Contemporary South Africa has massive problems including appallingly high crime rates and unemployment/underemployment levels of over forty percent! However, what South Africa does have going for it, despite these severe socio-economic problems, is a strong attachment to democracy. South Africans cherish their right to vote in democratic multi-party elections which seems to ensure that this nation’s problems will ultimately be resolved by democratic means.
This attachment to democracy exists even though most of South Africans did not have the right to vote until April 1994. Perhaps it is this historical denial of suffrage on racial grounds which has endowed the current universal right to vote with such a strong sanctity that South Africans will not countenance this right being taken away from them.
It is for this reason that it was so important that South Africans were able to vote in universal elections in April 1994 when this constitutional right commenced on its path to becoming so engrained. However, the April 1994 elections almost never took place. This was because Joe Slovo (1926 to 1995) the white leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP) nearly succeeded in provoking the far right into staging a military coup that would subsequently and consequently provoke a revolution from below.
Such a revolution would probably have succeeded in establishing South Africa as a Marxist-Leninist state even though communism had become so discredited nearly five years earlier (1989) with Eastern and Central European nations throwing off such regimes. That an arch-strategist such as Joe Slovo failed in provoking a military coup and a subsequent revolution was due to the tactical, cool level headedness of a white retired army general, Constand Viljoen (1933 to 2020)[1].
The establishment of a communist South Africa would have been a triumph for Cuba’s despotic leader Fidel Castro (1926 to 2017). The Cuban dictator had previously succeeded in the 1970s in crucially helping to facilitate communist regimes in Angola and Mozambique in southern Africa. For Castro, the establishment of a communist South Africa would have been the culmination of an objective which he and fellow totalitarian revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (1928 to 1967) had so assiduously worked toward, since the 1960s.
Revolutionary Contexts: Cuba and South Africa Compared
This following sectional overview of Cuba’s pre-1959 political context is undertaken to help convey the level of political sophistication which would be replicated nearly two generations later when the Cuban communist backed Joe Slovo similarly moved to sabotage national elections from occurring in South Africa in 1994. The fact that the 1994 elections did take place is illustrative of how voting in democratic elections can prevent a revolution from occurring.
It should also be pointed out that Fidel Castro had himself also previously succeeded in manipulating the then former Cuban president, Fulgencio Batista, into staging a military coup in Cuba in March 1952 so that he (Castro) could consequently instigate a revolution on that Island which culminated in this would be dictator coming to power in January 1959. The cornerstone of Castro’s success in generating this revolution was his solemn and unambiguous promise that he would hold democratic elections once the revolution was successful. Ironically, the success of Castro’s 1959 revolution has ensured that since then Cubans were thereafter never able to vote in democratic elections.
Pre-communist Cuba, similar to contemporary South Africa had deep seated problems. Indeed, Cuba had had a revolution in 1933 in which the dictator Gerado Machado had been removed from power. The post-1933 political context in Cuba was complex but in essence the revolutionary strongman who emerged, Fulgencio Batista (1901 to 1973) successfully conciliated the opposition by holding elections to a constituent assembly in 1939.
The constituent assembly drew up the democratic constitution of 1940 which thereafter became deeply revered by most Cubans. It was under this constitution that Batista was democratically elected president in 1940. President Bastia received considerable kudos amongst Cubans for not only respecting this constitution by stepping down as president when his presidential term expired in 1944, but for also for ceding power to the opposition Autentico Party which had unexpectantly won the elections that year.
Alas, the nearly eight years of Autentico Party misrule in Cuba (1944 to 1952) were exceedingly corrupt. Disenchantment with Autentico Party corruption reached a peak in August 1951 when the opposition senator, Eddy Chibbas committed suicide when he was unable to substantiate allegations of corruption against a government minister. The outrage which ensued was directed against the ruling party so that one of the opposition presidential candidates, Roberto Agramonte who belonged to Chibbas’s Ortodoxo Party had a strong chance of winning the June 1952 presidential election.
