The South African Bureau of Racial Affairs (SABRA) (Afrikaans: Suid-Afrikaanse Buro vir Rasse-Angeleenthede) was a South African think tank based at Stellenbosch University. [1] [2] [3] It was founded in 1948 at the initiative of the Afrikaner Broederbond as an alternative to the liberal South African Institute of Race Relations. [2]
Its co-founders were primarily Afrikaner intellectuals, and included Eben Dönges, Ernest George Jansen, Nico Diederichs, and Andries Charl Cilliers. [4] : 119 W.E Barker and Nic Oliver were also influential members in the SABRA. W.E Barker advocated for "vertical" separation is particularly troubling, as it suggests a deliberate intent to maintain white supremacy and dominate over other racial groups. “horizontal" separation would have implied a more equitable approach, recognising the equal rights and dignity of all individuals, regardless of race. This approach would have aimed to address the historical injustices and promote true equality and reconciliation. SABRA sought to give an academic and theoretical justification for the National Party's policy of Apartheid, and influenced the development of that policy during the 1950s and beyond. A number of SABRA members made an important contributors to the Tomlinson Commission, which formulated a strategy for developing the Bantustans. [2]
Frederik Willem de Klerk was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996. As South Africa's last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a social conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997.
Coloureds refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent, Zimbabwe and Zambia who have ancestry from African, European, and Asian people. The intermixing of different races began in the Cape province of South Africa, with European settlers intermixing with the indigenous Khoi tribes, and Asian slaves of the region. Later various other European nationals also contributed to the growing mixed race people, who would later be officially classified as coloured by the apartheid government in the 1950s.
Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, also known as H. F. Verwoerd, was a Dutch-born South African politician, scholar, and newspaper editor who was Prime Minister of South Africa and is commonly regarded as the architect of apartheid and nicknamed the "father of apartheid". Verwoerd played a significant role in socially engineering apartheid, the country's system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy, and implementing its policies, as Minister of Native Affairs (1950–1958) and then as prime minister (1958–1966). Furthermore, Verwoerd played a vital role in helping the far-right National Party come to power in 1948, serving as their political strategist and propagandist, becoming party leader upon his premiership. He was the Union of South Africa's last prime minister, from 1958 to 1961, when he proclaimed the founding of the Republic of South Africa, remaining its prime minister until his assassination in 1966.
Pieter Willem Botha, was a South African politician. He was the head of government of South Africa from 1978 to 1989, serving as the last prime minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984 and the first executive state president of South Africa from 1984 to 1989.
The National Party, also known as the Nationalist Party, were a political party in South Africa from 1914 to 1997, which was responsible for the implementation of apartheid rule. The party was an Afrikaner ethnic nationalist party, which initially promoted the interests of Afrikaners but later became a stalwart promoter and enactor of white supremacy, for which it is best known. It first became the governing party of the country in 1924. It merged with its rival, the SAP, during the Great Depression, and a splinter faction became the official opposition during World War II and returned to power. With the National Party governing South Africa from 4 June 1948 until 9 May 1994, the country for the bulk of this time was only a de jure or partial democracy, as from 1958 onwards non-white people were barred from voting. In 1990, it began to style itself as simply a South African civic nationalist party, and after the fall of apartheid in 1994, attempted to become a moderate conservative one. The party's reputation was damaged irreparably by perpetrating apartheid, and it rebranded itself as the New National Party in 1997 before eventually dissolving in 2005.
The United Party was a political party in South Africa. It was the country's ruling political party between 1934 and 1948.
Liberalism in South Africa has encompassed various traditions and parties.
Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naudé was a South African Afrikaner Calvinist Dominee, theologian and the leading Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist. He was known simply as Beyers Naudé, or more colloquially, Oom Bey.
A referendum on becoming a republic was held in South Africa on 5 October 1960. The Afrikaner-dominated right-wing National Party, which had come to power in 1948, was avowedly republican and regarded the position of Queen Elizabeth II as the South African monarch as a relic of British imperialism. The National Party government subsequently organised the referendum on whether the then Union of South Africa should become a republic. The vote, which was restricted to whites—the first such national election in the union—was narrowly approved by 52.29% of the voters. The Republic of South Africa was constituted on 31 May 1961.
