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Abstract
In ‘The Rise and Fall of Afrikaner Women’ (2003), Gilliomee argues that Afrikaner women's history ‘is the biggest untold story of the Afrikaner people’, and in doing so ignores the research on Afrikaner women's history. This ignoring of women's history may be attributed either to orthodoxy in historical writing or the lack of a review on women's history despite a relatively large body of work, focussing in particular on Afrikaner women. Although contributions to women's history come out of a wide range of disciplines, including literary theory, political science, anthropology and history proper, it is my contention that there is a definable trend developing in South African historiography which particularly represents the history of Afrikaner women. This article explicitly shows that the history of Afrikaner women is not untold through a review of the contributions of scholars whose work form part of (what I call) the historiography of Afrikaner women. This article not only contextualises Afrikaner women's history against the backdrop of tendencies in historical writing but also focuses on the major themes in the historiography of Afrikaner women, including identity, political agency, labour, welfare, class, reproduction and particularly the ongoing debate of the ‘volksmoeder’.
Notes
1. F.A. van Jaarsveld, Wie en Wat is die Afrikaner? (Kaapstad: Tafelberg, 1981), 69. See also L.M. Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity: Women and Afrikaner Nationalism in the Volksmoeder discourse of Die Boerevrou, 1919–1931’ (MA Thesis, University of Cape Town, 1991), 18–19, who connects the ‘silence about women’ to the ‘gaps’ in Afrikaner historiography.
2. Van Jaarsveld, Wie en Wat is die Afrikaner?, 1.
3. V. Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 68.
4. J.W. Scott, ‘Women's History’, in P. Burke, ed., New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 50.
5. Scott, ‘Women's History’, 58.
6. The earliest books of this kind includes W. Postma, Die Boervrouw: Moeder van Haar Volk (Bloemfontein: Nasionale Pers, 1918) and E. Stockenström, Die Vrou in die Geskiedenis van die Hollands-Afrikaanse Volk (Stellenbosch: Pro Ecclesia, 1921). The feminist theologian Christina Landman effectively describes the nationalist nature of these books in her study The Piety of Afrikaans Women: Diaries of Guilt (Pretoria: UNISA, 1994), 5–8. She depicts Postma's book as ‘patrio-religious’ and Stokenström's as ‘ethico-religious’. In other words Die Boervrouw: Moeder van haar Volk praises Afrikaner women (or ‘Boer women’) for their patriotism and sense of religion while Die Vrou in die Geskiedenis van die Hollands Afrikaanse Volk tries to trace the Afrikaans nation's roots back to 1568. Thus, he identifies the history of Afrikaans women with that of the Dutch women who fought with Kenau Hasselaar in the Eigthty Year's War. To him this serves as a justification and legitimisation for Afrikaner women's supposed ethno-centric sense of independence which later served the ends of Afrikaner nationalism. These books also played a major role in providing a historical motivation for the construction of the subjective identity of the Volksmoeder (mother of the nation). This construction would come into full fruition in the years after the publication of these texts. Other popular nationalistic accounts that follow the same line of thought are D.G. Venter, Die Vrou in die Openbare Lewe (Bloemfontein: Nasionale Pers, 1937), Die Gereformeerde Vroueblad (red.), Gedenkboek. Die Gereformeerde Vrou, 1859–1959 (Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom Herald, 1959); A.P. van Rensburg, Moeders van ons Volk (Johannesburg: Afrikaanse Pers Boekhandel, 1966); A. de Villiers, Barrevoets oor die Drakensberg: Pioniersvroue van die Neëntiende Eeu (Johannesburg: Perskor, 1975); F. van der Watt, Ek Sien haar Wen (Pretoria: Daan Retief Uitgewers, 1980).
