Dismantling Apartheid

Book excerpt: As a result of Pretoria's 1976 imposition of independence on the "black homeland" of Transkei, its capital city, Umtata, became one of the first communities in South Africa to experience fundamental changes in the apartheid. This timely book discusses those relationships that remained unchanged, as well as the important race and class realignments that accompanied apartheid's dismantling. Walton R. Johnson shows that although the universal franchise radically altered municipal government and desegregation changed access to some public and private amenities, transformation of the basic patterns of dominance and subordinance occurred slowly. He describes how the established dominant group perpetuated key parts of the old order by guiding and manipulating a pliable new African middle class. For the mass of Africans the facade was new, he makes clear, but the underlying structures were the same: effective social and political control stayed for a long while in the hands of the white elite and few new economic opportunities opened for Africans. His chapter on personal ideologies shows how deeply cultural much of this behavior was. Providing an informed account of change and continuity in one town, Dismantling Apartheid is a compelling preview of future social relations in South Africa.