Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities

by Mahmood Mamdani

Although the commissions appeared in some ways at odds, they were in fact articulating the two prongs of what would soon become apartheid. The Sauer Commission described apartheid’s political program, focused on tribalizing Africans by settling them permanently in homelands, far from the towns and cities. The Fagan Commission described apartheid’s economic logic, which focused on bringing the resettled African men back into the cities as migrant laborers subject to racial control and life under supervision in compounds. When the National Party came to power in 1948, it set about establishing policies to implement the recommendations of the two commissions. In the resulting seesaw of compromises, the economic strategy was modified to allow a permanent African working class in cities, but their political voice still would be silenced beyond the context of tribal reserves. The denial of the franchise unleashed another tide of urban protest.