7. See in this regard F.A. van Jaarsveld, Die Ontwaking van die Afrikaanse Nasionale Bewussyn, 1868–1881 (Johannesburg: Voortrekkerpers, 1959); F.A. van Jaarsveld, Die Afrikaner en sy Geskiedenis (Kaapstad: Nasionale Boekhandel, 1959); F.A. van Jaarsveld, Die Afrikaners se Groot Trek na die Stede (Johannesburg: Perskor, 1982). Women are scarcely mentioned in the eight-volume work of G.D. Scholtz, Die Ontwikkeling van die Politieke Denke van die Afrikaner (Johannesburg: Voortrekkerpers/Perskor, 1967–1984). Even important books on Afrikaner nationalism following a liberal and Marxist approach either casts women in a certain mould or just neglects to mention them. I am referring here to T.D. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975) and D. O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
8. For a broader interpretation of ‘politics’ and ‘power’ in history (which I also advocate in this paper) see J.W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
9. H. Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2003). The book proves to be immensely popular. Published in both English and Afrikaans it is now in its second edition and described by reviewers as ‘likely to become a baseline for interpreting Afrikaner history for a long time to come’ (G.M. Gerhart, ‘The Afrikaners: Biography of a People’, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003). This is a good example to use when assessing how an authoritative account of Afrikaner history (a biography of Afrikaners) takes into consideration all Afrikaners, men as well as women.
10. Giliomee, The Afrikaners, xvi.
11. M. du Toit, ‘Church, Gender and Ethnic Nationalism’, The Journal of African History, 45, 3 (2004), 501.
12. H. Giliomee, ‘The Rise and Fall of Afrikaner Women’, Litnet Akademies, 2003, http://www.litnet.co.za/seminarroom/afwomen.asp, accessed 31 May 2011, 1.
13. Giliomee himself does not call them supplements, but within the rhetoric of women's history they would qualify as supplements.
14. Giliomee, ‘The Rise and Fall of Afrikaner Women’.
15. H. Giliomee, ‘“Allowed Such a State of Freedom”: Women and Gender Relations in the Afrikaner Community Before Enfranchisement in 1930’, New Contree, 59, May (2003), 29–60.
16. B. Bozzoli, ‘Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 9, 2, (1983), 144.
17. Landman, ‘Tussen ‘n Breinaald en ‘n Koeksister’, 67. In her article Landman provides a list of works about Afrikaner women's history – undoubtedly one of the most incomplete lists ever made. This shows that even in the circles that advocate the writing of Afrikaner women's history, there is an ignorance about which studies already exist on the topic.
18. P. Bonner, ‘New Nation, New History: The History Workshop in South Africa, 1997–1994’, The Journal of American History: A Special Issue (December 1994), 977.
19. K. Smith, The Changing Past: Trends in South African Historical Writing (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988), 162.
20. F. Johnstone, ‘“Most Painful to our Hearts”: South Africa Through the Eyes of the New School’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 16, 1 (1982), 5.
21. The artificial division of historians into various ‘schools’ are in itself problematic, but even more so with regard to the Radical-Marxist school. For a thorough discussion on this approach to South African history, see H.M. Wright, The Burden of the Present: Liberal-Radical Controversy over South African History (Cape Town: David Phillip, 1980); Smith, The Changing Past, 155–212; C. Saunders, The Making of the South African Past: Major Historians on Race and Class (Cape Town: David Phillip, 1988).
22. P. Hetherington, ‘Women in South Africa: The Historiography in English’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 26, 2 (1993), 241. Hetherington snubs works relating to Afrikaner women but is nonetheless useful in tracing the influence of the Radical-Marxist school on South African women's history.
23. See D. Posel, ‘Rethinking the “Race-Class Debate” in South African Historiography’, in Southern African Studies: Retrospect and Prospect: Proceedings of a Seminar held in the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, May 30th–June 1st, 1983 (Edinburgh: Centre for African Studies, 1983), 1–27.
24. Hetherington, ‘Women in South Africa’, 242.
25. Hetherington, ‘Women in South Africa’, 245.
26. C. Robertson, ‘Developing Economic Awareness: Changing Perspectives in Studies of African Women, 1976–88’, Feminist Studies, 13, 1 (1987), 97–136.
