Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912-1950

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Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912-1950
Natasha Erlank
Feminist Studies; Fall 2003; 29, 3; Academic Research Library
pg. 653
Gender
and
Masculinity
in
South
African
Nationalist
Discourse,
1912-1950
Natasha
Erlank
In
1935, Alfred Bitini Xuma, African National Congress
(ANC)
president
from 1940 to 1947, wrote a paper expressing confidence in the ability of
Africans to participate responsibly in governmental politics because of
their
having come to
the
"status
of
full
manhood."
1
In
1946,
Anton
Lembede, leader of the
ANC
Youth League, wrote a charged newspaper
article describing how a "young virile nation" was in the process of being
rebirthed, drawing strength from a nationalism which fed on the idea of
Africa as a "blackman's country.,,, Xuma
and
Lembede were not alone
among African nationalist leaders in resorting to rhetoric saturated in
references to masculinity, although their vision of what it meant to
be
a
man
may have differed. Language redolent with metaphors calling for
the reassertion of a denied manhood
had
prominent rhetorical place in
nationalist discourse in
the
first
part
of
the century. Seldom acknowl-
edged, the existence
of
this discourse is fundamental to understanding
the political strategies of the
ANC
and
other nationalist groups from the
1920s
through
the
1950s. Such a discourse explains
some
of
the
gen-
dered currents
that
motivated nationalist activity during this period as
well as some of the reasons why African male leaders were disinclined to
involve African women in political activity undertaken as
part
of opposi-
tion policies to the white South African state.
This article covers the period from 1910 to 1948, when African nation-
alist leaders
had
moved away from assuming a continuance
of
former
chiefly power,
but
before
they
had
realized
the
full
extent
of
racist
antipathy toward all black South Africans. Before 1910, when a union of
colonies
had
not
yet
emerged
as
the
future
South
Africa,
African
urbanization was limited and most educated Africans still
had
great faith
in colonial Britain's commitment to racial fairness. African nationalist
politics were relatively fractured by disagreements between different
ethnic groups, and not all
had
yet understood the implication of a white,
Feminist Studies 29, no. 3 (Fall
2003).
©
2003
by
Feminist
Studies, Inc.
653

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Natasha Erlank
settler-dominated state. However, after union it became clear to most
African leaders
that
the British liberal promise of equal rights for all men
was not to be realized. After the First World War, preferential labor poli-
cies for white South Africans and state attempts to control African urban
settlement led to a restriction on African political rights
and
economic
prospects.
In
1948,
the
Afrikaner-dominated racist Nationalist Party
came into power, signifying the start of the apartheid era. Against this
history, I discuss how a concern for masculine reinforcement among an
early generation of leaders coalesced around several issues pertinent to
this period: the Cape franchise (black men in the Cape had the vote but
not black men in the rest of the country); the introduction of the political
ideology of trusteeship; the removal of African men from the common
voters roll; and, lastly, male impotence in the face of segregation-induced
economic hardship. Masculine interest in the public sphere arose largely
because the British stress on masculinity as politically mature adulthood
and
emphasizing
the
political responsibilities of
men
resonated with
traditionalist African perceptions of adulthood. As a result, the loss of the
vote was a source of great concern to African men. However, debate
about these issues occurred in a context in which urbanized and middle-
class African families (from whence were drawn
the
early nationalist
leaders) were "modernizing" their social and private lives according to a
British-inspired model
that
placed heavy emphasis on an individualist
and atomistic masculine responsibility. I therefore include discussion of
African men's private lives because they represent the crucible in which
ideas about male rights were fashioned.
Male-Gendering
the
Historiography
of
Nationalism
Most work on
the
rise of African nationalism
and
the struggle against
racism in South Africa has privileged the actions of men. Accounts of both
the development of racist policies from the formation of the South African
Union in 1910
and
the trajectory of resistance associated with the founda-
tion of the
ANC
in 1912, privilege male action, although this fact is often
obscured by apparently gender-neutral language. The gendered signifi-
cance of political action is seldom examined in such accounts, notwith-
standing the existence of a body of solid feminist research
and
theory."
