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The Springbok and the Skunk: War Veterans and the Politics of Whiteness in South Africa during the 1940s and 1950s

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070903101870

1465-3893

Neil Roos,

Military, Security, and Education Studies

Abstract This article draws on oral and written sources to explore the wartime and post-war experiences of white South African men who volunteered to serve in the Second World War. By examining the meaning of war service for these men, I argue that their history offers a critical perspective of the production of popular whiteness in mid-twentieth-century South Africa. The act of volunteering created a sense of entitlement among these men and, for them, the Allied war objective of ‘social justice’ converged around their hopes for ‘homes fit for heroes’ – an ideal loaded with a range of assumptions about race, class and gender. During the war, the Springbok Legion, a type of ‘trade union of the ranks’, attracted a substantial membership of white male soldiers although, by the end of the war, most were alienated by its increasingly radical politics. After the war, there was widespread disappointment and ‘restlessness’ among volunteers, which helped to consolidate their identity as ‘comrades’. However, after the advent of the National Party government in 1948, veterans realised that they would have to stake their claim to the privileges of apartheid society, not as heroes who had served their country, but as white men. War service remained a crucial part of their identity, and many joined the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (MOTHs), a veterans' movement that represented a ‘political’ response to a party political culture that failed to appreciate their service. I argue that the MOTH helps to explain how white veterans negotiated the shift from segregation to apartheid, and suggests that we need to look beyond the political realm for insight into ways that whiteness was reproduced and its dominant forms ‘contested’. Notes 1 The published collections of conference papers from the History Workshop offer a comprehensive insight into the work of the radical social historians during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. See B. Bozzoli (ed.), Labour Townships and Protest: Studies in the Social History of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1979); B. Bozzoli (ed.), Town and Countryside in the Transvaal (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1983); B. Bozzoli (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1987); P. Bonner, P. Delius and D. Posel (eds), Apartheid's Genesis, 1935–1963 (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1993). * My thanks to Ashgate Publishing Ltd for permission to draw on material that has appeared in N. Roos, Ordinary Springboks: White Men and Social Justice in South Africa, 1939–1961 (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2005). 2 T.C. Holt comments on the multiple ways in which ‘whiteness’ has been deployed in recent scholarly discourse. See ‘The Power of Whiteness: Comment on James Barrett/David Roediger’, WerkStattGeschichte, 39 (2005), pp. 35–6. 3 A. Stoler and F. Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda’, in F. Cooper and A. Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California and London, England, University of California Press, 1997), pp. 6, 20. 4 Stoler and F. Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda’, in F. Cooper and A. Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California and London, England, University of California Press, 1997), p. 6. 5 D. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London and New York, Verso, 1991), pp. 8–11. 6 T.W. Allen, ‘On Roediger's Wages of Whiteness’, available at http://eserver.org/clogic4-2/allen.html, retrieved on 11 May 2005. 7 R. Greenstein, ‘The Future of the South African Past’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 22, 2 (June 1996), p. 330. 8 S. Sarkar, Writing Social History (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 5. 9 Most were members of the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (MOTH). Although outside Durban the Order included a larger number of Afrikaans-speaking veterans, I did not encounter major regional variations in MOTH discourse and practice. Nevertheless, the elucidation of regional differences in the post-war experience of white veterans – in the MOTH and beyond – remains fairly uncharted. 10 C. Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York, Basic Books, 1963), pp. 16–17. 11 G.C. Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 217–313. 12 For an account of the events that led to Smuts’ installation as Prime Minister, see L.A. Reeves, ‘The War Issue and the Demise of the Fusion Government in 1939’ (Master of Arts thesis, University of Natal, Durban, 1984). 13 The African National Congress (ANC), for example, supported the war effort despite misgivings about the non-combatant role accorded to blacks. See A. Drew, Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left (Pretoria, Unisa Press, 2002), p. 226; B. Hirson, Yours for the Union: Class and Community Struggles in South Africa (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1990), pp. 76–8; J. Pampallis, Foundations of the New South Africa (Cape Town, Maskew Miller Longman, 1991), pp. 155–60. 