Introduction
Introducing a weekly serial – A Short History of the National Democratic Movement in South Africa
Welcome. Starting today I’m serializing my book “A Short History of the National Democratic Movement in South Africa”, here on Substack. We begin with the Introduction. If you’d like the story delivered to your inbox each week, subscribe below.
Introduction
South Africans are good at democracy. Elections are on time, every time. People line up on the appointed day, wait patiently, vote – and get on with their lives. The results have never been challenged. As Pierre Cronje (one of the founders of the National Democratic Movement) says, “it is such an elegant solution to the problem of choosing leaders – you put your mark on a piece of paper and go home.” If White men had extended the franchise to everyone in 1910, we would have found out that we are good at democracy a lot sooner than we did. That doesn’t mean that we choose well. But then, that’s the point of a democracy: every five years (or so) you can “throw the bums out.”
The title of this book is accurate but could be misleading. So it’s important to say what the book is not about: it is not a history of the process that took South Africa from a country governed by European settlers and their descendants to a non-racial democracy. Instead, it’s a short history of a movement: the National Democratic Movement (English) or Nasionale Demokratiese Beweging (Afrikaans); and the role that it played in South Africa’s transformation. A lot has been written about this period by others. This book fills in the NDM part of the story.
The NDM was founded by Wynand Malan and some dissident White politicians in 1987. Malan had been a member of parliament for the governing National Party. In 1987, he and a group of high-profile NP supporters broke away to contest the White elections as independents on an anti-apartheid platform. They achieved stunning results in an environment which had become very difficult for White anti-apartheid parties. Later that year they were joined by Progressive Federal Party dissidents Peter Gastrow, Pierre Cronje, and Pieter Schoeman. The two sets of defections – from the governing NP and the liberal PFP – tell you something about the political logjam that South Africa was in at the time.
This is their story. To set the scene, I’ve started in 1910. I’ve ended in 1990 with de Klerk’s speech. Some might say – why 1910? Read on. Others might say “but a lot happened after 1990.” Read on.
Now – some notes about the approach I’ve adopted for the book.
First, this is not an academic book in the manner of footnotes and references for every statement. I wanted to keep the book short and readable. But it is well researched. There are sources for everything. Click on the link and you’ll find them. When I researched the book, I discovered that there are many minor variations in authoritative sources around specific dates (for events, for instance); or numbers of people killed. You might therefore find dates and numbers that differ from mine. But you’ll find that the variations are small.
Second, I tried to keep it short by focusing on the content that I thought the reader should know. This means that the book does not dive into the details of every aspect of South Africa’s history. Important events are untold, for instance, the 1914 Afrikaner rebellion. Also missing is the story of simmering Afrikaner resentment against the British. At its core, the National Party was anti-British. You can see this from how it emerged as a result of breakaways during the World Wars and the Great Depression.
Third, names and terminology: I’ve adopted a convention of calling people and groups what they called themselves at the time. This is why the descriptor “non-European” appears in the early chapters. In fact, in one of the African National Congress’s early meetings, a member proposed that the organization should switch from the terms “European” and “non-European” to “African” and “non-African.” The ANC didn’t consider it seriously at the time.
Fourth, the term “Black territories”. At the heart of South Africa’s apartheid policies was the attempt to restrict Black land ownership to a small part of South Africa. The National Party called these “homelands”. It was a euphemism designed to make the policy sound acceptable. The ANC called them “Bantustans”. It was a pejorative name aimed at denigrating them. I’ve decided to use the words “Black territories.”
Fifth, acronyms! There’s the African National Congress (ANC), the National Party (NP), the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU), the Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party (GNP), the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP), the Progressive Reform Party (PRP) – and on and on. There are a great many names because organizations kept appearing and disappearing and renaming themselves. The use of acronyms to shorten the text made the text very difficult to follow. But writing out the names in full made the text slow and clumsy. So I’ve adopted the editorially inconsistent practice of sometimes writing a name in full; and sometimes using the acronym.
Sixth, I’ve made substantial use of quotes from source documents. This is a) because it ensures accuracy when representing a person or organization; b) because I need them for commentary; and c) because nothing captures what people were thinking better than the words they actually used. For the sake of brevity, I’ve sometimes shortened the quotes by cutting out words that weren’t needed. I haven’t used the convention of “…” to flag this every time because it breaks the flow. But the meaning of the originals is faithfully rendered.
When it comes to sources, I would like to thank the University of Cape Town Library Special Collections for permission to use extracts from Bloom’s “Notes of a meeting held at Mfuwe Game Lodge.” And a big thank you to the African National Congress and the Nelson Mandela Foundation for permission to quote from documents in their archives - in particular, Michael Young’s notes on the secret meetings between Thabo Mbeki and Willie Esterhuyse; the ANC’s archival documents in Karis (1972) and Gerhart and Glaser (2010); and the O’Malley interviews.
Finally, some stylistic notes: I’ve adopted a mix of British and Canadian spelling based on whichever felt right to my eye. It’s eccentric, but that’s the way it is. With respect to quotation marks, I’ve adopted United States conventions - it’s where I publish most these days. The bold text is mine, including the bold in quoted sources.
Some may feel that the book ends abruptly. That’s because de Klerk’s speech brought fundamental changes to what each of us in the NDM was doing. We stayed socially and politically involved in different ways. I have allowed myself some final comments in an “Epilogue.”
Next week: 1910: South Africa sets off in the wrong direction