Academic work on resistance
and
gender tends to be limited to work
on
women's
roles
in
formal
protest,
for example,
those
against
the
carrying of passes intended to restrict their general mobility
and
free-
dom
from poorly
paid
wage labor, such as
those
in Bloemfontein in
1913.4 More recent
and
earlier protests have until recently received little
attention. This research articulates a critique of elite nationalist politics
during the period, comparing ineffective elite protest, epitomized by
the
ANC,
and
more effective, grassroots protests undertaken by women.
Feminist scholars point to the
ANC
leadership's reluctance to extend

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Natasha Erlank 655
formal
and
full membership to women until 1943 as evidence of
the
ANC's early hostility to female participation in political matters. They
criticize the
ANC
for not being more supportive of women's rights, par-
ticularly during the period before the rejuvenation of the
ANC
Women's
League in 1943. (Before this the Women's League tended to function as a
catering auxiliary.) Commonplace in the history of the
ANC
is
therefore
its early lack of attention-even hostility-to gender issues and women's
concerns." Women's exclusion from the
ANC
is
explained as the result of
the dominant gender ideology of the period, originating from a model of
domestic relations adopted by the emergent African elite at the end of
the nineteenth century, rather
than
conscious political action. Work that
deals with the effects of Christian gender ideology in social rather than
political context
is
key to this implicit understanding.<'
The charge
that
the
ANC
was elitist in its exclusion of women tends
to
be
accounted
for in
the
mainstream
historiography
in
two ways:
(1)
women
were
included,
but
in
ways
that
are
invisible
to
us; or,
(2) women's absence needs to be understood within the larger context
of South African society.
When
I, as a white feminist scholar, have
raised
the
matter
of
ANC
hostility to the political activity of its black
female constituency with black
and
white
students
and
colleagues, I
have often been met with questions
that
in one way or another explain
this behavior by linking it to racial differences.
If
white South African
society did not provide space for female political activity, why should
we
expect anything different from the black
ANC?
Could
we
have expected
any more from African
men
in the early-twentieth century, given
that
most
Western
societies were still explicitly
patriarchal
in
content?
Questions about gender power are, in this way,
turned
into questions
about race.
I do not mean to suggest that women were not engaged in resistance to
racist
policies,
nor
that
their
activities were ineffective.
As
Glenda
Gilmore's work on black women activists in the
U.S.
South has shown,
women's agency is
present
but
not
easily recoverable from historical
narratives centered on male power. In South Africa, the case was much
the same. Black (and white) women were active in many political initia-
tives and protests,
but
they remained hidden from view because of the
hegemonic male authorial voice of the time. Frene Ginwala captures this
distinction when she writes
that
"the absence of women from political
institutions does not necessarily lead to their absence in
the
political
arena."7 Despite black women's initiatives-many of which I describe in
this article to highlight the disjuncture-male-dominated political spaces
were closed to them.
If
in
turn
we
construct a particular state of gendered
power relations as the norm, then
we
close off research into the specific
nature of those gendered power relations. Ginwala answers criticism of
the ANC's stance toward women, for example, by arguing that political

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Natasha Erlank
participation for Africans was based on a British model
that
accorded
power to men only.8 But this is not an adequate explanation for the male
absence of a desire to promote female political rights, and we need to seek
further.
Despite the gendering of nationalist history to include women, discus-
sions
of
male
activity as
gendered
activity is
absent
from
African
nationalist historiography. Laura Chrisman's work on Sol Plaatje
and
Elaine Unterhalter's on heroic masculinity in nationalist autobiography
are, however, beginning to address this lacunae." Rather
than
locating
gender in women alone, which suggests
that
only female constructions
of
gender
and
female political activity were problematic, we
should
move toward identifying
the
importance of gender to African men. Work
on
the
ambiguous
nature
of
"racial uplift ideology"
among
African
Americans in the early-twentieth century, as well as scholarship on the
crafting of African American masculine identity, points to ways
that
southern
African
scholars
can
fruitfully
interrogate
intersections
between constructions of masculinity and political discourses.
10
Gender
in
Private:
Masculine
Perceptions
and
Responsibilities
During
the
1920s
and
1930s South Africa's
urbanized
black middle
class
aspired
to
modernity
and
a white middle-class existence." For
them
a Western-style family life represented a modern model of social
relations
and
the
antithesis of savagery. Monogamy, nuclear families,
and
tea services marked the degree to which urbanized African families
had
moved away from
the
customs
of
their
originary societies
that
white
and
black liberal
sentiment
claimed kept African society back-
ward. Modern family life, therefore, served as an index of civilization
for
the
African petty bourgeoisie.
