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Vigne, Randolph. 1997. LIBERALS AGAINST APARTHEID: A HISTORY
OF THE LIBERAL PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA, 1953-1968. Basingstoke:
Macmillan Press and New York: St. Martin's Press.
Vigne has written a comprehensive account of the Liberal Party LP) in the finest traditions of political history. He draws upon a rich array of documentary data located in South Africa and the UK, plus his own personal experience as member and leader of the party. Like most accounts of this nature, Vigne provides little theoretical explanation for the events which do or don't take place. With the exception of the final chapter, there is little examination of how and why the South African political arena today reflects quite closely the tenets which the Liberal party espoused forty-five years ago. In the end, this is an important contribution to the political history of South Africa and of a party which may no longer exist, but whose ideas have become the dominant ideology of the new South Africa.
Vigne begins his text by situating the evolution of the Liberal Party within the historical evolution of liberalism in South Africa, and particularly the Cape Province, where liberalism became synonymous with the rule of law, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech, and a colour-blind, though qualified, franchise. Qualifications were thought necessary until poor whites, as well as Africans, could be educated as to how to behave as responsible citizens IP. 1). From the time of Union on, however, liberalism came under attack, with Africans denied the vote outside the Cape and their status in that province steadily eroded.
With the election of an intransigent Nationalist government in 1948, the tools which South African liberals had used, namely parliamentary opposition, influence on ministers and civil servants, and careful research into South Africa's problems, were rendered "obsolete" IP 9). This, coupled with the imposition of Bantu Education, which made it nearly impossible for Africans...