Acknowledgments

This work is the product of a five-year study of South Africa, including a twenty-two months stay in that country (February, 1960 to December, 1961). It is the third manuscript of book length to come out of my study. The first was an unpublished doctoral dissertation on race relations in South Africa; the second was a community study of a small sugar town in Natal; the present work, while greatly different from the previous two, grew out of them. Directly or indirectly, then, numerous people and organizations contributed to the present endeavour.

Among them, my wife Irmgard deserves a unique place for her unfailing moral support, patient clerical help, and sobering criticisms. The bulk of the material support which made our stay in South Africa possible came from a generous Ford Foundation grant and a frank Knox Memorial Fellowship. In addition, I received assistance from the Harvard Laboratory of Social Relations, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Natal, Wesleyan University, and the State University of New York. To Gordon W. Allport and Talcott Parsons, my joint thesis directors at Harvard, I am grateful for providing me with intense intellectual stimulation, constructive criticism, and warm encouragement.

I should like to express my thankfulness for the many hundreds of South Africans whom I have formally interviewed or

simply met during my stay in the country. Numerous local colleagues, acquaintances, and friends extended my wife and me their warm hospitality, and helped us in gaining a deeper insight into South Africa's problems. At the risk of making invidious distinctions, I should like to mention particularly Bill Bhengu, Ivar and Cynthia Chetty, S. P. Cilliers, Hamish and Elaine Dickie-Clark, Hans and Marie Holleman, Leo and Hilda Kuper, John and Ursula Laredo, Albert Luthuli, Ben Magubane, Jack and Len Mann, Joe Matthews, Philip Mayer, Ismael and Fatima Meer, Edna Miller, Jordan Ngubane, Anthony Ngubo, Alan Paton, Birbal Rambiritch, Margo Russell, Jack Simons, Johann and Pamela van den Berg, and R. G. T. Watson. During my stay in Paris in 1962, I greatly profited from my renewed association with Georges Balandier, Roger Bastide, and Jacques Maquet. To Ona Langer and Jean Coleman, I am grateful for typing the second and third drafts of the manuscript, and to Shirley Stout and David Frey for competently editing and criticizing the text.

Finally, I am indebted to my many predecessors in the field of South African scholarship. I found the works of Edgar H. Brookes, Gwendolen M. Carter, C. W. De Kiewiet, Ellen Hellmann, Muriel Horrell, Leo and Hilda Kuper, I. D. MacCrone, W. M. Macmillan, J. S. Marais, Leo Marquard, Philip Mayer, Sheila Patterson, B. G. M. Sundkler, Eric A. Walker, and Monica Wilson particularly useful. Authors of fiction such as Peter Abrahams, Sarah G. Millin, Ezekiel Mphahlele, and Alan Paton have also greatly contributed to my gaining a deeper understanding of their country. Indeed, the present work is, at best, a new interpretation and arrangement of known facts, and, at worst, a reformulation thereof in sociological jargon. Whatever I have contributed to the extension of factual knowledge about South Africa has been published mostly elsewhere. Errors of fact and interpretation which may have crept into my work, as well as the opinions expressed here, are entirely my responsibility.

P.L.v.d.B.
Buffalo, 1964