14 H. van Rensburg, Their Paths Crossed Mine: Memoirs of the Commandant-General of the Ossewa-Brandwag (n.p., Central New Agency, 1956), pp. 151–5. 15 H.J. Martin and N. Orpen, South Africa at War: Military and Industrial Organization and Operations in Connection with the Conduct of the War, 1939–1945 (Cape Town, Johannesburg and London, Purnell, 1979), p. v. 16 The Official Yearbook of the Union of South Africa estimates 190,000 while Cock goes for the higher figure. See The Official Yearbook of the Union of South Africa (Pretoria, Government Printers, 1946), p. 20; J. Cock, ‘Demobilization and Democracy: The Relevance of the 1944 Soldiers’ Charter To Southern Africa Today’ (paper presented to the University of the Witwatersrand History Workshop, July 1994), p. 2. 17 For an overview of the role of African volunteers in the UDF during the Second World War, see L. Grundlingh, ‘The Recruitment of South African Blacks for Participation in the Second World War’, in D. Killingray and R. Rathbone (eds), Africa And The Second World War (London, Macmillan, 1986), pp. 181–203. See also N. Cowling (ed.), ‘Historical Survey of the Non European Army Services outside of the Union of South Africa’, Militaria, 24, 1 (1994). 18 A. Grundlingh, ‘The King's Afrikaners? Enlistment and Ethnic Identity In The Union of South Africa's Defence Force During The Second World War, 1939–1945’, Journal of African History, 40, 3 (October 1999). 19 Official Yearbook (1946). 20 Wat Die Soldaat Dink (Pretoria, Hoofstafkwatier, 1945), pp. 4–18; 31–5. 21 Wat Die Soldaat Dink (Pretoria, Hoofstafkwatier, 1945), p. 11. 22 See for example T.P. Clynick, ‘Romance and Reality on the Vaal River Diggings: Race and Class in a South African Rural Community, 1905–1914’, Canadian Papers in Rural History, 9 (1994), pp. 401–18. 23 Grundlingh, ‘The King's Afrikaners?’, p. 11. 24 J.A. Brown, Retreat to Victory. A Springbok's Diary in North Africa: Gazala to El Alamein 1942 (Johannesburg, Ashanti, 1991), pp. xiii, 1. 25 M. de Lisle, Over the Hills and Far Away: My Twenties in the Forties (Cape Town, the author, 1999), pp. 2–3. 26 Interview with W. Grobler, transcript, Durban, 3 June 1997. In some instances, the names of informants have been changed. 27 Interview with P. Loubser, transcript, Johannesburg, 16 July1997. 28 Report of the South African National Conference on the Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1944), pp. 105–106. 29 In 1930–31, the number of whites receiving industrial and vocational training was less than one per cent of those receiving primary and secondary education. E.G. Malherbe, best known for his work as an educationist, noted that industrial and vocational training bore a stigma among whites. See D. Welsh, ‘The Growth of Towns’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds), The Oxford History of South Africa, Volume II: South Africa 1870–1966 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 223. 30 Springbok Legion: The History and Policy (Johannesburg, Springbok Legion, 1944), p. 16. 31 Interview with V. Clapham, transcript, Botha's Hill, 12 March 1987; University of the Witwatersrand, CPSA collection (hereafter Cullen), A617, Secretary's Report, Presented to the Second National Conference of the Springbok Legion held in Cape Town on 10–11 February 1945. Formally, the Legion welcomed women into its ranks and, unlike other South African service organisations, black volunteers. However, few women joined and Joe Podbrey, a wartime member of the Legion's Executive Committee, thought there were never more than about a thousand black Legionnaires. Interview with Joe Podbrey, tape and transcript, Johannesburg, 2 October 2002. 32 For accounts of the suspicion of the white poor and white workers of the state, see C. van Onselen, ‘The Main Reef Road into the Working Class: Proletarianization, Unemployment and Class Consciousness Amongst Johannesburg's Afrikaner Poor, 1890–1914’, in C. van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914, Volume One, New Babylon, and Volume Two, New Nineveh (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1982), pp. 132–3; T.P. Clynick, ‘Afrikaner Political Mobilization in the Western Transvaal: Popular Consciousness and the State, 1920–1930’(D.Phil. thesis, Queen's University, 1996). 33 L. Bernstein, Memory Against Forgetting: Memoirs from a Life in South African Politics, 1938–1964 (London, Viking, 1999), p. 66. 34 For an account of the history of the Springbok Legion, see N. Roos, ‘A History of the Springbok Legion, 1941–1953’ (Master of Arts thesis, University of Natal, Durban, 1990). 36 Fighting Talk, September 1945. 35 Interview with T. Velleman, transcript, Mafikeng, 8 April 1998. 37 Conference on the Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work, p. 106. 38 Hirson, Yours for the Union, pp. 76–121; 165–95. See also I. Edwards, ‘Recollections: the Communist Party and Worker Militancy in Durban, Early 1940s’, South African Labour Bulletin, 11, 4 (1986), pp. 65–84. 