The maintenance of gender difference was central to the middle class's
new
domestic
model.
Many
of
the
urban
petty
bourgeoisie
were
second-generation Christians, whose parents converted during the late-
nineteenth century. They
had
theoretically distanced themselves from
traditional social practices
and
power relationships,
but
Christian gender
ideology
and
colonial efforts to limit
the
number
of Africans living in
cities, via
the
cementing
of
power
in
the
hands
of
rural
patriarchs,
ensured the continuance of patriarchal norms.
12
Despite the African mid-
dle class's perception of itself as modernizing, it stressed the continuance
of traditionally deferential patterns of female behavior and traditionally
authoritative patterns of male behavior. In South Africa, female autono-
my
and
independence were therefore seen as inimical to proper family
life.
Thus
it was possible for
R.V.
Selope Thema,
ANC
member
and
"darling of the European liberals," to declare that "[t]his claim to equality
with men by Bantu women
is
at the root of the destruction of Bantu fami-
ly life.
It
is
not the right kind of equality
....
No community in which the

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Natasha Erlank
men are without control over their women can hope to build up a healthy
social system."'l The middle class's gendered model of society placed
particular emphasis on the promotion of distinct feminine and masculine
qualities as well as a separation of public from domestic life, epitomized
in the marriage ideal and a division of labor within the workplace. Ideal
gendered
behavior
rested
on
the
idea
of
the
petty
bourgeoisie
as a
progressive, civilized class. For
men
particularly, stress was laid upon
values such as "diligence
and
perseverance (particularly in education),
charity
and
kindliness,
abstemiousness
and,
of
crucial
importance,
rejection of tribalism
and
ethnocentricism."'4 Included was an emphasis
on individual chivalry toward women
that
reflected a care
and
succor
exercised in contexts not typical of traditional society.
The distinction between traditional and modern values
is
also seen in
attitudes toward marriage. Modern lifestyles included the refusal of cus-
tomary marriage practices, such as polygamy, bridewealth, and the choice
of marriage partners by parents. According to
men
like D.D.T
..
Jabavu
(Cape politician, academic, and president of the All-African Convention)
writing in 1920, these were the sources of the African women's low status.
Polygamy
reinforced
and
brought
out
women's
baser
and
natural
instincts, leading them to perpetuate the keeping of all Africans in a state
of primitive tribalism. The belief that "no nation can rise higher than its
womanhood" was a common feature of male elite rhetoric in the 1920s
and
1930s. Here women's lack of power was transformed into negative
power, in a manner analogous to the attitudes of black elite male contem-
poraries in
the
United States, who felt themselves betrayed by African
American women who
had
been
forced into sexual involvement with
white men. '5
If
marriage was important for African middle-class men, their choice
of wife was equally so. The importance of suitable wives as participants
in the project whereby African men were imagining a new political com-
munity has
not
always been emphasized.
16
Respectable
and
educated
wives gave
men
the social capital to participate in middle-class society.
The possession of an educated
partner
also reflected
the
degree to which
the petty bourgeoisie had broken away from
the
constraints of tradition-
al society.
This
did
not
mean
that
middle-class
African
men
might
not
have loving
and
companionate marriages,
but
rather
that
a wife
had
to
be
chosen very carefully. Silas Molema, Edinburgh-educated doctor,
member of the Baralong royal family (an elite Tswana chiefdom),
and
a
leader among Mafikeng's petty bourgeoisie during
the
early-twentieth
century made this clear in a 1920 letter to his father: "I am 29 years of
age now,
and
must prepare to settle down. I can hardly think that, in the
nature of my work, people would
trust
me to attend their wives and chil-
dren if I
had
no wife
and
children of my own." Molema's choice of wife
required careful consideration. He felt
that
he
had
succeeded, despite a

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658 Natasha Erlank
worry
that
his father would
not
approve:
She has the best education
that
it is possible for
our
women in South Africa. She
is of highly respectable birth and she loved me before there was a hope of rising
to my present position. This is the kind of person
that
could take an intelligent
interest in my life-work and be of material assistance to me in every way. There
are very few girls
to
think
of in connection with marriage, who have either
ambition
or
education enough. There are ce1tainly none amongst our immedi-
ate
people
....
