Board of Trustees, Boston University

The Political Mythology of Apartheid by Leonard ThompsonReview by: Bill FreundThe International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1986), pp. 367-369Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/219434 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 367 BOOK REVIEWS 367

At the same time, Forkl's definitions, which grow from the questionable distinctions drawn decades ago by Ankermann, Baumann, and Frobenius between "neosudanic" and "palaeonigritic" societies, make too many decisions for him. He accepts a rigid classification of strong and weak groups, actors and reactors, from which he only breaks away to make the "palaeonigritic" Jukun confederation a source of independent cultural diffusion. The resulting conclusion - that the origin of states is not limited to the civilizations of the desert edge - is too weak to bear the burden of Forkl's massive and undirected data.

His sources (well over eight hundred of them) are, not surpris- ingly, of very mixed quality. They cover almost everyone who ever had a published word to say about the Lake Chad basin and the middle Benue, and Forkl's bibliography will save others a great deal of library searching (unless they want to know about the influential Fulani states, which are missing entirely). The sources as Forkl uses them, however, provide little sense of the change or timing he needs. Cultural traits move in the vacuum of the anthropological present across the Central Sudan. They also move only from large to small societies, and, although this may have been generally true, Forkl nonetheless accepts too readily the major-state bias of most of his sources. He is too willing to believe the Sudanic empires were the monoliths they wished to be, and he ignores diversity with- in them. Enormous assumptions - about, for example, class systems in large states - are freely interspersed with detailed examinations of throwing knives and funeral urns. The sources will not allow a com- prehensive look at any single cultural element in every society south of Lake Chad, and Forkl is thus forever giving only parts of the whole. These parts never add up to enough evidence for the wide comparisons he must make. They lead instead to oversimplifications.

Forkl has no real analytical aim here. No hypothesis holds the book together. It remains a massive catalogue of cultural bits and pieces, useful perhaps as handy raw material, but unlikely in its present form to add to the debate Forkl hopes to engage on borrowing and the development of states.

STEPHEN MORRISSEY Boston, Massachusetts

THE POLITICAL MYTHOLOGY OF APARTHEID. By Leonard Thompson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985. Pp. xi, 293. $22.50.

Leonard Thompson came of age as a South African historian at a time when Afrikaner nationalism was experiencing its greatest triumphs and when its claims to hegemony in South African national culture were most overbearing. For a liberal outsider, the structure of symbols and interpretations that propped up Afrikaner nationalist historiography was as frustrating as the regime it supported. In 1962 Thompson published an important article on Afrikaner histori- ography, one of the first South African contributions to the new

At the same time, Forkl's definitions, which grow from the questionable distinctions drawn decades ago by Ankermann, Baumann, and Frobenius between "neosudanic" and "palaeonigritic" societies, make too many decisions for him. He accepts a rigid classification of strong and weak groups, actors and reactors, from which he only breaks away to make the "palaeonigritic" Jukun confederation a source of independent cultural diffusion. The resulting conclusion - that the origin of states is not limited to the civilizations of the desert edge - is too weak to bear the burden of Forkl's massive and undirected data.

His sources (well over eight hundred of them) are, not surpris- ingly, of very mixed quality. They cover almost everyone who ever had a published word to say about the Lake Chad basin and the middle Benue, and Forkl's bibliography will save others a great deal of library searching (unless they want to know about the influential Fulani states, which are missing entirely). The sources as Forkl uses them, however, provide little sense of the change or timing he needs. Cultural traits move in the vacuum of the anthropological present across the Central Sudan. They also move only from large to small societies, and, although this may have been generally true, Forkl nonetheless accepts too readily the major-state bias of most of his sources. He is too willing to believe the Sudanic empires were the monoliths they wished to be, and he ignores diversity with- in them. Enormous assumptions - about, for example, class systems in large states - are freely interspersed with detailed examinations of throwing knives and funeral urns. The sources will not allow a com- prehensive look at any single cultural element in every society south of Lake Chad, and Forkl is thus forever giving only parts of the whole. These parts never add up to enough evidence for the wide comparisons he must make. They lead instead to oversimplifications.

