B.J. Vorster

B.J. Vorster

Balthazar Johannes (John) Vorster was South African prime minister from 1966 to 1978. He is perhaps best known for having legislated into power some of apartheid’s most discriminatory and racial policies. Born on December 13, 1915, in Uitenhage, Eastern Cape, John Vorster was the 13th child of a wealthy sheep farmer.

After receiving his primary and secondary education in the Eastern Cape, he went on to receive his bachelor of law degree from Stellenbosch University and set up a law practice in Port Elizabeth in the late 1930s. With the onset of World War II, he ardently opposed South Africa’s involvement in support of the Allies by becoming a member of the pro-Nazi Ossewa-Brandwag. His support of the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler landed Vorster in jail during much of World War II.

However, this did little to deter his radical ideology, and he maintained that the dictatorial regime in Germany at the time was a more productive and suitable model for South African governance than the parliamentary system already in place. When Vorster was released from jail in 1944, his right-wing political and social views led him to join the growing South African National Party.


Vorster worked his way up the ranks of the party cadre, and in 1953 he was elected to parliament in Cape Town as a National Party representative. After one session in parliament he was appointed deputy minister of education in 1958; he rigidly enforced apartheid’s Bantu education policies.

Under Prime Minister Verwoerd he became minister of justice in 1961. During this time, the government sent South African Defense Force soldiers to support Ian Smith’s white regime in Rhodesia, with the popular support of most of white South Africa.

Vorster succeeded Prime Minister Verwoerd unopposed after Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966. His brief and uneventful time as a cabinet minister under Verwoerd meant that he knew little about the workings of departments other than his own.

He knew little about the African population and the inner workings of the huge departments that governed their lives. However, during the year he came to succeed Verwoerd, Vorster combined the Justice portfolio with that of Police and Prisons, strengthening the power of the department and the South African Police Service.

Although Vorster continued with the basic tenets of separate development policies, he alienated extremist factions of the National Party early in his prime ministership by pursuing diplomatic relations with African countries and by agreeing to let black African diplomats live in white areas. However, Vorster’s tenure as prime minister was marked mainly by an increase in racial discrimination and violence in all of South Africa, including an increase in detention without trial.

Although Vorster’s government is mainly known for streamlining and harshly enforcing apartheid’s policies, his foreign policy initiatives are generally viewed as moderate and conciliatory.

He began by unofficially supporting Rhodesia, which at the time was struggling to gain independence from British rule under prime minister Ian Smith. Although publicly he espoused the white public opinion in South Africa, he did not wish to alienate potential political allies such as the United States by extending diplomatic recognition to Rhodesia.

He exerted his pressure as a hegemon in the region by persuading Smith to negotiate with Mozambique during the regional civil war that was ongoing in southern Africa. Vorster began cutting off vital supplies to Smith and even went so far as to refuse calls made by the Rhodesian prime minister. International pressure continued to squeeze South Africa for the remainder of apartheid.

Vorster, in an attempt to regain South African public approval, invaded Angola in the 1970s in order to protect South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) against rebel attempts by Angola to invade the country for diamonds. Continuing his conciliatory initiatives in September 1974, Vorster announced in Cape Town his famous Détente with Africa policy. Despite regional efforts in Angola at the time, Vorster promised cooperation with the leaders of neighboring black African nations.

The negotiations over Rhodesia and attempts to make peace with black Africa were predicated on the hopes that such maneuvers would postpone Vorster’s day of reckoning in South Africa. His hope was that emerging Zimbabwean and Mozambican states would feel indebted to South Africa for its role in liberating these countries.

The 1970s were a turbulent time for Vorster. He harshly suppressed the Soweto uprising in 1976, which would draw more international pressure in the form of economic and social sanctions. He granted independence to the Transkei in 1976 and Bophuthatswana in 1977 in accordance with apartheid’s separate development policies, although economic development within them would stagnate.

He maintained the view that Africans could exercise political rights only in their homelands regardless of where they actually lived. On September 12, 1977, Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness leader, died in horrifying circumstances while in police custody. Vorster’s response was personally to ban 18 organizations. This step helped him to an overwhelming victory in the general election of November 1977.

However, Vorster did take the first, unconscious steps toward a more equal South Africa. Vorster’s minister of sport and recreation, Dr. Piet Koornhof, managed to secure some limited desegregation of sport by invoking the fiction of multinationalism: Each national group had to play sport separately, but they might play against each other in multinational events.

