaign of deliberate destabilization. Direct military incursions accompanied indirect support of dissident armed movements such as rENAMo in Mozambique and UNITA in Angola, while raids were made on centers which the South African state claimed housed ANC guerrillas in Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Botswana. In Namibia, South African occupation continued and a bitter guerrilla war was fought with the nationalist SWAPo (Davies and o’Meara 1984). In 1984 the results of this policy met some success with the signing

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of the Nkomati non-aggression accord with Mozambique, by which the Maputo government agreed to expel ANC guerrilla camps from its territory in return for the ending of South African support for rENAMo.

‘Total strategy’ was thus as much a reformulation of apartheid as a reform. Its purpose was to maintain white political hegemony while restructuring some aspects of the social and political order to counter the threat of revolutionary opposition. This was abundantly clear to many of the state’s opponents, who resisted ‘total strategy’ with renewed energy.

Resistance and repression

‘Total strategy’ was intended to defuse protest outbreaks of the kind that had occurred in the 1970s, and to bring economic and political stability to South Africa. It had precisely the opposite effect.

The economy failed to recover the growth rates it had shown in the 1960s and early 1970s. Despite a brief recuperation between 1978 and 1980, subsequent years saw a fall in the gold price, a balance of payments crisis, and dependence on loans from the International Monetary Fund and foreign bankers. Inflation and unemployment soared in 1982, and again in 1984. The standard of living of all South Africans fell: black poverty became even more acute than ever.

These circumstances did not favor a state campaign to ‘win hearts and minds’. The recession was accompanied by heightened opposition to ‘total strategy’ policies. Many of the Botha reforms produced consequences unin- tended by the state (Friedman 1986). For instance, the relaxation of pass controls led to an unprecedented move of Africans into the cities. This was particularly evident in Cape Town, where the ending of legislated prefer- ence for colored workers gave greater possibilities for African employment. Large squatter camps grew up on the outskirts of the city, particularly at Crossroads. At first, they were ruthlessly destroyed as the dwellings of ‘illegal’ incomers by the ironically named Department of Cooperation and Development. But by 1984 the government conceded the rights of squatters to stay in the region and plans were laid for the building of a large new township at Khayelitsha. The attempt to distinguish between permanent residents and temporary outsiders was collapsing here as in many other cities.

Another unintended development was the emergence of powerful trade unions. The proper recognition of African union negotiating mechanisms led to a massive growth in membership, particularly among migrant

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ThE DECLINE AND FALL oF APArThEID 137

workers hitherto excluded from union representation. Falling real wages and poor working conditions produced a number of strikes in the early 1980s. But action went further than local factory issues. In 1982, spurred by the death in detention of Neil Aggett, the Transvaal organizer of the Food and Canning Workers’ Union, many unions came together to organ- ize campaigns which represented broader political interests and protested against state policies. Thus in November 1984 a major stayaway was organized on the rand backed by union and community groups. Large- scale union affiliations were being formed with political allegiances. The largest was the Congress of South African Trade Unions (CoSATU), launched in 1985 and following a broadly Charterist position. The Azanian Confederation of Trade Unions (AZACTU) took a position more in tune with Black Consciousness lines, and in 1986 the United Workers’ Union of South Africa (UWUSA) was established under the aegis of the more con- servative Inkatha movement. The point was that unions were now at the forefront of the political struggle. Although there were debates within the unions over the advisability of involvement in wider populist politics, and fears that worker issues might thus be submerged, coordinated action between the federated unions and student and community organizations took place with increasing frequency from the mid-1980s. Far from taming the labor movement, the Wiehahn reforms had politicized it (Webster 1988).

The context for this was heightened popular resistance and mobilization on a scale which exceeded even that of the 1950s and 1976–7, and which took new forms and goals. In 1980 colored school students in the western Cape boycotted classes to protest against the use of army servicemen as teachers, and to demand free education for everyone and not for whites alone. Links were made with striking meat workers in Cape Town. Boycott action spread to the rand and the eastern Cape, where it meshed with demands for the ending of homeland citizenship. Although the boycotts were broken by police action by the end of the year, these episodes provided a link between the uprising of 1976–7 and the more widespread resistance of the mid-1980s.

The catalyst to this was the tricameral constitution and the Black Local Authorities Act. Both measures made it absolutely clear that the Botha government was attempting to restructure apartheid rather than to dis- mantle it, and that the African majority would continue to be permanently excluded from central government. White control would be entrenched, but the state hoped that the new system would be more acceptable both

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138 ThE DECLINE AND FALL oF APArThEID

locally and internationally. New oppositional organizations emerged to demonstrate the fallacy of this belief.

Early in 1983, the National Forum (NF) was established, bringing together supporters of Black Consciousness in the Azanian People’s organization (AZAPo) and the non-collaborationist tradition of the western Cape Unity Movement. Its ‘Manifesto of the Azanian People’ opposed all alliances with ruling-class parties, demanded the immediate establishment of ‘a democratic, anti-racist worker republic in Azania’, and defined the struggle for national liberation as ‘directed against the system of racial capitalism which holds the people of Azania in bondage for the benefit of the small minority of white capitalists and their allies, the white workers and the reactionary sections of the black middle class’ (Davies et al. 1988: 454).

