Race and Racism. A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

holds: there has been a growing convergence of interest in the benefits of industrialization and increasing wealth among all sections of the population, particularly the whites; and, in fact, it is this which gives meaning to the increasing ideological emphasis on apartheid. As van den Bergh shows so clearly, there is nothing new in the fact of apartheid in South African society, though a few details of its application may affect some African or Asian city dwellers far more severely than ever before. What is relatively new is the politically directed effort to prevent the breakdown of racial segregation by imposing added obstacles to it in occupational and many other social spheres. The historical analysis of the foundation of the Cape Colony and the later establishment of the Boer Republics is concisely and brilliantly presented, but it does suffer from a total absence of sympathetic understanding of the ideas, values and aspirations of the Afrikaner people. It is true that from the very beginnings of their pastoral expansion in the Cape Colony they tended to treat the Bantu peoples either as children or as human obstacles to be eliminated. But this was