W. A. de Klerk (1917–1996)

De Klerk's idea in this book seems to be to trace back the roots of the ways of thinking that led the Afrikaner nationalists of the 1940s into the monumentally destructive delusions of Apartheid (although he's writing in the mid-70s, he doesn't have the slightest doubt that it's only a matter of time before South Africa will have to face up to reality again).

The book is in four parts. The third and fourth parts, where de Klerk takes us through South African political and intellectual history from the 1930s to the 1970s and analyses what has gone wrong, are very clear and interesting: he's obviously talking about people and events he knows well, at first hand, and his insights are sharp, if sometimes a little too loaded with references to stars of the seventies (Hegel, Marx, Barth, Tillich, and of course the ever-popular Marcuse). He describes Verwoerd and D F Malan as setting out with a clear conscience and sincerely held — but deeply misguided — intentions to create a better world for everyone in South Africa, which then became more and more entangled in a vast, oppressive and costly mechanism of enforcement and control that soon lost sight of where it was meant to be going, and became an end in itself. A view that seems to make sense, although he perhaps doesn't take enough account of how many of the people operating the machine found that it gave them previously-undreamt-of opportunities to enrich themselves at the expense of those caught in its wheels. Of course, it all comes down to the colossal arrogance of believing that you have the right to take decisions on behalf of millions of other people who never got the chance to say whether they wanted you to or not, because you know that that's what God wants you to do.

The first and second parts of the book, where he looks at the early history of the Afrikaners and at the development of radical protestant ideas in Calvin's Geneva, in 17th century England and Scotland, and in New England, seemed less successful. He isn't a historian, and he obviously finds it very difficult to stick to a clear narrative line, so it comes over as a kind of long, rambling, after-the-port-and-sherry monologue, leaping from anecdote to generalisation and back again, hopping around in time arbitrarily. And there doesn't seem to be a great deal of it that he actually uses in the concluding parts: if you have at least a rough outline of South African history in your mind, you can probably skip the first 200 pages without inconvenience; if you don't, you'll probably be more confused after reading it than before you started...

Something of a curate's egg, but just about worth it for the good bits.… (más)