27. Hetherington, ‘Women in South Africa’, 245.
28. Bozzoli, ‘Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies’, 139, 144.
29. Hetherington, ‘Women in South Africa’, 243.
30. Robertson, ‘Developing Economic Awareness’, 97. In the past 20 years great strides have been taken in the writing black South African women's history. See Hetherington, ‘Women in South Africa,’ 241–269, for an excellent outline of the historiography up to 1993.
31. J.J. van Helten and K. Williams, ‘“The Crying Need of South Africa”: The Emigration of Single Women to the Transvaal, 1901–1910’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 10, 1, (1983), 17.
32. Bozzoli, ‘Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies’, 140.
33. A. van der Spuy, ‘South African Women: The Other Discrimination’, Munger Africana Library Notes (July 1978), 1–12.
34. Bozzoli, ‘Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies’, 139.
35. See H. Crowley, ‘Women's Studies: Between a Rock and a Hard Place or Just Another Cell in the Beehive?’, Feminist Review, 61 (1999), 131–150 and M.J. Boxer, ‘Women's Studies as Women's History’, Women's Studies Quarterly, 40, 3-4 (2002), 42–51 for a discussion of women's history within the framework of women's studies and the international women's movement.
36. C. van Onselen, New Babylon, New Nineveh: Everyday Life on the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914 (Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2001), 109–156. Originally published in two volumes under the titles Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914, Vol 1: New Babylon, Vol 2: New Nineveh (New York: Longman, 1982). Elizabeth van Heyningen also wrote an article about prostitution in the Cape Colony, see E. van Heyningen, ‘The Social Evil in the Cape Colony, 1868–1902: Prostitution and the Contagious Diseases Act’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 10, 2 (1984), 170–197.
37. The first published history of these women was written by the union activist, E.S. Sachs, Rebels’ Daughters (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957). Other works include L. Witz, ‘Servants of the Workers: Solly Sachs and the Garment Worker's Union (MA thesis, University of Witwatersrand, 1984); B.M. Touyzs, ‘White Labour and the ‘Social Democratic’ Movement in the Transvaal: The South African Labour Party, the South African Trades and Labour Council and their Trade Union Affiliates, 1930–1954’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 1984); E. Brink, ‘The Afrikaner Women of the Garment Worker's Union, 1918–1939’ (MA thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1986); I. Berger, ‘Solidarity Fragmented: Garment Worker's of the Transvaal, 1930–1960’, in S. Marks and S. Trapido, eds, The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in 20th Century South Africa (New York: Longman, 1987), 124–155; E. Brink, ‘Maar net ‘n klomp “Factory’ Meide”: Afrikaner Family and Community on the Witwatersrand during the 1920s’, in B. Bozzoli, ed., Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987); L. Witz, ‘Separation for Unity: The Garment Workers Union and the South African Clothing Workers Union, 1928–1936’, Social Dynamics, 14, 1 (1988), 34–54.
38. M. du Toit, ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism: A Social History of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vroue Vereniging, c. 1870–1939’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996), 4.
39. Brink, ‘The Afrikaner Women of the Garment Worker's Union’, ix.
40. Brink, ‘The Afrikaner Women of the Garment Worker's Union’, x.
41. See L.M. Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity: Women and Afrikaner Nationalism in the Volksmoeder Discourse of Die Boerevrou, 1919–1931’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1991), 19–27.
42. L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class (London: Hutchinson, 1987), 183.
43. C. Ross, ‘Separate Spheres or Shared Dominions?’, Transformation, 23, 4 (2006), 230.
44. I. Hofmeyr, ‘Building a Nation From Words: Afrikaans Language, Literature and Ethnic Identity, 1902–1924’, in Marks and Trapido, The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in 20th Century South Africa, 95–123. In a more recent study Archie Dick examines the reading initiatives of women's organisations from 1900 to 1914. He argues that women, in their capacity as educators of children in a family, were influenced by political, educational, cultural, economic and personal entanglements. These factors contributed to women applying themselves to use reading as a nation-building exercise contributing to the awakening of the Afrikaner's ethnic consciousness after the South African War. See A.L. Dick, ‘Building a Nation of Readers? Women's Organizations and the Politics of Reading in South Africa, 1900–1914’, Historia, 49, 2 (2004), 23–44.
