White Working-class Women and the Invention of Apartheid: ‘Purified’ Afrikaner Nationalist Agitation for Legislation Against ‘Mixed’ Marriages, 1934–9

Abstract

The South African white general election of 1938 was largely fought around a poster. The poster was published by the supporters of D. F. Malan's hard-line Afrikaner Nationalists, who were attempting to unseat the more pro-imperial United Party (UP) government of Hertzog and Smuts. The poster portrayed the alleged threat of ‘mixed’ marriages to Afrikaner women, and attacked the UP for failing to legislate against it. Rejecting J. M. Coetzee's contention that such racist manifestations can solely be understood in terms of the unconscious, the paper argues that shifting gender relations amongst Afrikaners were crucial to this agitation. As young Afrikaner women moved into industry on a large scale during the 1920s and 1930s, men experienced women's greater economic and social independence as a challenge to their authority. Nationalist leaders played successfully on this insecurity by appealing to men to ‘protect’ women against supposed black threats, including ‘mixed’ marriages. The particular campaign of 1938, however, backfired somewhat on the Malanites. The Hertzog and Smuts supporters were divided over the proposal for legislation. But even their liberal faction was against ‘mixed’ marriages; they simply did not see a law as the best way of preventing it. The UP responded to the Nationalist campaign by arguing that white women were being insulted by the mere suggestion that they would marry across the colour line. They used this particular strand of racism to mobilise white women and men against the Nationalists. But the whole affair ultimately smoothed the way for Malan to legislate against ‘mixed’ marriage after he came to power in 1948. The combined effects of both Nationalist and UP campaigns was to strengthen racist opinion about the issue. In order to avoid the divisions in his party on the marriage question, Hertzog handed it over to a Commission of Inquiry. The 1939 De Villiers Report recommended in favour of legislation, but was not acted on because of the break-up of the Hertzog–Smuts government. Yet this UP appointed commission was ultimately used by the Nationalist government as the basis of its own racist marriage legislation.

Retail, the service worker and the polity: attaching labour and consumption

“…Battles around white women's femininity and domesticity were critical to the imagining of an apartheid nation through NP election campaigns to welfare, magazines and education (Du Plessis 2011;Hofmeyr 1987;Hyslop 1995;Kruger 1991). The 1960s was a period of unprecedented growth.…”

‘I'll Give You Something to Cry About’: The Intraracial Violence of Uplift Feminism in the Carnegie Poor White Study Volume,The Mother and Daughter of the Poor Family

“…In this article, I am concerned both with this feminist literary criticism about white women (Du Plessis 2009;Horrell 2004;Van Niekerk 1996) and the feminist historical scholarship on poor whites and gender relations (Brink 1986;Du Toit 1996Grobler 2009;Hyslop 1993Hyslop , 1999Hyslop , 2002Krueger 1991;Lange 2002;Morrell 1992;Vincent 2000). Both literatures take up the question of how white women in South Africa have been represented historically, and both have important insights about how to understand the Carnegie Poor White Study (1927)(1928)(1929)(1930)(1931)(1932), a major international multiyear research project on poor whites, published in five volumes.…”

Condenados pelo desejo? Razões de estado na África do Sul

“…"Raça", gênero e sexualidade na era pré-apartheid Para entendermos alguns dos valores e as representações sociais sobre "raça", gênero e sexualidade que mobilizaram a opinião pública no interior de um específico quadro político e social, seguiremos a análise de Jonathan Hyslop (1995) sobre o uso político do debate que precedeu a era do apartheid, na década de 1930, a respeito da criação de uma legislação específica contra os casais "inter-raciais", e os estudos de Saul Dubow (1995) sobre as Comissões criadas com o objetivo de implementá-la. 6 Tal percurso se mostra necessário por evidenciar, a partir de uma certa chave interpretativa, a centralidade dos relacionamentos afetivo-sexuais "inter-raciais" na manutenção das hierarquias de classe e gênero e do lugar e importância da ameaça coloured (ou da miscigenação) na imaginação africâner, e na posterior instalação legal do apartheid.…”

“…Jonathan Hyslop (1995) argumenta que o eleitorado sul-africano "branco" (leia-se africâner) estava, nas eleições de 1938, mobilizado pela imagem da mulher "branca". Vejamos em que termos esta mobilização se constituiu.…”

“…Esta não é, entretanto, a esta- branco" e mulher coloured, para oito entre mulher "branca" e homem indian, e nenhum de mulher "branca" com homens "negros" (cf. Hyslop, 1995).…”