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The Colonial Situation in Southern Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Hilda Kuper
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Extract

This article indicates the complexity of the social relations of whites and Africans in Southern Africa and the myths by which they rationalise their behaviour.1 The situation is not identical throughout Southern Africa, but there are, as I will show, certain fundamental similarities which validate an over-all analysis in terms of a ‘colonial situation’.2

Each of the countries of Southern Africa (the Republic of South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, the three British High Commission territories of Swaziland, Bechuanaland, and Basutoland, and the Portuguese provinces of Mozambique and Angola) represents a distinct political unit, expressing in its constitution the limits of control and participation permitted to groups which are distinguished according to so-called ‘racial’, ‘ethnic’, or ‘cultural’ differences. There has been a major distinction, explicit in some countries, disguised in others, between a dominant white minority and a subordinate African majority, a division corresponding to the ‘colonisers’ or ‘colonials’ on the one hand, and the ‘colonised’ on the other. But now Nyasaland has become independent Zambia, and Northern Rhodesia will achieve independence in October 1964.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , July 1964 , pp. 149 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

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References

Page 149 note 1 The term whites is used for people who are sometimes labelled ‘Europeans’; Africans is applied here to members of indigenous societies as distinct from Coloureds or people of ‘mixed’ European, Asian, and African ancestry.

Page 149 note 2 Throughout this paper I use the words ‘colony’ and ‘colonial’ in two senses: first, the orthodox sense of a colony as a dependency of a European state: second, in the special sense of a white minority ruling an African majority in an independent or semi-independent state. ‘There is a colonial situation whenever one and the same territory is inhabited by ethnic groups of different civilizations, the political power being usually exercised entirely by one group under the sign of superiority, and of the restraining influence of its own particular civilization.’ Moreira, Adriano, General Report. Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in the Inter-Tropical Societies:legal and political aspects (Incidi, Brussels, 1957), p. 496.Google Scholar

Page 151 note 1 See Smith, M. G., ‘Social and Cultural Pluralism,’ in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (New York), LXXXIII, especially pp. 76–7;Google Scholar and Kuper, L., ‘Sociology—some aspects of urban societies in Africa,’ in Social Research in Africa (London, 1964).Google Scholar

Page 153 note 1 Horrell, Muriel, Survey of Race Relations (Johannesburg, 1960), p. 24.Google Scholar

Page 153 note 2 Ibid. 1961, p. 84.

Page 154 note 1 Duffy, James, Portugal's African Territories: present realities, Carnegie Endowment Occasional Paper No.I (New York, 1962).Google Scholar

Page 154 note 2 After the rebellion in Angola in 1961, the Portuguese announced their intention of abolishing the legal distinction between assimila and indigenas. Henceforth, all Africans will be citizens of Portugal, but the right to vote will be limited to the literate or those who can pay $7 in tax. For the most recent objective analysis, see Duffy, op. cit.

Page 160 note 1 Allport, Cf. Gordon, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), p. 191.Google Scholar

Page 161 note 1 Thompson, Leonard, ‘Afrikaner Nationalist Historiography and the Policy of Apartheid,’ in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), III, I, 1962, p. 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 Mphahlele, Ezekiel, The African Image (London, 1962), p.42.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 29.