Anthony Egan
COLONIAL SOUTH AFRICA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE RACIAL ORDER by Timothy Keegan= =20
(David Philip, R79,95)
WAS modern apartheid South Africa the product of the “mineral revolution” o= f g old and diamonds of the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Or do the roots= go
back even further into the Dutch and British colonial order?=20
Modern South African historical scholarship has debated this issue at lengt= h.=20
Dr Timothy Keegan of the Institute for Historical Research at the Universit= y o f the Western Cape has synthesised and criticised key themes in this new hi= sto
ry, coming up with a brilliant analytical and narrative argument for shifti= ng=20
the roots of apartheid back to the colonial period.
Anyone familiar with the dry-as-old-cowdung school history syllabus many of= us
endured will at first feel a little put off by some of the names,places an=
d e vents that Keegan describes. Remember Sir Harry Smith, Governor Somerset, = Dr=20
John Philip, the 1820 settlers, Great Trek, frontier wars ? They’re all her= e,=20
but they appear as never before in the classroom! Moreover, Keegan sets Sou= th=20
Africa wit hin the wider context of world history, showing how events and ideologies o= ver
seas affected local affairs – as one would expect in any outpost of a vast = col
onial empire.
Keegan’s point is that talk of the origins of the racial order is largely s= upe
rfluous; the notion of European/white supremacy was there from the start as= an
inherent ethnocentrism. As the players in South African history came into =
con
flict over the control of resources, various means were used to maintain c= olo
nial political and economic supremacy.=20
The Dutch instituted a hierarchy of legal status groups and the British mod= ern
ised, at times liberalising, them, in the interests of free enterprise and = fre
e trade. Humanitarian agents, like some (but definitely not all) missionari= es,
must be seen within this context – although they were opposed to overt opp=
res
sion of slaves, Khoikhoi , Sotho, Zulu and Xhosa peoples, their project was= la
rgely one=20 of assimilating colonised peoples into the colonial political economy, in t= he=20
interests of empire and capital. Cape liberalism, when in the ascendancy du= rin
g the mid- and late-19th century was an integral part of this process.
Likewise, he suggests, we should reread much of the history of conflict bet= wee
n “Bantu, Boer and Brit” (to use the language of earlier historians) in the= se=20
terms. Frontier wars – traditionally blamed on the Xhosa – can, on a more c= are
ful re-examination of sources, be seen as part of this colonising process, = del
iberate provocations on the part of the colonists.=20
Anti-British and illiberal views, a sense of “manifest destiny”,even the em= anc
ipation of slaves, can no longer be seen as causes of the Great Trek but be= com
e almost side issues; the real issues were ones of insecure land tenure and= th
e squeeze put on the Boer economy by the rapid growth of British commercial= en
terprise from the 1820s onwards.
Both Boer and Brit, then, were racial supremacists. Though Boer attitudes w= ere
perhaps more racist, they were also more likely to share land with indepen=
den
t African communities. The British, however, were more systematic and cynic= al:
they pursued maximum profit at minimal cost, often through indirect forms =
of=20
hegemony. It was their policies, Keegan suggests, that actually hardened hi= era
rchies of=20 race in a way that, one must conclude, formed the basis of the apartheid st= ate
.
To say that Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order is an= im
pressive work is understatement. It should without a doubt be a major sourc= e f or educators preparing a new curriculum for schools and universities. Unlik= e ( sadly) many books and learned articles of its kind, it is also very well-wr= itt
en and extremely readable.=20