Afrikaner Women Organize in Cradock

In the existing literature on South African history, the mobilization of Afrikaner ethnicity is written of at great length, but the crucial agents are invariably male—teachers, professors, ministers, politicians and, much later, businessmen and financiers. Indexes rarely have the entry 'women', even in sophisticated recent work.^[52] Yet the material to be presented here suggests that women were crucially important in the creation of Afrikaner ethnic consciousness, crucial not merely in their roles as wives and mothers, but as initiators of organizations and performers in the public arena.

In such societies as South Africa, with its complex divisions of colour, religion, and language, women in dominant, and perhaps in subordinate, groups played an important role in policing boundaries which did not have to be legal ones to be effective.^[53] Those boundaries were ones of culture as well as race. As internal class divisions would obviously pose a threat to the persistence of a cultural group largely defined by language, Afrikaner women were sensitive to such threats. Fortunately we have the records of one group of Afrikaner women in Cradock who organized themselves into the Afrikaanse Christelike Vrouwe Vereeniging (Afrikaans Christian Women's Association, or ACVV). We shall investigate their role in blunting such class divisions through their work, particularly in education and social welfare, concluding with a brief examination of their role as maintainers of racial and ethnic boundaries.

The organization of Afrikaner women in Cradock began as a result of concerns over farm burning in the republics and the prisoner of war camps in the Cape. On 13 March 1900, five months into the war, De Middelandsche Afrikaander published a letter from Elizabeth Jordaan urging the women of Cradock to form a committee. By July one had been formed.^[54] Further meetings followed in Cradock to discuss the formation of an organization of women to take up a wider range of issues. On 20 November, four women issued a call in De Middelandsche Afrikaander to a general meeting on 1 December. Soon thereafter, in March 1901, the four women—Hannie Michau, Pollie Michau, Levina van Heerden and Emmie Venter—were sent as 'undesirables' to Port Alfred, to return soon after the signing of the peace treaty in May, 1902.^[55] From the beginning of 1901, the name Afrikaander Vrouwen Vereeniging (Afrikaner Women's Association, or AVV) appears, and the organization apparently functioned successfully, helping

with war orphans and sending clothing to the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The first president, Mrs Reyneke, wife of the dominee, died in July 1902, shortly after the execution of her brother. This local sadness, however, did not sustain the movement: with the end of the war, enthusiasm apparently began to wane.^[56]

In November 1902, Elizabeth Jordaan wrote to Mrs Koopmans de Wet, asking for support for the establishment of a landwye (country-wide) organization of Afrikaner women. Mrs de Wet replied, supporting the idea and urging respect for domestic life and for age, a sense of honour in being an Afrikaner, an awareness of having a history like any other people, following the tradition of European nationalism, and anticipating much in Africa.^[57] Above all, continuing with an interest in the Afrikaans language movement which she had shown all her adult life, she stressed that 'woman and girl must prize their language; if they always speak it to each other, then the men will do the same . . . English must be learnt and read, but not at the cost of our own dear language'.

The Cradock committee decided to publish this letter, and after meetings in Mrs de Wet's house in Cape Town, the rules of the Cradock AVV were adopted with few amendments for a colony-wide organization. In September 1904, the Zuid Afrikaansche Christelike Vrouwen Vereeniging (South African Christian Women's Association) was established, and in 1906 the annual congress was held in Cradock, after which the 'Zuid' was dropped and the modern form ACVV adopted.^[58] There was a political issue here: 'South African' and 'Afrikaans' are hardly synonymous except to an ardent Afrikaner nationalist. Furthermore, Mrs de Wet objected to the conversion of a women's movement into an ethnic one: she wanted it open to all Christian women, including Roman Catholics, and withdrew when she failed to carry the point. There was also a religious issue because some members objected to adding 'Christelike,' preferring the earlier secular form.^[59] Mrs de Wet's more inclusive, more strictly feminist, position parallels that taken earlier by J.H. Hofmeyr in his differences with such contemporaries as Paul Kruger in the Transvaal; for Hofmeyr it was not necessary to be an Afrikaner to be a South African.^[60]

The ACVV, therefore, quickly became an ethnic and a Christian movement, closely committed to the Dutch Reformed Church, but not controlled by it. Something of its spirit can be felt in the words of Elizabeth Jordaan who rapidly became an important person in the provincial organization, and in 1930 completed a term as president. Addressing the 21st congress in 1930 in Cape Town, she echoed themes dear to Dr Malan and other Afrikaner nationalists from the founding of the National Party in 1914.^[61]

We feel that we are together, because we belong together; and this feeling of belonging togetherness is in the final analysis the deepest foundation of our association. I trust that we shall never abandon that and that the ACVV, true to its motto, through love of Volk, Language and Church, will always be inflamed (aangevuur ) . . . . Our work is so wide, like the social, cultural and spiritual welfare of the Afrikaner wife and mother . . . . [We try] to mitigate distress, to help the sick and the weak . . . to care for abandoned children . . . to give lodgings and bring children to adequate care in schools. We help them with books. We nourish their love for what is their own. We guard over the interests of our language.^[62]

In Cradock, the ACVV seems to have followed closely the spirit of Mrs de Wet's letter, concentrating heavily on religious, moral and cultural issues: in 1905 it sent £30 to support a teacher in Rhodesia; it offered prizes for 'Hollands' in

local high schools and sharply criticized the English-speaking principals in 1906 for not publicizing the prizes sufficiently; in 1907, in a resolution for Congress, it pressed for mother-tongue instruction; in 1910 it asked the school board to open schools at the beginning of term on a Tuesday, not a Monday, so that pupils would not have to travel on Sunday; in 1913, it complained to the municipality about 'mixed bathing'—a mixing of sexes, not races—and asked the principal of Rocklands, the girls' high school, for reports in both languages.^[63]