An African Volk

The demise of apartheid was one of the great achievements of postwar history sought after and celebrated by a progressive global community. Looking at these events from the other side An African Volk explores how the apartheid state strove to maintain power as the world of white empire gave way to a post-colonial environment that repudiated racial hierarchy. Drawing upon archival research across Southern Africa and beyond as well as interviews with leaders of the apartheid order Jamie Miller shows how the white power structure attempted to turn the new political climate to its advantage. Instead of simply resisting decolonization and African nationalism in the name of white supremacy the regime looked to co-opt and invert the norms of the new global era to promote a fresh ideological basis for its rule. It adapted discourses of nativist identity African anti-colonialism economic development anti-communism and state sovereignty to rearticulate what it meant to be African. An African Volk details both the global and local repercussions. At the dawn of the 1970s the apartheid state reached out eagerly to independent Africa in an effort to reject the mantle of colonialism and redefine the white polity as a full part of the post-colonial world. This outreach both reflected and fuelled heated debates within white society exposing a deeply divided polity in the midst of profound economic cultural and social change. Situated at the nexus of African decolonization and Cold War history An African Volk takes readers into the corridors of white power to detail the apartheid regime''s campaign to break out of isolation and secure global acceptance.