Populism in South Africa between the 1960s and 1990s : a historical review

Abstract

By the 1970s, when the internal mainstream anti-apartheid movement had been disrupted and was beginning to re-group elsewhere, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) emerged to occupy the vacuum left by mainstream formations. The BCM used a 'populist' Black identity ideology to put pressure on the National Party government to dismantle the oppressive and segregationist regime. At the same time, there emerged ultra-right-wing groups such as the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) and Volksfront that were pushing for the maintenance of the white status quo and called for an intensification of the apartheid laws in the face of the increasing resistance. Mobilising on different sides of the aisle, these organisations claimed that they were the representatives of the ‘people’ against the ‘established elite'. Even though they operated from different ends of the ideological spectrum, they both shared “an enemy” in the form of the National Party, which they had labelled as the corrupt elite. This thesis explores this curious case of contemporaneous but different practices of populism, with the view to seeing how populism can be differently understood as an eclectic historical phenomenon with both progressive and conservative/reactionary elements.