Indeed, Agramonte probably would have won the June 1952 elections had Batista not returned to power in March that year via a military coup. That Batista returned to power in this coup was due to Castro’s pre-election machinations. Castro (who was then an Ortodoxo candidate for Congress) between December 1951 and February 1952 made credible allegations of corruption against the outgoing presidential administration of Prio Socarras which ironically were published in the Batistano newspaper Alerta. Castro even went before the Supreme Court to make allegations of corruption directly against President Prio.
The future Cuban dictator (i.e. Castro) correctly calculated that President Prio, who had become addicted to wealth and luxury, would not want to risk the opposition Ortodoxo Party coming to power on an anti-corruption platform. However, due to a 1943 election code it was impossible for President Prio to rig the elections in favour of the Autentico Party’s presidential candidate Carlos Hevia. Nor could President Prio suspend the constitution to perpetuate himself in power for to have done so the president knew would have sparked a revolution against him.
The wily Castro also knew that the above cited options were closed off to President Prio. However, Castro was aware that President Prio could arrange for an avowed opponent of his in the person of Fulgencio Batista (who was then also running for president in the 1952 elections) to return to power via a military coup with President Prio’s covert connivance. Although Batista’s return to power meant that President Prio would have to temporarily go into exile he knew that due to the pre-arranged nature of the 1952 coup that his assets would be left untouched and that he would not be prosecuted for corruption.
The near bloodlessness of the March 10th, 1952 coup was testament to the fact that President Prio had helped engineer his own overthrow. This secret collusion between Batista and Prio with regard to the 1952 coup might not have been fatal to Cuban democracy had this event not fitted in with Castro’s grand strategy of preparing the groundwork for his revolutionary route to power so that he could proceed to establish a totalitarian regime.
How Castro subsequently exploited the 1952 coup to facilitate his revolutionary rise to power will not be detailed in this article. Nevertheless, the overall point needs to be made that by denying the Cuban people a vote in the scheduled June 1952 elections the March coup created the pre-conditions for Castro to come to power via a revolution.
As flawed as the Cuban political establishment was in the early 1950s, Cuba’s steep socio-economic problems would not have led to a revolution had there been no democratic disruption. That such a disruption occurred was due to Castro’s strategic genius not only in instigating the 1952 coup but also in exploiting the subsequent conditions to generate a revolution by January 1959. Joe Slovo with a similar degree of manipulative skill would move in 1994 to engineer events so that a revolution would ensue by provoking a right-wing military coup to prevent the scheduled April elections from proceeding.
The ANC Moves to a Revolutionary Context
Indeed, Castro demonstrated his similar capacity for political foresight by envisioning the potential to establish future totalitarian regimes in Africa by initially guiding anti-colonial resistance movements in Portuguese Africa and the anti-racist movement in white minority ruled South Africa in the 1960s.It was the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa in March 1960 which marked a turning point for the anti-apartheid movement away from the non-violent approach which had previously been adopted by the African National Congress (ANC) under the leadership of the Zulu chief, Albert Luthuli (1897 to 1967).
De facto leadership of the ANC following the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre passed to Nelson Mandela in June 1961 when he founded the armed wing of that organisation called the Umkhonto we Sizwe (‘Spear of the Nation’). Umkhonto we Sizwe was crushed by 1963 by which time Nelson Mandela had been captured and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The most prominent ANC activist who had escaped detention was Oliver Tambo who headed this anti-apartheid organisation in exile. It was in exile following the success of the clampdown by South Africa’s security forces that the ANC was restructured in the early 1960s with the active counsel of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. These two totalitarian revolutionaries ensured that the ANC’s alliance with the SACP (which dated back to 1946) was consolidated so that communist influence became predominant within the ANC.
A major base of communist influence within the ANC at a grassroots level in South Africa during the apartheid era was amongst urban based Zulus in Natal Province. This was partly because of the harsh nature of industrial laws which denied (until the Wiehahn Commission in the 1970s) basic labour rights to non-white South Africans. This substantial support for SACP in Natal Province’s urban areas amongst Zulus was countered in rural areas where traditional tribal structures were well entrenched and reverence for the institution of the Zulu monarchy remained strong.
Zulu support in rural areas for their monarchy was manifested by the prevailing influence of the Inkatha Party (later the Inkatha Freedom Party, IFP) which was founded and led by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha Party controlled the Kwa Zulu (Zululand) Bantustan (Homeland), which was created in the 1970s, as a one-party-state.
The apartheid regime was unable however to establish other black homelands which had genuine support amongst the Xhosa ethnic group (which Nelson Mandela belonged to) as most Xhosas were supporters of the ANC. SACP influence within the ANC in Xhosa areas was less structured and pervasive as it was in urban Zulu areas, but it was still there.
To counter support for the ANC /SACP amongst the Xhosas and other ethnic groups the apartheid regime in the 1970s established so-called ‘independent’ homelands which were scattered across South Africa. The ‘independent’ homelands were Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Transkei and Venda as well as a ‘self-governing’ homeland of Qwa Qwa.
The 1984 Constitution Produces Political Polarization
Having utterly failed to garner any support amongst non-Zulu black South Africans by creating these homelands the apartheid regime in 1984 promulgated a nominally multi-racial constitution which notionally extended full civic (including voting) rights to Coloured and Asian South Africans. A tricameral parliament was created respectively representing whites and the other two aforementioned communities. The real and lasting innovating dimension of the 1984 Constitution was the establishment of an immensely powerful executive presidency which was first held by PW Botha (1916 to 2006) who had previously (since 1978) led South Africa as prime minister.
The promulgation of the 1984 Constitution precipitated a massive anti-government civil disobedience campaign which was directed by an ANC front organisation, the United Democratic Front (UDF). The harsh response by the apartheid regime to this civil disobedience campaign fuelled an international campaign to place international economic sanctions against South Africa. It therefore seemed that South Africa was heading for a violent revolution which would probably result in a Marxist-Leninist regime.
The political polarization which ensued as a result of the civil disobedience campaign was such that in the May 1987 elections there was a shift to the right by the white electorate. This was manifested by the Conservative Party (a 1982 National Party breakaway party established to oppose the extension of political rights to Coloureds and Asians) displacing the liberal Progressive Federal Party (PFP) as the official parliamentary opposition.
The racist Conservative Party would have won the September 1989 elections had the popular Foreign Minister Pik Botha not succeeded in persuading enough white liberal Anglo voters to transfer their support from the Democratic Party (the successor to the PFP) to the National Party. Paradoxically, had the National Party continued to perpetuate white minority rule the probable result would have been that the Conservative Party would have won the next minority election.
The realization that white minority rule itself was not a viable option was appreciated by F W De Clerk who had succeeded PW Botha as president in August 1989. De Clerk’s ascension to the South African presidency had been assured in January 1989 when the National Party’s parliamentary caucus had chosen him to succeed PW Botha as party leader after Botha was severely affected by a stroke.
Although De Clerk would be instrumental in bringing apartheid to an end, he was not in a National Party context from that party’s relatively ‘liberal’ wing. Rather he was from the pragmatic predominantly centrist faction of the National Party. Indeed, PW Botha for all his intense anti-communism and authoritarian personality was actually (in a National Party context) a party liberal. Under his presidency, petty apartheid had been abolished with inter racial sex and marriage being permitted.
PW Botha was probably intelligent enough to realize that the National Party’s introduction of apartheid following its election to power in 1948 had, with the benefit of hindsight, been a mistake. However, PW Botha himself was wary of majority party rule on the basis that he feared that a communist takeover of South Africa would have resulted.
