Segregation in 1948 and the Nationalist victory

What the specification asks for

“Nature and extent of segregation in 1948. Election of 1948 and reasons for Nationalist victory.” — examined through continuity and causation. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

What already existed

South Africa in 1948 was already a segregated state and had been since the Union of 1910. The Natives Land Act of 1913 and the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 confined African land ownership to a small fraction of the country. Pass laws controlled the movement of African men into and around the towns. The franchise was effectively white: Cape African voters had been removed from the common roll in 1936, and Coloured voters remained on it in the Cape alone.

Urban housing, employment reservation in mining, separate schooling largely run by churches and missions, and a colour bar in most skilled trades were all in place before any Nationalist minister took office. This is the fact that makes the first question on the key topic a real one: what was new in 1948?

The answer is systematisation and intent. Segregation before 1948 was a large number of separate arrangements, unevenly enforced, with exceptions, loopholes and areas of practical integration that everybody tolerated. Apartheid was a programme to remove the exceptions, define every person by law into a racial category, and use that classification as the basis of where they might live, whom they might marry, what they might be taught and what work they might do.

Why the National Party won

The election of 26 May 1948 returned the National Party and its Afrikaner Party ally with 79 seats against the United Party's 65 — and with fewer votes. The constituency map weighted rural seats heavily, and the National Party's support was concentrated in the countryside and in Afrikaner working-class districts, so a minority of votes produced a majority of seats.

Several causes converged. The war had accelerated African urbanisation and industrial employment, which alarmed white workers competing for jobs and white suburbs facing new neighbours. Smuts's government had received the Fagan Report of 1948, which concluded that African urbanisation was permanent and should be managed rather than reversed; the Nationalists ran on the Sauer Report, which promised the opposite. Afrikaner nationalism, organised through the Broederbond and a network of cultural and financial institutions, had been mobilising since the 1930s around grievances dating to the South African War and the poor-white problem. And Smuts himself was internationally distinguished and domestically remote, having spent the war years abroad.

The margin matters enormously for any judgement about apartheid's popularity. A government that never obtained a majority of the votes of the white electorate — itself around a fifth of the population — imposed a system on everybody else. Whatever else apartheid was, it was not the settled will of South Africans, and it was not even the settled will of white South Africans in the year it began.

What changed after 1948

The first practical change was constitutional consolidation. The government needed the classification laws to survive challenge, and it needed to remove the remaining Coloured voters from the common roll in the Cape, which took most of the 1950s and required enlarging the Senate to obtain the necessary majority.

The second was administrative. Apartheid required a state capable of classifying, registering, zoning and policing an entire population, and the 1950s are the decade in which that machinery was built. It is worth noticing the scale of the undertaking: a government of a poor country committed enormous resources to an administrative project whose economic benefits were, at best, arguable.

The third was ideological. Segregation had been a practice defended by custom and interest; apartheid was defended as a philosophy of separate development in which each people would find its own destiny. Whether the ministers believed it is disputed and largely beside the point. What matters historically is that it supplied a justification which could be argued in a parliament and in a church, and which had to be answered rather than merely resisted.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1913 and 1936

Land Acts confine African land ownership to a small share of the country. Why this date: It establishes that the land settlement long predated apartheid, so the question about 1948 is what was added rather than what was begun.

May 1948

The National Party wins 79 seats to the United Party's 65 with fewer votes. Why this date: A minority of votes produced a majority of seats on a rural-weighted map, which is decisive for any claim about apartheid's popularity.

1948

The Fagan and Sauer Reports offer opposite answers to African urbanisation. Why this date: It shows the election was fought on a real policy choice rather than only on sentiment, and that the alternative had been set out.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 79 to 65 — The seat totals in May 1948, obtained with fewer votes than the United Party.
• A small fraction of the land — The share available for African ownership under the Land Acts. (The figure is usually given as around 13 per cent after 1936, and the reserved area was never fully transferred, so the effective share was smaller.)
• About a fifth — The white share of the South African population, and therefore of the electorate. (Census proportions shifted across the period; the order of magnitude holds throughout.)

The people to place

• D. F. Malan — Led the National Party to victory in 1948 and became Prime Minister.
• Jan Smuts — United Party Prime Minister; lost his own seat in 1948 having received more votes nationally.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'continuity' reading: Apartheid was the intensification of a segregationist order built between 1910 and 1948, and 1948 changed the pace and the vocabulary rather than the direction. Contested by The reading that stresses the break: classification of every individual by law, the removal of exceptions and the explicit doctrine of separate development created a system qualitatively different from the practices it replaced..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Segregation in South Africa began in 1948.

This: The Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, the pass laws and the effectively white franchise were all in place before the National Party took office. What 1948 added was systematisation, classification by statute and an explicit doctrine.

Not this: The National Party won a clear popular mandate in 1948.

This: It won a majority of seats with fewer votes than its opponents, on a rural-weighted map, in an election in which only about a fifth of the population could vote at all.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Segregation and apartheid.

The distinction: Segregation was a set of practices with exceptions and uneven enforcement; apartheid was a legal system that classified every person and removed the exceptions. Answering what changed in 1948 requires the distinction.

Blurred: Seats and votes.

The distinction: The National Party won more seats and fewer votes in 1948. Using one when the question needs the other is the commonest factual error on this strand, and the gap between them is itself an argument.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer sees that apartheid began as a minority policy twice over: a party with fewer votes than its opponents legislated for a population of which its own electorate was about a fifth. That is not a rhetorical point but an analytical one, because it explains why the system required so much law, so much administration and, eventually, so much force to sustain.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (a) (6 marks — “What impression does the author give about …? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.”); Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The seats-and-votes gap, given with both numbers. It is precise supporting knowledge and it carries a judgement about legitimacy at the same time.

The cap that bites here: The 8-mark question caps a single cause at 4 marks with no access to Level 3. Two developed causes, each ending in an outcome.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. What impression does the author give about segregation in South Africa before 1948? [6 marks · Paper 1 (a)]
2. Explain two causes of the National Party's victory in the 1948 election. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Explain two effects of the 1948 election result on South Africa. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'Apartheid was a continuation of what already existed rather than something new.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'The National Party won in 1948 because of the electoral system rather than because of its policies.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Next lesson: The apartheid statutes, 1950–53
• Also in this key topic: Early opposition and its suppression, 1948–54
• Key topic 1 · Setting up apartheid, 1948–54 · South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of South Africa: The growth of apartheid, 1955–59 · Resisting apartheid, 1955–78 · PW Botha – response to resistance, 1978–90 · Dismantling Apartheid, 1990–94