Afrikaans Working-Class Drama in the Early 1940s: Socialist Realism in Die Offerande by Hester Cornelius

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the drama Die Offerande [‘The Sacrifice’] (1941) by Hester Cornelius, in which the Soviet aesthetic of socialist realism was grafted onto an Afrikaner cultural setting. To outline the context in which the play was created and performed, this contribution elaborates on the representation of Soviet socialism in the South African trade union periodical Klerewerker/Garment Worker, where the play was published. It aims to demonstrate that this propaganda play renders the socialist realist principle of narodnost (i. e. inclusion of a national folk element) by incorporating motifs characteristic of the Afrikaans farm novel, references to the historical events on which the Afrikanerdom founding myth is based, and characters representing 'typical' Afrikaners. Moreover, this article argues that the play’s plot is reminiscent of the socialist realist novel master plot which illustrates the protagonist’s transition from political immaturity to political awareness and his becoming the New Man. The important modification which Cornelius introduced was that she cast women in the main roles, so her play propagates the working-class New Woman.

KEYWORDS:

• working-class drama
• Afrikaans
• South Africa
• trade union press
• socialist realism
• New Woman
• Hester Cornelius

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Tagangaeva, “Socialist in Content, National in Form,” 399.

2. See Mkhize’s unpublished PhD thesis, “Social Realism in Alex La Guma’s Longer Fiction,” University of Natal, 1998; and by the same author ‘Shades of Working-Class Writing.’

3. See Brink, “Purposeful Plays, Prose and Poems.”

4. See Coetser, “KWU-werkersklasdramas.”

5. See Stander and Willemse, “Winding through Nationalism”; Conradie, “Redefining Identity”; Lourens, “Afwesig uit die Kanon,” Van Niekerk, “Die Afrikaanse Vroueskrywer,” and Van Coller, “The Peregrination of Afrikaans Prose Fiction.”

6. See Brink, “Maar ʼn Klomp “Factory” Meide,”; Brink, “Man-Made Women,” Berger, Threads of Solidarity; Witz, “Separation for Unity,”; and Mawbey, “Afrikaner Women of the Garment Union.”

7. Walker, Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, 322.

8. The New Woman embraced a range of identities, such as a feminist activist, a social reformer, a popular novelist, a suffragette playwright, a woman poet. First mentioned in 1894 by Sarah Grand in “The New Aspect of the Woman Question,“ in The North American Review, the New Woman was a cultural icon and a type of character appearing in fiction throughout the first half of the 20^th century. See Ledger, The New Woman, 2. The most iconic South African New Women were established middle-class writers and social commentators Olive Schreiner (1855–1920) and Maria Elizabeth Rothmann (1875–1975). See Stanley, Imperialism, Labour and the New Woman.

9. Verwey, New Dictionary of South African Biography, 221.

10. See Jacobson, M., and A. M. Cunningham, Records of the Garment Workers Union, 2007. The Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, available at http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventory/AH1092.php, retrieved 4 April 2018.

11. Vincent, “Bread and Honour,” 63.

12. Mawbey, “Afrikaner Women of the Garment Union,” 195.

13. Coetzer, “KWU-werkersklasdramas,” 62–64.

14. ‘Our Policy’, Garment Worker, October 1936, p. 1.

15. Ibid., 12.

16. ‘Die vakunies stel baie belang in die werkers gedurende werksure en buite werk … Hulle sien dat hulle werkers geleerdheid kry, deelneem aan sports, liggaams-oefening, ens.’ [The trade unions care a lot for the workers during the working time and outside of it … They see that the workers receive education, practice sports, physical exercises etc.], Ibid. 12.

17. ‘At every club we visited, we saw excellent performances by amateur actors and actresses, many of them children who showed remarkable talent.’ (Hartwell, “South African Workers’ Delegation,“ Klerewerker, January 1939, p. 12). In her study on Soviet socialist theatre, Mally points to the enormous popularity of amateur drama groups in the Soviet Union and she observes that trade unions were particularly active in this field; see L. Mally, Revolutionary Acts, 3.

18. Attwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman, 80–83.

19. Ibid., 91.

20. Ibid., 94.

21. Ibid., 126.

22. In particular from the 1920s on, the Volksmoeder figure was becoming one of the Afrikaner national symbols thanks to two highly influential books: W. Postma, Die Boervrouw: Moeder van Haar Volk [The Boer Woman: Mother of Her People] and E. Stockenström, Vrou in die Geskiedenis van die Hollands-Afrikaanse Volk: ʼn Beknopte Oorsig van die Rol wat die Vrou in die Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika Gespeel het in die 350 Jaar tussen 1568–1918 [Woman in the History of the Dutch-Afrikaans People: A Short Overview of the Role which the Woman Played in the History of South Africa during the 350 Years between 1568–1918]. These publications specify a set of qualities which the Afrikaner woman possesses, stressing her devotion to home and family, by extension understood also as the Afrikaner nation.

