Apartheid

=== 1948 Election ===
{{Main|South African general election, 1948}}[[File:DFMalanPortret.jpg|thumb|upright|[[D. F. Malan]], the first apartheid-era prime minister (1948{{ndash}}1954)]]

South Africa had allowed social custom and law to govern the consideration of multiracial affairs and of the allocation, in racial terms, of access to economic, social, and political status.<ref name="zastudy">{{cite book|last=Kaplan|first=Irving|title=Area Handbook for the Republic of South Africa|pages=1–86|url=http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED056947.pdf|access-date=25 March 2016|archive-date=28 April 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150428004403/http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED056947.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> Most white South Africans, regardless of their own differences, accepted the prevailing pattern.{{Citation needed|date=September 2020}} Nevertheless, by 1948 it remained apparent that there were gaps in the social structure, whether legislated or otherwise, concerning the rights and opportunities of nonwhites. The rapid economic development of [[World War II]] attracted black migrant workers in large numbers to chief industrial centres, where they compensated for the wartime shortage of white labour. However, this escalated rate of black urbanisation went unrecognised by the South African government, which failed to accommodate the influx with parallel expansion in housing or social services.<ref name="zastudy" /> Overcrowding, increasing crime rates, and disillusionment resulted; urban blacks came to support a new generation of leaders influenced by the principles of [[self-determination]] and popular freedoms enshrined in such statements as the [[Atlantic Charter]]. Black political organisations and leaders such as [[Alfred Xuma]], [[James Mpanza]], the [[African National Congress]], and the [[Council of Non-European Trade Unions]] began demanding political rights, land reform, and the right to unionise.{{Sfn|Clark|Worger|2016|p=37-38}}

Whites reacted negatively to the changes, allowing the [[Herenigde Nasionale Party]] (or simply the National Party) to convince a large segment of the [[voting bloc]] that the impotence of the United Party in curtailing the evolving position of nonwhites indicated that the organisation had fallen under the influence of Western liberals.<ref name="zastudy" /> Many [[Afrikaners]] resented what they perceived as disempowerment by an underpaid black workforce and the superior economic power and prosperity of white English speakers.<ref>P. Brits, ''Modern South Africa'': Afrikaner power, the politics of race, and resistance, 1902 to the 1970s (Pretoria, University of South Africa Press, 2007), p37</ref> Smuts, as a strong advocate of the [[United Nations]], lost domestic support when South Africa was criticised for its colour bar and the continued [[League of Nations mandate|mandate]] of [[South West Africa]] by other UN member states.<ref name="O'Meara">O'Meara, Dan. ''Forty Lost Years : The National Party and the Politics of the South African State'', 1948–1994. Athens: [[Ohio University Press]], 1996.</ref>

[[Afrikaner nationalism|Afrikaner nationalists]] proclaimed that they offered the voters a new policy to ensure continued white domination.<ref name="Meredith">M. Meredith, ''In the Name of Apartheid'', London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988, {{ISBN|978-0-06-430163-3}}</ref> This policy was initially expounded from a theory drafted by [[Hendrik Verwoerd]] and was presented to the National Party by the [[Sauer Commission]].<ref name="zastudy" /> It called for a systematic effort to organise the relations, rights, and privileges of the races as officially defined through a series of parliamentary acts and administrative decrees. Segregation had thus far been pursued only in major matters, such as separate schools, and local society rather than law had been depended upon to enforce most separation; it should now be extended to everything.<ref name="zastudy" /> The commission's goal was to completely remove blacks from areas designated for whites, including cities, with the exception of temporary migrant labour. Blacks would then be encouraged to create their own political units in land reserved for them.{{Sfn|Clark|Worger|2016|p=41-42}} The party gave this policy a name{{snds}}''apartheid''. Apartheid was to be the basic ideological and practical foundation of Afrikaner politics for the next quarter of a century.<ref name="Meredith" />