If
I
must
marry,
I
must
have
an
educated
and
intelligent
partner.''
Alfred
Xuma
also
held
Molema's views
on
the
need
for a suitable
partner.
In
1933, Xuma married
Amanda
Mason, a Liberian educated in
the
United
States.
"In
Miss
Mason
he
found
a
woman
who
was
well-schooled in
the
African
American
ideas
of
racial
solidarity
and
self-reliance,
and
who
shared
his Christian beliefs
and
standard
of
edu-
cation as well."'" His father's
comment
on
the
match reflects this: "It is
better
for you to
marry
someone who
understands
the
type of work you
are doing
and
some
of
the
people you
must
associate with."
19
Usually his
father, a
rural
farmer, would have
had
some say in Xuma's choice
of
partner,
but
Xuma
felt
that
a village woman would
not
suit
the
life
he
desired. His choice
of
partner
reflected a clear
break
with tradition. The
desire
for
an
educated
wife is
even
clearer
with
respect
to
Xuma's
second marriage. Mason
Xuma
died from childbirth complications in
1934. Xuma proceeded
to
bring up his two children with
the
help
of
a
sister,
but
by
1937
he
was lonely
and
finding his single status irksome.
During
the
next few years,
he
solicited several friends overseas
to
help
him
find a suitable wife:
As
for private matters, we are doing nicely here.
All
is well with the children
except the absence of a tender and guiding voice of a mother. But I feel
that
it is
in Providence's plan to provide them with some one who will fill the gap
that
the
departure of their late mother left. That someone will have made a great contri-
bution to Africa if she assisted in developing in these little ones those Ideals
which my late wife and myself
had
for them
....
I greatly feel the need of a part-
ner and the inspiration she will be in my little effmts to serve my Africans.""
There
is a
subtext
to
Xuma's
search.
His
rejection
of
local
partners
betrays an ambivalence toward local black women, something quite clear
in his writing.
James
Campbell has
commented
upon
this, describing
Xuma as "a
man
so conscious
of
his own position as a 'leader of the race,'
so preoccupied with vindicating African potential in his own life,
that
he
could no longer conceive
of
marrying
an
African."21 Eventually
Xuma
married Madie Hall, a highly educated African American whom he
had
located
through
the
help
of
U.S. friends. Madie Hall
joined
Xuma
in
South Africa in 1940, where
she
lived until 1963. Hall
Xuma
devoted
much
effort to advancing women's rights in South Africa, which reflected

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Natasha Erlank
thinking
at
odds with
her
husband's
on
the
subject of women's capabili-
ties.""
If
the
acquisition
of
an
educated
wife was
the
first
step
toward
respected
status
for
many
African men,
the
second involved ensuring
that
husbands
and
wives performed their correct roles within
the
family.
Middle-class households allocated labor according to
the
belief
that
men
were
the
natural guardians
and
providers for their families while women
cared for their domestic
and
moral needs. This was
an
ideal propagated
in mission education for girls as well as by Protestant female mission-
aries who
instructed
African housewives in
domestic
duties.
Not
all
African girls agreed with
these
ideas
but
they
acquiesced for
want
of
educational alternatives. This allocation
of
labor
was
the
ideal for all
classes,
but
many African families could
not
afford it."' The perception of
what women's
and
men's labor ought to involve is evident in
the
auto-
biography of academic
and
ANC
member,
Z.K.
Matthews.
It
was
borne
in on
me
and
my brothers
at
a very early age
that
our
father was
an
uncommon
man.
For
one
thing,
in
most
African families, work
around
the
home
was women's work. So we were vastly impressed by
the
fact
that
when-
ever my
mother
wcis
away, my father could
and
did do all
her
jobs, cooking,
cleaning,
and
looking after us. He helped also when she was
at
home
and
the
same
was expected
of
us. We lived in this way in a communily in which house-
work was regarded as being
beneath
male dignity.'''
Despite
the
ideal,
many
middle-class
women
did
work for a wage.
