Introduction

This chapter is entitled 'Afrikaner women and the creation of ethnicity . . . .' By ethnicity we do not mean only the existence of a community with a distinctive language and institutions, and, therefore, a history of its own. Afrikanerdom in that sense is almost as old as the settlement of Dutchmen in South Africa. We mean in addition a community conscious of its institutions and language, developing an historical record, aware of the existence of other communities in conflict with it and of the necessity of mobilizing itself in defence of its interests. Ethnicity in this sense is analogous to E.P. Thompson's notion of class—'when men . . . as a result of common experiences . . . feel and articulate the identity of their interests . . . as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs'.^[2] That consciousness, as Thompson emphasized, is itself an historical product; it will, therefore, vary in intensity over time, and is by no means a necessary consequence of cultural difference, but the result of action by individuals and organizations that create and sustain it.

Most studies of ethnicity in South Africa have stressed the role of long-term political conflict between English and Afrikaners and, most especially, the impact of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902. Granted the importance of this conflict, however, the construction of Afrikaner ethnic identity cannot be understood in terms of that conflict alone. John X. Merriman, a noted politician in the Cape Colony who frequently showed an acute sense of social process and a capacity to

foresee the consequences of current policies, was aware of the importance of women in the process. Writing during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, he drew attention to the complex division of authority between the sexes in Afrikaner society and to women as 'a very real factor' in spite of disenfranchisement and an apparent lack of interest in the contemporary struggle for 'women's rights'.

Power is affected by social as well as explicitly political factors. In a study of the Creoles in Sierra Leone, Abner Cohen has written: 'In all systems of stratification, women play a crucial part in the distribution and maintenance of power between groups. The higher the group is in the hierarchy, the more crucial that part tends to be.'^[3] As members of the group at the top of a racial hierarchy, Afrikaner women had for long played a central role, as Merriman noted, even though they did not receive the vote until 1931. 'Afrikaner women . . .', wrote Sheila Patterson, 'despite their traditional assignment to the kitchen and the nursery, [are] far from disinterested in politics.'^[4] There was, and is, substantial male dominance in many spheres of Afrikaner society, but on occasion Afrikaner women have shown independence from their menfolk on public issues. Acting outside the explicitly political realm, they frequently played an important part in defining Afrikaners as a self-conscious ethnic group in an urban environment and in meeting many of the needs of Afrikaner poor whites who had recently left the land.^[5]

Furthermore, although it will not be possible to pursue the issue in detail, I shall suggest that they helped to raise ethnic awareness to such a level that being an Afrikaner became not merely a cultural identification, defined essentially by language spoken and church attended, but a political one as well. To be a 'ware Afrikaner', poorly translated as a 'true Afrikaner', was to have certain precise political loyalties. Thus women contributed greatly to the development of the 'second phase' of Afrikaner ethnic consciousness that occurred during the first half of this century and which contributed crucially to the victory of the National Party in 1948. By concentrating upon the role of women in forming Afrikaner ethnic consciousness, we shall, therefore, move towards an explanation of the social processes which aided the sustained political consolidation of Afrikanerdom, produced the victory of 1948, and which lasted until the founding of the Herstigte Nasionale Party in 1969.

In addition to emphasizing the role of women in these processes, we shall also be correcting a tendency to write South African history from the 'centre'. Social histories of small towns can tell us much about the history of Afrikaner communities that we now know only in outline because much of it is in an Afrikaans literature that English-speaking scholars have largely ignored.^[6] What were the local processes by which an ethnic group was mobilized to overcome divisions of region, leadership, income, ownership, recent impoverishment and reluctant urbanization? The Afrikaner poor may have been a class in the sense that they shared landlessness, low income, and a consequent lack of control over their lives, but they became a class in E.P. Thompson's sense with an important qualification. 'Class,' wrote E.P. Thompson, 'happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.'^[7] In South Africa, their sense of common experience was inherited and shared in their recent humiliation at the hands of the British conqueror; the articulation of their interests had, or was given, an ethnic dimension. Thus class loyalties having their origins in 'productive relations',^[8] which could and perhaps should have divided the ethnos, did not do

so. The evidence of genuine class conflict dividing Afrikaners from each other so that local organizations were linked to class specific divisions is sparse indeed. There is strong evidence that it was the work of Afrikaner women in particular which brought about this situation of blunted class antagonisms.