Auburn University, Montgomery
         <sgish@mickey.aum.edu>

crossposted from H-SAfrica

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-SAfrica@h-net.msu.edu (February, 2001)

Robert Ross. _A Concise History of South Africa_.  Cambridge
Concise Histories.  Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.  xv + 219 pp.  Maps, photos,
illustrations, bibliography, and index. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN
0-521-57313-0; $17.95 (paper), ISBN 0-521-57578-8.

Reviewed for H-SAfrica by Steven Gish <sgish@mickey.aum.edu>,
Department of History, Auburn University Montgomery

A Concise Survey of South African History

As all history instructors know, finding the right textbook for
a course can be a difficult and time consuming task.  Those who
teach South African history are fortunate to have several
recently published works from which to choose.  Among the latest
works are Robert Ross's _A Concise History of South Africa_,
under review here, plus Roger Beck's _The History of South
Africa (Greenwood Press, 2000), T.R.H. Davenport and Christopher
Saunders' _South Africa: A Modern History_, fifth edition
(Macmillan and St.  Martin's, 2000), and Nigel Worden's _The
Making of Modern South Africa_, third edition (Blackwell, 2000).

Ross's book is part of the Cambridge Concise History series,
which provides short national histories for college and
university students and general readers.  Ross is well-qualified
to have undertaken the South Africa assignment.  A lecturer in
history at the University of Leiden since 1979, he has written
several works on South African history, including books on the
Griquas (1976); Cape slavery (1982); and colonial South Africa
(1992).

_A Concise History of South Africa_ focuses on the Republic of
South Africa, but it mentions surrounding countries just enough
to illustrate that their histories have been intertwined with
South Africa's.  Ross' work focuses on several themes: early
patterns of racial interaction and conflict; the development of
an industrial economy; the consolidation of white power; African
social and economic life; protest politics; and the development
and unraveling of apartheid.  The first forty percent of the
book covers South Africa to 1910; the remaining sixty percent
since 1910.  Unlike Nigel Worden's survey, Ross's book does not
explicitly delve into historiographical debates.

Ross has produced an outstanding work.  In just two hundred
pages, he has synthesized the latest research on South Africa
history in a well-organized, reader-friendly format.  His
ability to produce such a balanced narrative is especially
admirable.  While he emphasizes the social and economic history
of black and white South Africans, he does not ignore political
history.  He blends his treatment of important leaders and key
historical figures with the social history of ordinary people.
He also incorporates material on gender, generational conflict,
and the environment.  That Ross weaves all of these themes into
a smooth, seamless narrative is a testament to his skill as a
writer and a historian.

In his introduction, Ross notes that despite South Africa's
diversity, its many different cultures have become more
interdependent over time -- politically and economically.  "This
book," he writes, "is an attempt to show how South Africa became
a single, though not uniform country" (p.  1).  Undergraduates
and general readers will be drawn into the story immediately
when Ross outlines the country's diverse heritage.  He notes
that South Africa's identity contains African, ex-colonial,
capitalist, urban, and Christian elements, as well as many
others.  His goal is to explore how these strands became
interwoven in the past to create the South Africa of today. He
succeeds admirably in his task.

After beginning his book with a chapter on South Africa's early
population groups, Ross moves on to colonial conquest.  Besides
outlining the impact of European settlers on indigenous peoples,
Ross includes some environmental history.  As white settlers
moved away from Cape Town and brought their livestock to graze
into the interior, wildlife herds in the southwestern Cape
decreased sharply and some species became extinct.  Ross also
reviews the trend toward political consolidation among African
groups in eastern South Africa in the late eighteenth, early
nineteenth centuries.

In so doing, however, he studiously avoids the term "mfecane."
Given the historical importance of this term and the
controversies surrounding it, Ross should consider including it
in future editions of his work.  The chapter on colonial
conquest would also benefit from an expanded treatment of
miscegenation and the birth of the mixed-race population.
Writing a concise history with page limitations no doubt forced
Ross to make some difficult editorial decisions.  Nevertheless,
the role of the "coloureds"  as an intermediate group under
white domination deserves more attention.

Chapter three charts how South Africa became economically and
politically unified in the late nineteenth, early twentieth
centuries.  Ross draws upon the work of Charles van Onselen to
paint a vivid picture of the Witwatersrand in the years after
gold was discovered in 1886.  He traces the origins of the South
African War without denigrating the Boers or the Britons.  The
former sought to maintain the autonomy of the South African
Republic, while the latter wanted to preserve their supremacy in
South Africa.  Ross does not dwell on the military history of
the South African War.  Instead, he outlines the conflict
briefly and then discusses its impact upon black South Africans.
In his section on the birth of the Union of South Africa in
1910, Ross illustrates the development of African nationalism by
including some verses by the Xhosa poet I.W.W. Citashe.  The
poem, which stresses verbal protest over armed confrontation,
captures the rising influence of mission-educated Africans and
is beautifully placed near the chapter's end.

Chapter four, entitled "Consolidation," covers the years between
1910 and 1948.  Here Ross summarizes the main developments in
Afrikaner nationalism without dwelling on the machinations of
white politicians.  He skillfully shifts to explore developments
in African nationalism and describes the early ANC as
gradualist, elitist, and largely ineffectual, but notes that
"eventually its potential would be realized" (p. 86).  When he
incorporates relevant demographic and economic statistics
(regarding population, infrastructure, and employment), he does
so without becoming tedious.  The material he presents supports
his argument that "the cash economy, the demands of the
government for taxes, the labour market, and the infrastructure
of communications held the country together.  Segregation was
not designed to split it apart, merely to maintain is
hierarchies" (p.  88).

Ross clearly identifies the significance of the 1913 Land Act
and argues that it cannot merely be explained by racism.  As he
suggests, the government sought to strengthen white commercial
farmers and create a propertyless African proletariat.  Thus
capitalism was important as racism in shaping twentieth century
South African society, according to Ross.  But he never portrays
Africans simply as victims.  He discusses the significance of
the ICU in coordinating militant African resistance to
segregation in the 1920s, noting its strengths while not
ignoring its shortcomings.  He also discusses African women who
resisted beer brewing restrictions.  Such consistent inclusion
of gender issues further strengthens the book and underscores
its commitment to social history.  When he discusses migrant
labor, Ross is not content merely to outline the relevant laws
and probe white motivations.  Instead, he examines the impact of
migrant labor on Africans of different genders and generations.
He describes the life of migrant workers in terms of work
discipline, authority, sex, housing, and links with home, and in
so doing, captures how migrant labor affected the lives of
generations of Africans.

When it comes to South Africa after 1948, Ross links the
development of apartheid with the economic interests of whites.
He races through the repression after Sharpeville, the
establishment of the armed struggle, and the Rivonia trial in
one paragraph.  Perhaps a little more is needed here, given the
significance of these events.  Displaying his interest in
economic history over political history, Ross uses six
paragraphs to discuss the growth of the South African economy
from the 1950s to the 1970s.  He notes that white mining
magnates benefited from apartheid in one sense, because it
guaranteed them a cheap and controllable unskilled African
workforce.  But when white industrialists needed more skilled
labor, they became frustrated because apartheid had stunted the
skills of generations of black workers.  The shortage of skilled
labor, plus heavy state involvement in the economy, meant that
"...apartheid had left the country particularly vulnerable to
the challenges of the world economy in the last quarter of the
century" (p. 133).

Ross reveals the tragedies under apartheid by focusing on
homelands and forced removals.  But as harsh as repression was
under Verwoerd and Vorster, voices of opposition were never
totally silenced.  According to Ross, the Soweto protests of
1976 marked the beginning of the end of apartheid for two main
reasons: 1) students fleeing persecution resuscitated the ANC in
exile; and 2) the government began a reform process that
signaled that Verwoerdian apartheid was unworkable.

In order to underscore the long term damage done by apartheid,
Ross has included an excellent chapter entitled "The costs of
apartheid."  In this chapter, which is more thematic than
chronological, Ross links apartheid to a host of problems:
poverty; violence and repression; drug and alcohol abuse; and
the breakdown of African families.  He stresses that the Bantu
education system under apartheid produced poorly trained, under
motivated workers, which stunted long term economic growth.
Eventually black students channeled their energies into the
political struggle, which further devalued their schooling.