Here, perceptions of women's capacities
tended
to dictate employment
opportunities.
As
a result, women in paid employment were overwhelm-
ingly clustered in domestic service, nursing, or teaching, or in activities
ancillary
to
their husbands' work. According to Xuma, women were best
suited to being nurses, teachers,
and
educators. This was a natural exten-
sion of their labor as wives
and
mothers. In these areas they were
to
be
given
the
best training possible. This is why he did not support a move to
introduce lesser qualifications for African nurses during the early 1930s.""
Women who strayed beyond these employment bounds found little male
support.
This
was
particularly
true
if
they
undertook
labor
that
encroached
upon
the
masculine political sphere,
where
women
were
viewed
with
ambivalence.
This
is
clear
in
Xuma's
comments
about
Charlotte Maxeke, prominent female educator
and
first president of the
Bantu
Women's
League.
The
different
careers
of
Xuma
and
Maxeke
epitomize
the
contradictions between women's presence in public space
and
the
hostility of
many
male nationalist luminaries toward it.
In
his
obituary of
her
in 1939, Xuma referred to Maxeke as "a woman
of
refine-
ment, culture
and
education; a devoted wife, a loving mother, a fine judge
of
human
nature, a sympathetic healer
and
an alleviator of
human
mis-
ery."""
He gave no
hint
of
her
political activities, which were manifold,
including philanthropic work, activity as a delegate to
ANC
conferences,

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660
Natasha Erlank
and
participation in
the
Johannesburg
Joint
Councils.27 Xuma's 1930
pamphlet on Maxeke, "What an Educated African Girl Can
Do"
(she was
probably twenty years his senior), construes
her
achievements almost
exclusively as the expression of external forces-including the Holy Spirit.
His description of
her
singing talent
is
a demonstration of this. "The
bud
of musical talent
that
appeared in Port Elizabeth,
had
now,
under
the
care of an expert florist, blossomed into a beautiful flower with its aroma.
It
was as if one of those large, blue precious stones from the stands of
Kimberly
had
been
washed, cut
and
polished
by
an
expert
diamond
cutter."28 Xuma's patronizing
comments
deprive Maxeke
of
political
agency. Despite his praise he nevertheless found it necessary to minimize
her
achievements, suggesting a discomfort with black South African
female autonomy.
Ironically, Xuma was instrumental in calling for a reinvigorated
ANC
Women's League in 1943, possibly in response to a suggestion of Madie
Hall,
the
first president of the relaunched society. Although criticized by
her
contemporaries for
her
lack of political engagement, she was instru-
mental
in
establishing zenzele (self-help) clubs on
the
Witwatersrand
and
traveled widely as ambassador for the
ANC
on trips to the United
States;
her
husband's views nonetheless prescribed
her
activities within
the
Women's League.
It
was
not
uncommon
for key male leaders to
publicly support women's activities
that
they discursively undermined
in the same instance. Hazel Carby has uncovered a similar contradiction
in W.E.B. Du Bois's advocacy of female equality
and
the
gendering
strategies present in his writings. Similarly, Elaine Unterhalter showed
that
male anti-apartheid activists commonly used rhetorical strategies
to represent participation in the anti-apartheid struggle as being of pri-
mary importance while portraying female activity in a stereotypically
passive manner.
29
Gender
in
Public:
Masculinity
as
an
Element
in
Nationalist
Rhetoric
During
the
1920s
and
1930s,
when
families
in
urban
areas
were
attempting to fashion their lives according to a Western ideal, African
men
were using their vision of
the
duties
and
rights of
men
to structure
how
and
on what terms they engaged in political activity. In this section
I
examine
how
ideas
about
common
masculine
responsibility were
employed by African nationalist leaders to create an invisible male com-
munity, united through its understanding of masculine adulthood
and
the
responsibilities it entailed.
The liberal project of modernity
that
conferred on men the right to
the franchise
had
roots in seventeenth-
and
eighteenth-century political
philosophy. The evolution of European society from a monarchical to a
more representative form of political rule was described as a social con-

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Natasha Erlank
661
tract, emphasizing the reciprocal relationship between citizens
and
their
elected governments. However, as Carole Pateman has shown, the idea
of social contract concealed a hidden sexual contract, in which women's
exclusion from political rights was a precondition for male inclusion.
