Changing racial attitudes in Colonial and Apartheid South Africa. This piece explores the changing racial attitudes of the white communities of South Africa towards the Coloureds and Blacks, between British take-over and independence.

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Jamal Maxey – Development Studies – Understanding Global Cultures – Essay 1:  S. Africa        /8

This piece explores the changing racial attitudes of the white communities of South Africa towards the ‘Coloureds’ and Blacks, between British take-over and independence.  Race will be defined here as “a group descended from a common ancestor”  This period is interesting as different “groups were brought into contact that had not had contact, or at least, simultaneous contact before”  Firstly, the resentment of the Boers to the transplantation of European liberal ideas of the time about race to the South African Cape Colony shall be explained.  Secondly, the period between the Great Boer Trek commencing in 1836 and the end of the Natalian Vortrekker Republic in 1945 will be outlined as its fundamental to the romantic or ethnic nature of Afrikaner nationalism.  Thirdly, the development of segregationist and racial discriminatory policies between then and independence and how these were indicative of the racial attitudes of the time.    

Even though “the need to ‘civilise inferior natives’ became part of the justification for the scramble for Africa”, Britain’s main reason for taking control over the Cape Colony in 1806 was economical: to secure a key port on the trade passage to India.  In 1833, however, the colonial administration, following having already abolished the slave trade and in line with existing Enlightenment thinking of the time, proceeded to grant equal rights to all British male subjects residing in the colony, regardless of their colour, as well as liberating the natives and Khois from slavery through an outright ban a year on.  The Boers, who were aware of foreign criticisms of their race policies, and who believed in the Calvinist Church doctrines of white supremacy and their primordial claim to Cape Colony territory, “deplored the new laws which destroyed correct relationships, which gave Coloureds on ‘ungodly equality’”.  The Boer Great Trek north from the Eastern Cape was in search of new lands to occupy and to escape their diminishing autonomy that they saw as harmful to the purity of their doctrines.


The Boers on the Great Trek (Voortrekkers) had to defend themselves against relentless attacks from the African tribesman during their search for ‘available’ and verdant land.  On establishing the first Vortrekker republic, they prescribed to “a native policy which forbade the shedding of innocent blood and the kidnapping of San children without their parents’ permission.”  This could be deemed as contrary to the argument that the idea of ethnicity (bound closely with racial categorisation) leading to the “treatment of members of other groups as if they were members of a different species (pseudo-speciation), which they are not.”  The Vortrekkers’ innate fear of native aggression, after experiencing such hostility and potential annihilation, could have incited a feeling of hatred that effectively meant they dehumanised their ‘enemies’, then this native policy is to some extent commendable.

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They traded cattle for land, defeated their overtly aggressive neighbours, seizing their land and cattle in the process, and then proceeded peacefully to make oral treaties with other local tribes.  Annexing a large part of land through victory allowed the Voortrekkers to form the Natalian Republic in which “citizenship was reserved to those of European descent, born at the Cape and Dutch-speaking”; an immigration policy aimed at preserving Afrikaner distinctiveness in respect to a modernising world.

Even though Voortrekker commandos were appropriating stolen cattle on behalf of Dingaane, the Zulu Chief, in exchange for promised land, “he was confused by ...

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