Forkl has no real analytical aim here. No hypothesis holds the book together. It remains a massive catalogue of cultural bits and pieces, useful perhaps as handy raw material, but unlikely in its present form to add to the debate Forkl hopes to engage on borrowing and the development of states.

STEPHEN MORRISSEY Boston, Massachusetts

THE POLITICAL MYTHOLOGY OF APARTHEID. By Leonard Thompson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985. Pp. xi, 293. $22.50.

Leonard Thompson came of age as a South African historian at a time when Afrikaner nationalism was experiencing its greatest triumphs and when its claims to hegemony in South African national culture were most overbearing. For a liberal outsider, the structure of symbols and interpretations that propped up Afrikaner nationalist historiography was as frustrating as the regime it supported. In 1962 Thompson published an important article on Afrikaner histori- ography, one of the first South African contributions to the new

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.92 on Fri, 9 May 2014 09:49:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

368 BOOK REVIEWS

Journal of African Histopy. After twenty years he now returns to his theme in this book, which forms a set of related essays.

The greatest strength of Thompson's work has always been his

lucidity and his commitment to rational discourse, which helped him

convincingly to pioneer the entry of the African as a major histor- ical subject in South African scholarship. In this book, historians will enjoy his patient pursuit of the actual historical circumstances behind three chapters in the Afrikaner myth-making saga: the question of who came to South Africa first, black or white; the Slagtersnek rebellion of 1815; and the origins of the oath of the covenant, supposedly taken after the Boer victory at the battle of Blood River in 1838. It is equally interesting to see these set against informa- tive discussions on the progress of the Afrikaner nationalist inter- pretation of these subjects in South African schools.

These events, albeit in different proportions, mix up two com- ponent themes - mobilization and racism - according to Thompson. It is important to stress that the latter was hardly unique to the Afrikaners. On the whole, as examples from this book demonstrate, it was often articulate outsiders who formulated racially exclusive definitions as a means of determining Afrikaner and South African history, determinations by no means so rigid in actual popular life. There is a historical moment, between the 1940s and 1960s, when an uncompromising use of racial categories was still standard in Afrikaner nationalist writing while gradually falling out of favor elsewhere, but is unclear from Thompson's book how much weight that coincidence should really be given. Rational discourse does not gain from re-mythologizing the Afrikaner viewpoint as especially atavis- tic, arcane or lurid. The mobilization theme unites Afrikaner nationalism very well of course, with a multitude of other contemp- orary nationalisms, and the spread of mass literacy and schooling has encouraged elites everywhere to make use of parallel historical material in forging this kind of mental structure on hopefully re- ceptive populations.

In his introductory chapter, Thompson seems to be undecided as to how to treat the question of political mythology. He clearly relishes the role of rational critic and debunker. Yet he feels historians must involve themselves in the process of "describing exemplary events powerfully" and thus they become mythmakers. More- over, he perceives myth as an ineluctable and psychologically es- sential human cultural feature which rationality will not actually overcome. There are a number of hard questions which follow from this that are only suggested by the discourse of this volume: How are myths finally determined and can their use be easily manipu- lated? Alternatively, might they contain an internal life and an internal discourse full of contradictions that transcend simple ruling class manipulation? What explains their reception?

One of the most interesting aspects of the publication of this book is that it comes out just as its underpinnings are most seri- ously being put into question, a point Thompson himself considers. In October 1985, a group of prominent Afrikaner historians discussed on South African television the need to reconstruct the history books along lines that break with the mythology. In particular, they are now moving to reject the idea that South African history is primarily Afrikaner history and promoting social and economic his- tory as a means of tying together different populations across the race line as an alternative to patriotic accounts of battles and

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.92 on Fri, 9 May 2014 09:49:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS 369 BOOK REVIEWS 369

nation-building. It can be argued that the coming of television itself and other facets of the communications revolution of the late twentieth century are making the old South African historiography increasingly quaint and implausible, even to those who would appear to be its beneficiaries. Will the result be a new rationality appro- priate to a new pluralism or a new mythology appropriate to the "reform" era? Will a black nationalist counter-mythology gain ground? The outcome is so uncertain that it lends an interesting topicality to Thompson's book for South Africa today.