Francois Mitterand Counters Fidel Castro
The statesman who had the political nous to stymie Fidel Castro’s objective of establishing a communist South Africa was the then French president, Francois Mitterand (1916 to 1996). Mitterand as the under-secretary for African affairs in France’s Fourth Republic in the 1950s had orientated a generation of Francophone leaders away from the French Communist Party’s (PCF) orbit toward pro-western regimes and their ideologies when independence was granted in the 1960s.
Furthermore, Mitterand had displayed remarkable political skill in the 1970s to ensure that his French Socialist Party (PS) supplanted the PCF as the main party on the left, therefore helping to consolidate French democracy following Charles De Gaulle’s departure as president in 1969.
It was at Mitterand’s instigation that the South African government commenced secret negotiations with Nelson Mandela between 1987 and 1989 on the issue of majority rule. The major anxiety that Nelson Mandela had to address when negotiating with the South African government was how to ensure that the SACP did not utilize the ANC as a Trojan Horse by which to come to power should the right to vote be extended to all South African adults.
Nelson Mandela undertook to his captors to apply the operational principles which Francois Mitterand advocated to keep the South African communists in check should majority rule be conceded. The application of these Mitterand operational principles was illustrated in the 2009 film Invictus where President Nelson Mandela retains most of De Clerk’s presidential staff and bodyguards to the amazement of his close associates. Actions such as this were more than gestures because they enabled President Mandela to utilize pre-existing power networks to keep SACP at bay without having to disassociate from that party.
Convinced of Nelson Mandela’s sincerity about keeping the SACP in check, President De Clerk in his state of the nation address in February 1990 announced Nelson Mandela’s unconditional release later that month as well as the immediate unbanning of the ANC and SACP. These dramatic actions on President De Clerk’s part marked the commencement of a turbulent four-year transition to majority rule culminating in Nelson Mandela being elected and inaugurated as president of South Africa in May 1994.
One of the major obstacles which was overcome in this four year period between 1990 and 1994 was white consent for majority rule with a white’s only referendum held on the issue in March 1992 in which the over sixty-eight percent of the electorate voted in the affirmative. Nevertheless, there were still major obstacles to be overcome, particularly regarding inter-Zulu violence between the IFP and SACP during this time.
Despite the continuing violence, Nelson Mandela and FW De Clerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993. Although Nelson Mandela and President FW De Clerk were worthy recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, this prize for 1993 should perhaps also have included President Francois Mitterand because his strategic advice and mediation had crucially laid the groundwork for the ending of apartheid.
Potential Barriers to Majority Rule: The Formation of the so called ‘Freedom Alliance’
However, the real test of whether peace would ensue in South Africa was whether democratic elections would be held in April 1994. A major potential obstacle toward holding those elections arose with the formation in October 1993 of the Freedom Alliance, which was composed of the Conservative Party, the IFP as well as the homeland governments of Bophuthatswana and Ciskei.
Also included in the Freedom Alliance was the Afrikaans Volksfront (AVF) which contained over twenty Afrikaans organisations. The AVF was chaired by Constand Viljoen who emerged as one of the most important leaders in the Freedom Alliance. His importance was derived from the fact that as a retired commander of the South African Defence Force (SADF), Constand Viljoen could potentially utilize his still strong influence within the armed forces and the police to stage a military coup to prevent the April 1994 elections from proceeding.
To help encourage this eventuality (i.e. a military coup) to occur, SACP leader Joe Slovo moved to instigate the overthrow of the regime of Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana in March 1994 in order to provoke a national right-wing military coup response. Had such a coup occurred the succeeding national government probably would have been multi-racial in that it would have been composed of members from the Freedom Alliance.
However, the overwhelming majority of South Africans would inevitably have rejected such a government therefore leading to a massive revolt by the African population which could not have been put down without bloodshed on a considerable scale. Indeed, even had such a coup succeeded in the short term, in the long term such a government would eventually have succumbed to a violent revolution resulting in a probable Marxist-Leninist totalitarian regime for South Africa.
