Theology Today - Vol 44, No.1 - April 1987 - BOOK REVIEW - The Political Mythology of Apartheid

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The Political Mythology of Apartheid

By Leonard Thompson

New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985. 293 Pp. $25.00 ($10.95 Paper).

The heart of this book is a well-documented, absorbing account of the historical, scientific, and religious myths that underlie racial apartheid as practiced and believed by the Afrikaner population of South Africa, and of the breakdown of these myths under social pressure today. It is a study not of South African history as such, but of the beliefs that have motivated the Afrikaners in their search for, and grounding of, their existence as a people. Surrounding this account, however, is a fascinating set of questions with more general import. What is historical truth, and how is it related to structures of meaning that impose an interpretive pattern on the facts? How important are myths-or the breakdown of them-in determining the events of history? These are the problems with which the study begins and ends.

The picture the author gives of Boer-Afrikaner society is realistic; it is neither demonic nor particularly attractive. With dispassionate objectivity, he describes a people imbued from the beginning with attitudes of racial superiority common to white people of the time, modified only by the practical need to negotiate or work with black Africans when one could not dominate and use them. He shows a pioneer society, with its outlaws and its respectable burghers, concerned with settling the land, not very religious, though with roots in their Reformed tradition and churches. He then shows how myths arose among these people as they consolidated their power and developed their society and their educa-

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tional system: myths about historical events by which they defined themselves over against the British and the black peoples, scientific myths about racial identity, and religious myths about their piety and their covenant with God. Carefully, he dismantles the claims of the historical myths, most notably that of the Voortrekkers' covenant in 1838 before the Battle of Blood River against the Zulu nation. Then he examines historically how confidence in them and in the scientific and religious myths has broken down in the crossfire of modern scholarship and modern conscience. He leaves us with the picture of an Afrikaner people beleaguered in the crumbling fortress of their self-image, holding on stubbornly to old fragments or groping for a new vision of the meaning of their existence.

What difference does this situation make? Will a nation weaken and die when its myths are undermined? Can it be led to broaden and deepen its vision by the purge of historical scholarship to the point where ethnic identity gives way to an inclusive, multiracial, sense of peoplehood? What is at work here? Is it the economic self-interest of a white ruling class, which will throw up a superstructure of self-justifying pseudohistory, pseudo-science, and pseudo-Christianity as needed? This would be a Marxist's interpretation. Is it an idolatry of ethnic culture and racial self-identity that will die in its own Masada rather than surrender? Is it the desperation of a fearful people who cling to illusions because there seems to be no future in compromising with reality? Is it perhaps an insulated culture only slowly becoming aware of its precarious position? Thompson raises some of these questions, but he does not deal with them. He leaves them for us to ponder.

He also leaves us to ponder the role of a historian. This breed of scholar must be, he says, a technical analyst of evidence out of the past to determine what actually happened. On the other hand, the reason for choosing a subject, and the context, historical and contemporary, of meaning within which the fruits of investigation are placed, are choices the historian makes on other grounds, from within a context of values or allegiances to which he or she adheres. In this sense, historians are and should be "mythmakers," commending historical facts for their meaning and relevance.

To an extent, the author does in his investigation. At times, one wishes he would do it more. A sound sense of moral distaste pervades his treatment of the Afrikaner myths; one wishes that he had done more to bring out, even to identify with, the moral dynamic among Afrikaners themselves with its doubts, its self-criticism, and its interaction with the conscience of other groups both black and white. He treats the Christian faith of the Afrikaners as a determinative element in their mythology and notes the recent church protests against that mythology. A real empathy with the struggle of Christian conscience across all races including the Afrikaner, and with the theological perspectives underlying it, would have deepened his historical insight. But perhaps this is to

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ask that he become a South African historian, rather than a historian of South Africa. As an American study, it is an excellent book.

CHARLES C. WEST

Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey