Framing the role that South African architects played in supporting or opposing the apartheid state.

Abstract

The covert role that the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), a secret organisation with membership reserved for white Afrikaner males, played in the physical development of universities for the white Afrikaans-speaking section of South African society remains by and large hidden from history. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, when the first all-inclusive democratic election was held in the country, members of the AB controlled the University of Pretoria (UP), the University of South Africa (Unisa), and the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), positions that made it possible for them to influence, veto or approve campus development decisions with major financial implications. AB members in executive positions could also ensure that the ‘modern monumental’ style, a style which sought to assert the power of the apartheid modernity project, was made manifest on the campuses under their control. Why did certain architects only benefit from lucrative commissions post 1948? Was it because they were members of the AB or had associates or close relatives who were? Were architects favoured with repeated appointments because of the quality of their work, or because they were ‘connected’ to AB members in a world under the AB’s clandestine control? Answers to these questions are explored by a closer examination firstly of the AB, an organisation that seems to have facilitated and approved architectural commissions at Afrikaans universities; and secondly of the monopoly that Brian Allan Theodor Sandrock (1925-1990) had on the provision of new buildings at the UP and Unisa campuses in Pretoria.