The scenario which confronted South Africa in 1994 was similar to the situation which Cuba faced in 1952 where Fidel Castro also manipulated pre-election events so that Fulgencio Batista staged a coup in response. The disappointment that many Cubans felt about not being able to vote in the 1952 elections ultimately laid the groundwork for Castro’s January 1959 revolution.
High Stakes Political Chess: Joe Slovo versus Constand Viljoen
Similarly, Joe Slovo by having masses of ANC supporters converge on Bophuthatswana’s capital Mmabatho in early March 1994, tried to provoke the highly trained commanders of the Freedom Alliance to intervene so that a national coup would ensue. However, ill-trained and ill-disciplined white militiamen of the fascist Afrikaner Resistance Front (AWB) precipitately arrived in Mmabatho before Freedom Alliance troops had reached this homeland capital.
This precipitant action by the AWB caused a mutiny in the Bophuthatswana armed forces. Two AWB members were shot dead by Bophuthatswana security forces and this was shown on the nightly national news.
The De Clerk government reacted quickly to this deteriorating situation in Bophuthatswana by despatching a delegation of the Transitional Executive Council (TEC) to meet with President Mangope on March 12th to have him formally re-incorporate this homeland into South Africa so that national elections could proceed there in April 1994. The rapidity with which Bophuthatswana was reincorporated into South Africa undermined the scope for a far-right national military coup to occur.
Another crucial factor which upended the prospect of a national military coup occurring was General Constand Viljoen’s swift action on March 16th of submitting candidates of a new political party, the Freedom Front with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). By breaking with the AVF and the Freedom Alliance to register the Freedom Front, General Constand Viljoen in a masterstroke had appropriated the voting base of the boycotting Conservative Party while also ensuring that the far-right did not fall into Slovo’s trap of staging a national military coup.[2]
General Constand Viljoen’s decision to participate in South African national and provincial elections in April 1994 was a paradigm shift as this conveyed the far-right’s acceptance of the emerging new constitutional order. Indeed, as the politics of post-Franco Spain in the 1970s also demonstrated, that seemingly intractable national problems can often be overcome by the holding democratic national and regional elections.
Contemporary communist Cuba’s ruling nomenklatura could also extricate themselves from riding the tiger of being a dictatorship by holding multi-party elections to a constituent assembly to revise the Constitution of 1940. The benefit of conducting future elections to a constituent assembly is that Cuba’s ruling communists could gauge their legitimate bases of support without having to immediately cede executive power.
Last Minute Deals: The IFP Enters the Electoral Fray
The importance of holding elections to resolve seemingly intractable problems was also shown in South Africa when the Kenyan academic Professor Washington Okumu persuaded his friend Chief Buthelezi to participate in the April 1994 national and provincial elections. The IFP’s agreement to participate in these elections was made on the basis that considerable autonomy would be granted to the new province of KwaZulu Natal and that if Chief Buthelezi’s party won ten percent or more of the national vote that it would be represented in the national cabinet.
The IFP’s last minute decision (April 15th) to register and participate in the joint national and provincial April 27th, 1994 elections was facilitated by the IEC’s decision to attach that party’s logo to the bottom of the national and provincial ballots. It should be pointed out at this juncture that South African voters in the 1994 elections were handed two ballot papers with which to vote- a national ballot and a provincial ballot.
Post-apartheid South Africa now has nine provinces and the decision to retain a federal system of government has been an important ingredient in that nation having a viable working democracy by preventing the concentration of power with the central government. By contrast contemporary Australia is faced with the prospect of Australian states being dismembered by a process known as ‘regionalization’ which would ultimately concentrate power in the national government.
It should not be forgotten that in the last days of the Gillard government in 2013 that legislation was passed authorising a referendum on local government recognition in the Australian constitution by which the regionalization process could be facilitated in the future. It would be an ironic pity that Australia might throw away a system of government that has served the nation so well while a nation such as South Africa which has fought so hard to become a majority democracy now appreciates the value of having a federal system of government.
