ABSTRACT
In protecting apartheid from attack from outside the South African government not only prolonged colonialism for its neighbours but, mainly in the 1980s, gave the colonial experience an unparalleled destructive edge. During the next three decades South Africa mounted a rearguard action to protect apartheid against the mounting tide of black nationalism. The period 1960-90 added an unwanted chapter to the colonial experience of southern Africa as the minority government of South Africa sought to protect the apartheid state. The High Commission Territories were vital to the design of 'grand apartheid' as set out in its blueprint, the Tomlinson Commission Report of 1955. But by 1959 Britain, influenced by the accession of Malan's nationalists to power in South Africa in 1948 and the controversial and much-publicized rise of apartheid through the 1950s, had determined that the territories should not be transferred to South Africa.