39 E. Webster, Cast in a Racial Mould: Labour Process and Trade Unionism in the Foundries (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1985), p. 16. 40 N. Clark, ‘Regendering Production: White Women and Black Men in World War Two’ (Paper presented to University of the Witwatersrand History Workshop, July 1994). Lewis examines how trade unions tried to subject female and black labour to trade union discipline so that they could not be used to undercut established wage-rates. J. Lewis, Industrialisation and Trade Union Organisation in South Africa, 1924–1955: The Rise and Fall of the South African Trades and Labour Council (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 101–10. 41 Clark, ‘Regendering Production’, p. 15. 42 M. Bryant, As We Were. South Africa, 1939–1945 (Johannesburg, Keartland, 1974), p. 10. 43 M. Bryant, As We Were. South Africa, 1939–1945 (Johannesburg, Keartland, 1974), pp. 59–62. 44 M. Bryant, As We Were. South Africa, 1939–1945 (Johannesburg, Keartland, 1974), p. 98. 45 A. Stadler, The Political Economy of Modern South Africa (Cape Town and Johannesburg, David Philip and London, Croon Helm, 1987), pp. 59, 91. 46 D. van Tonder, ‘First Win the War and then Clear the Slums: The Genesis of the Western Areas Removal Scheme, 1942, 1949’, in Bonner, Delius, and Posel (eds), Apartheid's Genesis, p. 322. See also M. Swanson, ‘The Sanitation Syndrome: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909’, in W. Beinart and S. Dubow (eds), Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth Century South Africa (London and New York, Routledge, 1995), pp. 25–42. 47 D.T. Goldberg, ‘“Polluting the Body Politic:” Racist Discourses and Urban Location’, in M. Cross and M. Keith (eds), Racism, the City and the State (London and New York, Routledge, 1993), p. 45. 48 H. Judin, ‘blank: Architecture, Apartheid and After’, Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), 8–14 January 1999, Friday supplement. 49 Interview with W. Grobler, transcript, Durban, 5 June 1997. 50 All of my 50-odd informants used this term to describe their sense of disjuncture and displacement after the war. 51 Interview with W. Robinson, transcript, Kimberley, 28 June 2000. 52 See, for example, D. Hughes ‘The Spivs’, in M. Sissons and P. French (eds), Age of Austerity (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1963), p. 92. 53 Interview with G. Wyley, tapes and transcript, Durban, 18 June 1997. 54 Interview with P. Loubser, tapes and transcript, 16 July 1997. 55 B.G. Hobbs, Recollections of Italy: The Memoirs of a Trooper in Prince Alfred's Guard (Port Elizabeth, self-published by the author, 1996), p. 87. 56 Conference on the Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work, pp. 43–4. 57 Fighting Talk, September 1944. 58 A. Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire. Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham NC and London, Duke University Press, 1995), p. 11. 59 Interview with B. Scheepers, transcript, Durban, 17 September 1996. 60 Fighting Talk, September 1945. 61 Cited in F. Oosthuizen, ‘Changes and Expectations: The White Union Defence Force Soldier Prior to and During the Second World War’, Militaria, 23, 3 (1993), p. 39. 63 House of Assembly Debates, Vol. 49 (1944), Cols. 6,048–6,081. 65 Conference On The Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work, p. 81. 62 Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation Harry Lawrence regularly used the phrase ‘there will be no forgotten men’ when referring to the Soldier's Charter. Cited in F. Oosthuizen, ‘The Demobilisation of the White Union Defence Force Soldiers During and After the Second World War’ (Master of Arts thesis, Rand Afrikaans University, 1993), p. 30. 64 Conference On The Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work, p. 83. 66 Conference On The Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work 67 F. Oosthuizen, ‘Demobilisation and the Post-War Employment of White Union Defence Force Soldiers’, Militaria, 23, 4 (1993), p. 34. 68 L. Manson, interview by author, tapes and transcript, Johannesburg, 8 July 1998. See also Cock, ‘Demobilization and Democracy’, p. 4; Oosthuizen, ‘Demobilisation and the Post-War Employment of the Union Defence Force Soldier’, pp. 34–7. 69 House of Assembly Debates, Vol. 49 (1944), Col. 6,072. 70 Conference on the Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work, pp. 83–4. 71 L.W.F. Grundlingh, ‘The Participation of South African Blacks in the Second World War’ (D.Litt. et Phil. thesis, Rand Afrikaans University, 1986). 72 Fighting Talk, September 1945. 73 Cock, ‘Demobilization and Democracy’, p. 1. 74 F. Oosthuizen, ‘Soldiers and Politics: Political Ramifications of the White Union Defence Force Soldiers’ Demobilisation after the Second World War’, Militaria, 24, 1 (1994), p. 21. 75 Interview with V. van Rensburg, tapes and transcript, Pinetown, 15 July 1998. 76 C.W. de Kiewiet, A History of South Africa Social & Economic (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1941), p. 221. 77 Interview with Manson. 78 Interview with Wyley. 79 Conference on the Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work, p. 106. 