The Herstigte Nasionale Party is a South African political party which was formed as a far-right splinter group of the now defunct National Party in 1969. The party name was commonly abbreviated as HNP, evoking the Herenigde Nasionale Party, although colloquially they were also known as the Herstigtes. The party is, unlike other splinter factions from the National Party, still active but politically irrelevant.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. In this minoritarian system, there was social stratification and campaigns of marginalization such that white citizens had the highest status, with them being followed by Indians as well as Coloureds and then Black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.
A Volkstaat, also called a Boerestaat, is a proposed White homeland for Afrikaners within the borders of South Africa, most commonly proposed as a fully independent Boer/Afrikaner nation. The proposed state would exclude Afrikaans-speaking Coloureds but accept South Africans of English ancestry and other White South Africans, if they accept Afrikaner culture and customs.
The Sauer Commission, was created in 1948 largely in response to the Fagan Commission. It was appointed by the Herenigde Nasionale Party and favoured even stricter segregation laws.
General elections were held in South Africa on 26 May 1948. They represented a turning point in the country's history, as despite receiving just under half of the votes cast, the United Party and its leader, incumbent Prime Minister Jan Smuts, were ousted by the Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP) led by D. F. Malan, a Dutch Reformed cleric.
Afrikaner nationalism is a ethnic nationalistic political ideology created by Afrikaners residing in Southern Africa during the Victorian era. The ideology was developed in response to the significant events in Afrikaner history such as the Great Trek, the First and Second Boer Wars and the resulting anti-British sentiment and Anti-communism that developed among Afrikaners and opposition to South Africa's entry into World War I.
South African citizenship has been influenced primarily by the racial dynamics that have structured South African society throughout its development. The country's colonial history led to the immigration of different racial and ethnic groups into one shared area. Power dispersion and inter-group relations led to European dominance of the state, allowing it to directly shape citizenship although not without internal division or influence from the less empowered races.
Eric Hendrik Louw was a South African diplomat and politician. He served as the Minister of Finance from 1954 to 1956, and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1955 to 1963.
Henry Allan Fagan, QC was the Chief Justice of South Africa from 1957 to 1959 and previously a Member of Parliament and the Minister of Native Affairs in J. B. M. Hertzog's government. Fagan had been an early supporter of the Afrikaans language movement and a noted Afrikaans playwright and novelist. Though he was a significant figure in the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and a long-term member of the Broederbond, he later became an important opponent of Hendrik Verwoerd's National Party and is best known for the report of the Fagan Commission, whose relatively liberal approach to racial integration amounted to the Smuts government's last, doomed stand against the policy of apartheid.
The Tomlinson Report was a 1954 report released by the Commission for the Socioeconomic Development of the Bantu Areas, known as the Tomlinson Commission, that was commissioned by the South African government to study the economic viability of the native reserves. These reserves were intended to serve as the homelands for the black population. The report is named for Frederick R. Tomlinson, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Pretoria. Tomlinson chaired the ten-person commission, which was established in 1950. The Tomlinson Report found that the reserves were incapable of containing South Africa's black population without significant state investment. However, Hendrik Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs, rejected several recommendations in the report. While both Verwoerd and the Tomlinson Commission believed in "separate development" for the reserves, Verwoerd did not want to end economic interdependence between the reserves and industries in white-controlled areas. The government would go on to pass legislation to restrict the movement of blacks who lived in the reserves to white-controlled areas.
The Dakar Conference was a historic conference between members of the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA) and the African National Congress (ANC). It was held in Dakar, Senegal between 9 and 12 July 1987. The conference discussed topics such as strategies for bringing fundamental change in South Africa, national unity, structures of the government and the future of the economy in a free South Africa. The IDASA delegation from South Africa, participated in the conference in their private capacity and would later be condemned by the South African government for meeting a banned organization. The future indirect result of the conference was South African government talks with Nelson Mandela and his eventual meeting with P. W. Botha in 1989.