‘Mother of the nation’: rugby, nationalism and the role of women in South Africa's Afrikaner society

Abstract

This study investigates the role of women in Afrikaner society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how it came to form an integral part of emergent Afrikaner nationalism within South Africa. Created by men and sustained through the male-dominated realms of politics and rugby, the notion of Volksmoeder or ‘Mother of the Nation’ promoted the virtues of ‘ideal womanhood’ and became a central unifying force within Afrikanerdom in the years following the Anglo-Boer War. Although the concept of the Volksmoeder defies precise definition, it nevertheless incorporated a clear role model for Afrikaner women and became part and parcel of the Afrikaner nationalist mythology that incorporated masculinized sport as part of its doctrine. On the basis of the exploits of Voortrekker women and those who had suffered at the hands of the British during the 1899–1902 conflict, this study explores the notion of an ‘idealized womanhood’ and how it was woven into a male-dominated nationalism.

Notes

^1.Brink, ‘Man-Made Women’, 273.

^2.Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom, 17.

^3. Ibid.

^4.Kotzé, Nationalism. A Comparative Study, 3.

^5.Allison, ‘The Changing Context’, 4.

^6.Harrison, The White Tribe of Africa.

^7.Vatcher, White Laager, 3.

^8.Streak, The Afrikaner.

^9.Greyling, ‘From Hyper-Imperialist to Super-Afrikaner’.

^10. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom, 3.

^11.Lerumo, Fifty Fighting Years.

^12. Born in the Eastern Cape in 1825, Kruger took part in the Great Trek as a child. He later became three times President of the Transvaal and a strong opponent of British interests in South Africa. He led the Republic during the 1899–1902 War.

^13.Booth, The Race Game.

^14. Vastly outnumbered, a group of Voortrekkers defeated a Zulu army deep in the heart of Natal on 16 December 1838. Subsequently, during the apartheid years, this date was celebrated by Afrikaners as the ‘Day of the Vow’, a public holiday honouring a supposed covenant made by the Boers with God himself that if he granted them victory, they would hold that day sacred.

^15. The white population of the Transvaal in 1899 was recorded as 288,750 compared with Sheffield's population of 324,243. See Meysey-Thompson, The Transvaal Crisis.

^16.Giliomee, The Afrikaners.

^17.Schreiner, Thoughts on South Africa, 201.

^18.Postma, Die boervrouw, 205; translated.

^19. Ibid., 63–5.

^20.Le May, British Supremacy in South Africa, 106 and Spies, ‘Women and the War’, 170.

^21. Brink, ‘Man-Made Women’.

^22. Ibid., 279.

^23. See Morrell, ‘Forging a Ruling Race’.

^24.Van Rensburg, Moeders Van Ons volk, 99; translated.

^25.Walker, ‘The Women's Suffrage Movement’.

^26.Du Toit, ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism’.

^27.Grundlingh, Odendaal, and Spies, Beyond the Tryline; Booth, The Race Game and Nauright, Sport, Cultures and Identities.

^28.Allen, ‘Beating Them’.

^29.Rapport, 23 October 1994, 25.

^30.Nauright and Chandler, Making Men.

^31.Nauright, ‘Sustaining Masculine Hegemony’, 241.

^32.South African Rugby Football Board, Souvenir, 7.

^33. In particular, see Grundlingh, ‘Playing for Power?’.

^34. Quoted in Dobson, Rugby in South Africa, 68.

^35. D. Snyman, Private Interview, Stellenbosch: January 19, 2000.

^36. B. Booyens, Private Interview, Stellenbosch: January 19, 2000. See also Bose, Sporting Colours. According to Bose, rugby's attraction for the Afrikaners also lay in the fact that they realised soon enough that it could be an elitist sport. Wishing to find cultural pursuits in which they could excel, rugby provided an ideal vehicle through which the Afrikaners could distance themselves from other sections of South African society.

^37.Black and Nauright, Rugby and the South African Nation, 61.

^38.Archer and Bouillon, The South African Game, 73.

^39. Black and Nauright, Rugby and the South African Nation, 63.

^40. Ibid.

^41.Wilkins and Strydom, The Super-Afrikaners, 242.

^42. H. I. Nel, Private Interview, Stellenbosch: January 18, 2000.

^43. H. van Niekerk, Private Interview, Stellenbosch: January 13, 2000.

^44.Morrell, ‘The Times of Change’, 23.

^45. See in particular Collins, A Social History, chapter 3 for the link between rugby and military honour and patriotism.

^46.Nicholson, ‘The Western Province’, 735.

^47. Grundlingh, ‘Playing for Power?’, 200.

^48. Ibid., 199.

^49.Thompson, ‘Challenging the Hegemony’.

^50. Grundlingh, ‘Playing for Power?’, 200.