The Origins of Non-Racialism

This book tells some of the stories and hidden histories that help explain our past. It focuses on a talented, brave, but tiny minority of whites, liberals, radicals, communists, Trotskyists, humanists, Christians, and idealists who rejected the growing racism of post-war South Africa and worked to breach the dividing line between black and white. From the Torch Commando that could mobilize tens of thousands of whites at the beginning of the 1950s to the Liberal Party and Congress of Democrats that could only boast a few hundred members by the end of the decade, white activists fought to maintain the vision of racial equality in an increasingly divided society.

Their African nationalist allies fought a harder battle within the ANC and other organizations in order to keep alive the notion that black and white could struggle together and live peacefully. Together, black and white activists developed a theory of struggle and ways of mobilizing that maintained the ideal of a non-racial South Africa. The democratic state ushered in after 1994 can be traced back directly to the work that activists undertook in the 1950s and after.