Introduction

The reinvention of South Africa as a republic in May 1961, following a referendum of white voters in October 1960, created the ‘one nation with one fatherland and one loyalty’ that H.F. Verwoerd and other Afrikaner nationalists had been hankering after. The formation of the Republic reshaped the nation and the national vision and allowed the state to construct a new, inclusive white national identity that could embrace immigrants. South Africa, no longer a hyphenated nation, and controlled by Afrikaner nationalists, now felt confident enough to open the doors to immigration with a new state-aided immigration scheme.

In 1959 Verwoerd articulated the relationship between the nation-building project and national identity and immigration policy of the state and Afrikaner nationalism. Before the state could open the country to large-scale immigration, two problems had to be resolved. The first was what Verwoerd called the ‘colour problem’. The government needed to be confident that immigrants would not undermine its racist racial policies. The second was the country's need for a homogeneous people who could, in turn, absorb large numbers of immigrants. Anything less, he argued, would do great harm to the immigrants themselves and to national unity. Verwoerd saw selective immigration as the answer to the first problem and republicanism as the answer to the second.

The struggle over white South African identity started to decline in significance in the late 1950s, particularly given the economic advances made by Afrikaners during the decade. Repeated election victories for the National Party and success in the referendum on a republic suggested that English-speaking South Africans and British immigrants who had acquired the vote were not a threat to the electoral aspirations of the National Party or its apartheid policies.