45. Hofmeyr, ‘Building a Nation From Words’, 113.
46. Hofmeyr, ‘Building a Nation From Words’, 106.
47. J. Butler, ‘Afrikaner Women and the Creation of Ethnicity in a Small South African Town, 1902–1950’, in L. Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in South Africa (London: James Currey, 1989), 56.
48. Hofmeyr, ‘Building a Nation From Words’, 113–114.
49. B.Y. Eisenberg, ‘Gender, Class and Afrikaner Nationalism: The South African Vrouefederasie’ (BA Hons diss., University of Witwatersrand, 1987), 33–34.
50. Eisenberg, ‘Gender, Class and Afrikaner Nationalism’, 96.
51. Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity’, 22.
52. M. du Toit, ‘“Die Bewustheid van Armoed”: The ACVV and the Construction of Afrikaner Identity, 1904–1928’, Social Dynamics, 18, 2 (1992), 1–25; ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism: A Social History of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vroue Vereniging, c. 1870–1939’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996); ‘Framing Volksmoeders: The Politics of Female Afrikaner Nationalists, 1904–c.1930’, in P. Bacchetta and M. Power, eds, Right-Wing Women: From Conservatives to Extremists Around the World (New York: Routledge, 2002), 57–70; ‘The Domesticity of Afrikaner Nationalism: Volksmoeders and the ACVV, 1904–1929’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 1 (2003), 155–176.
53. Du Toit, ‘The Domesticity of Afrikaner Nationalism’, 160.
54. Du Toit, ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism’, 349–362.
55. Du Toit, ‘Die Bewustheid van Armoed’, 12–13.
56. D. Gaitskell and E. Unterhalter, ‘Mothers of the Nation: A Comparative Analysis of Nation, Race and Motherhood in Afrikaner Nationalism and the African National Congress’, in N. Yuval-Davis and F. Anthias, eds, Women-Nation-State (London: Macmillan, 1989), 58–78.
57. A. McClintock, ‘Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family’, Feminist Review, 44 (1993) 61–80; ‘“No Longer in a Future Heaven”: Women and Nationalism in South Africa’, Transition, 51 (1991) 104–123. Also see C. Walker, ‘Conceptualising Motherhood in Twentieth Century South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 21, 3, (1995), 417–437. Also see S. Klausen, ‘“For the Sake of the Race”: Eugenic Discourses of Feeblemindedness and Motherhood in the South African Medical Record, 1903–1926’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, 1 (1997), 27–50.
58. E. Brink, ‘Man-made Women: Gender, Class and the Ideology of the Volksmoeder’, in C. Walker, ed., Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town: David Phillip, 1990), 273–292.
59. Brink, ‘Man-made Women’, 273.
60. Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity’, 26.
61. See Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity’, 3–30.
62. Du Toit, ‘Die Bewustheid van Armoed’, 1.
63. Du Toit, ‘Die Bewustheid van Armoed’, 11–14.
64. Du Toit, ‘Die Bewustheid van Armoed’, 19.
65. The idea of the ‘organic unity’ of the Afrikaner were propagated in the heyday of early Afrikaner nationalism, see N. Diederichs, Nasionalisme as lewensbeskouing en sy verhouding tot internasionalisme (Bloemfontein: Nasionale Pers, 1936).
66. E. Cloete, ‘Frontierswomen as Volksmoeders: Textual Invocations in Two Centuries of Writing’ (MA thesis, University of South Africa, 1994), 3.
