Apartheid: Britain's Bastard Child

by Hélène Opperman Lewis

This book is written as an attempt to understand what psycho-historical factors played a dominant role and undoubtedly contributed to Afrikaners creating apartheid 1948. The main factors are humiliation by the British, and unprocessed grief due to the Anglo-Boer War when the women and children were put into British concentration camps, leaving the survivors with a deep fear of survival as a people, in a country where they were far outnumbered by black people.

The book follows their tracks from 1795 till 1948. The book is not about Apartheid, it's about what determined it's creation in 1948 from a psychological perspective. It's a psycho-historical study.

610 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 13, 2016

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not an easy read. The roots of South Africa's current levels of brutality and violence are to be found in its tragic history. This book examines the British killing of 19 percent of the population of the two Boer Republics during the conflict in South Africa at the turn of the century. The systematic destruction of farms, villages and towns, the mass killing of livestock and burning of crops in a scorched earth response to continued Boer resistance to the British bid to seize control of the gold reserves is documented. The near genocide against Boer children and the mortality in the camps and on the veld makes painful reading. The rape and sexual abuse is another painful dimension of this war explored in some depth.

An ideology of Social Darwinism and aggressive imperialism enabled those British politicians who engineered the conflict and the invasion to whip up incredible levels of public hatred and aggression towards the Boer nations who were portrayed as filthy, brutal, uneducated, racially inferior sub-humans and at best feral Europeans. Although concentration camps were invented by the Spanish in Cuba, this was their first major deployment as a weapon in conflict, and along with planned starvation and mass deportation, they started a frightening escalation of conflict against civilians that was to become a trademark of conflict in the twentieth century. The jingoistic mass media (despite worldwide condemnation and opprobrium for British actions) managed to whip people in the UK into a patriotic and racially charged frenzy. The role of famous authors like Connan Doyle and Ryder Haggard in whitewashing British atrocities is documented in detail.

The book documents these systematic state sponsored human rights abuses against the Boer people and the trauma suffered but then explores in great detail the tragic legacy of this in the emergence of a militant and bitter nationalism that led to the victory of the Nationalist Party and the entrenchment of racial oppression and Apartheid. It argues convincingly that the brutality and excesses of the Nationalist government after the 1949 elections was rooted in the suffering and trauma of the South African War. It issues a stark warning to the current government not to continue this vicious cycle to hatred and revenge that is rooted in trauma and suffering.

A bleak and awkward book that could have benefited from good editing but nevertheless fearlessly challenges the mythology of white South African's that locates blame for Apartheid with the Afrikaaners and the Nationalist Party. The book demonstrates that this a much deeper problem and one that defies simple characterisation. Not an easy read.

[Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

II have had to read this book over a period of months just because the intensity of its content and the tragic series of events it describes were too heart-rending to take in at once. Opperman Lewis made a brave choice in choosing this subject matter as it may easily be misconstrued (by those who seek out conflict) as a defence of apartheid. It is not.

This book seeks to answer that question that so many of us ask when confronted with the capacity of one group of ordinary people to commit large-scale atrocities. Born in 1987, toward the end of the apartheid regime, I have often wondered: "how did it ever get that far?" This book goes some way to answering that question.

In addition to that, "Apartheid: Britain's Bastard Child" lovingly acknowledges the suffering experienced by the Afrikaaner nation at the hands of the British Empire. This is particularly refreshing at this time, when it has become so unfashionable to be Afrikaans.

I urge the skeptical reader to lay disbelief aside for long enough to find the value (particularly as a cautionary tale) of this book. While the author has clearly done her best to keep her own prejudices at bay and spent 15 years researching her topic, she does appear to allow her emotion to interfere with how she expresses herself at times, although she is generally highly eloquent. Please don't allow the occasional poor choice of words to prevent you from experiencing the overall significance of this work.

It is a must-read for anyone who seeks to understand the complexity of human behaviour and group dynamics and for all South Africans trying to come to terms with what history has made us.

[Magdel Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trauma informed perspective of the apartheid system and psyche of the Afrikaner people. Whilst it by no means is an excuse for any aspect of apartheid it certainly gave an informative perspective that had a significant impact on me personally and helped me to better understand some aspects of my heritage (some of which I was deeply ashamed of).

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped me understand the special circumstances which led to the creation of Apartheid. A people who had to fight against an empire to preserve their identity. The author highlights the destitution many Afrikaans families experienced because of the Boer war and also the discrimination they experienced.

[Rachel Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me a lot to think about, and opened my eyes to a lot of South Africa's history that I was unaware of. I picked it up for a research paper I'm doing for my World Civilizations class, along with the Emily Hobhouse book I read last week. I'm glad I read the Emily Hobhouse account before this, as much of Hobhouse's work is referenced in Opperman-Lewis's thesis. The research that she put into this work is astounding. It's the first time that I've encountered writing that comes from a psychohistorical perspective, and I found it super interesting. Brilliantly written.