British Settlers and South African identity

  • 2

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1820_Settlers#/media/File:Thomas_Baines_-_The_British_Settlers_of_1820_Landing_in_Algoa_Bay_-_1853.png

During the ANC’s congress in January this year marking the organisation’s 108th year, President Cyril Ramaphosa gave the bicentennial anniversary year of the 1820 British Settlers a brief accusatory mention, that it was “200 years since (their) arrival in the Eastern Cape, an event that accelerated the process of colonial occupation and deepened the contest for land and natural resources”. This set the official tone for ensuring that the event would receive, at best, little more than an occasional media lambasting, with scant discussion permissible regarding historical nuance or rational intellectual discussion, juxtapositioning differing perspectives and interpretations.

In fact, no “pushback” in the form of a rigorous interrogation of “decolonisation” might even be plausible without significant reputational risks to those adopting such. Today, the benign-looking settler family statue outside the 1820 memorial in Grahamstown/Makhanda would surely be a bullseye for destruction by the totalitarian-type wave of iconoclasm currently sweeping the Western world.

The global fury emanating from the Left and ensconced within anticlassical liberal identity politics grossly escalated following George Floyd’s death in the USA. What is effectively a deadly, politicised culture war is profoundly influencing the conduct of public life, not least in education. This trend can only further mute any public effort to analyse colonisation via academic rigour and evidence, inevitably impacting on any South African historical discussion thereon.

.....
A huge corpus of historical texts not anchored in post-modernism is considered by very significant sections of local academia to be beyond the pale; such would include prominent opinion-makers like Hermann Giliomee, RW Johnson and the IRR. This is light years from another context, no less politically conceived, in which I began learning about one view of this country’s turbulent history.
.....

A huge corpus of historical texts not anchored in post-modernism is considered by very significant sections of local academia to be beyond the pale; such would include prominent opinion-makers like Hermann Giliomee, RW Johnson and the IRR. This is light years from another context, no less politically conceived, in which I began learning about one view of this country’s turbulent history.

Nearly 50 years ago, at Bergvliet Primary School in Cape Town, my standard four (grade six) class teacher, Mr Smit, taught us history. That year, the emphasis was South Africa: from early explorers Da Gama and Dias, through post-Van Riebeeck Cape settlements, British occupations, the Trekboers, the Eastern Frontier Wars, the 1820 British Settlers and the Great Trek. Our syllabus ended with the 1843 Battle of Boomplaats, preceding the 1852 Sand River and 1854 Bloemfontein Conventions – Boer independence lost in battle to red coats under Cape governor Sir Harry Smith, representing Britain, but reclaimed through negotiation as occupation/policing costs became unacceptable to the Imperial treasury.

Knowing dates sometimes seemed more imperative than comprehending detail; but, for our largely Afrikaner, nationalist-centric syllabus, the content-interpretive goals were always both explicitly and subtly entrenched – one being confirmed thus by my 1977 matric history textbook, which insisted: “The republican ideal runs like a golden thread through the fabric of South African history.”

At Bergvliet High School, it was another Afrikaner history teacher, Piet Rossouw, who pointed out how ludicrous this deterministic, ideological, nationalist-driven “assurance” was. Piet was a fervent bloedsap and believed (with rugby, anyway) that nothing good existed beyond the Hex River Mountains. No doubt, most of us white English-speaking South African (WESSA) teenagers were oblivious to exactly what he was trying to communicate. We had been infants when the republican referendum battle was fought among white South Africans during 1960–61.

But, returning to 1971, I distinctly recall Mr Smit dealing with the 1820 Settlers by stressing how friendly Boers had readily assisted the 4 000 newcomers who arrived throughout that year in batches demarked by different ships and leaders. Boer ox wagon transport at the Algoa Bay beaches ensured that the immigrants reached their hinterland farms; agreed settler ownership comprised part of a British government deal attempting to site a British barrier against Xhosa incursions into the Zuurveld. We were taught that the Boers showed the newcomers the farming ropes, and we learned about how Afrikaner-British friendships and intermarriage soon materialised.

So our teacher continued: even when the exasperated Boers chose to “quit the colony” – as Retief’s manifesto put it – furious at purported missionary negrophilia and convinced that both this and British colonial government mismanagement of the Eastern Frontier had catalysed the disastrous 6th Frontier War, another trekker leader, Jacobus Uys, still received a Bible as a gift of friendship from settler notable William Thompson on behalf of British colonists. After all, had not Boer and British settlers jointly suffered from Xhosa depredations and fought back shoulder to shoulder? By 1971, with the republic’s 10th anniversary being celebrated, the NP had made inroads into gaining conservative WESSA voting support, and government endeavours to sustain this filtered into history teaching and schoolbooks.

Three years later, when I had progressed to standard seven (grade nine), an event that year passed me by; school rugby and cricket now dominated my interests. In July 1974, the 1820 Settler memorial was opened outside Grahamstown; this directly coincided with a conference entitled, “English-speaking South Africa: An assessment”. The opening address by conference president, former Chief Justice Newton Ogilvie Thompson – the great-grandson of an English immigrant, who by 1819 was already a businessman in the same town – strongly stressed that the new commemorative building was “no sectional memorial for the fuelling of selfish pride or an incentive to division” and was inclusive for all who spoke English as a first or second language, “irrespective of racial origin”.

More recently, the memorial custodians referred to on their website as “The Grahamstown Foundation” – possibly because the new name, Makhanda, remains legally contested – have with scant dignity scurried to invent a still undecided alternative name for the existing “1820 Settlers National Monument”, citing a need for “inclusivity”, curiously ignoring Ogilvie Thompson’s insistences 46 years ago. However, the memorial’s construction, first mooted in 1920 by historian Sir George Cory, was later also supported by the WESSAs’ historical political opponents.

In 1962, building upon his republican theme of a united (white) South Africa, Prime Minister Verwoerd launched a fund-raising campaign for the envisaged structure; ultimately, the NP government’s assistance toward the R4 000 000 building costs was significant, but not exclusive – settler descendants and private donations contributed, too. Building formally commenced in 1970, and the memorial was opened by then Cape Province administrator Dr Nico Malan.

The conference commenced, and, notwithstanding Ogilvie Thompson’s entreaty, the overwhelming focus of speakers was predictably on WESSAs – but the tone and content were anything but triumphalist. Instead, the Commemoration Committee chairman, Rhodes University Professor of English and 1820 Settler historian (and descendant) Guy Butler, insisted that the proceedings were to be educational and should “not attempt to turn the laconic WESSA into an Ulsterman”. Indeed, the monument was intended to be –and remains – a “living memorial”, its facilities used particularly for education and the promotion of English throughout Africa.

A range of papers were delivered concerning WESSAs and their history; their identity and integration with the broader community; their economic contribution; the English-speaking churches; WESSAs and (then) contemporary South African politics and racial conflict; and their contribution to education, the media and literature. A final paper concerned black writing in English in South Africa. The papers – now historical documents – still make for informed, penetrating reading, but beg the question: how, if at all, could such a gathering and similar set of contributions ever be made today? Like for this 1820 Settler bicentennial?

Interestingly, Butler’s academic critics charged him with a legacy of attempting the construction of a WESSA identity based upon the “founding myth” of the 1820 Settlers – that he valorised and validated a WESSA archetype which was classically liberal and, although explicitly South African, stood aloof from the historical struggles between African and Afrikaner nationalism. Writer Alan Paton, through his leadership of the Liberal Party, had already – from the 1950s – rather unrealistically advocated pure liberalism as this country’s only political hope. During the early 1980s, Paton pilloried his own community’s apparent lack of political cohesion and drive, ascribing it to the fact that “we never trekked … we were never defeated in war, we never had to pick ourselves up out of the dust”.

After 1948, with the NP now having full political control of the state, NP-supporting Afrikaners observed their fellow white South Africans with mixed feelings, ranging from distrust and intense hostility, to absolute peace and sincere friendship. But NP thinkers were not oblivious to the WESSAs’ problematic sense of identity: Afrikaner business tycoon Anton Rupert, who had the NP government’s ear, wrote in 1966 that “English settler culture” in South Africa had been inherently weakened by historical dependency on past Imperial interests. This had resulted in these settlers elsewhere in Africa being mercilessly liquidated for want of a national identity bound to the land.

Thus, Rupert explained, Afrikaners had to take responsibility for setting the pace and course of white nationhood. The implications mirrored Broederbond discussions of the period: for an authentic white South African nation to materialise, WESSAs had to be Afrikanerised. In fact, had Rupert read Olive Schreiner, Paton or Butler, he would have discovered an authentic WESSA love for the land. Post-1948 and Smuts, the NP leadership deliberately undermined the tentative wartime WESSA and United Party Anglo-Afrikaner identities and cast them adrift. Strident Afrikaner nationalist assaults in the 1950s, particularly on British South African symbolism and traditions, meant that many WESSAs discovered some solidarity in defiance, blaming Afrikaners exclusively for apartheid and the country’s growing isolation – claims that historically cannot be sustained.

Historian John Lambert has shown that WESSA origins were too disparate to have ever ensured a solid sense of identity akin to what Afrikaners once developed. Between the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were many anomalies between the Cape Town British, with their Cape liberal traditions, and the more conservative, rural Eastern Cape 1820 Settler descendants – not to mention the loudly pro-British, separatist, markedly conservative Natal colonists. Then, there existed the opulent mine owners of Johannesburg, perennially and often violently at loggerheads with their highly class-conscious British immigrant industrial workers. If anything drew WESSAs together, if just momentarily, it was the crucible of war – two world wars – just as occurred with their kin in other British dominions.

......
Returning to my own life and personal experiences regarding being a born (1960 – 5th generation) and bred WESSA: schools rugby across the Afrikaans-English divide had a much tougher extra edge than when we played another “English” school. Afrikaans schools’ rugby sides were inevitably tough and hard to beat – not least our local opponents, Zwaanswyk and Voortrekker – some lost, some won: “Come guys, let’s show these rock spiders,” doubtless with the reverse said in the opposition’s half-time team huddle; and there were handshakes after the match, but not necessarily always friendliness.
......

Returning to my own life and personal experiences regarding being a born (1960 – 5th generation) and bred WESSA: schools rugby across the Afrikaans-English divide had a much tougher extra edge than when we played another “English” school. Afrikaans schools’ rugby sides were inevitably tough and hard to beat – not least our local opponents, Zwaanswyk and Voortrekker – some lost, some won: “Come guys, let’s show these rock spiders,” doubtless with the reverse said in the opposition’s half-time team huddle; and there were handshakes after the match, but not necessarily always friendliness. For 30 teenagers playing on those winter Saturday mornings during the 1970s, we still played under a historically formed cloud: the Anglo-Boer War and decades before and after, with accompanying attitudes, had been transmitted down to us through the generations.

At the end of 1977, matric was over and we boys prepared for a different experience, of which we had already heard much; mine began on 8 January 1978 in a Bloemfontein infantry camp, and WESSAs were markedly outnumbered. It was not the totality of my SADF national service experience, but during the initial months of training, we were very often badged and jeered as soutpiele, Ingelse and Engleesh by fellow conscripts and instructors alike. But, between our fighting with the “Dutchmen”, everyone suffered together the same abuse, pains and homesickness. The alchemy of young men thrown together against adversity ensured many lasting friendships across language lines. Earlier this year, after 40 years, I linked up with an old Afrikaans army buddy, and we could reminisce for another four decades.

But army days also allowed me to reflect in later years how devoid of an identity we WESSAs seemed. We were “the English”, and that alone provided some cohesion in an overwhelmingly Afrikaner-dominated environment. The Afrikaans ouens were generally far more “tribal-minded” and conscious of the 1899–1902 war; some even brought it up with us, and hardly always as an academic discussion. We (those who even knew) would never have attached the same significance to the 1820 Settlers, let alone the Frontier or Anglo-Zulu Wars. As for the Boer War, well, was that not the British?

Our school history lessons had brought more confusion than linking us with the past. We had heard too much about the Great Trek, Piet Retief, Paul Kruger and General Hertzog, and hardly anything about the world wars, where our fathers and grandfathers had served alongside Afrikaners who had also supported Jan Smuts – this besides our being given only the Afrikaner nationalist viewpoint on British colonisation from 1806.

Bloemfontein’s Anglican cathedral (photo: Facebook)

I always experienced Sunday mornings in Bloemfontein’s Anglican cathedral as calming: we all spoke the same language, the hymns and liturgy were familiar, the dean presiding over the services was kind and the uniformed schoolgirl boarders in the pews were pretty. It was something of a cultural equanimity in contrast to an alien and unfriendly army camp.

But what, then, to do about this current, seemingly one-sided war against the legacy of the West in general and in this country, clearly aimed at the destruction of any objectively comprehended – for want of a better description – analysis of different facets regarding white South African historical identity, including the 1820 Settlers? Indeed, it could convincingly be argued that at a local level, this global “cultural war” is also a rejection of what most of us in 1994 understood to be a core of Mandela and Tutu’s rainbow nation – a vision pledged to acknowledge and respect its ethnic/cultural/linguistic pluralism, including varied academic comprehensions of its history. Instead, the 1820 Settler bicentenary has been roughly shoved aside, following the same occurring recently with other milestone events: the 1910 Union, the South African Air Force centenary – the list is long.

Among today’s young WESSAs, there is virtually no sense of any pre-1994 historical identity, and, for some – not least university students – there is a revulsion and combatant disposition towards “colonisation” akin to that of their contemporaries across the global Anglosphere from North America to New Zealand. Now, at age 60, I note that the identity I pondered over – outlined above by snapshots of a young man’s life experiences – appears to be even vaguer.

Even if Cecil Rhodes represents the most significant (and for many, notorious) 19th century economic, political and historical British South African player, the 2015 removal of his statue at UCT – instigated by black student Fallists with unrestrained African nationalist agendas, regularly expressed in the most racialistically offensive terms – brought no pushback from white students. On the contrary, there was significant Fallist support alongside apathy and a weary defeatism.

But the English language’s South African origins obviously have emphatic historical roots, with the language arriving via historical processes and people with a culture manifested in innumerable forms, most long shared across communities from origins other than British. Like Hermann Giliomee has explained in his magisterial Die Afrikaners, people are entitled to their historical story, warts and all.

True, the 1820 Settlers’ arrival and contributions were historical phenomena that received formal commemoration only in a time when apartheid was official government policy – which John Vorster’s 1974 government had no plans to scrap, and nor was the NP then under any pressure to do so by the white community majority.

On the contrary, the government was marking time with Vorster’s détente efforts into Africa, while pressurising another WESSA variation, Ian Smith’s white Rhodesians, to accept black majority rule, and concealing this from the volk yet shoring up Afrikaner and – to an extent – broader white political unity behind the NP. And, no doubt, among the citizens whose families linked to the 1820 Settlers, there were those who also voted NP during the 1974 general election.

But do these points invalidate the retention of a memorial to the historical contributions rendered by the settlers and their descendants, or validate a contrived multicultural monument that strips the memorial of its 1820 Settler identity, substituting another which somehow affirms African nationalists?

 

  • 2

Kommentaar

  • Frederik Van Dyk

    I think to exist as a community in South Africa, one’s level of engagement with the country as a state of your being must feature firmly without overdependence on the state, or trying to dominate others.
    So in this sense I pity the WESSA community, because I tend to pick up, as you call it, a sense of defeatism or searching for identity in social justice causes among them. Many younger ones profess that SA is only a phase for them; emigration to the Anglo Motherlands (UK, Auz, Canada) is the endgoal. In this regard, the many options for the WESSA is a curse for their South Africanness.

    As corruption and neglect grow, I see the WESSA ccommunity, once a reservoir for liberal and progressive thought, tending towards disillusionment. For a while, the 1990’s gave WESSAE a sense of triumphalism and a patriotic identity forged by the constitutional nationhood of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. It’s like a familiar democratic and colourful society, dominated by English, has emerged for their convenience. And now, after years of ANC neglect and rising radicalism, their brief sense of belonging seems to flutter.

  • Henning Janse van Vuuren

    Ja, ek het al heelwat gesprekke met Engelse gevoer wat hul walging oor die Duitsers uitspreek tot ek vra hoe hulle voel oor wat die Britte aan Afrikaanse kindertjies en vroue gedoen het.

  • Reageer

    Jou e-posadres sal nie gepubliseer word nie. Kommentaar is onderhewig aan moderering.


     

    Top