This study by Jamie Miller was developed from his University of Cambridge dissertation. Its aim is to investigate the debates and conflicts in which South Africa's ruling National Party (NP) engaged in their efforts to adapt to an evolving postcolonial world. To do so, Miller set out to place himself ‘in the shoes of South African policymakers, and understand the values, norms, historical experiences, and political imperatives that shaped their views of the world and informed the various programs they developed for the regime's survival’ (ix).
Miller succeeds admirably in this task. The result is a fascinating study of the policy of détente developed by John Vorster, the South African Prime Minister between 1966 and 1978. Vorster was determined to break out of the apartheid state's international isolation by reaching out to other African governments. He was confident that diplomacy could transform the hostility of other African nations to the apartheid state into acceptance, thereby securing apartheid's legitimacy. Success on that front would provide the NP with the time and space to bring its homeland policy for South Africa's black majority to fruition, which would then ensure the survival of the Afrikaner people. In making his case to African leaders, Vorster emphasised the anticolonial history of the Afrikaner, and argued that the Afrikaner volk was part of Africa, and not a European entity.
To win over those African leaders, as well as South Africa's black majority, Vorster realised that he had to smooth the rough edges of apartheid with tightly controlled domestic reforms. He took some petty measures in this direction, for example, by opening some parks and hotels to all races, and allowing the visiting New Zealand rugby team to include Maori players. But Vorster's policies exacerbated the already existing deep divisions in the NP between the verkramptes (narrow-minded) and the verligte (enlightened) groups. In 1969 a small number of ultra-conservatives broke away to form a new political party, the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP), but it was crushed in the 1970 election. However, the majority of verkramptes remained in the NP. The government was furthermore divided on Vorster's outreach to Africa between the ‘doves’ and ‘hawks’. The ‘doves’, concentrated in the Bureau for State Security and the Department of Foreign Affairs, fully supported Vorster's diplomacy. P. W. Botha, the short-tempered and vehemently anti-communist Minister of Defense and leader of the NP in the Cape Province, led the ‘hawks’. For him Vorster's détente policy signified appeasement to the communist threat that faced South Africa, and he was convinced that military force should be used to force southern African states to submit to South Africa's regional hegemony.
Diplomacy, combined with financial assistance, meant that Vorster initially achieved some success in meeting and forming ties with African leaders; he convinced Malawi's government to open an embassy in Pretoria. However, détente received a serious setback in 1975 when South Africa, at the insistence of Botha, became involved in the Angolan civil war, an intervention that undermined the claim that the apartheid state could coexist peacefully with black Africa. But what finally shattered the détente policy was the Soweto uprising of June 1976, which bolstered the perception that apartheid was a symbol of Africa's colonial past.
It is in explaining Vorster's failure to bring about much needed domestic reform that An African Volk is open to some criticism. Miller argues that Vorster was unable to free himself from the millstone of the right wing of the NP, which operated under the leadership of A. P. Treurnicht. It is clear that Vorster feared that his policies would foster the growth of the HNP, but the claim that Treurnicht was Vorster's bête noire is too simplistic. Leading verligte editors, such as Schalk Pienaar, Dirk Richard, and Wimpie de Klerk, in fact felt that Vorster's relationship with Treurnicht was too close. Vorster, who held a high opinion of the idealism, abilities, and leadership potential of Treurnicht, was also insecure and ultra-sensitive to criticism, which made him receptive to flattery. Treurnicht, with his considerable charm bordering on sycophancy, exploited this weakness ruthlessly. As a result, Vorster trusted him as a loyal ally, and protected him against verligte criticism, such as in 1976, when he confronted Wimpie de Klerk, the editor of the influential Die Transvaler newspaper, for daring to publicly attack Treurnicht's conservativism.Footnote 8 Ultimately it was not Treurnicht's influence but, as Miller points out, Vorster's inability to articulate a coherent reformist vision, and rally support on that basis, that stalled his reform initiative.
My misgivings about Miller's analysis of Treurnicht's relationship with Vorster is a minor point, and does not detract from the achievement of An African Volk as a significant and pathbreaking study of policymaking in South Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. Miller's new insights on the workings of the inner circles of the NP make this book obligatory reading for those scholars and students with any interest in the history of the apartheid state.