67. Brink, ‘Man-made Women’, 280.
68. L. Vincent, ‘The Power Behind the Scenes: The Afrikaner Nationalist Women's Parties, 1915–1931’, South African Historical Journal, 40 (1999), 64.
69. R. van der Merwe, ‘UP and the Volksmoeder: The Enemy Within, 1920–1970’, paper presented at a conference of the Southern African Historical Society, Pretoria, UNISA, July 2009, 7.
70. Brink, ‘Man-made Women’, 273.
71. Brink, ‘Man-made Women’, 290.
72. Gaitskell and Unterhalter, ‘Mothers of the Nation’, 60.
73. Eisenberg, ‘Gender, Class and Afrikaner Nationalism’, 10.
74. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 18.
75. Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity’, 25.
76. Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity’, 308.
77. Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity’, 338.
78. Du Toit, ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism’, 25–46.
79. Du Toit, ‘The Domesticity of Afrikaner Nationalism’, 158.
80. Du Toit, ‘Framing Volksmoeders’, 67.
81. A. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 378.
82. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 377–379. Other studies that also makes use of visual culture in their historical research on the volksmoeder are H. Terre Blanche, ‘Mothers of the Nation: Afrikaans Women's Magazine Advertisements in the 1940s’, Kleio, 28 (1996); L. van der Watt, ‘Art, Gender Ideology and Afrikaner Nationalism: A History of the Voortrekker Monument Tapestries’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996); L. van der Watt, ‘The Comradely Ideal and the Volksmoeder Ideal: Uncovering Gender Ideology in the Voortrekker Tapestry’, South African Historical Journal, 39 (1998), 91–110.
83. Du Toit, ‘Framing Volksmoeders’, 60.
84. Du Toit, ‘Framing Volksmoeders’, 61.
85. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 379.
86. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 378.
87. R. Miles, Women's History of the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), 13.
88. M. du Toit, Vrou en Feminist: Iets oor die Vrouevraagstuk (Bloemfontein: Nasionale Pers, 1920).
89. Kruger, ‘Gender, Community and Identity’, 183.
90. C. Walker, ‘The Women's Suffrage Movement’, in C. Walker, ed., Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, 318.
91. See L. Vincent, ‘A Cake of Soap: The Volksmoeder Ideology and Afrikaner Women's Campaign for the Vote’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 32, 1 (1999), 1–17; ‘Power Behind the Scenes: The Afrikaner Nationalist Women's Parties, 1915–1931’, South African Historical Journal, 40 (1999), 51–73; ‘Bread and Honour: White Working Class Women and Afrikaner Nationalism in the 1930s’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 26, 1 (2000), 61–78.
92. Vincent, ‘A Cake of Soap’, 2.
93. Vincent, ‘The Power Behind the Scenes’, 54.
94. Walker, ‘The Women's Suffrage Movement’, 340.
95. Vincent, ‘The Power Behind the Scenes’, 64. Also see Van der Merwe, ‘UP and the volksmoeder’, 8–9.
96. Vincent, ‘A Cake of Soap’, 15.
97. Van der Merwe, ‘UP and the volksmoeder’, 9.
98. Vincent, ‘The Power Behind the Scenes’, 69; Van der Merwe, ‘UP and the volksmoeder’, 9; Vincent, ‘A Cake of Soap’, 15–16.
99. Vincent, ‘Power Behind the Scenes’, 73.
100. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 378.
101. E. Cloete, ‘Afrikaner Identity: Culture, Tradition and Gender’, Agenda, 13 (1992), 42–56; E. Cloete, ‘Die Vrou in die Afrikaner Volksgeskiedenis: Ingeskryf, herskryf, weggeskryf!’, Woord en Daad, 370 (1999), 14–16.
102. The call for this kind of writing was pointed out in the work of C. Saunders, Writing History: South Africa's Urban Past and Other Essays (Pretoria: HSRC Press, 1992), 78.
