Republic of South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in the southern part of Africa, consisting of South Africa proper and the Province of South West Africa as well as the Bechuanaland Territory. They share borders with the kingdoms of Basutoland and Swaziland, the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, and the British protectorate of Southern Rhodesia.

Founding

Colonial Period (1652-1934)

Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the most efficient way to transport goods and services to and from the orient was by circumnavigating the continent of Africa. However, staying on a boat for months at a time proved to be an unappealing prospect to even the most experienced navigators.

In 1649, members of the Dutch East India Company were shipwrecked at the Cape of Good Hope in what is now Cape Town. When they were rescued, they reported favorably on the conditions found there, and thus in 1652, the Dutch established a colony in the cape. This initial wave of Dutch settlers clustered primarily at the Cape. These settlers would come to be known as the Afrikaners or Boers.

During the French Revolutionary Wars, the British would seize the Dutch Cape Colony and impose British colonial rule. Angered by this prospect, the Dutch population would commence the 'Great Trek' eastwards. The rivalry between British settlers, The Boers, African settlers in the form of the Zulu, and the rest of the African natives made the environment in South Africa naturally chaotic. Several major uprisings occurred during this period, including the First and Second Boer Wars against the Afrikaners in the Orange Free State, Natal, and Transvaal regions.

In 1910, the Union of South Africa in its present incarnation was formed from the various regional colonies, consisting of four provinces - later five after the occupation of Namibia during the First World War. After the contributions made by South Africans to the First World War, the Union of South Africa was granted self-governance in 1934.

The formation of the Union of South Africa however hid a dark element within local politics in the form of J.B.M. Hertzog's founding of the National Party (NP).

The Interwar Period (1934-1939)

Hertzog's National Party would serve as one of the pillars of Afrikaner politics during the first decades of the Union; the former Boer general and cabinet minister held stubbornly to his resentment of the British and his republicanism. Under his leadership, the NP quickly became the primary opposition to the SAP, displacing the Unionists, who folded into the SAP in 1920.

The interwar period was marked by significant social upheaval in South Africa, as urbanization and industrialization intensified racial and class tensions. Hertzog's National Party capitalized on the underlying anger of the poor white workers, forging a coalition with the Labour Party that won a shock victory in the 1924 elections. The National-Labor government fulfilled its promises by instituting welfare policies and labor protections for the poorer whites; non-white workers were confronted with a reinforced 'colour bar'. Hertzog also pushed for an expansion of the franchise to all whites, first by granting white female suffrage and then by removing property and wealth restrictions, which substantially weakened the already minimal power of non-white voters.

During the 1920s and 1930s, many Afrikaner hardliners saw fascism as the vehicle needed to bring about an independent Afrikaner republic immersed in the principles of Christian nationalism. South African fascists, almost all with ties to the old NP, formed groups like the Greyshirts, the Boernasie, and the Nuwe Orde. The most prominent of the South African fascist organizations would prove to be the Ox-Wagon Sentinels (OB), founded in 1938 as an Afrikaner 'cultural association'.

Many members of the GNP, who were soon re-joined by Hertzog to create the Reunited National Party (HNP), were open in their desire to see Nazi Germany defeat Britain, thinking that it would dramatically speed up their timetable to independence and a republic. Others saw Nazism as a natural reaction to the threats of capitalism and Bolshevism, both of which, according to HNP leaders like Eric Louw, were to be blamed on the Jews. Louw and his party colleagues had spent the 1930s stoking antisemitic hate against the Jewish refugees who came pouring out of Germany.

Finally, the Great Depression was a massive blow to the South African economy, and desperate times called for desperate measures. Smuts and Hertzog agreed to merge their parties into the United South African National Party (UP). For hardliners in the Nationalist Party, this Fusion Government was a step too far. In 1935, Daniël François Malan, head of the Cape branch of the NP, formed the Purified National Party (GNP) with fellow hardliners. While the UP's victory in the 1938 general elections seemed to say that South Africans had no interest in the extreme Afrikaner nationalism of the GNP compared to the unity and stability promised by the UP, Smuts and Hertzog were building their political future out of sand, and this became apparent all too soon.