The last substantive chapter of Ross's book focuses on the end
of apartheid and the transition to democracy.  He notes that the
mixture of reform and repression under P.W. Botha caused both
the Afrikaner right and the democratic left to mobilize against
National Party rule.  In his discussion of the anti-apartheid
movement of the 1980s, Ross charts the development of the UDF
and the "culture of resistance" it spawned.  While he clearly
sympathizes with the movement's goals, he doesn't shy away from
noting the excesses of the revolt, such as vigilantism and
"necklacing."  He discusses the conflict between Inkatha and the
UDF by arguing that it was a struggle for territory fanned by
the government's security forces.  As he documents meetings
between the ANC and the white establishment, Ross suggests on
page 181 that it was Kobie Coetsee who initiated talks between
Mandela and the South African government in the 1980s.  This
point needs some clarification.  According to accounts by
Anthony Sampson and Allister Sparks, it was Mandela who first
wrote the government suggesting that talks be held.[1]

Students of South African history often debate the role of
Botha's successor F.W. de Klerk, the country's last white
president.  Ross identifies a number of factors that led to de
Klerk's dramatic speech in February 1990, in which he announced
the unbanning of anti-apartheid organizations, the impending
release of Nelson Mandela, and his intention to begin
negotiations for a "new South Africa."  Ross makes sense of de
Klerk's bold steps by discussing the wider context: economic
decline;  rising military costs; international pressure; a lack
of new investment;  increased questioning of apartheid in
business, church, and intellectual circles; and the collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe.  With the domestic uprising
contained temporarily, de Klerk and his colleagues wanted to
negotiate a new dispensation from a position of relative
strength.  "..[T]here is no doubt," writes Ross, "that de Klerk
and his fellows calculated that they could control the process
of transition in such a way as to guarantee their own
interests..."(p. 185).  Once again Ross's analysis seems right
on the mark.

Ross characterizes the period of negotiations from February 1990
to April 1994 as "chaotic and bloody, though not as bloody as it
might have been"  (p. 185).  In analyzing the reasons for the
explosion of violence during this period, Ross establishes the
link between Buthelezi and the security forces without labeling
the ANC as blameless.  He is unsure of the degree of de Klerk's
complicity in the violence.  Ross notes the important role of
both Slovo and Ramaphosa in the negotiations, and identifies the
key sticking points for negotiators on all sides: the form of
the new government; the fate of Afrikaners in the civil service,
police, and military; and the new provincial powers and
boundaries.  After a brief analysis of the April 1994 voting
patterns and election results, Ross ends chapter seven with
Mandela's inauguration as the first black president of South
Africa.  "...Nelson Mandela took the oath as the first president
of a country in which the scars of the past were temporarily
hidden before a vast and jubilant multitude" (p. 196).

The book ends with a brief epilogue in which Ross discusses how
the new government fared after the euphoria of the 1994
elections faded.  He asserts that the ANC showed fiscal
discipline, although they lacked the cash to ease South Africa's
socio-economic problems substantially.  He praises the country's
new constitution and lauds Mandela for symbolizing integrity and
reconciliation.  As controversial as the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission proved to be, Ross admires that body
as well because it allowed untold stories to be revealed, both
from victims and oppressors.  As Ross sees it, many scars
inflicted by apartheid have yet to heal, but South Africa has
finally begun to emerge from its painful past.

_A Concise History of South Africa_ is richly illustrated with
maps, drawings, and black and white photographs.  Many of the
photos are contextualized by detailed captions.  These captions
explain the significance of a wide range of historical
phenomena, such as manyanos (the organizations for African
Christian women); black South African jazz;  rugby; endangered
wildlife; even the braai.  One example will suffice to indicate
the value of these captions.  A photograph of a 1950s beerhall
and its accompanying caption on pp. 158-9 focus on the role of
alcohol in South African history.  Drawing on the work of social
historians, the caption touches upon women's efforts to become
independent; the conflict between the state and Africans; the
development of jazz; prostitution; and generational conflict.
Photos and captions like this help the reader understand South
African society and culture, not just its history.

In this work, Robert Ross has displayed a breathtaking command
of South African history and historiography.  He has produced an
outstanding work of synthesis that is up-to-date, wide-ranging,
and concise at the same time.  His book is meant to be a
starting point for those wishing to explore South Africa's
history.  There is no excess material or "fat" in this book--it
is all "meat."  I will use this book the next time I offer my
lecture course on South African history; others who teach
similar courses should consider it as well.

Note

[1].  Anthony Sampson, _Mandela: The Authorized Biography_ (New
York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), pp. 338, 340-1, 347 and Allister
Sparks, _Tomorrow is Another Country_ (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996 ), pp.  23-4.

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