103. Bozzoli, ‘Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies’, 171.
104. All the studies that are subsequently mentioned discuss the usefulness of these insights for their own work and in many cases they use it as platform from where they work on their own contributions.
105. T. Willoughby-Herard, ‘“I'll Give You Something to Cry About”: The Intraracial Violence of Uplift Feminism In the Carnegie Poor White Study Volume, The Mother and Daugther of the Poor Family’, South African Review of Sociology, 41, 1 (2010), 79.
106. Willoughby-Herard, ‘I'll Give You Something to Cry About’, 80–88.
107. Willoughby-Herard, ‘I'll Give You Something to Cry About’, 97.
108. L. Viljoen, ‘Nationalism, Gender and Sexuality in the Autobiographical Writing of Two Afrikaner Women’, Social Dynamics, 34, 2 (2008), 186–202.
109. Viljoen, ‘Nationalism, Gender and Sexuality’, 190–193; 196–199.
110. S.S. Swart, ‘“Motherhood and Otherhood”: Gendered Citizenship and Afrikaner Women in the South African 1914 Rebellion’, African Historical Review, 39, 2 (2007), 42.
111. Swart, ‘Motherhood and Otherhood’, 55.
112. I. du Plessis, ‘Nation, Family, Intimacy: The Domain of the Domestic in Social Imaginary’, South African Review of Sociology, 24, 2 (2011), 59.
113. I. du Plessis, ‘Nation, Family, Intimacy: The Domain of the Domestic in Social Imaginary’, South African Review of Sociology, 24, 2 (2011), 51–60.
114. S.M. Klausen, ‘“Reclaiming the White Daughter's Purity”: Afrikaner Nationalism, Racialized Sexuality, and the 1975 Abortion and Sterilization Act in Apartheid South Africa’, Journal of Women's Hisory, 22, 3 (2010), 39–63.
115. S.E. Duff, ‘“Head, Hart and Hand”: The Huguenot Seminary and College and the Construction of Middle Class Afrikaner Femininity, 1873–1910’ (MA diss., University of Stellenbosch, 2006).
116. S.E. Duff, ‘From New Women to College Girls at the Huguenot Seminary and College, 1895–1910’, Historia, 51, 1 (2006), 1–27.
117. S.E. Duff, ‘From New Women to College Girls at the Huguenot Seminary and College, 1895–1910’, Historia, 51, 1 (2006), 25.
118. C. Blignaut, ‘Volksmoeders in die kollig: 'n Histories-Teoretiese Verkenning van die Rol van Vroue in die Ossewa-Brandwag, 1938–1954’ (MA diss., Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University, 2012).
119. R. van der Merwe, ‘Moulding Volksmoeders or Volks Enemies? Female Students at the University of Pretoria, 1920–1970’, Historia, 56, 1 (2011), 77–100.
120. J. Grobler, ‘Volksmoeders in Verset: Afrikanervroue-optogte in Pretoria, 1915 en 1940’, Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Kultuurgeskiedenis, 23, 1 (2009), 26–54.
121. E. Brink, ‘Die Volksmoeder: ‘n Beeld van ‘n Vrou’, in A.M. Grundlingh and S. Huigen, eds, Van Volksmoeder tot Fokofpolisiekar: Kritiese Opstelle oor Afrikaanse Herinneringsplekke (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2008), 7–16.
122. Blignaut, ‘Volksmoeders in die kollig’; C. Blignaut, ‘“Goddank dis Hoogverraad en nie Laagverraad nie!”: Die Rol van Vroue in die Ossewa-Brandwag se Verset teen Suid-Afrika se Deelname aan die Tweede Wêreldoorlog’, Historia, 57, 2, (2012), 68–103.