The struggle to engineer a transition to majority democracy in South Africa was such that as historic as South Africa’s 1994 elections were, the provincial and national vote in KwaZulu Natal was probably rigged in favour of the IFP so that it won control of the new province and gained national cabinet representation with Chief Buthelezi subsequently serving as the federal Home Affairs Minister.
For Nelson Mandela, the political benefit of the IFP holding office in KwaZulu Natal was that this helped to keep the SACP in check because its base was in the ANC’s urban Zulu areas. Nelson Mandela therefore publicly and ‘paradoxically’ welcomed the IFP’s electoral success as being conducive to needed national unity.
In the overall April 27th, 1994 national elections, the ANC predictably came first with just over sixty-two percent of the vote. While over ten percent of the successful national parliamentary candidates of the ANC were covert members of SACP the fact that the ANC had had a democratic national vote among its members in December 1993 to preselect its national candidates prevented the communists from dominating this party.
The National Party came in second with a respectable twenty percent of the vote followed by the IFP winning just over ten percent of the vote. The Freedom Front and the Democratic Party respectively garnered over two and one percent of the national vote in the 1994 poll among a relatively small minority of white voters.
Alternative History: What Could have Been Had the United Party Prevailed in 1948
While the Democratic Party’s national vote in the 1994 election was a low one it still gained parliamentary representation. During its coverage of the 1994 South African elections The Age newspaper in Melbourne Australia ran a series of short ‘talking head’ interviews with South African voters from various racial groups. Interestingly, one of those interviewed was a black man who said that in the ballot for the national government he would vote for the ANC but that he would cast his provincial vote for the Democratic Party on the basis that it was the only political party participating in the elections which really believed in democracy.
This anecdotal endorsement for the Democratic Party and the support that the Democratic Alliance (the successor to the Democratic Party) has received in the 2000s from a substantial minority of African voters illustrates that such a ‘wrong turn’ was taken in 1948 when the then white electorate voted in the National Party.
Counterfactually, South Africa could have evolved into a majority multi-racial democracy had the United Party under General Jan Smuts won the 1948 elections. General Smuts (1870 to 1950) led a remarkable life in which he went from being a leading anti-British guerrilla leader during the Boer War (1899 to 1902) to be the founder in 1918 of Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) at the time of the First World War (1914 to 1918).
This statesman also wrote the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1919 and was the main author of the United Nations General Charter in 1945. While Jan Smuts was in an international context unquestionably a liberal, in a domestic South African context his role was more ambiguous. For Smuts the issue of race relations was not a question of white versus black but rather the need to achieve reconciliation between Afrikaners and white Anglos.
It was in pursuit of the above objective that Smuts supported the creation of the Union of South Africa as a dominion of the British Empire in 1910 in which the four provinces federated. [3] During the First World War General Smuts and Prime Minister Louis Botha took their nation into the Allied side, crushed a military coup attempt by pro-German elements within the armed forces and conquered German South West Africa (Namibia) in 1915.
Representing South Africa at the negotiations at the Treaty of Versailles in1919 where the victorious Allies imposed a peace treaty on a defeated Germany it was General Smuts who modified this treaty so that it was less harsh than was proposed by other members of the alliance (including Australia). Later that year (1919), General Smuts succeeded to the prime ministership of South Africa upon the death of Louis Botha.
General Smuts’ main innovation during his first prime ministership (1919 to 1924) was his unsuccessful attempt to bring in the self-governing neighbouring British colony of Southern Rhodesia (contemporary Zimbabwe) as a province of South Africa in 1922. This proposal was rejected in a referendum by Southern Rhodesia’s white electorate. This consequently deprived General Smuts of a potential extra voting base among white Anglos by which he might have been able to have held onto office. Instead he lost the 1924 elections.
