APARTHEIDIN CRISIS
South Africa's law and practice. The ways had parted between South Africa
and the rest of the world. 5
In those circumstances, Afrikaners were divided as to what should be
done. Afrikaner 'solidarity, which had been the key to the electoral suc-
cesses of the National party in the 1960s, was collapsing. Ironically, eco-
nomic success was eroding the Afrikaner nationalist movement. Whereas
in the previous decade the overwhelming majority of Afrikaners had placed
ethnic above class interests, by the late 1970S Afrikaner class divisions had
become more marked and more potent. Eighty-eight percent of Afrikaners
were urban, 70 percent of those in white-collar jobs. Prosperous profes-
sionals, businesspeople, and absentee landowners had replaced the old
rural and cultural elites in control of the National party and the Broeder-
bond. They talked about reforming apartheid by making carefully crafted
changes to appease foreign and domestic critics and at the same time to
strengthen white supremacy by creating further divisions among the sub-
ject peoples. But they were encountering opposition from Afrikaners on
both flanks."
On the right, Afrikaner urban workers and marginal farmers who relied
on apartheid's defenses against black competition and the numerous bu-