BILL FREUND University of Natal

TOWN AND COUNTRYSIDE IN THE TRANSVAAL: CAPITALIST PENETRATION AND POPULAR RESPONSE. Edited by Belinda BozzoZi. Braamfontein: Ravan Press, 1983. Pp. xii, 446. R19.95, paper. Distributed in the United States by Ohio University Press.

Over the past decade and a half the works of E. P. Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Antonio Gramsci have inspired a flowering of English language historical writing on the social history of ordinary people. The so-called new school of South African historiography has been part of the general bloom. Historians at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand in combination with their United Kingdom colleagues and mentors have been almost unceas- ing in their efforts to unearth what this volume refers to as "people's history." The History Workshop sponsored by the University of the Witwatersrand has provided an essential forum for scholars of Southern Africa. The historical scholarship generated within that forum is characteristically rich in detail and focused in approach. The group's diversity and spirited concern for quality and relevance have generated tensions which undoubtedly contribute to its intel- lectual fertility.

Town and Countryside in the Transvaal is a collection of papers presented at the second History Workshop. Belinda Bozzoli also edited the papers from the first History Workshop in a volume entitled Labour, Townships and Protest (Johannesburg, 1979). Hap- pily, Ohio University Press now distributes the publications of Ravan Press, thus making much of this exciting work more easily available to scholars in North America. Historians, whatever their area of specialization, and students of southern Africa will find something special in this volume. Editor Bozzoli introduces the work of seventeen authors in what is much more than an introduction. She deftly broadens and sharpens the terrain to focus discussions of class' and culture. It is here that History Workshop collections make their most important contribution. Writing good "history from below" (p. 35) may not require any more attention to local, regional and national perspectives than writing good "history from above," but discovering and analyzing such perspectives remain an ongoing task to which this volume contributes nicely.

nation-building. It can be argued that the coming of television itself and other facets of the communications revolution of the late twentieth century are making the old South African historiography increasingly quaint and implausible, even to those who would appear to be its beneficiaries. Will the result be a new rationality appro- priate to a new pluralism or a new mythology appropriate to the "reform" era? Will a black nationalist counter-mythology gain ground? The outcome is so uncertain that it lends an interesting topicality to Thompson's book for South Africa today.

BILL FREUND University of Natal

TOWN AND COUNTRYSIDE IN THE TRANSVAAL: CAPITALIST PENETRATION AND POPULAR RESPONSE. Edited by Belinda BozzoZi. Braamfontein: Ravan Press, 1983. Pp. xii, 446. R19.95, paper. Distributed in the United States by Ohio University Press.

Over the past decade and a half the works of E. P. Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Antonio Gramsci have inspired a flowering of English language historical writing on the social history of ordinary people. The so-called new school of South African historiography has been part of the general bloom. Historians at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand in combination with their United Kingdom colleagues and mentors have been almost unceas- ing in their efforts to unearth what this volume refers to as "people's history." The History Workshop sponsored by the University of the Witwatersrand has provided an essential forum for scholars of Southern Africa. The historical scholarship generated within that forum is characteristically rich in detail and focused in approach. The group's diversity and spirited concern for quality and relevance have generated tensions which undoubtedly contribute to its intel- lectual fertility.

Town and Countryside in the Transvaal is a collection of papers presented at the second History Workshop. Belinda Bozzoli also edited the papers from the first History Workshop in a volume entitled Labour, Townships and Protest (Johannesburg, 1979). Hap- pily, Ohio University Press now distributes the publications of Ravan Press, thus making much of this exciting work more easily available to scholars in North America. Historians, whatever their area of specialization, and students of southern Africa will find something special in this volume. Editor Bozzoli introduces the work of seventeen authors in what is much more than an introduction. She deftly broadens and sharpens the terrain to focus discussions of class' and culture. It is here that History Workshop collections make their most important contribution. Writing good "history from below" (p. 35) may not require any more attention to local, regional and national perspectives than writing good "history from above," but discovering and analyzing such perspectives remain an ongoing task to which this volume contributes nicely.

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.92 on Fri, 9 May 2014 09:49:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions