Reinterpreting the Historical Memory of the Black Peril in South Africa

Abstract

This article employs a critical Black Atlantic frame to re-examine, re-evaluate and reinterpret the historical memory of the Black Peril in South Africa. It exposes the Black Peril as a wide-ranging racist discourse that demonised Black men as potential rapists of white women. This racist narrative was vehemently expressed in early twentieth-century South Africa. A key finding of this work is that the Black Peril was a highly successful racist campaign because it not only led to the criminalisation of interracial sex between Black men and white women but was also used to justify racist laws that had far-reaching effects on social relations in the broader society – eventually yielding a white supremacist state (apartheid) – which proceeded to use the Black Peril discourse to mobilise an aggressive racialisation process for both whites and Blacks.