Male participation was premised on their reason, a quality not held to
be
present
in
women.
Furthermore,
male political participation was
predicated on the idea of a fraternal contract
that
structured the politi-
cal community. Political participation was linked to the existence of a
community
of
rational
men. The idea of political power
based
on a
conception of all
men
as equal differed from the concept of a political
community where access to power was governed by blood
and
patriar-
chal right. w The
contrast
a
fraternal
contract
offered
to
traditional
society suited a modernizing African elite trying to achieve political
and
social equality in white society. The paradox, though, is
that
modern,
urbanized African
men
viewed themselves as
part
of a new political
community of men, based on a collection of ideas about the responsibil-
ities of men
that
was partially premodern in origin. Although
the
role of
father
and
husband
was
important
in defining
the
status
of
modern
African
men,
male
responsibility
lay equally
in
the
public
sphere.
During
the
previous
century
at
least, African practices
included
an
assumption
that
men
would participate in public affairs upon reaching
adulthood. Even more modern leaders like Xuma supported the impor-
tance of this idea of "manhood franchise" in African society."'
In South Africa, masculine political representation on the basis of a
fraternal
bond
was first conferred in
the
Cape liberal tradition, where
masculine equality was recognized as part of the franchise. Subject to a
property qualification, African
men
were awarded the franchise along
with
European
men
when
the
Cape Colony
gained
representative
government in 1853. The Cape franchise represented not only masculine
adulthood
but
also racial equality. "The non-racial qualified franchise in
the
Cape was of
great
symbolic significance.
It
represented
a direct
continuity with the Victorian 'civilising mission' which promised that at
some point in the future, however remote, at least some Africans could
participate
as equals in a
common
political society."'2 Although few
African men qualified for the franchise in the Cape, it still represented the
pinnacle of public responsibility.
11
However, when the Union of South
Africa was declared in
1910,
the status of adulthood in European society
was denied to the African male elite in the other three of the four consti-
tutive elements of the new country. The denial of adulthood lay at the
heart of African calls for the extension of the franchise between
1910
and
1936. Male African leaders tapped into this discontent, fueling a political
rhetoric full of references to masculinity and a call for the restoration of
African manhood. Calls to manhood shared a common language of kin,
so
that
familial, gendered metaphors abound in early
ANC
discourse.'"

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662
Natasha
Erlank
The mobilizing significance of calls to manhood, however, only became
apparent from the 1910s onward. Before
that
African leaders
had
not yet
internalized the power union
had
given to a coalition of white English-
and
Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, united
.in
their distrust
of
the
country's black population.
By
the
1920s, implicit
trust
in traditional
definitions of masculinity
had
given way to language in which the lack
of
access to
the
modern
political
system
was
expressed
as a
threat
to
manhood. The matter of the vote, therefore, represented one of the most
important areas where concern for denied masculinity was articulated.
Although mobilization
around
the
vote formed one axis
of
nationalist
activity, dissatisfaction with
government
policies
and
legislation
that
focused on political and economic rights formed another. The combined
effect
of
racist legislation
and
lack
of
a vote
turned
African
men
into
children.
For the African male elite the acquisition of the franchise represented
a process analogous to
that
of circumcision in traditional society. Circum-
cision was of great impmtance to African men. Traditionally,
men
who
had
not participated in the circumcision ceremonies were not allowed to
marry, establish
their
own households,
or
participate in the affairs
of
the
chiefdom. Even Christian
men
underwent
circumcision,
despite
missionary prohibitions against it. Circumcision, therefore, formed a
powerful
trope
in
political
language.
Speaking
in
1921,
Zaccheus
Mahabane,
ANC
president
from 1924 to 1927
and
1937 to 1940, was
emphatic in this respect. "According to
the
custom
of
the
Bantu, only
males who have not undergone the rights of circumcision are treated as
youths
or
'Amakwenkwe,'
or
'Maqui' and, no
matter
how old they may
be
or
how
bearded
they may be,
or
what
number
of
children they may
have . . . the black
man
in South Africa is treated in exactly
the
same
manner. He is a 'political child."'
