The Meaning of Apartheid before 1948

In 1948, an alliance of Afrikaner nationalist groupings, rallying together under the shared ideological slogan of ‘apartheid’, brought the Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP) into power in South Africa. What was it about the notion of apartheid that won the support of Afrikaners from businessmen, farmers and workers, to teachers, academics, lawyers and journalists? ¹ Several studies of apartheid ² attribute the power and appeal of the term to the fact that it accommodated the distinct interests of each member of the Afrikaner nationalist alliance within a single policy blueprint. The substance of this blueprint, it is argued, was outlined in the Sauer Report commissioned by the HNP to develop wide-ranging solutions to the country’s ‘colour problems’. Moreover, this Report equipped the newly elected Nationalist government with the ‘grand plan’ which informed the substance of apartheid policies from 1948 onwards. ³