The 1924 elections were won by a National Party/Labour Party coalition led by J. B.M. Herzog which pursued racist policies such as shutting out African workers from skilled work in the mining sector so that this employment could be reserved exclusively for whites. Realizing that it was inevitable that Africans were eventually going to urbanize and that it was going to be impossible to exclude them permanently from industry, Jan Smuts during his time as federal parliamentary Opposition Leader (1924 to 1933) formulated the concept of apartheid.[4]
Jan Smuts conceptualized apartheid as a system where industrial and urban development would occur separately among the different races of South Africa. From Smuts’ perspective apartheid was a liberal policy because it recognised that there would be industrial and urban development amongst the African majority. In fact, Smut’s outlook was essentially racist because he could not (at this point until the 1940s) envisage that blacks, whites, Coloureds and Asians could integrate in a context where there would be majority rule.
Ironically, the concept of apartheid would after 1948 be appropriated and utilized by the National Party government of D. F. Malan to perpetuate white minority rule based upon an obsessively rigorous and systematic policy of racial separation. However, for Jan Smuts the issue of race was one in which the objective was to achieve reconciliation between Afrikaners and white Anglos so that his mindset did not at this stage envisage majority rule.
Jan Smut’s then relatively narrow mindset was reflected by taking his South Africa Party into coalition government with Hertzog’s National Party in 1933 to help solve the steep economic challenges which confronted the nation due to the onset of the Great Depression. While Smut’s South Africa Party and a majority of the National Party merged in 1934 to form the United Party an intransigent minority of the National Party continued on under the leadership of F. W. Malan.
Co-operation between Jan Smuts and J.B. M. Hertzog however became impossible due to the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 as the latter favoured South African neutrality due to his pro-Nazi sympathies. The South African parliament’s vote in September 1939 to enter the Second World War on the Allied side led to Hertzog’s resignation and Smut’s return to power as prime minister as head of pro-Allied coalition government composed of the United Party, the Labour Party and the Dominion Party.
Lost Opportunities: The Potential for Earlier Democratic Reform
The second Smuts government (1939 to 1948) achieved much during the Second World War as South Africa made an important contribution to the Allied war effort with South African troops serving with distinction in Ethiopia, Somalia, Libya, Madagascar, Greece, and Italy. Despite opposition by a militant minority of Afrikaners to the war effort, South African industry was efficiently converted to war production needs and in 1943 the Smuts led coalition was returned to power in a landslide election victory.
As an important allied power during the Second World War there was of course no question about South Africa joining the United Nations (UN) in 1945 as a founder member. However, during South Africa’s membership of the UN between 1945 and 1948 under United Party rule, the government of Jan Smuts was most put out by criticism of its racial segregation policies in the UN General Assembly.[5]
As a brilliant man who was susceptible to international criticism an argument could consequently be made that if South Africa had retained the United Party government in 1948 that by the 1960s this nation would already have given way to black majority rule.
The main indicator that the above scenario would have come to fruition was the United Party government’s plan to have a massive post-war influx of migration from Britain, Italy and Greece so that when black majority government was granted by the 1960s the ratio between black and white would have been that for every white there were two blacks instead of the then ratio of six to one .
J.M Hofmeyr: The Great ‘could have been’ of South African History
Another indicator of the United Party’s possible liberal intentions was a post-war plan to extend social services to all races as envisaged by Jan Smuts’ overworked deputy, J.M. Hofmeyr (1894 to 1948). Among the string of Hofmeyr’s portfolio responsibilities was that of Immigration Minister. Indeed, Hofmeyr in opposition to the National Party had supported Jewish migration to South Africa in the 1930s and proposed to undertake a massive programme of post-war immigration. Due to overwork and perhaps because of his intense disappointment that the United Party had lost the May 1948 general election, J.M. Hofmeyr unfortunately died in December 1948.
Contemporary South Africa needs national ministers of the calibre of J.M. Hofmeyr to serve in portfolios such as education and training as well as urban development so as to lift millions of South African blacks out of poverty. Putting massive resources (both material and human) into South Africa’s education and training systems will prove to be the antidote to systematic inequality which apartheid bequeathed. Furthermore, the provision of microcredit to spur on the growth of small business generated employment should also be a national priority because this has the potential to be poverty circuit breaker.
The advocacy of these above cited policies might not have been necessary, had the National Party not won the 1948 elections. Indeed, the 1948 general election victory of the National Party (in which Jan Smuts lost his seat) was a surprise. This upset can be attributed in part to the 1946 census results which indicated that over forty percent of black Africans were urbanized which consequently frightened enough Afrikaners to shift their vote to the National Party to deliver this racist party victory.
A Myriad of Party Splits
Had the United Party instead won the 1948 election this party would have gained the electoral support of new white migrants who would then have provided a continuing electoral support for the ruling party to eventually enable it to transition to black majority rule. As it was the ambiguous stance which the United Party adopted in opposition in relation to apartheid precipitated four major splits within this party over the next thirty years.
It was in 1954 that the racist element within the United Party broke away to form the Conservative Party, which is not to be confused with the party of the same name which was founded in 1982 following a split within the National Party. A liberal element within the United Party broke away in 1959 to form the Progressive Party and for years its sole member of Parliament was the courageous Helen Suzman (1917 to 2009).
In 1975 other liberal members of the United Party again departed to form the Reform Party which later that year merged with the Progressive Party to establish the Progressive Reform Party. This new party in 1977 joined with the continuing liberal elements within the United Party to become the PFP which became the main white parliamentary opposition party. The PFP in turn merged with two minor white liberal parties in 1989 to found the Democratic Party in that year.
The Democratic Party (which following the 1999 South African general election emerged as the major parliamentary opposition party) merged with the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 2003. Since then the DA has been South Africa’s main opposition party. Indeed, between 2015 and 2019 the DA was led by a black African, Mmusi Maimane, which illustrated the potential for this party to become a viable alternative to the ruling ANC.
The overview of the above cited political machinations concerning party formation is illustrative of the counter factual perspective that had the United Party won the 1948 general election there could have been a more peaceful transition to black majority rule earlier than ultimately occurred (possibly by the 1960s).
As it was there was still a transition to black majority rule in the 1990s, which was more hazardous resulting from the spectre of a Marxist-Leninist takeover of South Africa. However, as a result of the courage, foresight and magnanimous wisdom of Nelson Mandela as well as the positive political skills of FW De Clerk and Francois Mitterand, South Africa transitioned to majority rule in 1994. Furthermore, Constand Viljoen’s refusal to fall for the Castro/Slovo trap of staging a national right-wing military coup in March 1994 was also instrumental in ensuring that there was ultimately a transition to a majority democracy.
MagazineWithout voting there can be no Democracy
Overall, the moral of South Africa’s story between 1910 and 1994 is that if you deny people the right to vote then a revolution will become inevitable. Seemingly intractable problems can usually be overcome if people are granted the right to vote. Even though contemporary post-apartheid South Africa faces profoundly serious problems such as deep-seated poverty, these challenges can eventually be overcome because the people have the right to elect their representatives at a federal and a provincial level.[6]
[1] The role of Abraham (‘Braam’) Viljoen, Constand’s identical twin brother in influencing him, might have been a factor in ensuring that the far-fight did not fall into the Castro/Slovo trap of staging a military coup. Braam Viljoen was a prominent liberal academic.
[2] The AVF and the Conservative Party were wedded to the futile idea of creating an ill-defined Afrikaner homeland or Volkstaat.
[3] Unfortunately, General Smuts initially, and thankfully unsuccessfully, advocated that this new dominion be a unitary state.
[4] Apartheid is Afrikaans for ‘apartness’ but has often been translated into English as ‘separate development’.
[5] South Africa was expelled from the UN in 1968.
[6] Land reform is one of the issues which confronts post-apartheid South Africa. The smart approach to this issue would be to allow white farmers to continue to own and manage their farms so long black farm workers are well remunerated and their working conditions are decent. In this context, South African trade unions have an important role to play.