123. With regard to the relationality between Afrikaner women and Afrikaner men within the context of both masculinities and femininities see S.S. Swart, ‘“You Were Men in War Time”: The Manipulation of Gender Identity in War and Peace’, Scientia Militaria, 28, 2 (1998), 187–199; S.S. Swart, ‘“A Boer and His Gun and His Wife are Three Things Always Together”: Republican Masculinity and the 1914 Rebellion’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 4 (1998), 737–751; K. du Pisani, ‘Puritanism Transformed: Afrikaner Masculinities in the Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Period’, in Changing Men in Southern Africa (London: Zed Books, 2001), 157–175.
124. See in this regard: P.M. Krebs, ‘The Last of the Gentlemen's Wars: Women in the Boer War Concentration Camp Controversy’, History Workshop, 33 (1992), 38–56; H. Bradford, ‘Gentlemen and Boers: Afrikaner Nationalism, Gender and Colonial Warfare in the South African War’, in G. Cuthbertson, A.M. Grundlingh, and M.L. Suttie, eds, Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902 (Cape Town: David Phillip, 2002), 37–66; A.M. Grundlingh, ‘The National Women's Monument: The Making and Mutation of Meaning in Afrikaner Memory of the South African War’, in Cuthbertson, Grundlingh, and Suttie, Writing a Wider War, 18–36; E. van Heyningen, ‘The Voices of Women in the South African War’, South African Historical Journal, 41 (1999), 22–43; E. van Heyningen, ‘Women and Gender in the South African War, 1899–1902’, in N. Gasa, ed., Women in South African History (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2007), 93–125; ‘Costly Mythologies: The Concentration Camps of the South African War in Afrikaner Historiography’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34, 3 (2008), 495–513; –‘“Fools Rush In”: Writing a History of the Concentration Camps of the South African War’, Historia, 55, 2 (2010), 12–33; F. Pretorius, ‘The White Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Debate Without End’, Historia, 55, 2 (2010), 50–75.
125. Bradford, ‘Gentlemen and Boers’, 37–66; Van Heyningen, ‘Women and Gender in the South African War’, 93–125.
126. L. Maritz, Afrikanervroue se Politieke Betrokkenheid in Historiese Perspektief met Spesiale Verwysing na die Women's National Coalition van 1991 tot 1994 (DPhil thesis, University of Stellenbosch, 2004); ‘Party Politics Jeopardised the Credibility of the Women's National Coalition for Afrikaner Women in the Organisation’, New Contree, 61 (2011), 99–121.
127. Maritz, ‘Party Politics Jeopardised the Credibility’, 101.
128. Maritz, ‘Party Politics Jeopardised the Credibility’, 117–118.
129. P.L. Möller, ‘They Also Served: Ordinary South African Women in an Extraordinary Struggle: The Case of Erna de Villiers (Buber)’, New Contree, 59 (2010), 61–84.
130. See M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage, 1990); Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980). Joan Scott elaborates on the usefulness of this view of power/politics when writing history: ‘Within these processes and structures, there is room for a concept of human agency as the attempt (at least partially rational) to construct an identity, a life, a set of relationships, a society within certain limits and with language – conceptual language that at once sets boundaries and contains the possibility for negation, resistance, reinterpretation, the play of metaphoric invention and imagination’: Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 42.
131. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 46.
132. See C. Walker, ‘Women in Twentieth-Century South African Politics: The Federation of South African Women, Its Roots, Growth and Decline’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1978); Women and Resistance in South Africa (London: Onyx Press, 1982).
133. Bozzoli, ed., Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand Press, 1984), xiii–xx.
134. Scott, ‘Women's History’, 58. I refer here to studies mentioned in the discussion of Afrikaner women's historiography: Giliomee, ‘The Rise and Fall of Afrikaner Women’; ‘“Allowed Such a State of Freedom”: Women and Gender Relations in the Afrikaner Community Before Enfranchisement in 1930’, New Contree, 59, May (2003), 29–60; J. Grobler, ‘Volksmoeders in Verset: Afrikanervroue-optogte in Pretoria, 1915 en 1940’, Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Kultuurgeskiedenis, 23, 1 (2009), 26–54.
135. Scott, ‘Women's History’, 58.