World War II (1939-1945)

Only a year later, in 1939, the German Reich invaded Poland and triggered the Second World War. As a British dominion, South Africa was naturally expected to support its mother country, but there could not have been a more contentious issue for the government. Many Afrikaners, including Prime Minister Hertzog, were not interested in putting South African lives on the line for a country they wanted independence from. When Parliament voted narrowly to enter the war, Hertzog resigned rather than fight, leaving Smuts to be appointed as his wartime replacement. For the Afrikaners who agreed with Hertzog, there was more to this conflict than just the geopolitics involved; many had come to sympathize and admire fascism and Nazism in particular openly.

During the Second World War, as a member of the British Commonwealth, the Union of South Africa sent soldiers to fight alongside the rest of the allies. Most South African deployments were in Africa, particularly focused on the North African and East African campaigns. South African forces saw consistent defeats due to staunch Italian guerilla resistance in East Africa and major tactical successes by the Afrika Korps in North Africa and Egypt.

However, with the German landings in Britain and the offensive across the Volga, the Italian advance into Egypt, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor - it was only a matter of time before South Africa would break off from the Crown. Furthermore, the Afrikaners needed a strong leader to meet the moment, and van Rensberg, for all his bravado, was not capable of stepping into power. Moreover, the more trouble the Stormjaers caused, the more difficult a task it would be for Malan and his party to secure the support of the moderate whites. Whether by luck or providence, the Grand Council agreed with Malan's reasoning. Van Rensberg was ordered to cease operations, and a reconciliation between the OB and the party produced the Second Cradock Agreement.

Aftermath (1945-present)

The end of the war in 1945 humiliated the Smuts government. Having gone against so many of his fellow Afrikaners to defend the same empire of the camps, Smuts had gambled everything on Allied victory, and he had lost. What were South Africa's rewards for joining this pointless crusade? Thousands of dead across East Africa, Egypt, and in the British Isles. There were also the new dependencies - in the last year of the war, as it became obvious that Britain could not hold out much longer, Smuts had ordered the UDF into the High Commission Territories of Bechuanaland, Swaziland, and Basutoland in order to stop them from falling into Axis hands. The peace treaty had made no mention of them, and the new collaborator government in London had much more to worry about than three of its least valuable territories. Peace, then, was certainly a bitter pill to swallow.

The Smuts government limped along for three miserable years, fully conscious of its failures while Malan and the HNP marshalled overwhelming Afrikaner opinion against it. As the 1948 elections approached, Malan and his cronies fell back on a series of simple, but devastatingly effective attacks. There were, of course, the charges of national humiliation and popular betrayal from the entry into the war, and the claim that only a strong leader could navigate the New Order South Africa found itself in, but what struck an even deeper chord was Malan's apocalyptic vision of race relations. The demands of the war had spurred industrial growth, this growth meant an increase in the need for labor, which in South Africa could only be met with African laborers from the reserves. The growth of a non-white, urban proletariat conscious of their leverage within the economy deeply alarmed white society. Some UP leaders around Prime Minister Smuts were prepared to offer social and economic reforms to meet the moment, but they were swimming against the tide.

According to the HNP Volksleier, the only solution to this imminent crisis was the redoubling of segregation under the policy of Apartheid - a complete separation between white and black, with the latter serving as a permanent underclass for the benefit of the former. The results of the election proved this strategy was far more successful than even the HNP could have counted on - the party was handed a clear governing majority.

The party wasted no time, capturing South African institutions one after another. The police, the courts, the military, the parastatals - they were all packed with loyal HNP members and turned into tools for furthering the party's agenda. Under Malan's strict leadership, Parliament passed scores of Apartheid legislation. South West Africa, a League of Nations mandate assigned to Pretoria since Versailles, was officially made the Union's fifth province; its new seats in the Assembly and Senate were guaranteed wins for the HNP. Laws further restricting land occupation and travel by race were soon in force, tightening the state's grip on the non-white population. The South African Communist Party was banned, and the state was granted extraordinary powers to act against any group construed as a threat to the racial order.

