Very interesting, very disturbing. But what about the role of religion in both the implementation of the Apartheid regime and in resistance to it? (Knowing who raised me, could you doubt I’d notice this big absence in what you’ve written?) I think we ignore the presence of religious institutions and sectarianism in authoritarian regimes at our peril. Those are often disciplined—in every sense—and highly motivated. And there is no doubt that religion is playing an enormous, even out-sized, role in what is happening in the US today, as it did in South Africa. State-level action is often ideologically informed (or masked) by religious practice. This isn’t simply a matter of laws and legislatures but also of churches and cattle kraals.
The Dutch Reformed Church is a huge part of the story, absolutely--though of course putting it into the frame reintroduces the question of whether apartheid was "cultural" and tied distinctively to Afrikanerdom. I think that question is more productively open than it was at the height of the orthodoxy about racial capitalism's centrality, e.g., that Afrikaner resentments and feeling of threat were a huge fuel for 1948 (and here a parallel to the U.S. presents itself). Though the other striking thing is the way that many English-speaking whites quickly aligned behind apartheid despite its ties to Afrikaner nationalism because the system intensified a sense that all whites would be threatened if they ever let up on the whip hand. When you stand behind a repressive system, however reluctantly, you start to feel in danger of some possible future retribution. That's a big part of all authoritarian states: you might not have been in favor of them when they were established, but if you end up identified with them later for whatever reason, you're stuck--it's like becoming a made man in the Mafia.
The Anglican Church’s role here would also be interesting to know, since the English settlers also had their parts to play, and Establishment churches do tend to lean towards, well, the Establishment. Obviously African churches and less-mainstream denominations were part of Black South Africans’ experience of political and social action, too—as were recourse to indigenous religious practices of various types. Your point that it wasn’t all Afrikaners all the time is a good one. Was it all Protestants all the time, though? I rarely hear anything about Catholicism in South Africa. Now I’m curious.
Very interesting, very disturbing. But what about the role of religion in both the implementation of the Apartheid regime and in resistance to it? (Knowing who raised me, could you doubt I’d notice this big absence in what you’ve written?) I think we ignore the presence of religious institutions and sectarianism in authoritarian regimes at our peril. Those are often disciplined—in every sense—and highly motivated. And there is no doubt that religion is playing an enormous, even out-sized, role in what is happening in the US today, as it did in South Africa. State-level action is often ideologically informed (or masked) by religious practice. This isn’t simply a matter of laws and legislatures but also of churches and cattle kraals.
The Dutch Reformed Church is a huge part of the story, absolutely--though of course putting it into the frame reintroduces the question of whether apartheid was "cultural" and tied distinctively to Afrikanerdom. I think that question is more productively open than it was at the height of the orthodoxy about racial capitalism's centrality, e.g., that Afrikaner resentments and feeling of threat were a huge fuel for 1948 (and here a parallel to the U.S. presents itself). Though the other striking thing is the way that many English-speaking whites quickly aligned behind apartheid despite its ties to Afrikaner nationalism because the system intensified a sense that all whites would be threatened if they ever let up on the whip hand. When you stand behind a repressive system, however reluctantly, you start to feel in danger of some possible future retribution. That's a big part of all authoritarian states: you might not have been in favor of them when they were established, but if you end up identified with them later for whatever reason, you're stuck--it's like becoming a made man in the Mafia.
The Anglican Church’s role here would also be interesting to know, since the English settlers also had their parts to play, and Establishment churches do tend to lean towards, well, the Establishment. Obviously African churches and less-mainstream denominations were part of Black South Africans’ experience of political and social action, too—as were recourse to indigenous religious practices of various types. Your point that it wasn’t all Afrikaners all the time is a good one. Was it all Protestants all the time, though? I rarely hear anything about Catholicism in South Africa. Now I’m curious.
The Anglican Church in South Africa has some deep roots in diverging from its English progenitor, going back to John Colenso.