White Working-class Women and the Invention of Apartheid

‘Purified’ Afrikaner Nationalist Agitation for Legislation Against ‘Mixed’ Marriages, 1934–9

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8978451
AutoresJonathan Hyslop (0000-0002-6879-2281, University of the Witwatersrand, autor de correspondencia)
Año1995
Volumen36
Número1
Páginas57-81
Fecha de publicación1995-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021853700026979
OpenAlexW2168137394
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas44
Referencias citadas22

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

Government (linguistics · Independence (probability theory · Legislation · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · White (mutation · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender Studies · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture