Abstract
As Prime Minister, General Hertzog is usually credited with having made two fundamental policy initiatives. The first relates to his role as an Afrikaner nationalist leader seeking to establish parity between English- and Afrikaans-speakers; while the second is commonly accepted to be his ‘native policy’. At first sight there appears little to connect these political programmes, but the relationship is in fact a close one: the creation of a unified ‘white nation’ under the rubric of ‘South Africanism’ was the mirror image of the subordination and exclusion of Africans from civil society. Indeed the success of each was conditional, to at least some extent, on the fulfilment of the other.
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Notes and References
For a description of the 1936 Representation Act, see M. Ballinger, From Union to Apartheid. A Trek to Isolation (Folkestone, 1969), chap. 1.
Hertzog papers, A32 vol. 112, Hertzog to Brookes, 23 March 1924; O. Pirow, James Barry Munnik Hertzog (Cape Town, n.d., [1957]), pp. 197–8;
P. Lewsen, John X. Merriman. Paradoxical South African Statesman (New Haven and London), 1982, p. 353.
J. C. Smuts, Memorandum on Government Natives and Coloured Bills (Pretoria, 1926).
Pirn papers, A881 cc36, Pirn (unsigned) to Arthur Gillett, 19 July 1929; J. Krikler, ‘The South African Party and the Cape African Franchise, 1926–36’ (BA(Hons) thesis, University of Cape Town, 1978), pp. 66–7; Pirow, Hertzog, p. 192.
A. Paton, Hofmeyr (London and Cape Town, 1964), p. 222.
J. T. Cameron, ‘An Analysis of Smuts’ Attitude Towards Hertzog’s “Native Bills” From 1926 to 1936’ (MA thesis, UNISA, 1982), p. 12.
B. Friedman, Smuts: A Reappraisal (London, 1975), p. 87.
Indeed, during the 1929 Joint Sitting of Parliament, Smuts stated emphatically that neither he nor his party were ‘bound finally or irrevocably to the Cape basis’ and he indicated his willingness to ‘collaborate’ with Hertzog. Joint Sitting of Both Houses of Parliament 1929, col. 68, 18 February 1929.
Natal Advertiser, 15 May 1935. See also G. Heaton Nicholls, The Native Bills (Durban, 1935).
Nicholls, The Problem of the Native in South Africa (Pretoria, 1937), p. 5.
On coalition and fusion see D. O’Meara, Volkskapitalisme. Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism 1934–48 (Cambridge and Johannesburg, 1983), pp. 39–48;
D. W. Kruger, The Making of a Nation. A History of the Union of South Africa 1910–1961 (Johannesburg, 1969), pp. 154–74.
The above analysis is drawn from Friedman, Smuts, pp. 101–3. On fusion, see Hancock, Smuts Vol. II, chap. 13; Pirow, Hertzog, chaps 13–15; N. M. Stultz, Afrikaner Politics in South Africa 1934–48 (California, 1974), chap. 2.
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© 1989 Saul Dubow
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Dubow, S. (1989). The Passage of Hertzog’s Native Bills, Part One. In: Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20041-2_6
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