The National Party's election platform stressed that apartheid would preserve a market for white employment in which non-whites could not compete. On the issues of black urbanisation, the regulation of non-white labour, influx control, social security, farm tariffs and non-white taxation, the United Party's policy remained contradictory and confused.<ref name="O'Meara" /> Its traditional bases of support not only took mutually exclusive positions, but found themselves increasingly at odds with each other. Smuts' reluctance to consider [[Foreign relations of South Africa|South African foreign policy]] against the mounting tensions of the [[Cold War]] also stirred up discontent, while the nationalists promised to purge the state and public service of communist sympathisers.<ref name="O'Meara" />

First to desert the United Party were Afrikaner farmers, who wished to see a change in influx control due to problems with squatters, as well as higher prices for their maize and other produce in the face of the mineowners' demand for cheap food policies. Always identified with the affluent and capitalist, the party also failed to appeal to its working class constituents.<ref name="O'Meara" />

Populist rhetoric allowed the National Party to sweep eight constituencies in the mining and industrial centres of the [[Witwatersrand]] and five more in [[Pretoria]]. Barring the predominantly English-speaking landowner electorate of the [[Natal Province|Natal]], the United Party was defeated in almost every rural district. Its urban losses in the nation's most populous province, the [[Transvaal Province|Transvaal]], proved equally devastating.<ref name="O'Meara" /> As the [[Electoral system|voting system]] was [[Malapportionment|disproportionately weighted]] in favour of rural constituencies and the Transvaal in particular, the 1948 election catapulted the Herenigde Nasionale Party from a small minority party to a commanding position with an eight-vote parliamentary lead.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blSAApartheidFAQ.htm|publisher=about.com|title=Apartheid FAQ|access-date=25 March 2016|archive-date=13 May 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130513214652/http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/blSAApartheidFAQ.htm|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="sahistory-1948election">{{cite web |url=http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/SA-1948-1976/1948-election.htm |title=The 1948 election and the National Party Victory |access-date=13 July 2008 |publisher=South African History Online| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080816015132/http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/SA-1948-1976/1948-election.htm| archive-date= 16 August 2008 | url-status=live}}</ref> [[Daniel François Malan]] became the first nationalist prime minister, with the aim of implementing the apartheid philosophy and silencing liberal opposition.<ref name="zastudy" />

When the National Party came to power in 1948, there were factional differences in the party about the implementation of systemic racial segregation. The "[[baasskap]]" (white domination or supremacist) faction, which was the dominant faction in the NP, and state institutions, favoured systematic segregation, but also favoured the participation of black Africans in the economy with black labour controlled to advance the economic gains of Afrikaners. A second faction were the "purists", who believed in "vertical segregation", in which blacks and whites would be entirely separated, with blacks living in native reserves, with separate political and economic structures, which, they believed, would entail severe short-term pain, but would also lead to independence of white South Africa from black labour in the long term. A third faction, which included [[Hendrik Verwoerd]], sympathised with the purists, but allowed for the use of black labour, while implementing the purist goal of vertical separation.<ref name="Kuperus1999">{{cite book|author=T. Kuperus|title=State, Civil Society and Apartheid in South Africa: An Examination of Dutch Reformed Church-State Relations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UzuJDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA83|date=7 April 1999|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-0-230-37373-0|pages=83–|access-date=29 April 2018|archive-date=5 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200105163723/https://books.google.com/books?id=UzuJDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA83|url-status=live}}</ref> Verwoerd would refer to this policy as a policy of "good neighbourliness" as a means of justifying such segregation.<ref name="Indiana University Press">{{cite book |last1=Cole |first1=Catherine M. |title=Performing South Africa's Truth Commission: Stages of Transition |date=2010 |publisher=Indiana University Press |page=31 |isbn=9780253353900 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6wfjROt3sLEC |access-date=20 June 2021 |archive-date=24 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624204518/https://books.google.com/books?id=6wfjROt3sLEC |url-status=live }}</ref>