Apartheid’s forty-year history emerged from contingency rather than a master plan

Evidence

Apartheid, then, spans a period of over 40 years - a history shaped in complex ways by the shifting interactions of long-standing ideological principles and political imperatives, ad hoc strategies and decisions of the political moment, the pressures of popular resistance, the opportunities and constraints created by the global economy, the unintended consequences of existing policies, together with the uneven capacities of an increasingly ambitious state. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 553

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the historical-accident vs. grand-design debate in readings of other regimes, e.g. the Spanish Armada chapter’s argument that decisive outcomes are contingent.