‘Becoming manly’: white South African defence force veterans negotiating masculinity

ABSTRACT

This study examines how white South African men reflect on their experiences of being and becoming army veterans, while negotiating masculinity. In the context of ‘high apartheid’, Afrikaner domination of the socio-political landscape, ethnic and racialised inequalities, the veterans negotiated being white English-speaking men through reflecting on, critiquing and disassociating from military masculinity. An English South African masculinity was upheld by distancing from Afrikaner domination and values, violence and compulsory heterosexuality. These findings suggest that while a military masculinity offered men a powerful template to assert their authority as white men, such power was nuanced by English South Africans’ relative political impotence, the domination of Afrikaans as a language and illustrates the heterogeneity in the experience of white veteran masculinity under apartheid. At the same time, however, white English veterans were complicit in and benefitted from whiteness and the power accrued in the country by virtue of race, class and history of British colonialism. We argue that the experience of being and becoming conscripts and the reflection on military masculinity directs attention to the ways in which broader social and political contexts have effects for the shaping of masculinity reflecting hierarchies of power and fluidity.

KEYWORDS:

• Veterans
• hegemonic masculinity; apartheid
• resistance
• military
• South Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raksha Janak

Raksha Janak, PhD is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her research interests include gender, sexualities, sexual violence, new feminist materialism, social media and teachers' work. Her most recent publications include “No! We definitely don't teach that sort of thing”: Teachers and the childhood-sexuality assemblage in South Africa (2024) and Girls becoming ‘sexy' on digital spaces: capacities and constraints (2023).

Deevia Bhana

Deevia Bhana, PhD, is the South African Research Chair in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her research examines how gender and sexuality come to matter in the young life course. Her recent book is entitled, Girls and the Negotiation of Porn in South Africa: Power, Play and Sexuality (2023, Routledge).

James Marculitis

James Marculitis is a student of Diplomacy and World Affairs studying at Occidental College. His research interests include comparative politics, gender studies and whiteness.

Imraan Buccus

Imraan Buccus, PhD, is attached to a study abroad programme, the School for International Training and is post-doctoral fellow in Gender Justice, Health and Human Development at the Durban University of Technology.