Carnegie Corporation in South Africa:
A Difficult Past Leads to a Commitment to Change

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa, this overview of the Corporation’s grantmaking in that country reveals how the foundation’s support of efforts focused on a post-apartheid government were aided by earlier work that had unintended consequences.

In 1927 when Carnegie Corporation president Frederick Keppel and Corporation secretary James Bertram visited South Africa to explore possibilities for grants, they found a country blessed with a variety of climates, rich valleys, rugged mountains and fertile plains. South Africa, with its stark, often haunting beauty, has been called a kind of African Eden. Its people are Zulu, Indian, Xhosa, Boer, British, Ndeble, a diverse cultural mix. Possessed of an abundance of natural resources, the Union of South Africa, then a self-govern-ing colony of Great Britain, would have seemed to be the setting for immense promise and possibilities for all its citizens. But in the country where Keppel and Bertram were greeted as high-ranking offi cial guests, a white settler minority had proscribed the rights of the African majority. Racial segregation laws separated the races. Only whites, one-fi fth of the population, could vote or work in the highest-paying jobs. African resistance to these harsh realities was growing, but largely ineffective.

The discovery of diamonds and gold had transformed the economy, catapulting it into the modern, industrial era. The brutal Boer War (1899–1902)—in which the British fought to wrest control of the region from the Dutch, German and Huguenot descendents of the first settlers—was history, but remained a seething wound in the memory of most Afrikaners, who had, nonetheless, made peace and a pact with the British to govern the country.

Written by: Marita Golden. Golden is a novelist and nonfi ction writer. She is the author of 12 books; the most recent, Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex, will be published by Doubleday in April 2004. Golden lived in Nigeria for several years in the 1970s and maintains a keen interest in the African continent. She also founded and serves as president of a literary nonprofi t organization, The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.

In researching this article, Golden worked with materials from the Corporation’s archives; published accounts such as Creative Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation and Africa 1953-1973 (Teachers College Press, 1976) by E. Jefferson Murphy; and interviewed individuals connected with the events discussed.

Editor’s Note: Andrew Carnegie created Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911 to “promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding,” a mission that has often led the foundation to support in-depth research and analysis of issues that affect the life of our nation and our interactions with other countries in an increasingly globalizing world. But we are also concerned with funding projects that can help us understand, in a more immediate way, trends and changes that may influence both domestic policy and international relationships. This issue of Carnegie Results highlights three current Corporation grantees whose efforts illustrate how scholarship and dialogue can add breadth to our perspective on current events while also contributing to our ongoing struggle to understand the roots of conflict and explore solutions that may lead to peace. Work is ongoing at all three organizations, but as these profiles suggest, the results are already having an impact on those at the frontlines of policymaking.

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