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TESTED LOYALTIES: POLICE AND POLITICS IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1939–63*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2012

KEITH SHEAR
KEITH SHEAR*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
*
Author's email: k.s.shear@bham.ac.uk
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Abstract

Well into their rule, at a time when South Africa was increasingly perceived as a police state, the Nationalists, the party of apartheid, depended for the implementation of their policies on structures and personnel inherited from previous governments. Even in the South African Police, the institution most associated with the country's authoritarian reputation, key developments of the early apartheid decades originated in and cannot properly be understood without reference to the preceding period. A legacy of conflict between pro- and anti-war white policemen after 1939 was particularly significant. Concentrating on the careers and views of illustrative officers, notably members of the Special Branch, rather than on ‘the police’ in abstraction, this article analyses the complexities and continuities in the South African state's handling of domestic dissent in the years before and after the apartheid election of 1948.

Keywords

South Africapoliceapartheidnationalism
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , July 2012 , pp. 173 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

I thank Max Bolt, Saul Dubow, Tom McCaskie, Isaac Ndlovu, Insa Nolte, Benedetta Rossi, Kate Skinner, Paul Ugor, and the Journal of African History's reviewers for their readings of earlier versions of this article. Piet Swanepoel kindly emailed responses to the many questions I put to him.

References

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7 Ellis, ‘The genesis’, 673, is a recent instance. See also Fullard, M., ‘State repression in the 1960s’, in South African Democracy Education Trust (SADET), The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Volume 1 (1960–1970) (2nd edn, Pretoria, 2010), 318–19Google Scholar.

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34 Dippenaar, The History, 176.

35 CAD NTS 511/400, D. L. Smit to C. P. Alport, 19 Feb. 1942.

36 Union of South Africa, Report of the Select Committee, 93, para. 740.

37 TNA Records of the Security Service (KV) 3/10, ‘Appendix’, 5.

38 Interview with R. de Villiers, Cape Town, 18 Nov. 1994; R. de Villiers, responses to follow-up written questions, 28 Oct. 1995.

39 Interview with Pattle.

40 D'Oliveira, Vorster, 140; The Nongqai, 40:10 (1949), 1,371; The Nongqai, 40:11 (1949), 1,491.

41 Pensions (Supplementary) Act, No. 32 of 1950, Schedule, Section 1; D'Oliveira, Vorster, 140; The Nongqai, 41:5 (1950), 633; interview with Pattle.

42 D'Oliveira, Vorster, 84–7 and 140.

43 CAD JUS 1/49/39, CCO to SJ, 9 Oct. 1942, encl. H. J. van den Bergh et al. to Minister of Justice (MJ), 21 Sept. 1942.

44 Ibid. Baston to SJ, 21 Oct. 1942.

45 Dippenaar, The History, 160 and 258.

46 CAD Police Inquiry Commission Archives (K80), 18 Jan. 1937, J. J. Coetzee, 1,648; Ibid. 15 Apr. 1937, J. T. Clarke, 6,838–9; Ibid. 19 May 1937, I. P. de Villiers, 8,797 (for ‘abnormally rapid’ promotion in the CID); Union of South Africa, Interim and Final Reports of the Commission of Inquiry Appointed by His Excellency the Governor-General to Inquire into Certain Matters Concerning the South African Police and the South African Railways and Harbours Police (Pretoria, 1937), 22Google Scholar, paras. 80–2.

47 CAD K80, 28 Apr. 1937, U. R. Boberg, 7,663.

48 Ibid. 15 Apr. 1937, J. T. Clarke, 6,839.

49 CAD Archives of the South African Police (SAP) 9/6/46, Palmer to Secretary, Public Service Commission (PSC), 21 Jan. 1947.

50 Fedorowich, ‘German’, 219.

51 TNA KV 3/10, ‘Southern Africa’, 24 (footnote), 66 and ‘Appendix’, 5; J. S. Chavkin, ‘British intelligence and the Zionist, South African, and Australian intelligence communities during and after the Second World War’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009), 203–4.

52 Chavkin, ‘British’, 203, note 84.

53 D'Oliveira, Vorster, 64.

54 Dippenaar, The History, 163.

55 TNA KV 2/907, 32A, Copy of Minute from Director-General, 4 Nov. 1943.

56 TNA KV 3/10, ‘Southern Africa’, 71 (capitals in original).

57 South African Police Service (SAPS) Museum, Pretoria, 1/4/2/49, Statement of Johannes Taillard Made to Captain J. Hurter, Olifantsfontein, 1 Mar. 1965.

