When Botha goes: South African society beyond the era of apartheid.

Author George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty Four" was the most celebrated fictional attempt to predict the shape of things to come to written in the English language in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Less well known, but similarly prescient, was the history of South Africa written by author Arthur Keppel-Jones covering the years from 1952 until the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century which was first published in 1947. The title of the book "When Smut Goes," symbolized the end of an era and anticipated the demise of the United Party and the final triumph of the militant wing of Afrikaner nationalism. The political, social and economic consequences of this victory were set out with chilling realism. However, just as it is true that not every aspect of Orwell's nightmare vision has come to pass, so, too, several important features of Keppel-Jones' future of South Africa have proved to be incorrect. Nevertheless, these errors and omissions, almost as much as the uncanny anticipation of so many events that did actually take place, provide some instructive lessons for anyone trying to repeat Keppel-Jones' flight of the sociological imagination some forty years later. The paper outlines the course of events set out in "When Smut Goes." It reassess the accuracy of its basic predictions now that the half-way mark in Keppel-Jones' history have been reached. The paper considers what factors are likely to prove to be the most important in determining the future path of South African society as it moves towards the next century.