The premise of apartheid was that whites were superior to Africans, Coloureds, and Indians, and the function of it was to entrench white supremacy forever. As the Nationalists put it, “Die wit man moet altyd baas wees” (The white man must always remain boss). Their platform rested on the term baasskap, literally boss-ship, a freighted word that stood for white supremacy in all its harshness. The policy was supported by the Dutch Reform Church, which furnished apartheid with its religious underpinnings by suggesting that Afrikaners were God’s chosen people and that blacks were a subservient species. In the Afrikaner’s worldview, apartheid and the church went hand in hand.

The Nationalists’ victory was the beginning of the end of the domination of the Afrikaner by the Englishman. English would now take second place to Afrikaans as an official language. The Nationalist slogan encapsulated their mission: “Eie volk, eie taal, eie land” — Our own people, our own language, our own land. In the distorted cosmology of the Afrikaner, the Nationalist victory was like the Israelites’ journey to the Promised Land. This was the fulfillment of God’s promise, and the justification for their view that South Africa should be a white man’s country forever.

The victory was a shock. The United Party and General Smuts had beaten the Nazis, and surely they would defeat the National Party. On election day, I attended a meeting in Johannesburg with Oliver Tambo and several others. We barely discussed the question of a Nationalist government because we did not expect one. The meeting went on all night and we emerged at dawn and found a newspaper vendor selling the Rand Daily Mail: the Nationalists had triumphed. I was stunned and dismayed, but Oliver took a more considered line. “I like this,” he said. “I like this.” I could not imagine why. He explained, “Now we will know exactly who our enemies are and where we stand.”

Even General Smuts realized the dangers of this harsh ideology, decrying apartheid as “a crazy concept, born of prejudice and fear.” From the moment of the Nationalists’ election, we knew that our land would henceforth be a place of tension and strife. For the first time in South African history, an exclusively Afrikaner party led the government. “South Africa belongs to us once more,” Malan proclaimed in his victory speech.

 

 

That same year, the Youth League outlined its policy in a document written by Mda and issued by the league’s executive committee. It was a rallying cry to all patriotic youth to overthrow white domination. We rejected the Communist notion that Africans were oppressed primarily as an economic class rather than as a race, adding that we needed to create a powerful national liberation movement under the banner of African nationalism and “led by Africans themselves.”

We advocated the redivision of land on an equitable basis; the abolition of color bars prohibiting Africans from doing skilled work; and the need for free and compulsory education. The document also articulated the push-and-pull between two rival theories of African nationalism, between the more extreme, Marcus Garvey–inspired, “Africa for the Africans” nationalism and the Africanism of the Youth League, which recognized that South Africa was a multiracial country.

I was sympathetic to the ultra-revolutionary stream of African nationalism. I was angry at the white man, not at racism. While I was not prepared to hurl the white man into the sea, I would have been perfectly happy if he climbed aboard his steamships and left the continent of his own volition.

The Youth League was marginally more friendly to the Indians and the Coloureds, stating that Indians, like Africans, were oppressed, but that Indians had India, a mother country that they could look to. The Coloureds, too, were oppressed, but unlike the Indians had no mother country except Africa. I was prepared to accept Indians and Coloureds provided they accepted our policies; but their interests were not identical with ours, and I was skeptical of whether or not they could truly embrace our cause.

 

 

In short order, Malan began to implement his pernicious program. Within weeks of coming to power, the Nationalist government pardoned Robey Leibbrandt, the wartime traitor who had organized uprisings in support of Nazi Germany. The government announced their intention to curb the trade union movement and do away with the limited franchises of the Indian, Coloured, and African peoples. The Separate Representation of Voters Act eventually robbed the Coloureds of their representation in Parliament. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act was introduced in 1949 and was followed in rapid succession by the Immorality Act, making sexual relations between white and nonwhite illegal.