Such a policy was a rejection of the broader populist Charterist tradi- tion, which was represented in the foundation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the same year. The UDF called for rejection of the apart- heid state, boycott of the tricameral system and acceptance of the Freedom Charter principles (see p. 115). The campaign had dramatic results: only a small percentage of colored and Indian voters cast their poll, and many others refused even to register. The tricameral system was thus denied legitimacy from the start.

Both the NF and the UDF were loosely knit confederations of commu- nity, youth and trade union organizations that had proliferated across the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s, rather than political parties. Their differences lay in their ideologies, with the NF regarding worker interests as paramount and criticizing the UDF for its ‘petty bourgeois’ leadership and its populist multi-class character. The Black Consciousness strand in NF thinking was apparent in the reluctance of some of its supporters to admit white-dominated organizations such as the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). however, those from the Unity tradition rejected any policy that recognized race. Indeed, the involvement of AZAPo members in the NF showed how the Black Consciousness movement had moved decisively towards workerist positions since the days of Biko.

The UDF acquired by far the largest number of affiliates and the highest public profile, and was only really challenged by the NF in the western Cape. The UDF drew on a wide range of local community organizations across the country, and particularly in the Transvaal and the eastern Cape. Swilling (1988) has argued that its Charterist position did not preclude working-class membership, and indeed leadership. Certainly, as protest

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ThE DECLINE AND FALL oF APArThEID 139

developed in the course of 1984–6, the organizations affiliated to the UDF gave it an increasingly radical character, although it still lacked a clear political program and was ‘only involved in issues if the relevant affiliates sought its assistance’ (Seekings 2000: 291).

The UDF also worked more actively to recruit support to its affiliated organizations at a local level. Its campaign to obtain a million signatures for a petition against apartheid in the aftermath of the tricameral elections in 1984 failed to attain its numerical goal, partly because of police harass- ment and confiscation of signed papers, but ‘it did, for the first time, provide township activists with a vehicle for some solid door-to-door organizing’ (Swilling 1988: 101).

By 1985 this was bearing fruit in a series of local campaigns, including bus and rent boycotts, school protests and worker stayaways. Although local circumstances varied, a common focus of township resistance was the Community Councils and those councilors who accepted office and were branded as collaborators in the apartheid system. Economic pressures also undermined the position of the councils. Not only were they politically unacceptable, but their dependence on local funding and their role as col- lectors of rents and unpopular service charges made them vulnerable to protests against increases at a time of recession. Tensions were heightened by accusations of corruption and malpractice. Such issues mobilized town- ship residents of all ages and meshed with student protests and boycotts.

It was primarily resistance to increases in rent and service charges that led to a major rebellion in the townships of the Vaal triangle between September and November 1984 (Seekings 1988). Protest spread to other parts of the Transvaal, with attacks on councilors and their homes as well as government buildings, homes of police and beer halls. A number of councilors resigned under such threats to their lives, but the uprising con- tinued with student and worker protests at the fore. By 1985 township conflict had spread to the orange Free State, the eastern Cape and, finally, to Cape Town and Natal.

State repression only fuelled further opposition. on Sharpeville Day, 1985, police opened fire on a funeral procession in Uitenhage in the eastern Cape, killing twenty people in an episode that bore strong resemblance to the events twenty-five years earlier. This provoked renewed school boycotts throughout the country and clashes between township youth and police. By July the situation had reached such proportions that the government declared a State of Emergency in many regions, extending the power of arbitrary detention without trial and indemnifying the security forces

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140 ThE DECLINE AND FALL oF APArThEID

against any charge of malpractice. With a brief break in 1986, emergency regulations were extended throughout the country and remained in place until 1990.

The conflicts of 1984–6 marked a new phase in South African popular resistance. In many townships throughout the country civil government collapsed, to be replaced by alternative, unofficial organizations calling for ‘people’s power’. In many cases, as in 1976–7, the initiative was taken by youth organizations, although they drew support from a wider sector of the community than was the case previously. More effective links were made between students and workers, particularly in the Vaal triangle and in the eastern Cape. Street committees organized coordinated actions such as rent boycotts and consumer boycotts of white businesses to persuade their owners to support calls for desegregation and lessening of state oppression. Moreover, this happened in hitherto unpoliticized small towns and rural areas in platteland South Africa as much as in the large metro- politan townships. In many cases, such actions by young men were only reluctantly supported by their elders, who resented the overturning of generational authority. Certainly, the events of the mid-1980s marked an emergence into the political arena of a male youth assertiveness that had previously been expressed through gangs (Glaser 1998).

In most of these cases, local grievances led to action; during the Vaal uprising the UDF was ‘trailing behind the masses’ (Seekings 1992). It none- theless played an important part in creating an alternative national political culture that transcended local issues and gave a sense of common purpose. In this its Charterist line was crucial. In many townships the ideals of the Freedom Charter provided the focus for action and political organization. A case study of Youth Congress activists in the Alexandra township near Johannesburg shows that in practice this might not always have penetrated very deeply, although debates over populist and workerist issues and clashes with AZAPo supporters were part of the linking of local issues of rent and school boycotts with a wider national framework (Carter 1991).

A further important development was the massive increase in support for the exiled ANC, not only in its earlier regions of strength such as the eastern Cape and the Transvaal, but also in the western Cape where histori- cally its position had been weaker (Bundy 1987b). Songs of praise to Mandela and Tambo, study of ANC underground literature, ANC flags draped across coffins at the many funerals of activists killed by the security forces, and shouts of ‘Viva’ (t

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History / American history

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