Apartheid’s legal structure predates its theological rationale, which the Church supplied

Evidence

The Church – in particular the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) – played a defining role in apartheid’s articulation, elaboration, and rationalization in the century’s first half. The skeletal sociolegal structure of the state that would become apartheid, as I have suggested, was already stitched in place by the British and various administrations from 1910 to 1948: restrictive and increasingly eroded Native reserves set apart, Pass Laws, job color bars, segregated schools and delimited educational opportunities for those not white, divided recreational facilities and racially restrictive public accommodations, discrete voters rolls and differentiated political representation. That said, however, apartheid – as a term and as an idea, as a structure and as a set of practices, as an ideal and aspiration, as dream and nightmare, in short, as political theology – was projected as coherent conception from the Church, from God’s projected word, down. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1506

Categorization

• DEFINE: Characterizes apartheid as a ‘political theology’ — a coherent conception projected from God’s word downward — rather than merely a set of legal practices.
• QUESTION: Chronology worth probing: the state skeleton existed by 1948 but the theology gave it coherence — how did the theology retroactively rationalize the pre-existing structure?
• XREF: connects to: Academic intellectuals guided the theological framework that formalized apartheid — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1542; Post-apartheid reconciliation inverted the theological frame of apartheid rule — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1573