Similarly higher-class hotels and restaurants might acquire multinational status and thereby admit people of all races. An elaborate system of permits for mixed gatherings, events, and venues was initiated. Vorster saw many apartheid policies as unnecessary and began the slow process of weeding them out.

In the late 1970s Vorster was implicated in what became known as Muldergate (so named after Dr. Connie Mulder, the information cabinet minister at the center of the scandal). Although Vorster was certainly a victim of the scandal, in a sense the scandal arose from circumstances that he himself had perpetrated.

Vorster was implicated in the use of a slush fund to buy the loyalty of The Citizen, the only major English-language newspaper favorable to the National Party. The official investigation concluded that Vorster, in conjunction with the head of the South African Police Services, General H. J. van den Bergh, had not only conspired to manipulate The Citizen but also to buy the U.S.-based Washington Star.

It was discovered that in 1973 Vorster had agreed to Mulder’s plan to shift about 64 million rands from the defense budget for a series of propaganda campaigns. In what became a National Party embarrassment, a commission of inquiry finally concluded in 1979 that Vorster had been aware of the fund and had tolerated it. After the scandal, Vorster retired from the position of prime minister in 1978. Vorster died in Cape Town in 1983.

Namibia

Namibia Flag

Namibia spent much of the 20th century under colonial rule. As South West Africa, it was a possession of Germany. From 1904 to 1906 the Namibians rose against their German rulers. The rebellion was crushed, and most of the indigenous people were stripped of their land.

On July 19, 1915, the last German troops surrendered to the South African expeditionary corps at Khorab, and the South African military occupation of Namibia began. Namibia was seen as a valuable asset to whoever controlled it because of its mineral wealth and agricultural potential.

On December 17, 1920, South Africa received official approval from the League of Nations to rule Namibia under a “C” mandate. This type of mandate was designated for former German territories that were not considered to be likely to pass into independence in the foreseeable future. It led to decades of tension.

Although the South Africans publicly claimed that the mandate should be viewed as a position of great trust and honor, in practice it offered profits and advantages to South African nationals. For all essential purposes, Namibia had been annexed to South Africa, with the interests of Namibians subordinate to those of whites.


The South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), a Marxist guerrilla group founded in 1960, began fighting for Namibia’s independence in 1966. In 1966 the United Nations (UN) passed Resolution 2145, which revoked South Africa’s mandate and changed the country’s name to Namibia.

The UN brokered a peace agreement in 1977 in which South Africa accepted UN control over Namibia. Only in 1988, however, did South Africa agree to withdraw from Namibia. The new government held UN-supervised elections in 1989, which SWAPO won decisively.

Sam Nujomo, one of the leaders of the independence movement, became Namibia’s first president. After independence, the government pursued a policy of compromise with opposition groups and worked to address racial inequalities.

Map of Namibia

There is an extreme disparity between the income levels of blacks and whites. However, the living standards of blacks have been steadily improving, and the major economic resources in the country are no longer controlled exclusively by whites.

The country’s modern market sector produces most of its wealth, while a traditional subsistence agricultural sector supports most of its labor force. The principal exports are diamonds, copper, uranium, gold, lead, cattle, and fish. Ranching is still controlled largely by white citizens and foreign interests.

In other industries—notably mining, fishing, and tourism—the participation of indigenous entrepreneurs has been increased to provide economic opportunities for blacks. The unemployment rate of nearly 40 percent in 2000 primarily affected the black majority.

Namibia struggled to bring equality to its indigenous population. Racially, in 2005, black Africans made up 87.5 percent of the population, with white Africans numbering 6 percent and people of mixed race making up 6.5 percent.

By law, all indigenous groups participate equally in decisions affecting their lands, cultures, traditions, and allocations of natural resources. However, Namibia’s indigenous citizens were unable to fully exercise these rights as a result of minimal access to education, limited economic opportunities under colonial rule, and their relative isolation.

Virtually all of the country’s minorities are represented in Parliament, in senior positions in the cabinet, and at other levels of government. The San, also known as Bushmen, are particularly disadvantaged. The government took numerous measures to end societal discrimination against the San. However, many San children do not attend school, making advancement difficult.

The future of Namibia remained in doubt at the start of the 21st century. The spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) held the possibility of devastating the country. Over 20 percent of Namibian adults were infected with HIV.

Additionally the presence of numerous refugees from nearby war-torn nations held the potential to drag down the economy and involve Namibians in cross-border conflicts. Desertification, land degradation, and wildlife poaching were likely to remain issues of concern in the foreseeable future.

Nelson Mandela - South African Leader

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was considered by many to be the most respected world leader alive in the early 21st century. During the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, he remained unembittered by a regime that offered him only indignity and poverty.

His story cannot be separated from that of his family, colleagues, and supporters in the African National Congress (ANC) and a wider coalition of liberation groups in South Africa. In his fight for the right to live an ordinary life, Mandela gave up career and family, lived the life of an outlaw, and endured 27 years of imprisonment.

Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, the eldest child of his father’s third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, in the village of Mvezo, Umtata, the capital of the Transkei, in the southeast of South Africa, and was called Rolihlahla. He was given the name Nelson Mandela at age seven when he attended a mission school, the first member of his family to do so.

Madiba, as ANC leaders call him affectionately, is his clan name. Following his father’s defiance of a local magistrate, the family lost their inheritance and moved to Qunu, a large village north of Mvezo, where Mandela enjoyed an idyllic childhood as a herd boy.


When he was nine, his father died and he was sent to the house of Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, the acting regent of the Thembu people, who raised him to become an adviser to the Thembu royal house.

Through education Mandela gradually developed a tribal and national identity. Tribal elders expected him to learn by observation and passed down Xhosa history and culture to him. He witnessed the free speech and consensus decision-making of the men of the Thembu court, and also learned about British and Dutch imperialism.

At 16, he was circumcised, a traditional site of passage into manhood. Following his mother he became Christian, was baptized into the Methodist Church, and enrolled in a number of mission schools. At the Clarkebury Boarding Institute, Mandela reveled in sports and learned that ability was more important than lineage.

He then attended Healdtown, the Wesleyan College at Fort Beaufort, 175 miles southwest of Umtata, the largest liberal arts school for Africans south of the equator, and was appointed prefect. His education made him both an Anglophile and an African, as he came to admire British manners, to meet people from other tribes, and to think independently.

At 21, Mandela entered University College, Fort Hare, the only institution for higher education for blacks in South Africa. He studied law and joined the Student Christian Association, where he met Oliver Tambo. Mandela started a B.A., but did not complete it until 1943 because he disagreed with the principal about the voting system for the Student Representative Council.

At 23, to escape an arranged marriage, Mandela ran away to Johannesburg, where he lived on a meager wage and studied at night to complete his degree at the University of South Africa. Mandela was so poor that he went without food, wore patched clothes, and walked six miles to and from work to save the bus fare.

Although the partners at the law firm discouraged politics, Walter Sisulu and Gaur Radebe—a fellow articled clerk—believed that politics was the only long-term solution to the duduk perkara of race relations in South Africa. In the 1950s Mandela opened the first firm of black African lawyers with Oliver Tambo.

Mandela joined the ANC in 1943 and helped transform it from a deferential nongovernmental organization to a mass movement. Founded in 1912, the ANC was the oldest African organization in South Africa and advocated multiracialism.

By the 1940s, however, the ANC was more concerned with maintaining the privilege of elite black South Africans. Mandela enrolled in the law agenda at the University of Witswaterand, where he met white and Indian students his own age who would also become leaders in the struggle.

The ANC formed a Youth League on Easter Sunday 1944, and adopted its anjuran for boycotts, strikes, and protest demonstrations. The Youth League had been inspired by Indian demonstrations in 1946 in response to laws restricting their movement and their right to buy property.

The National Party won national elections in 1948 and passed the Group Areas Act in 1950. Apartheid, or the separation of black and white into urban areas on the basis of white superiority, became law. On Freedom Day, May 1, 1948, two-thirds of African workers stayed at home, and the government banned meetings by anti-apartheid activists. A coalition of groups organized a National Day of Protest (NDP) on June 26, 1950.

The Defiance Campaign, in which 8,500 volunteers defied laws and went to jail on the anniversary of the NDP in 1952, was Mandela’s apprenticeship as a freedom fighter. Mandela believed that the form of resistance was determined by the enemy, and that nonviolent resistance was a tactic rather than a principle.

He traveled the country explaining the campaign and training volunteers to respond to police nonviolently. The government began to ban people, which was like informal imprisonment, and to conduct arrests and raids of the homes and offices of people linked to nongovernmental organizations.

