UTP-University of Pretoria: Seminars on Culture and Culture Management
Cultural production as political and social action: Whiteness (Blancura) and masculinities
Good Afternoon, my name is Stephen Symons and I am a post-doctoral researcher attached to the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies at the University of Pretoria. My presentation this afternoon focuses on how South African males navigate essentialised identities of whiteness and masculinity within the contested geographies of a post-apartheid space, but it also addresses the origins of these notions of whiteness and masculinity, so I’d like firstly to take you back to the height of apartheid in South Africa, namely the 1970s and 1980s.
It is of crucial importance to understand that, for example, my almost exclusively white middle-class childhood years and those of my classmates growing up in apartheid-era South Africa of the 1970s and 80s were indelibly marked by the presence of the South African Defence Force (SAFDF), and the constant presence of brown uniformed men in our lives. Conscripts wearing their uniforms in public or church on a Sunday morning reinforced the idealized image of loyal and patriotic white South African males, as defenders of home and hearth from shadowy hordes of communists intent on invading the country.
It is estimated that 600 000 men, in all, were conscripted from white South African society between 1968 and 1993. Apartheid instilled, categorised and institutionalised a divisive sense of race. The normalcy of white superiority was bound to the apartheid regime’s socialisation and militarisation of white males. In turn, the present has resulted in an acute sense of loss of the familiar, a loss of certainty, loss of comfort, loss of privilege, and even a loss of well-known roles. As Melissa Steyn writes, for white males “a delusional home has now collapsed”.
The conscription of white males during apartheid not only underpinned white power and but defined the white nation, specifically males. Black males were simply blurred out of the narrative, and in turn, white masculinity was always positioned as superior. White conscription was bound to various guises of masculinity and was perceived as a rite of passage and deeply enmeshed with notions of hegemonic and militarised masculinities. These notions of whiteness and masculinity tend to persist into the present for white males of the conscription era. The system of conscription in South Africa was racially determined and perceived as a type of nationalistic manhood. In a sense, the SADF offered young men the opportunity to assert and prove their manhood, but also allowed the regime to “groom male bodies for violence”. Of course, these constructs pose interesting contemporary challenges, namely, how does one attempt to deconstruct these white militarised masculinities in a contemporary post-apartheid, or at least allow for these masculinities to give an account of themselves.
To understand whiteness and masculinity in contemporary South Africa one has to draw on history and the origins of current notions of South African whiteness and masculinity – namely the apartheid era and conscription into the former South African Defence Force. Conscription was perceived as a rite of passage and deeply enmeshed with notions of hegemonic and militarised masculinities. It’s been argued that whiteness is often “made visible through violence”, and is undoubtedly entangled with all South African masculinities.
Schools, universities and related youth activities prepared adolescent white males for military service but in turn allowed for the formulation of a white militarised masculinity. The influence of the SADF over white schooling from the mid-70s, as a means of preparatory military training, allowed for the development of a complex configuration of white masculinities that endures into the present. Jacklyn Cock uses the phrase “socialisation into brutality”, which essentially bound white masculinity to militarism in an attempt to transform young men into soldiers. This process was ubiquitous, exerting constant pressure from childhood on white males destined for military service and it scaffolds much of white masculinity in South Africa. It is also important to note that compliance was the response of the vast majority of SADF conscripts. Interestingly, the role of women (including the girlfriends of conscripts) and family served to strengthen the bonds between masculinity and militarism, and this is often ignored. Academic, Nyameka Mankanyi makes a very pertinent point when he notes that “men’s bodies tend to intersect with their masculinities” within a military institution. The white male body was a key construct in the formation of a militarised masculinity, and if we look back to the apartheid era it becomes abundantly clear that the SADF socialised hundreds of thousands of men according to a nationalist blueprint. In many respects, white males still refer to this blueprint in attempting to navigate their masculinity in the present.
Irrespective of the cultural and political differences of apartheid-era White English and Afrikaans citizens, the ideological mechanisms of militarisation required the compliance of all White South African familial structures. In this regard, the National Party government employed a coercive rhetoric of fear, portraying the threat of communist expansion in Southern Africa as a means to justify conscription and national military preparedness. Therefore, the SADF acted as a forge for white Afrikaner ideologies, which dominated how conscription was rationalised and marketed to Whites during apartheid. The regime’s narrative of external threat was essentially a means of self-preservation, aspects of what we could refer to as a long-standing laager mentality that was woven into the intimacy of family structures, childhood and the social fabric of White society.
Interestingly, when one examines white masculinities in South Africa, it’s important to note that a small minority of white South African males resisted and rejected militarism, such as conscientious objectors and war resistors, but they were, and are still often portrayed or remembered as “effeminate, naive, untrustworthy and even politically dangerous”. Undoubtedly, white masculine identities in South Africa of the apartheid-era still feel the pressure of their military experience, yet if we want to understand the origins of this sense of whiteness and masculinity, it is crucial to examine their childhoods. Schools played an important role and functioned as “nurseries” or vectors for impressing ideological agendas in the preparation of white males for military service.
So apartheid-era education was never a “neutral act”. It was influenced by a dominant and racially divisive political discourse that entrenched white privilege. White schools were buttressed by Protestant-Christian (Calvinist) principles that adhered to a predominantly a typically authoritarian Afrikaans paradigm. This form of Christian National Education (CNE) not only espoused the values of the Nationalist regime, opposing a long-established British system of education but also attempted to instil a system grounded in the life and worldview of whites, most especially those of Afrikaners as senior white trustees of blacks. Added to this, pervasive notions of a country under threat infiltrated childhood, manufacturing socio-psychological pressures rooted in threat and fear, irrespective of race. Both black and white children were taught to fear each other. These constructions of fear were fuelled further by para-military organisations such as the school cadet system, which was referred to ‘as national service by imitation’ at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). We can therefore begin to understand that the configuration and construction of contemporary white masculinities were rooted in childhood.
Additionally, the role of sport in a South African context cannot be dismissed, particularly a sport such as rugby. Rugby was regarded by Afrikaner males as “the king of sports”, an important vent for male aggression. Sports heroes were idolised in a similar way to war heroes. In a sense, schoolboy rugby played a vital role in creating a seamless transition from the sports field to the parade ground. One can even argue that rugby, was militarised in White apartheid-era society and used as a key means by which white militarised masculinities were constructed and asserted in childhood. Sports such as rugby served as a benchmark from where masculinity could be measured and affirmed. Although rugby is a largely racially transformed space nowadays, the perception of the sport as a hypermasculine proving ground endures into the present.
Besides education, it is also important to examine the role of religion. The Afrikaans Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) was an active participant within the regime’s “Total Strategy”. The DRC was supportive of state policy, whereas the more politicised English-speaking churches, such as the Anglican Church, were often active voices of protest and social conscience, including leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The church, therefore, served as a conduit between white families and the SADF, playing a crucial role in winning the hearts and minds of South Africa’s white population, commencing with children in Sunday school. At the TRC, Reverend Du Plooy referred to an “unholy marriage” between church and state, elaborating on how the DRC co-operated fully with the SADF. Therefore it is crucial when grappling with whiteness and masculinity in South Africa, to examine the role of the church, education and Afrikaner culture when attempting to understand white masculinities.
Whiteness and masculinity are undoubtedly rife with contrast, contradiction and are by no means homogeneous, yet remain inevitably bound to a deeply unsettling past. So how do white males, specifically, those men who grew up during apartheid, attempt to navigate the present? Many white males feel that they have been systematically marginalised by the black majority in the post-apartheid era. As previously mentioned, Melissa Steyn writes, “a delusional home has now collapsed” for white males in South Africa. Yet, is this the case in reality? According to a report in 2017, only 23% of the shares traded on the South African stock exchange are held – directly and indirectly – by black South Africans’. White males of the conscription era remain a potent economic force within the post-apartheid landscape, still firmly gripping the financial reins of power in many sectors of the market.
These largely unsettled spaces of Whiteness have forced males of the conscription era to re-evaluate their roles and sense of identity and usefulness within South African society. This “loss of the familiar” within the democratic era, particularly among ex-conscripts, have allowed continued undercurrents to flow, which are most notably internalised and then articulated as counter-memories and memorialisations of a bye-gone age. For many, social media, sport and social gatherings such as braais, a traditional South African barbeque, all act as a locus of white masculinity. These seemingly comfortable spaces among friends allow these men to re-imagine and attempt to navigate their experiences. Interestingly, for many white males, their militarised pasts have become memorialised within the digital realm of the Internet, expressed on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. These memorialisations are imbued with the nostalgia of lost childhood, presenting an idealised and even romanticised social order of things, ever reticent to accept the present.
I would therefore argue that nostalgia is a temporary balm, and indeed, in the case of white males of the apartheid era, it distances rather than incorporates. So one can argue that this form of distancing, originating in childhood, becomes a string of lived experiences stretching into the present. Yet, this sense of Whiteness and masculinity is indelibly marked by the divided histories of all South Africans. The militarised childhoods of many white South African males remain foundational in their perception of the world in which they inhabit. These memories are bound to personal, cultural and social perceptions of the world and are in a state of continual modification. For many white males, they are navigating a terrain where both identity and recognition are in a state of flux, where identity is constantly being renegotiated.
I would like to read an excerpt from an interview with Michael, a white male of the conscription era, who describes the indelible effect that his past has had on him, and how it defines how he navigates the present,
This may seem strange, but my reasons to avoid my past, and better still completely erase it has less to do with trauma but more to do with how I feel about being white. On one level, I want to forget that I’m white, that I grew up in white apartheid South Africa, went to a white school, went to a largely white university was called up into a white army. All this stuff about race has exhausted me over decades. It feels all too South African and I want to put it behind me. I don’t feel ashamed, perhaps part of me does, but I feel thoroughly exhausted by my white skin. I’ve made plans to leave the country which might well help me forget.
So in closing one is left with more questions than answers when attempting to understand and grapple with the complexities of whiteness and masculinity in contemporary South Africa. What we do know is that whites and masculinity in South Africa remains bound to the past.
Further scholarly examination of white militarised childhoods will perhaps allow us to understand and navigate the palpable silences and memories of white South African society more effectively, particularly those of males. What is understood is that apartheid and its militarisation of white males impacted all sectors of South African society. Apartheid has altered our nation’s psychology indefinitely, engineering a deep-set fear of others. Sadly, these fears continue to cast a long shadow of division that extends from its genesis in childhood into the present of all South Africans. This is a wholly understudied area and we as researchers and historians should go there and see how it moves.
Dr Stephen Symons
Department of Historical and Heritage Studies
University of Pretoria, South Africa
Cape Town, May, 2021
