‘An Unknown People’: Reconstructing British South African Identity

Abstract

This article is part of a wider project, the writing of a biography of South Africans of British origin or descent. As a group, they have been neglected in South African historiography and the article traces the evolution of their identity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, placing it in the context of studies both in South Africa and elsewhere in the Anglophone world on Britishness and also of studies on South Africanism. While acknowledging that there were a variety of British identities in South Africa, the article distinguishes the emergence of a hegemonic identity and teases out characteristics common to most of the group. The article concludes with an examination of how British, or, as they became known in the twentieth century, English-speaking South Africans, reacted to the changes taking place in the country since first 1948, and then 1994.

Notes

See Hall, ‘Histories, Empires and the Post-Colonial Moment’, 70.

Bond, They Were South Africans, 1.

Garson, ‘English-Speaking South Africans and the British Connection’. This was followed by two studies of contemporary English-speakers: Gardner, ‘The English-Speaking Whites’, 39–45, and Duminy, ‘The English-Speaking Dimension in South African Politics’.

Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation.

For later discussions on Britain see, among others, Paul Ward, Britishness since 1870; Mandler, The English National Character.

Thompson, ‘The Languages of Loyalism in Southern Africa’; Hyslop, ‘Cape Town Highlanders’ and The Notorious Syndicalist; Saunders, ‘Britishness in South Africa’; Mackenzie, The Scots in South Africa; Dubow, ‘How British was the World?’.

Dubow, ‘How British was the World?’, 7.

See Lambert, ‘Britishness, South Africanness and the 1st World War’; ‘An Identity Threatened’; ‘Maintaining a British Way of Life’; ‘“Munition Factories”’; ‘South African British?’; ‘“The Thinking is Done in London”’; ‘“Their Finest Hour?”’ .

For Australia, see Stephen Ward, Australia and the British Embrace, and for Canada, Buckner, ‘The Long Goodbye’.

Curthoys, ‘History and Identity’, 23–24.

The 1911 census recorded only 3,694 persons in South Africa born in Wales and 14,571 in Ireland, compared to 37,138 in Scotland and 126,488 in England. By 1946 these figures were 4,513, 10,568, 33,129 and 105,628 respectively (Union of South Africa, Official Year Book of the Union, Vol. 1, 1917, 172–73, Vol. 23, 1946, 11.) For Protestant Irish, see McCracken, ‘Irish Identity in Twentieth-Century South Africa’, 7–45.

Mackenzie, The Scots in South Africa, passim. See also Paton, Towards the Mountain, 56, 61; Macmillan, My South African Years. For Scottishness elsewhere in the Empire, see McCarthy, ‘“At Heart I'll Always be Scottish”’, 17; Henshaw, ‘John Buchan and the British Imperial Origins of Canadian Multiculturalism’, 13.

See The Natal Mercury, 25–30 April 1915.

Davie, Anglo-Australian Attitudes, 7.

Langenhoven, Republicans and Sinners in South Africa, 8.

Mandler, The English National Character, 239.

Duminy, ‘English-Speaking Dimension’, 3.

Lambert, ‘Maintaining a British Way of Life’, passim.

Robinson, A Lifetime in South Africa, xxxv.

Paton, Save the Beloved Country, 120.

Colley, Britons, chapter 1.

Pretoria News, 21 Sept. 1914, ‘The Bishop's Sermon’.

Thompson, ‘The Languages of Loyalism’; Lowry, ‘The Crown, Empire Loyalism’.

Many associations and clubs effectively barred Catholics and Jews from membership. See Lambert, ‘Maintaining a British Way of Life’, passim.

Marr, The Day Britain Died, 20.

As part of my research I have had discussions with a range of English-speaking South Africans on how they and their parents viewed questions of identity.

Despite being anti-capitalist, many workers were not prepared to support the Labour Party during the 1920s when it formed a pact government with the Afrikaner Nationalist Party. By 1930 the chance of a powerful class-conscious, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist English working-class movement had been lost. The memoirs of Labour politician Tommy Boydell clearly indicate the changes that took place in the Labour Party, see ‘My Luck's Still In’.

Lambert, ‘“Munition Factories”’, passim; Morrell, From Boys to Gentlemen.

See Hattersley, An Illustrated Social History of South Africa.

See Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge, passim.

This was mentioned by many of my informants. See also Paton, Towards the Mountain, 56, 61.

Ibid., 56.

Cape Times, 18 Feb. 1947, ‘Vanguard Escorted into Port’.

Each year, English-language newspapers carried features on all of these commemorations.

See Lambert, ‘South African British?’, 202.

Although the number of English-speaking South Africans who voted against the republic is unknown, areas where they were numerically strong returned large anti votes. In Natal, with its large English-speaking white majority, 93 per cent of the voters turned out and of them 75.9 per cent voted against the republic (Stewart ‘Natal and the 1960 Republican Referendum’, Appendix C).

