Examination of Coloureds toward a more inclusive history (original) (raw)

The Report of the Native Economic Commission, 1930-1932 was assisted by anthropology to preserve and reconstruct the “pristine identity of native society” while simultaneously developing their society in an economic sense. Limits on publishable information by Afrikaner hegemony and the intellectual and political discourse of the period prevented solutions to segregation (Cocks 2001:742, 746). A series of ecological catastrophes, the ravages of the second Anglo-Boer war, and the Great Depression witnessed many Whites slipping into poverty. For class and race conscious Europeans, John Comaroff (2012) attributes the success of Schepeara and other Jewish social scientists to the assimilation of the Boere-Jode (Afrikaner-Jew) into the local Afrikaner communities and their rise to prominence in the discipline. The Boere-Jode became “adept at observing the differences in culture, how you passed, what you could say, what you could not” (Bangstad et al. 2012:118). As a result of their positions and practices of ethnic and personal survival, they used their powers of observation and cultural adaptability to study non-white communities. This paper shows how the social sciences assisted the development of Apartheid policies.