The Good White South African

There were many white South Africans who aspired to do good and address the bad consequences of the apartheid project, and especially so over the 1980s, but what difference did they make? In answer, this chapter highlights how the “anti-apartheid” endeavours of good, largely English-speaking, white South Africans within the noble professions (law, medicine, the church, and academia) failed to rise above and come to terms with the systemic racism of their society. More particularly, through drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted by the author, it is argued that the type of public issue stands taken by noble professionals in their professional lives under apartheid fell short of properly constituting anti-apartheid activism—primarily because all such individuals upheld the law and worked within the dominant racial frame of the white moral community. Given this, and despite all their good intentions, good white noble professionals have to be seen as having played a complicit part in the social reproduction of South Africa as a racist society.