In South Africa, apartheid was a divisive political system entrenched by a white minority who regarded other ethnic groups as inferior, creating townships on the outskirts of cities to house the black population and legislation totheir movements. Many academic studies have focused on black life under apartheid, but few on white life - and even fewer on the role of working-class whites in the system.
An example of this was the apartheid state's research into alcohol consumption among whites, which led to the establishment of alcohol retreats and penal settlements called work colonies . Removing white drunks from society effectively cleansed the white population by creating an image of it without drunks. Another example: the state modelled new neighbourhoods for a growing new class of white public servants.
Of this generation of apartheid intellectuals, Cronjé was one of those most invested in whites. His career is of particular value in understanding the state's ambitions to subject white society to social engineering, as well as its limitations. He was interested in"deviance" and how this was most commonly seen in certain classes of white society.
The people whose stories feature most prominently in this volume were family and people I grew up with. None occupied influential positions in apartheid society. For me their significance lies in what their history tells us about that society. Notably, how whites could simultaneously"oppose" apartheid while still supporting the grand project of racial supremacy. The many ways that white people were bound into apartheid society, and how they contributed to sustaining it.