Page 186 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

688 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

National Party while 14,2 % found themselves in the opposition (mostly liberal and thus
left-wing with a smaller percentage finding themselves on the right of the an authoritarian
government that professed to be “reformist”). Closest allegiance to the National Party cor-
45
related with religion and language, the latter since long a deep dividing line amongst white
South Africans. By 1974 the National Party in Stellenbosch sacrificed 7% of its support
46
with the Progressive Party gaining some 6%. 47
It is interesting to compare the statistics for 1970 – 1974 with later findings. What the
white South African’s youth “manipulated consciousness as a result of ideological control”
48 reflected showed some of the same tendencies more than ten years later at Stellenbosch,
yet important differences are observable:
At the University of Stellenbosch 53,6% of students supported the ruling National Party,
6,6% found themselves to the right of the National Party while 33,6% of students supported
the more liberal Democratic Party. Only 1,3% of students supported non-racial and radical
movements such as the United Democratic Front. The divide between Afrikaans speaking
campuses and English speaking campuses was not surprising. Support for the National Party
varied from 9% at the University of Cape Town to 21,8% at the University of Witwatersrand
in 1988/1989. The two Afrikaans universities that reflected the most support for the ruling
party was the University of the Free State with 65,7% and the Randse Afrikaanse University
(RAU) at 60,8%. 49
The effect of a mobilised consciousness is seen in a study by Gagiano published in
1986. The study showed that students at Stellenbosch University (which included a few
50
students from the Military Academy in the sample) showed a low protest potential and a high
repression potential that coincided with their belief in the political regime as legitimate. 51
In this respect South African students were a reflection of, a micro-cosmos of the broader
society and its strains, contradictions and paradoxes. Likewise the Afrikaner youth (also at
Stellenbosch) was a reflection of broader Afrikaner society; a society that experienced itself
as besieged by a “Communist Onslaught” (in securocratic jargon it was called a Total On-
slaught). Underpinning this perception was also the fear for “the other” – in this case black
people.

45 l. Pretorius. Partyvoorkeure van Studente: Stellenbosch, 1970 – 1975. (Masters in Commerce and Adminis-
tration, University of Stellenbosch, 1977), p. 56.
46 Ibid, p. 59.
47 Ibid, p.59
48 S. Booysen, 1989. The legacy of ideological control: The Afrikaner youth’s manipulated political
consciousness, Politikon, Vol. 16(1), p. 7.
49 S. Booysen, 1989. The legacy of ideological control: The Afrikaner youth’s manipulated political
consciousness, Politikon, Vol. 16(1), p. 7.
50 At the time various observers described the South African regime as “a garrison state”, a “bunker state”,
a “militarized state”, a “praetorian state” and some refereed to the South African military in Namibia and
Angola as a “frontier army” while others suggested that the security minded politicians has drawn the South
African Defence Force (SADF) into acts of destabilization of southern African states (the Frontline States).
51 J. Gagiano, Meanwhile back on the Boereplaas: Student attitudes to political protest and political systems’
legitimacy at Stellenbosch University. In Politikon, Vol. 13(2), p. 3ff.