Book Review

Our understanding of the making of apartheid has been considerably enriched in recent years by historians (such as Deborah Posel and Saul Dubow) who have shown how internal developments within the state shaped the formulation and implementation of policy, and how the results were sometimes unplanned and contradictory. Ivan Evans's splendid book contributes to this re-evaluation of the making of apartheid by looking at the Department of Native Affairs, particularly in the period between 1930 and 1960. Unlike earlier histories, he wishes to shift the focus of attention from a discussion of ideology, policy, or economy to a close analysis of the process of administration itself. The result is highly impressive: for he shows that a technocratic, problem-solving bureaucratic mind was at the heart of native policy, creating and shaping the detail of the structures that defined apartheid, in a way often undebated in the wider world.	1
At the heart of Evans's argument is the transformation of the Department of Native Affairs after 1948. Whereas in the early part of the century, it was a relatively weak department, largely concerned with rural administration, but happy to leave much to autonomous and paternalistic Native Commissioners, after 1950 the department became a centralized "state within a state" seeking to control all aspects of native life and seeing urban administration as much more at the heart of its business. The key figure in this transformation was H. F. Verwoerd, the Minister of Native Affairs. Verwoerd reorganized the department to extend its range but preserve efficiency, while ensuring that a close group of Afrikaans administrators would run it. He wanted total control of the department, interfering personally in minor detail and spying on his staff. He wanted administrative problems to be solved in a clinical, scientific way. Yet he was no ideological purist: though rejecting the paternalism of pre-war administrators, he rejected both the "ethnos theory" of his secretary, W. W. M. Eiselen (for whom the moral imperative of preserving ethnic diversity was more important than racial domination) and the Tomlinson Commission's vision of industrial and propertied development in the reserves. His low-cost, administratively efficient solutions saw him create a crude version of baaskap over a mass of undifferentiated Africans.	2
The first part of the book is devoted to a discussion of urban administration. Evans shows the ambivalent view of the DNA in the interwar years: nominally responsible for native affairs, the department left urban matters to local authorities, who used their powers (notably regarding influx controls) in an inconsistent and inefficient way. Legislation in 1937 sought to strengthen the DNA and to create a bureaucratic strategy to deal with the labor problem. But it was not until after the war that urban policy was fully rethought. The key transformation here was the establishment of labor bureaus, which were to subordinate the market economy to bureaucratic dictates by strictly controlling labor supply. A number of features stand out in Evans's argument. First, it soon became clear that the system would not work in the frictionless way that was desired, which forced the DNA to compromise and adjust its policy. While the debates with local officials that had taken place in the 1930s were now strictly curtailed, the higher administrators, who implemented policy through regulations, could experiment and modify policy without it becoming the subject of debate in parliament, the press, or the courts. Second, he shows that opposition to the changes was less important than parliamentary debates would suggest: civil servants were locked into an administrative logic, solving the problems at hand, without thinking of the wider political implications.	3
Next to labor mobility, housing was the biggest problem the DNA encountered in urban affairs. Faced with a growing housing crisis in the 1940s, the DNA still sought decent housing occupied by property owners. Verwoerd again took a completely different view, wanting standard undifferentiated low-cost housing, which white ratepayers would not have to subsidize. Evans shows that the housing policy of the 1950s was to control African life by controlling space, and he shows well how the DNA went about designing and structuring the townships. Rejecting both the idea of liberals that Africans were a permanent part of the urban landscape whose townships should be close to white areas, sharing services, and the purist view of Eiselen that Africans should live in distant townships where they could own and run businesses, Verwoerd determined that locations should be distant, but not economically self-sufficient. Small traders would only be permitted to rent units from the state.	4
In the second part of the book, Evans turns to administration in the reserves, focusing on the Transkei. He shows clearly how urban and rural policy became intertwined. By the 1930s, the reserves were in severe economic decline. To prevent further soil erosion, the DNA turned to betterment programs aimed at fencing off land and culling cattle, which in turn created a landless, resentful peasantry. Yet, to protect the towns from being swamped with African migrants, this surplus labor had to be absorbed at the source. The state's response was both to turn more to headmen and chiefs (hitherto neglected by the DNA in Transkei) and to develop a policy of dividing the "true" farmer in the reserves from the proletarianized African living in peri-urban villages, either commuting to white areas or working in border industries. Nevertheless, the DNA eschewed a positive development policy, as outlined by the Tomlinson Commission, neither wanting to invest money in the reserves, nor wanting to create economic competitors. The DNA thus fixed the Bantu authorities and the chiefs with an economic development program bound to fail, so that the reserves became, in effect, a mere repository for a reserve army of African labor. In this context, the DNA stumbled toward the Bantustan policy: with African chiefs rejecting trusteeship, and demanding a greater leadership and financial role, and seeking to avoid the financial cost of developing Transkei, the DNA, implementing its new Bantu Authorities system, moved toward a constitutional structure not hitherto envisaged. As Evans shows, the implementation of this system provoked revolt and resistance, while in response, the line between the DNA and the police vanished.	5
This is an excellent study, densely written, engaged with the historiography, and full of insights. It makes a significant contribution to its field and deserves to be widely read.	6
Michael Lobban Brunel University, London

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