Liberals against apartheid

by Randolph Vigne

"The non-racial Liberal Party of South Africa, led by Alan Paton, promoted, at first in Parliament and increasingly among the voteless blacks, democratic liberalism in opposition to the white supremacist apartheid of the Afrikaner Nationalists and in competition with the racially-compartmented Congress Alliance, under strong Communist Party influence in those Cold War days. With the proscription of the African National and Pan Africanist Congresses in 1960, it struggled on as the country's sole non-racial and radical political force. Growing success among rural blacks began its slow extinction - by the 'banning' of nearly fifty of its leaders, the move into sabotage by Liberals who had lost faith in the constitutional process it upheld, and, in 1968, by legislation. The African National Congress won power in 1994, with Liberal Party ideals of non-racial democratic liberalism triumphing over black nationalism and Marxism-Leninism, as well as white supremacy, in the constitution of the '