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Thing is, if you go back and read the papers at the time, what is so shockingly clear is that no-one realised what was in the process of happening. They all thought it would blow over soon.
You see, the National Party never won the popular vote. They had barely 37%. They only got in because of the electoral system. Rural votes were more heavily represented in Parliament. They barely squeaked in. It was never meant to happen. It was a glitch.
And Apartheid? Read the newspapers of the time. Very few in the English press took it seriously. It was a word and a couple of incendiary and racist slogans. Even the National Party itself did not have any detailed policies. It was clearly impractical, doomed.
In 1953, the NP achieved a solid majority. Still, people did not think they would last. In those days, coloured people in the Cape still had the vote. The NP passed an act taking them off the voter's roll. The Appelate Division struck it down as unconstitutional.
So what the NP then did was to pack the Senate, to ensure a two-thirds majority, and they changed the Constitution. That was 1955. That was the first time that it really became clear that big trouble was coming. Seven years after they got in. It took 40 years to get them out.
When I was doing my history degree, reading the mainstream press from the 1940s and 1950s, it seemed to me I was seeing people sleepwalking into a battlefield. Floating down the stream of history, not seeing what was right in front of their eyes.
It's hard to look at Trump's America, and the GOP's deliberate obstruction and exploitation of the SCOTUS nominations, and the deliberate galvanisation of all the most racist and violent segments of American society, and not to fear that you all are going down a similar road.
What that means in practice for your choices, I don't know. The one thing I am sure of is that it is a big mistake to wish for normalcy to return. It won't. It hasn't here. 25 years after freedom came, it looks as if our biggest changes still lie ahead. /ends
...as with all fascists.
I know the feeling. In my part of Germany even in the sham election of 1933 Hitler's party only got 30%... Doesn't change a thing though in the grand scheme of history.
Shame they turned out at all. Would have been much better had they not bothered, like the others. Then everyone would be happy
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