Personal observation.

Schreiner, An English South African's View, 10. For discussions on this British influence, see note 8.

See Langenhoven, Republicans and Sinners, 12.

Ibid.

Calpin, There are No South Africans, 12.

Van Heerden, Leap Year, 50.

Cape Times, 25 May 1917, ‘Ceremony at Queen's Statue’.

See the grave of Sergeant A. T. R. Jones, Thaba-Tshwane (Voortrekkerhoogte) New Military Cemetery.

Members of my family and many of their friends spent between one and two years working in Britain.

Keppel-Jones, When Smuts Goes, passim.

See Grainger, Patriotisms, 48.

See Guy, The Heretic; Cronwright-Schreiner, The Life of Olive Schreiner; Lewsen, John X Merriman.

See Saker, The South African Flag Controversy, 250f.

See Langenhoven, Republicans and Sinners, 12; Dominion Office (DO), (National Archives, Kew) 35, 334/3, no 172, Stanley to Thomas, 24 April 1935, 4; Brink, Reinventing a Continent, 110.

See White, Inventing Australia, 71.

For a study of liberalism, see Vigne, Liberals against Apartheid, which includes an introduction on earlier liberals.

Paton, Save the Beloved Country, 110.

South African Commercial Advertiser, 17 March 1824.

Schreiner, An English South African's View, 6, 7.

Pretoria News, 17 February 1904, 17 April 1905.

Plomer, At Home, 214.

See Dubow, ‘Colonial Nationalism’. See also Buckner, ‘The Long Goodbye’, 1–9; Davie, Anglo-Australian Attitudes, 19. On South Africanism, see also Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge; ‘“How British was the British World?”’; ‘Scientism, Social Research and the Limits of “South Africanism”’.

Dubow, ‘Colonial nationalism’.

See Lambert, ‘An Identity Threatened’, passim.

See Lambert, ‘“The Thinking is Done in London”’, 47–49.

S. Michael's Chronicle, June 1913, 12.

This stress on South Africanism in tandem with Britishness was elaborated on by Edgar Brookes during the Second World War; see Cape Times, 8 May 1941, ‘True Patriotism’.

See Grundlingh, Odendaal and Spies, Beyond the Tryline. See also Lambert, ‘South African British?’, 210–11.

Lambert, ‘Britishness, South Africanness and the 1st World War’; for Second World War, see Lambert, ‘“Their Finest Hour?”’.

Many of my informants had had this experience.

By 1946, the number of English-speakers born in the British Isles had declined to 17.7 per cent (Union of South Africa, Official Year Book, 23, 1946, 11). See also Millin, People of South Africa, 206.

Walrond, ‘The land-call’, in The Canterbury Book of South African Verse, 209.

Schreiner, An English South African's View, 7. Her rejection of British actions during the Anglo-Boer War, however, saw her question her Englishness; see Cronwright-Schreiner, Life of Olive Schreiner, 378–85.

Quoted in Calpin, There are No South Africans, 237–38.

See Lambert, ‘“Their Finest Hour?”’.

Vigne, Liberals against Apartheid, passim; DO 35, 7896, Secret, detailed brief on republicanism, 1960; DO 35, 5036, ‘Report on a visit to Natal’, High Commissioner to Secretary of State, 22 Sept. 1954, 2.

Heaton Nicholls, South Africa in My Time, 191.

Hope, White Boy Running, 92.

Anderson, Imagined Communities, ch. 11.

DO 35/5095, Current events in Natal, report 33 for March and April 1955.

Stewart, ‘Natal and the 1960 Republican Referendum’, 29.

See Natal Mercury, 12 and 13 Nov. 1965.

Pocock, ‘Conclusion: Contingency, Identity, Sovereignty’, 297. See also Ward, ‘The End of Empire’, 242–58; Buckner, ‘The Long Goodbye’, 201.

Gardner, ‘The English-Speaking Whites’, 43. British officials had predicted this would happen, see DO 35, 7898, Commonwealth Relations Office Print, 28 Oct. 1960, 7.

See Hancock, Are There South Africans?, 17.

Lever, South African Society, 17.

McGill, ‘The Militarization of South African White Society, 1948–1990’.

Paton, Save the Beloved Country, 109.

Hall, ‘Histories, Empires and the Post-Colonial Moment’, 69.

See Sparks, Beyond the Miracle, 8–9.

Van Heerden, Leap Year, 129.

In the mid-1970s, only 46 per cent of English-speaking respondents to a cultural survey, regarded their culture and outlook as specifically South African (see Schlemmer, ‘English-speaking South Africans Today’, 111). The number of my informants who, while they do not regard themselves as British, also do not see themselves as South African is a matter for concern.

Sparks, The Mind of South Africa, 46–48.