80 Interview with Grobler. 81 Fighting Talk, January 1946. 82 Interview with Loubser. 83 Conference on the Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work, p. 106. 84 Cock, ‘Demobilization and Democracy’, p. 4. 85 Fighting Talk, August 1945. 86 Fighting Talk, April 1946. 87 Interview with G. Routh, transcript, Durban, 16 March 1987. 88 P. Alexander, War, Workers & the Origins of Apartheid (Oxford, James Currey; Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press; and Cape Town, David Philip, 2000), pp. 99–100. 89 Conference on the Post-War Planning of Social Welfare Work, p. 83. 90 Alexander, War, Workers & the Origins of Apartheid, p. 102. 91 Skunks in Uniform, U.P. Central Head Office: Grievances, 1943–1945, Sanlam United Party Archives, University of South Africa [pamphlet]. 92 Interview with V. Roos, transcript, Scottburgh, 19 April 1995. 93 Reef Barb, February 1946; H.J. Simons and R. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850–1950 (Lusaka, IDAF, 1983), p. 561. 94 Reef Barb, October 1944. 95 Reef Barb, October 1944; interview with Loubser. 96 Interview with Loubser. 97 Fighting Talk, August 1945. 98 Fighting Talk, October 1944. 99 Interview with D. Lourens, tapes and transcript, Pinetown, 15 July 1998. 100 Fighting Talk, June 1946; van Rensburg and Lourens agree with this estimate. 101 In interviews with Loubser, Grobler and Wyley as well as with S. Gibson, tapes and transcript, Pinetown, 15 July 1997, this point was raised by all those interviewed. 102 Bradford makes a similar point in her discussion of Afrikaner homesteads during the South African War. See H. Bradford, ‘Gentlemen and Boers: Afrikaner Nationalism, Gender and Colonial Warfare in the South African War’ (paper presented to conference on Rethinking the South African War, UNISA, August 1998). The employment of black domestic servants was important in white South African households. However, as Cock and van Onselen have shown, the extent to which domestic servants were employed by whites was shaped by such factors as social class among whites, and trajectories of urbanisation among blacks. See J. Cock, Maids and Madams: A Study in the Politics of Exploitation (Johannesburg, Ravan, 1980), and C. van Onselen, ‘The Witches of Suburbia: Domestic Service on the Witwatersrand, 1890–1914’, in van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, Volume 2, New Nineveh. 103 Forum, 7 July 1945. 104 Cited in Oosthuizen, ‘The Demobilisation of the White Union Defence Force Soldiers’, p. 99. 105 Fighting Talk, December 1945. 106 Fighting Talk, June 1946. 107 O'Meara writes that after the NP came to power, the secret Afrikaner Broederbond (‘Afrikaner Brotherhood’) exercised its influence over the NP to secure senior civil service positions for Broederbond members. D. O'Meara, Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948–1994 (Johannesburg, Ravan; Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, 1996), pp. 61–2. 108 Interview with Robinson. 109 Interview with B. Davidson, tapes and transcript, Kimberley, 28 June 2000. 110 Interviews with Grobler and Loubser. 111 Interview with Loubser. 112 On the radicalisation of the Springbok Legion see Roos, ‘A History of the Springbok Legion’. 113 All the ex-servicemen I interviewed greeted the notion of a soldiers’ party with incredulity. 114 C.A. Evenden, Old Soldiers Never Die: The Story of MOTH 0 (Durban, MOTH, 1975, 5th edition), p. 124. A few shellholes (branches) were established in neighbouring parts of southern Africa and in England, possibly by veterans with South African links. Comparative histories of veterans’ movements remain largely unexplored. 115 Evenden, Old Soldiers Never Die, p. 302. See also Fifty Years of the Memorable Order of The Tin Hats, 1927–1977 (commemorative brochure-MOTH, 1977). 116 Evenden, Old Soldiers Never Die, p. 175. 117 J. Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: the Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 261. See also J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1990). 118 The Home Front, December 1945. 119 The Home Front, July 1946. 120 The Home Front, May 1953. 121 The Home Front, November 1946. 122 The Home Front 123 The Home Front, June 1951. 124 Interview with Grobler. My own high school education was subsidised by the MOTH. 125 Evenden, Old Soldiers Never Die, p. 142. 126 The Home Front, November 1947. 127 The Home Front 128 From 1935, wives of male MOTHs were sometimes organised into MOTH Women's Associations (MOTHWAs), which helped MOTH shellholes with catering and fund-raising tasks. Fifty Years, 1927–1977, pp. 50–51, 71. 129 See Comaroff, Body of Power, p. 11. 130 ‘MOTH Membership, 1946–1994’, Graph produced by MOTH General Headquarters, n.d. 131 D. Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, US, Blackwell, 1993), pp. 90–95. 132 I have argued elsewhere that their involvement in the War Veterans’ Torch Commando between 1951 and 1953 demonstrated that white veterans’ ideas about social justice incorporated visceral ‘anti-fascist’ convictions and, at least during the early 1950s, opposition to the ‘Malanazis’ in the NP almost to the point of insurrection. See Roos, Ordinary Springboks, pp. 129–57.