The Sauer Report became the ideological framework upon which Apartheid was enacted. It was prepared for the opposition Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP – Reunited National Party) in advance of the 1948 general election as a policy document, and arose out of decades of academic and social discussion on the need for segregation in South Africa.
The Sauer Committee recommended that the doctrine of Apartheid should be embodied in a set of interrelated programs:
- stricter regulation on black African migration into urban areas (influx control),
- restriction on political and social rights of black Africans
- reorganisation of black African education away form the interference of Missionary Schools
- the consolidation of 'independent' homelands (the reserves) where black Africans would have their own identity
The main aim was to stop ‘the black oorstroming (flooding) of the cities’ and to ensure continued supply of cheep labor for agriculture through the creation of labor bureaus. But it enshrined the concept of white supremacy in South Africa and an institutionalized system of Apartheid.
South Africa's white voters reacted positively to the Sauer report and the HNP's propaganda against the ruling United Party's vacillating approach to race. On 26 May 1948, the HNP, with the minority Afrikaner Party, won the general election and the Apartheid era began in South Africa.
