The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (10 page)

Treaty signed in 1951 by Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, pledging mutual protection, with the aim of discouraging communist expansion and increasing US influence in the Pacific region.
ANZUS was superseded by the broader-based
SEATO
, but was used by the United States to put pressure on Australia and New Zealand to become more involved in the
Vietnam War
. The failure of the military campaign in Vietnam, and the growth of opposition to nuclear weapons in New Zealand, have meant that, though still technically operative, ANZUS has little practical relevance.

 
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Afrikaans word meaning, literally, ‘separateness’. In South Africa, an official government policy between 1948 and 1989 of racial segregation. The term originated as a political slogan coined by Dr D. F. Malan , leader of the South African National Party, in 1944, and derived from the Afrikaans word denoting ‘apartness’ or separation. It featured prominently in the party's successful election campaign in 1948, cementing a coalition of disparate Afrikaner groups and classes, and would serve for the next four decades as the rationale for the regime's racial programme. Segregation had long been practised by white governments in South Africa, both before and after the creation of the Union, and most of the legislation enacted after 1948 had its origins in earlier measures, sanctioned by the predominantly white electorate. White workers were traditionally privileged in an economy otherwise heavily dependent on black labour. The African population, three-quarters of the total, was disenfranchised and subject to coercion backed by law. And 70 per cent of the land had been reserved for white occupation. After 1948, under the new apartheid measures, racial differentiation and separation, already comprehensive, became rigid and systematized, with no further prospect of assimilation or integration.
The key legislation enacted 1948–50, dealt with Population Registration, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages, demarcation of Group Areas and restructuring of Bantu Education, as well as the Suppression of Communism. The main architect of apartheid was H. F. Verwoerd , the leading intellectual and ideologue of the National Party, who occupied the key Native Affairs Portfolio during 1950–8 and was subsequently Prime Minister until his assassination. Determined to resist the movement towards self-determination and independence elsewhere in Africa, Verwoerd insisted that in South Africa self-determination for the white and other racial minorities was incompatible with majority African rule. Instead the government proposed to implement a programme of separate development, promising eventual independence for the various ethnic groups that were held to comprise the African population. Having been assigned a national homeland, or Bantustan, Africans settled and working in South Africa would lose their residence and other rights and became liable to deportation in the event of political unrest or large-scale unemployment. Under the guise of ‘trusteeship’, government policy was to confine the African majority to reserves that could not support them, thus ensuring the continuation of a cheap, compliant labour force.
Within South Africa opposition to apartheid was forcibly suppressed, with the main African political movements banned after 1960 and their leaders imprisoned or exiled. Through the 1970s, however, there was mounting criticism, not only from white liberals, but also from a younger generation of Africans who had grown up under apartheid and were attracted by Black Consciousness ideology. Resistance to the regime continued after the Soweto uprising of 1976, reinforced by the collapse of white rule elsewhere in southern Africa, and by growing international pressure for sanctions. Among ‘enlightened’ whites it was already clear that apartheid was unworkable (and increasingly unprofitable) in a closely integrated, urban society, with a growing industrial base looking for a wider domestic market and heavily dependent on a skilled, educated African labour force. The gradual scrapping of petty apartheid discrimination, and the recognition accorded black trade unions in 1979 were evidence of revisionist thinking among Verwoerd's political successors. Meanwhile, without infrastructure or resources, deprived of investment, and denied international recognition, the four ‘independent’ and six self-governing homelands offered no prospect of development and served only to underline the contradictions inherent in official policy. After 1978 the term apartheid was itself rejected by the new Prime Minister, P. W. Botha .
It was 1984, however, before constitutional changes were made, providing for an executive-style President and a tricameral legislature. Structured along racial lines and with no provision for the African majority, the ‘reform’ provoked sustained unrest throughout South Africa during 1984–6, with the state declaring a state of emergency and exceptional levels of violence on both sides. The international community responded with further sanctions, while foreign banks withheld investment, precipitating a financial crisis in an economy already experiencing prolonged recession and record unemployment. With the end of the Cold War in southern Africa, and independence for Namibia, there was growing pressure for democratization in South Africa itself. Meanwhile apartheid no longer commanded the loyalty of the white electorate as a whole, or even of its entrenched Afrikaner component. After four decades of social upliftment, with guaranteed state employment and generous welfare provision, the Afrikaner community had shed much of its militant nationalism while class and status divisions had undermined its earlier cohesion. Like the English-speaking community the Afrikaners now had much to lose from domestic conflict generating widespread insecurity. The far right had quit the National Party as early as 1982 to form the Conservative Party and, by 1989, there was majority support for new leadership, under F. W. de Klerk , and a new political dispensation.
De Klerk freed Mandela and the other political detainees, unbanned the nationalist parties and the Communists and, by 1992, had repealed all the principal apartheid legislation. The Dutch Reformed Church, which had claimed scriptural backing for apartheid, split with the white branch, which was prepared to acknowledge that apartheid was a serious error, if not a heresy. Even the
Broederbond
, the original inspiration for apartheid, whose select membership has been credited with a disproportionate influence on government, considered the admission of non-whites. See also
ANC
.
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A Russian word literally meaning ‘apparatus’, used to denote the machinery of state administration. Its primary use in English is pejorative, denoting a faceless, privileged, and all-powerful communist bureaucracy; its members are referred to as
apparatchiki
. As with many important terms describing administration under communist rule, however, the meaning of
apparat
is both vague and ambiguous. In the narrowest sense in official Soviet discourse, the word did not have a negative connotation. Rather, it may best be understood as designating that part of the state—the permanent commissions of the Council of Ministers and the state committees such as State Committee for Planning (Gosplan) or the State Committee for Material and Technical Supply (Gossnab)—primarily concerned with issuing regulations and instructions to other bodies—the industrial ministries— which were operationally responsible for carrying them out. Members of the latter bodies were frequently called
khozyaystvenniki
(economic executives). Although this distinction between
apparatchiki
and
khozyaystvenniki
has proved useful to some Western scholars, the more common use of the term includes officials of all state and party bodies believed to comprise a single ruling élite.
SWh 

 
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In France, a legally recognized alliance between parties. Before the 1951 legislative elections the governing centre parties introduced changes in the electoral system which aimed to neutralize pressure from the two political extremes,
Gaullists
and
Communists
, both opposed to the regime and expected to benefit from a proportional system that favoured the strongest parties in the distribution of seats. By changing the law to provide (among other things) for
alliance
or
apparentement
the centre parties were able to pool their votes, maximize their share of seats, and achieve a workable majority in the legislature. General de Gaulle was able to discriminate even more effectively against the political extremes, at the outset of the
Fifth Republic
, by replacing proportional representation with a two-ballot system.
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