For all of his zeal in pursuing Apartheid, however, Prime Minister Malan was always one step behind its most strident proponents within his party. More problematic than their enthusiasm, however, was their increasing willingness to countenance extraconstitutional means to speed up the process of transforming the state. Above all, Malan always prided himself as a constitutionalist, but in the eyes of men like Hendrik Verwoerd and Johannes Strijdom, the Prime Minister's reluctance to bend the rules was becoming a liability. Increasingly exhausted as his party slipped further and further out of his grasp, D.F. Malan suddenly resigned the premiership in 1952.

Into his position slid the energetic and tenacious Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom, the HNP strongman of the Transvaal. Where Malan had balked at defying the constitution, Strijdom, the 'Lion of the North,' barrelled forward. Within months of his ascension, the government began to reshuffle the judiciary. Up until then, the courts had been one of the few obstacles in the way of Apartheid's implementation, and the new Prime Minister was determined to break that resistance permanently. It was in the midst of the complicated battle against the courts that the issue of the High Commission Territories, so long sidelined, reemerged with nearly disastrous consequences.

The Smuts government had occupied the High Commission Territories in the waning days of the Second World War, and the Beaverbrook government had declined to press the issue. Now, however, the Duke of Bedford was determined to correct that mistake. Bedford demanded the return of the territories, threatening all manner of consequences, but Strijdom refused to concede anything - the territories had been claimed as the British empire was disintegrating, and the South Africans would no more return them than Canada could be expected to return Bermuda. Bedford, infuriated, deployed troops to Rhodesia while calling on the Germans for support if it came to fighting; Germania watched with interest as Strijdom in turn deployed the UDF to the Rhodesian border. In a move that the world would not accept, the Reich refused to commit itself against South Africa, even pressuring its British clients to relinquish their old territories in exchange for a few token corporate concessions.

Since the end of the High Commission Territories Crisis, analysts have hotly debated the Reich's actions. Some argue that the Master of Europe had simply been stretched too thin, as it still dealt with resistance across its occupied territories while suffering from a sharp economic downturn, all the while supporting other colonial actions as in Madagascar and Kenya. Others suspect that Germania saw much more value in a friendly Pretoria than in a marginally expanded British Empire, and that the Reich was already at work extending its influence into the Union.

Regardless of Germany's reasoning, Strijdom's successful standoff with Britain skyrocketed his popularity. The Prime Minister judged that the time was perfect for a decisive break with Britain, the dream of Afrikaner nationalists since Vereeniging: a republic. The referendum the next year was passed with a decisive majority. At one time, the Anglo-South Africans would have presented a major challenge to the scheme, but now, after watching their mother country transformed into a fascist puppet and having nearly come to blows only months earlier, loyalists to His Majesty King Edward VIII were few and far between. With that, it was done - the Republic of South Africa was now finally independent.

While Strijdom had worked to consolidate the HNP's institutional power, his mentor and Minister for Native Affairs, Hendrik Verwoerd, had been working towards the ultimate expression of the Apartheid doctrine - the Homeland system. Developing upon the Native Reserves first established in 1913, Verwoerd envisioned a future in which all Africans would live in such territories amongst their people, ruled according to their historical customs, able to develop at their own pace. Of course, for Verwoerd, this development would never outstrip that of the white herrenvolk. Verwoerd saw the two chiefdoms of Swaziland and Basutoland as excellent test cases in how the Homelands might develop, native authorities working harmoniously under Pretoria's sovereign authority but free, for the most part, to conduct domestic affairs under their traditional laws. By the end of the 1950s, Verwoerd had identified several other territories to be granted this strange form of self-government within a few years.

