In 1948, Afrikanerdom achieved its long-sought goal of dominance within the white minority when the Nationalist Party won the general election—offering South Africa a new policy called apartheid and, incidentally, adding a new pejorative to the international political vocabulary.

Although its authors had failed to define apartheid with any precision, political observers at the time feared that South Africa was about to enter a dangerous era of authoritarian racism fundamentally different from past policies. Those fears, based on the ugly pro-Nazi record of Nationalist leaders during World War II (among them the present Prime Minister, Johannes Vorster) and the blatant Nationalist exacerbation of white bigotry instanced by the popular election slogan die swart gevaar (the black menace), soon turned out to be fully justified.

Examination of the black reaction to apartheid during the period 1948-1973 is topical and should help us to understand what is now happening in South Africa. The black reaction is not merely to apartheid; it is to the whole social system imposed on the black people of South Africa from the moment the white man landed there in 1652. There has been a reaction over the succeeding centuries which has manifested itself in a variety of ways. For a long time this reaction assumed the form of armed resistance. When that was defeated, it took the form of political opposition.

The word "apartheid" does not appear anywhere in the South African statute book, and a keen observer would be hard put to discover its existence anywhere in the formal texts which make up the law. Yet apartheid is deeply embedded in the law of South Africa.

In a country in which neither the content nor the administration of the law has ever been free from racial overtones, twenty-five years of continuous rule by the National Party Government have seen to it that the ideology of segregation has been translated into a formidable pattern of legalized racial discrimination. This pattern is to be observed throughout the entire apparatus of the South African legal system. It is written into the constitution and reflected in the legislature. It is a major constituent of the statute law of the country, and decisions as to the manner in which legislation is to be implemented make up a significant proportion of the case law. Apartheid has involved and influenced both the composition and the conduct of the courts, just as it has affected the legal profession and the teaching of law.

In 1959, following the recommendations of the Eiselen Commission, the South African government established separate university colleges for the country's three non-white communities. Heretofore, African, Asian, and Coloured students had attended non-white Fort Hare University or certain white institutions, but the Extension of University Education Act of 1959 specifically prohibited racially integrated education except in extraordinary cases approved by the government. There are now five institutions serving these groups: the University of Durban-Westville for Indians, the University of the Western Cape at Belleville for the Coloured community. Fort Hare University, now exclusively for the Xhosa people, the University of Zululand at Ngoye for Zulus and Swazis, and the University of the North at Turfloop in the Transvaal, serving the Sotho groups as well as the Tswana, Tsonga and Venda peoples.

Rarely has the policy of an individual government attracted as wide attention throughout the world as the racial policy of South Africa. It has been discussed in several organs of the United Nations, in specialized agencies of the United Nations, and in several other international and regional intergovernmental organizations; in the Parliament of many countries; and in numerous non-governmental organizations. A number of countries have broken diplomatic, consular and trade relations with South Africa or refrained from establishing such relations. Actions protesting apartheid have involved hundreds of thousands of people outside Africa. The publications and documents on apartheid fill a good-sized library.

This article concerns the problems connected with the Black American reaction to apartheid in South Africa reaction which appears to have been largely ignored by social scientists, opinion poll samplers, opinion leaders, and even the distributors of foundation grants. A discussion such as this one is, perforce, impressionistic. Hopefully, however, it will contribute to the construction of sound hypotheses about the character of the Black American reaction to apartheid.

The reader should perhaps be warned that I do not subscribe to the doctrine of intellectual neutrality. The perspectives from which I write are informed by clearly articulated value postulates or preferences.

Prophecy is one of the simplest ways for an historian to destroy his credit and reputation. Having been persuaded to take this risk, I shall partly cover it with one small insurance policy: I shall set forth what seem to me to be the relevant facts, but not be too dogmatic about the conclusions to be drawn from them.

Where will South Africa stand twenty-five years from now? What will have happened during those years? In theory there are, I think, only four possibilities: (i) that the status quo will remain essentially unchanged; (ii) that radical changes, involving or at least leading to the abolition of all racial discrimination, will come about peacefully, by constitutional means; (iii) that the regime will be overthrown by invading foreign forces; and (iv) that it will be overthrown by revolution within the country, with or without foreign support. As there are strong reasons for believing that none of these alternatives is really possible, some factor seems to have been overlooked. Perhaps it will appear as the four alternatives are examined.

In studying African development and the problems facing independent Africa, we are constantly reminded by Western scholars, particularly political scientists, that Africa has dissipated its political capital and has turned away from the democratic institutions it inherited from the West towards dictatorship. Such reminders are often made without reference to the history of Western democracy, the implication being that European states behaved better, and that following the French Revolution complete emancipation of the Europeans was achieved.

Nearly everyone agrees that the protection of free speech is one of the most, perhaps the most, important ingredient in the concept of “democracy,” as that term is conceived in the Western world. It is not the only element within the concept, of course, and it is forced into ceaseless competition with other factors and policies that demand recognition and official protection. Nevertheless, it is possible to predicate a judgment on the degree to which a society is in fact democratic, based on an analysis of the degree to which free speech is there allowed to flourish.

United States policy towards Namibia is the one shining oasis in the veritable desert known as United States policy towards southern Africa—an area of foreign policy where a mirage of official words has tended either to obfuscate United States government actions supporting the minority government or to obscure the real significance of such actions.

For observers of U.S. policy toward Africa, this has been the fall of the "Nissem."

Newspaper and magazine articles by Tad Szulc and Jack Anderson, based on the text of National Security Study Memorandum 39 of 1969 (NSSM 39), have popularized an alleged Nixon " tilt " toward Southern Africa's white regimes, stemming from a preference for protection of U.S. economic interests over ideals of democracy and decency. The State Department, embarrassed and flustered by the leak of another secret document, has tried to downplay its significance (calling it merely a preliminary study), and has disclaimed any change in policy.

There are some things in life that do yield visible, satisfying results; in building a room, painting a picture, or baking a cake, we are able to control most of the elements that contribute to the desired result. But if we try to restore sanctions against Rhodesia, we will find the effort frustrated by countless factors which concerned citizens are powerless to regulate.

At the outset of our endeavors to strengthen sanctions legislation, we knew that Administration support was critical particularly in the House of Representatives. We have always needed Republican votes. In 1973, Senator McGee (who in 1972 had initiated the attempt to repeal the Byrd Amendment to the Military Procurement Bill), was reluctant to try again unless he could obtain assurances from Secretary of State Kissinger that the Administration meant business this time.

Southern Africa earns little press coverage in the United States. Issues which relate to this part of the world are, newsmen feel, of minimal interest to the American news consumer. But the lack of coverage reflects another phenomenon: the nature of the activities of Southern African agents and allies in the U.S. These pressure groups, unlike those of the splashier (domestic) labor, medical and legal lobbies, do not concern themselves with grassroots activity or extensive media attention. Like the Nixon Administration at least until the Watergate debacle the Southern Africa-oriented pressure groups foster and consciously maintain a low profile.