Introduction

South African social work has its historical roots not only in violent and racist coloniality but also in its brutal continuity – that of repressive apartheid. Despite social work being defined as a social justice profession, its historiography points to a range of ideological positions in discourse, knowledge and practice. These positions mean variations in levels of complicity, sense of responsibility and resistance to matters of injustice, oppression and crimes against humanity.

Colonisation of South Africa by the British and Dutch achieved gains for race-based mercantile capitalism through the violent enslavement of local people and ‘importation’ of thousands. This creation of a Black, servile working class served the interests of White capital during the 19th century, forming the basis for apartheid's legislated racism and inequality which would come to structure South Africa society (Seekings, 2008; Sewpaul, 2013). South African social work, developing from this context of growing inequality and social problems, developed in the early 20th century. Given the classand race-based structuring of society through colonisation, its early roots and formalisation focused only on the White group (Harms-Smith, 2014).

Various moments and conjunctures before and during the period of apartheid as a crime against humanity emerge. These, among many, seem important for investigating the meanings and actions of complicity, responsibility and resistance, and so this chapter details some of these important antecedents and conjunctures. This task is difficult because textual (and other) discourses occupy the broadest range of ideological positions. The same events, personalities and moments in history are described in contradictory and multiplicities of ways; as writers we must constantly revisit discourses and explore dissenting voices. The other difficulty arises from the personalisation of algorithms in our web-based searches for scholarship (Bozdag, 2013). What we find is often what we wish to see, and so we must be conscious of and find ways to resist this tendency.