Apartheid: Psychiatric and Psychological Influence in South Africa

The link between psychiatry, psychology and apartheid is long-standing. South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, a psychologist, had studied in German universities during the height of the Nazi psychiatrists’ racial hygiene planning.

German psychiatric eugenics of the day labeled Blacks, according to Richard Lerner in Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice and Genocide as “[lazy], unintelligent, though … physically capable people, who live in crime, poverty, and generally socially deteriorated conditions, and do so because of their genetically based limited mental capabilities.”

German influence on Verwoerd’s thinking is clear. In 1928, Verwoerd, with the help of psychologists from America’s Carnegie Foundation, helped instigate an inquiry that blamed white poverty on black competition in South Africa’s job market, stating that “... long-continued contact with inferior colored races has in some respects had deleterious social effects on the European.” Verwoerd stated, “There is no place for [the Native] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labor ... for that reason it is of no avail for him to receive training.”

His Nazi thinking was also obvious by the fact that South Africa’s segregation law was very similar to the Nazi psychiatrists’ Racial Purity Law banning Aryans and non-Aryans from living together or marrying. South African psychiatrists and psychologists offered the government a “scientific” means by which to deny black South Africans employment and education and to tear apart their families.

Verwoerd stated in September, 1943: “This segregation policy, which also means protection and care for the Native in the land of the Afrikaner, but decisively rejects any attempts at equality, gives the Native an opportunity to develop what is his own, so that he can have pride and self-respect as a Native, instead of being continually humiliated as a failed and imitation white.” He stated that South Africa would be doomed if its policies allowed the African to “improve his skill, draw better wages and provide a better market within ‘white’ South Africa.”

As a result, proper education was also denied Blacks. To reinforce this, psychologist M.L. Fick invented an intelligence test to “prove” the inferiority of “color castes” and how their educational abilities were limited.

With millions of people facing substandard education, unemployment and poverty and, consequently, low morale, it is no wonder that psychiatric institutions were established or that the justifiable and normal reactions to the resultant oppression
were falsely labeled as “mental disorders.”

For more than 30 years, these “special” psychiatric institutions were run by secret agreement between the government and the private Smith, Mitchell & Co. (now called Lifecare), to keep and “treat” black patients. The apartheid government guaranteed a 90% occupancy rate. Tens of thousands of Blacks were incarcerated against their will, drugged and subjected to electroshock without anesthetic, because anesthetics were “too expensive” to use on Blacks. They were hired out to companies to perform unpaid labor, making coat hangers, brushes, sheets and other items under the guise of “industrial therapy.”

Members of the Church of Scientology and the Citizens Commission on Human Rights exposed all this in 1974, resulting in psychiatrists convincing the apartheid government to revise the Mental Health Act to make it a criminal offense to report on conditions in any psychiatric hospital or to take any photographs of them. So CCHR went outside of South Africa, reporting its evidence to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In 1977, the WHO responded with an investigation of the psychiatric camps. In 1983, a report on its findings condemned the use of patients for unpaid labor, stating, “This situation has no parallel in the history and present state of psychiatric care; it certainly does have a parallel in the ownership and trading of slaves.”

It also referenced another inquiry which had substantiated CCHR’s allegations of unexplained patient deaths: “The most shocking finding of our investigation was the high number of needless deaths among black patients in Smith Mitchell facilities. At none of the facilities did we find evidence of adequate medical care during the patients’ final illnesses … we saw charts of black patients in their 40s and 50s who were apparently allowed to die.”

When apartheid ended in 1994, CCHR helped initiate a Health Ministry inquiry into malpractice and racism in psychiatric hospitals. The inquiry found gross patient abuse, falsified death certificates and general mistreatment of patients. The camps were reformed.

In 1997, CCHR presented testimony to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the apartheid crimes of psychiatrists and psychologists. The Psychological Society of South Africa finally admitted that psychological studies had been deliberately aimed at discrediting Blacks as intellectually inferior.

Still, the effects of apartheid will take a long time to rectify, especially because of the obstruction by the psychiatric industry. In 1999, CCHR Commissioner Lawrence Anthony addressed the World Psychiatric Association on behalf of the South African government, reporting that the Society of Psychiatrists of South Africa had “failed to admit any guilt or responsibility” for its role in apartheid atrocities. Instead, psychiatrists used the post-apartheid era to garner more business, diagnosing the response of Blacks to apartheid oppression as a “persecution complex.”

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