Prime Minister Strijdom died unexpectedly in 1958, leading to a fierce competition between possible successors, but in the end, Verwoerd came out on top. His commanding personality, political mentorship of the late Prime Minister, and status as the HNP's leading racial theorist all pointed in a single direction - only Dr. Verwoerd could lead the HNP into a future that promised to be ever more turbulent.

While many legalist parties oppose the HNP government, the system of minority rule itself is opposed by two main groupings - the African National Congress (ANC), and the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). Of the two, the ANC is by far the older formation, having been founded in 1912. In its early years, the ANC was primarily a party of the Black elite and middle class, with very limited outreach to the masses. Inspired chiefly by Gandhian philosophy, the ANC maintained a stance of strict non-violence. Attempts at mass mobilisation occurred under the leadership of Josiah Gumede in the 20s, but he was eventually ousted from his position, and replaced by the conservative Pixley ka Isaka Seme. The ANC began to gradually revitalise in the 1940s, under the leadership of AB Xuma, who was able to successfully take advantage of an upsurge in discontent and Black trade unionism. The radical ANC Youth League was founded under his leadership, and they would quickly become the dominant faction in the ANC, surpassing the central leadership and building up the first generation of anti-apartheid freedom fighters - among them, Nelson Mandela.

The creation of Apartheid had huge impacts upon the ANC, with the Youth League being at the forefront, demanding a more radical policy against the government, which they successfully achieved, with the Programme of Action. The Programme of Action demanded mass civil disobedience, strikes, and deliberate defiance of the apartheid laws, which led in turn to the Defiance Campaign. The Campaign’s demands were not enacted, but it proved that radical action could work. The ANC, however, were beginning to fracture over the issue of whether or not the anti-apartheid struggle should adopt a multi-racial stance. Figures like Mandela wanted to begin official cooperation with the underground South African Communist Party, alongside other Indian, White and Coloured organisations that opposed apartheid and minority rule. They were able to successfully push for this goal, organising the Congress of the People in 1955, and forming an official alliance between anti-apartheid organisations, adopting the Freedom Charter stating their core principles and making it clear that the struggle against apartheid included all races.

Much of the ANC’s Youth League, however, felt betrayed by this policy, believing that it represented a step backward from the Programme of Action and that the Freedom Charter focused insufficiently on the Black majority. In addition to this, there was a strong dislike for the Communist Party among much of the Youth League, with the ANC and SACP being historical rivals and the ANC being a traditionally anti-communist organisation. In 1959, a major split in the party occurred due to this, with Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo leading a significant section of ANC cadres over to a new party - the PAC. The PAC’s programme stressed the idea of South Africa as a solely Black African nation, and took heavy inspiration from Pan-Asian rhetoric found within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, seeing common ground in the statement of “Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans”. In addition to this, the PAC firmly rejected communism in all forms, disavowing any cooperation with communist organisations and declaring that they had no interest in class struggle, only national liberation.

No single event better encapsulates the pervasive racial violence of South Africa than the Blesberg Massacre. In furtherance of Prime Minister Verwoerd's ambitious goals for the Homelands policy, in 1960, the HNP issued removal orders for Basotho, Swazi, and Tswana in South Africa. In a show of defiance, both the ANC and PAC organized major protests all across the country. While the South African Police unleashed violence to suppress many of these demonstrations, the township of Blesberg in the Orange Free State was the site of the most severe confrontation. Armed officers opened fire on the protesting crowds, killing dozens and injuring scores more. In the aftermath, Prime Minister Verwoerd brought down the full force of the state; Justice Minister B.J. Vorster invoked the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act, banning the ANC and PAC. Both organizations were scattered as the authorities hauled thousands of activists to prison. Patlako Leballo, secretary general of the PAC, fled to Azad Hind, leaving Robert Sobukwe to manage the now underground movement. Meanwhile, the ANC's leadership dispersed, with some hiding in Bechuanaland and others escaping to as far away as Ghana. Both groups have prepared a transition to armed struggle and have organized paramilitary wings, but without ready sources of weapons or a strategy to follow, both MK and Poqo have been able to accomplish little more than basic training for volunteers.