23. Eyerman, “Modernity and Social Movements,” 37.

24. ‘Kan u sing, dans, toneel speel, enige musiek instrument speel?’ [Can you sing, dance, act, play any musical instrument?], Klerewerker, April/May 1940, p. 12.

25. ‘Werkers van Germiston gebruik julle talente,’ Klerewerker, March/April 1941, p. 12.

26. Cornelius, “Eendrag teater,” Klerewerker, May/June 1941, p. 11.

27. Ibid., 11.

28. Ibid., 11.

29. Mally, Revolutionary Acts, 1–2.

30. Ibid., 10.

31. Douglas Schild, “Between Moscow and Baku,” 8.

32. See Zdhanov, “Soviet Literature – The Richest in Ideas,” n. p.

33. See: Gorky, “Soviet Literature,” n. p.

34. Clark, The Soviet Novel, 3.

35. Ibid., 4–5.

36. Coetser, “KWU-werkersklasdramas,” 64.

37. Tagangaeva, “Socialist in Content, National in Form,” 340.

38. “Rype Ondervinding,“ Klerewerker, February 1940, p. 14.

39. See: Grundlingh and Sapire, “From Feverish Festival.”

40. Coetzee,’n Hele os, xiv.

41. Van Coller, “The Peregrination,” 32.

42. Viljoen, “Land, Space, Identity,” 108.

43. See Van Coller, “Literatuur in die marge: Die plek van die middelmoot-literatuur”; and Lourens, “Afwesig uit die kanon: Die prosageskrifte van die Klerewerkers.”

44. Conradie, “Redefining Identity,” 70.

45. See Berger, Threads of Solidarity, 82; and Witz, “Separation for Unity.”

46. Vincent, “Bread and Honour,” 67.

47. Johanna Cornelius, undated statement prepared for press release ca. 1940. Garment Workers Collection, Bcf 3 (Press Statements 1931 to 1956). William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand.

48. Cornelius’s play can be described as both working-class and proletarian. Working-class literature is a broader term than proletarian literature; while the former focuses on (variously defined) working-class experience, the latter refers to works whose explicit objective is instilling the spirit of class-consciousness in the reader. See discussions in Clark, “Working-Class Literature and/or Proletarian Literature;“ and Nilsson and Lennon, “Defining Working-Class Literature(s).“

49. Coetser, “KWU-werkersklasdramas,” 73.

50. The drama was written and performed in 1941 and its text published in two issues of Klerewerker: July/August 1942, 3–5, and November/December 1942, 3–6.

51. Information about performances of Die Offerande was published in Klerewerker September/October 1941, p. 8. According to Brink, these performances reached an audience of approximately 400 people (Brink, “Purposeful Plays,“ 126).

52. Clark, “Socialist realism,” 181.

53. Cornelius, Die Offerande, Act 1, p. 4.

54. Ibid., Act 1, p. 4.

55. Ibid., Act 1, p. 3.

56. Ibid., Act 1, p. 4.

57. Cornelius, Die Offerande, Act 2, p. 3.

58. Clark, The Soviet Novel, 17.

59. Clark, “Socialist realism,” 179.

60. McClintock, “Family Feuds,” 63–64.

61. Vincent, “Bread and Honour,” 66–68.

62. The call ‘werda’ comes from German, from the original question wer geht da? meaning ‘who’s there?,” see van der Sijs, Etymologiebank, 2010, www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/werda. Accessed 10 April 2018; also: G. J. van Wyk, Etimologiewoordeboek van Afrikaans, Stellenbosch, 2003.

63. Cornelius, Die Offerande, Act 4, p. 5.

64. Ibid., Act 4, p. 5.

65. Ibid., Act. 4, p. 5.

66. The music was written in 1921 by Reverend Marthinus Lourens de Villiers, and the song had been publicly sung from the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s and 1940s, the song had not yet been associated with racial segregation. In 1957, it became the South African apartheid era national anthem; see Koch, Historia Literatury, 529, 552.

67. ‘Deur ons vêr verlate vlaktes/Met die kreun van ossewa’ [Through our far-deserted plains/With the groan of ox-waggon]. The official English version of the poem, compiled from various individual translations, was officially approved by the Government in 1957.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre Poland (NCN) under grant no. 2018/31/D/HS2/00131.

Notes on contributors

Małgorzata Drwal

Małgorzata Drwal is assistant professor at the Department of Dutch and South African Studies at the Faculty of English of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. In 2014, she completed a PhD thesis on women’s life writing from the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), in which she focused on changing interpretations and political significance of published and translated diaries and memoires. Her current research interests include working-class literature, literary sociology, and cultural mobility, in particular the involvement of white South African women in the global movements, such as feminism and socialism, in the first half of the 20th century.