The government increased repression with the Sophiatown evictions in 1953, the Bantu Education Act of 1955—which transferred control of education to the Native Affairs Department—and the massacre of 69 peaceful protesters at Sharpeville in 1960.

Oliver Tambo left the country and formed the external wing of the ANC. Mandela was arrested for treason in 1956, and when the trial ended in 1961, the government began to appoint its own judges, to use torture in prison, and— starting at the end of 1963—to harass and imprison wives of freedom fighters, including Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela, whom Mandela had married in 1958.

For the next two years Mandela went underground and became an outlaw, disguising himself as a chauffeur, chef, or garden boy. By 1962 the ANC had established a military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which adopted a policy of sabotage of infrastructure.

Mandela studied guerrilla warfare and surveyed the country’s industrial areas, transport system, and communications network. He attended the Pan African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa in Addis Ababa, and organized financial support for the MK.

The government passed the Sabotage Act, which allowed house arrests that were not subject to challenge in court, restricted the printing of the words of banned people, and passed the Ninety-Day Detention Law, which allowed detention without charge.

On his return to South Africa Mandela was arrested and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. He defended himself against the charges of inciting the country to strike and leaving the country without travel documents.

Standing in the courtroom in his kaross, or traditional clothing, he put the state on trail, arguing that in a state where there was no justice without representation, he had no option but to follow his conscience in defiance of the law.

In late May 1963 Mandela was transferred to Robben Island, to the north of Cape Town. He knew about the island from childhood stories of Xhosa warriors who had been banished there.

Nine months into his sentence the police discovered Rivonia, the house from which the ANC had operated underground; they arrested the commanders of the MK and charged them with sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government. Realizing they could face the death penalty, the accused defended themselves on adab grounds.

Mandela rejected the allegation that he was a communist and admitted his African nationalism and support for British parliamentary democracy. The MK, seeking to respond to increased Afrikaner repression and growing African restlessness, had adopted a policy of sabotage to prevent civil war and to provide the best conditions for future relations.

Prison Life

Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment; he would be imprisoned for 27 years. By 1962 Robben Island had become the toughest correctional facility in South Africa. Prisoners were classified into four groups according to political opinion and the extent to which they were prepared to adopt servile behavior.

The prisoners could write and receive only one letter of 500 words every six months to or from their immediate families, defined according to Western culture. Prisoners were not permitted to touch their relatives or to speak in their native language.

They were given insufficient clothing, bedding, and food. In 1979, after 15 years of protests, African, Indian, and mixed-race prisoners received the same food as white prisoners, including fresh vegetables and meat.

Mandela considered the struggle in prison a microcosm of the struggle in the country. He refused to be robbed of his dignity, to show emotion, or to despair. He fought for reforms such as better food, study privileges, and dismissal of officers, communicating his complaints during the visits of dignitaries such as the Red Cross, three justices of the Supreme Court, and Mrs. Helen Suzman, the only member of the Liberal Progressive Party in the parliament and the sole parliamentary opposition to apartheid.

Mandela’s first protest was against short trousers. He refused a pair of long trousers until all prisoners were given them in 1965. He endured 13 years of hard labor in the limestone quarry until it was abolished in 1977.

It took three years to convince the authorities that prisoners needed sunglasses, and when they were given them, the prisoners had to pay for these glasses themselves. Sunday services with a sympathetic preacher, books, games, tournaments, plays, concerts, and gardening provided some relief.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Mandela sought to bring the government and the ANC to the point of talks. In March 1982 Mandela was transferred off Robben Island, and in 1988 he was relocated to a cottage within Victor Verster prison, in the town of Paarl, northeast of Cape Town.

South African president F. W. de Klerk began to dismantle apartheid. He seemed prepared to negotiate with Mandela, but often sought to secure his own power through the guise of equality.

On February 3, 1990, Mandela was released and greeted by a great crowd in Cape Town. He challenged the people to bring the government to the negotiating table. After his release Mandela knew that his dream of a simple family life would again be sacrificed as he worked for a new South Africa. (His first marriage, to Evelyn, had ended in 1955 when she became more interested in the Jehovah’s Witnesses than in politics.)

In 1992 Mandela and Winnie separated. Democratic elections were held in 1994. Mandela was elected president for a five-year term and immediately embarked upon an ambitious agenda of reconstruction, which remained the struggle for South Africans into the 21st century.