Forging an Alternative to Separate Development: Afrikaner Sociology, the Apartheid State, and the ‘Coloured’ Question (c.1932–1984)

ABSTRACT This article makes an intervention into the historiography which has positioned Afrikaner sociology as an unambiguous instrument of the apartheid state. In doing so, the article examines how leading Afrikaner sociologists used Parsonian structural functionalism to engage with the coloured question in the 1970s – articulated as the conundrum of where to position coloureds politically in the absence of direct representation in parliament. The primary argument is that this form of differentiated knowledge production was ‘alternative’ in the context of Afrikaner sociology’s early ties to Afrikaner nationalism because it challenged Verwoerdian separate development and replaced it with the idea that coloureds shared ‘common values’ with white society. This argument is made by tracing how Afrikaner sociologists’ calls for coloured representation gained momentum in the early 1970s, initiating a set of reforms which may be viewed as a resolution to the coloured question through the establishment of the Tricameral Parliament in 1984.