Review of Jamie Miller’s, An African Volk- The Apartheid Regime and its Search for Survival, Oxford University Press, New York, 2016, 439 pages, price N$ 725,00.
This is an extraordinary book. It details the policies pursued by John Vorster during his tenure as Prime Minister (1966-1979). Events inside SA are presented with sound observation and documented authoritatively. The global and regional repercussions of some of the ill-fated decisions are dissected and laid bare. He cuts to the bone in exposing Afrikanerdom's troubled efforts to make itself compatible with the post-colonial world.
What went into the final product demonstrates tenacity and perseverance. The author, an Australian, came to South Africa to fathom what John Vorster was all about. For any South African that would have been a daunting task. For a foreigner even more so to work his way through stacks of archival material and official cabinet documentation, including the minutes of their meetings.
For five arduous years he spent his days delving for what was hidden between those pages. He spared no effort to travel throughout Southern Africa to pick the brains of nearly all the personalities who were still around from the Vorster days. He mastered Afrikaans so that he could read and understand that language. He interpreted the Afrikaans nuances almost to perfection. All of that enabled him to present the many facets of the man so many admired and even more that despised him.
Vorster’s engagement with the outside world was overshadowed first of all by the Rhodesian problem for which the likes of Kissinger and others accepted him as key in unlocking the intransigence of Ian Smith. Slowly South West Africa (SWA, but now Namibia) gained similar prominence on the agendas with Vorster.
It is this latter issue which brought new insights into what happened during the turbulent years after the demise of the Portuguese prominence in Angola in late April 1974. Consequently, and mainly due to limited space, Rhodesia will be skipped and attention will be focused on what new insights have come from the parts of the book fleshing out issues surrounding Namibia.