“No blood on their hands”?: The structured incoherence of the apartheid state and its violence

Abstract

The ideological contradictions generated by South Africa’s apartheid regime were neither exceptional nor wholly derivative of structural and physical violence. Instead, these contradictions contain valuable information about the practical operations of the state that produced them. Drawing from state archives and interviews with retired government officials, this article argues that the apartheid state produced incoherent violence in a recognisably structured fashion. The state’s racist vision for South Africa generated ambiguous cases and situations, with which government officials contended. In addressing these ambiguities, officials often disagreed with other officials and branches of government. These disagreements, in turn, produced on-the-ground violence and yet more incoherence. Because incoherence was a prelude to, as well as a consequence of, authority in apartheid South Africa, this article’s close examination of the regime’s operation reveals how administrative incoherence can grow into a powerful political technique.