58 Strydom, For Volk, 231.

59 Visser, OB, 107–8.

60 CAD SAP 2/85/40, encl. in Deputy Commissioner (Decompol), Johannesburg, to Commissioner of Police (Compol), 27 July 1940; Visser, OB, 95 and 116.

61 P. C. Swanepoel, ‘The South African Police during and after the Second World War’ (unpublished document emailed by Swanepoel to author, 23 Apr. 2011).

62 TNA KV 3/10, ‘Southern Africa’, 77; The Nongqai, 35:8 (1944), 943.

63 De Villiers, responses; Strydom, For Volk, 264.

64 Visser, OB, 107–8; Dippenaar, The History, 258.

65 Profile based on interview with Marais and McLennan; Butler, G., Bursting World: An Autobiography, 1936–45 (Cape Town, 1983), 163Google Scholar; ‘Personality parade’, Indaba (August 1954), 2–4, 13 and 15; R. Norval, ‘General Palmer's life story – I’, Cape Times Magazine, undated [28 July 1951?]; copies of other undated press cuttings kindly shown to me by Mrs McLennan.

66 Interview with Marais and McLennan.

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70 CAD SAP 9/6/46, Palmer to Secretary, PSC, 21 Jan. 1947; Visser, OB, 176.

71 CAD SAP 9/6/46, Palmer to Secretary, PSC, 21 Jan. 1947.

72 CAD SAP 9/15/50, Palmer to MJ, 26 Oct. 1950.

73 Ibid.; Swanepoel, ‘The South African Police’; Chavkin, ‘British’, 227–44; Dippenaar, The History, 209–11.

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75 Swanepoel, ‘The South African Police’. Du Plooy later prepared an Afrikaans edition of his lectures: The Nongqai, 44:6 (1953), 584. But Rademeyer's commissionership was better remembered for his Standing Order conferring on policemen ‘the inalienable right to draw up any document … in [their] mother tongue’. Dippenaar, The History, 258.

76 Visser, OB, 133.

77 SAPS Museum 1/4/1/49, Verklaring van Luitenant-Generaal H. J. du Plooy, 5 Feb. 1968.

78 Ibid.

79 Chavkin, ‘British’, 238, citing Minute by Baring, 6 Dec. 1949.

80 Nicol, M., A Good-Looking Corpse (London, 1991), 331Google Scholar; D'Oliveira, Vorster, 141–2; Frankel, P. H., An Ordinary Atrocity: Sharpeville and Its Massacre (New Haven, CT, 2001)Google Scholar, 60 and 91. They were also members of the Pretoria Police Rugby Club first fifteen in the 1930s (overlapping with Du Plooy, who had earlier played in the team with Rademeyer) – a detail that adds point to their shared history of division and cooperation before and after 1948.

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88 Act No. 32 of 1950, Schedule, Section 1.

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90 The Nongqai, 40:9 (1949), 1,241.

91 Ibid. 41:6 (1950), 715, notes Prinsloo's appointment as ‘Officer-in-Charge’ (Diedericks's former position) at ‘The Grays’ (a building later synonymous with the SB in Johannesburg). See also Ibid. 45:9 (1954), 955; ‘Two days in London for Mr Swart’,The Times (London), 23 Dec. 1954, 5.

92 CAD SAP 2/85/40, F. J. Verster to Compol, 15 Aug. 1940, encl. ‘“On Service” Badges: Members of the Criminal Investigation Branch: List of Members Who Took New Oath’.

93 CAD JUS 1/49/39: Coetzee to SJ, 24 Jan. 1942, encl. lists of detainees’ names; CCO to SJ, 9 Oct. 1942, encl. H. J. van den Bergh et al. to MJ, 21 Sept. 1942.

94 Ibid. Baston to SJ, 21 Oct. 1942.

95 Act No. 32 of 1950, Schedule, Section 1, showing A. C. Spengler's service resumed on 31 July 1949.

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99 See tables for authorised establishments in CAD SAP 9/19/60, kindly copied for me by Fred Kooijmans.

100 ‘Country Internal Defense Plan’, encl. in A-278, J. C. Satterthwaite, American Embassy, Pretoria, to Department of State, Washington, 18 Dec. 1962, reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System (Farmington Hills, 2011).

101 Swanepoel e-mail to author, 28 Aug. 2011.