In
the
same
speech
Mahabane
stated:
"[T]he
white
man
...
has
described our people as the 'child races' of the Empire. They have carried
this to a logical conclusion by denying us the right, privileges and respon-
sibilities of manhood
....
I emphatically refuse to submit
or
subscribe to
this
policy
of
treating
men
of
maturer
years as children
or
youths."'"
Mahabane's
comments
were radical in
the
context
of
the
1920s
and
gained weight partly because
of
his emphasis
on
the
threat
of
African
masculinity.
By
the 1930s, references to Africans as a child race
had
con-
siderable rhetorical currency. Comments about the denial of adulthood
extended to include a critique of the idea of trusteeship, the combination
of
segregation
and
paternalist white rule on behalf of Africans espoused
by
the
South
African
state
during
the
1920s
and
193os.
36
Mahabane
brought this home in his 1939 presidential address. "Let us for a moment
examine the ideology of the average South African white
man
in regard to
the
place
of
the
black
man"
which is as a "CHILD AND HEWER OF

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Natasha Erlank
WOOD
AND
DRAWER OF WATER."37 In 1953,
Z.K.
Matthews was still
examining this view in the New York Saturday Review. Although the dis-
course on Africans as a child race originated among whites, the use of it in
black discourse reflected African need to counter its suggestion.i8
Linked to descriptions of Africans as a child race were other meta-
phoric constants. Political leaders often referred to the way that European
rule and the denial of the franchise had led to their alienation in the land
of their birth. Mahabane talked about the way
that
the "sons of the soil"
had
lost access to their natal territory.i9 He linked this directly to a "sinis-
ter policy of separation, disintegration, disunion, segregation"
that
was
the result of the government betraying "Rhodes' formula of 'Equal rights
for all civilised men south of the Zambesi.'" Notwithstanding his use of
the word "sinister" (in heraldry it connotes illegitimacy), he reappropriat-
ed the child-race discourse to suggest an African right to South African
territory. In this language children were denied rights in the land of their
birth through the guardianship of evil parents. Trusteeship, according to
white writing, implied the idea of a benevolent paternalism,
but
black
comments subverted the idea, focusing instead on the white state as an
oppressive and evil parent. In 1939, Mahabane referred to black men as
stepchildren in the land of their fathers.
10
The idea of illegitimate parent-
age was used as a rhetorical weapon with which to attack European poli-
cies. This was a neat counterthrust on the part of a society that valued the
status
of
fatherhood
highly.
The
parenting
theme
was also
carried
through into concern for African youth. Nationalist leaders were paiticu-
larly worried about the problem of boys growing up without parental and
particularly
paternal
supervision. Laura Chrisman, for instance,
has
stressed the way that African men viewed masculinity as being defined,
among other things, by fatherhood. African parental caring was contrast-
ed to the poor parenting abilities of the South African state.4'
Although black African men's masculinity was denied in the white
political system, whether in relation to the vote or in trusteeship com-
mentary, the denial itself also incited political action. In his 1920 address
to the Cape Native Congress's annual conference Mahabane argued
that
the Color Bar based "the test of citizenship on a wrong principle-the pos-
session of material power or a white skin," leading to the treatment of
"the Blackman as an outcast." Further on in the same address he referred
to
the
way
that
South African legislation deprived the African of "his
rights, duties and responsibilities as a citizen
....
If
he has any sense of
self-respect and
is
conscious of his manhood can the Black
man
remain
contented with such a state of affairs? I say no."42 This call to action did
not give much space to female participation.
Black men, in this period, also felt threatened in their abilities to fulfill
their obligations as fathers and husbands. During the first
few
decades of
the twentieth century African families were working to
turn
their vision

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Natasha Erlank
of domesticity
into
fact. However,
this
domestic
vision was coming
increasingly under threat by the 1920s as a result of segregationist legis-
lation
marking
out
new
African
townships
far
from
urban
centers,
restricting movement, and barring Africans from entry into many kinds
of employment. The diminishing economic status of Africans required
many
women,
even
from
petty
bourgeois
households,
to
seek
paid
employment. This was a source of great concern to nationalist leaders
because it threatened Africans' hard-won bourgeois status. Xuma's sub-
missions to
the
Native Economic Commission in 1932 articulated this
fear. He suggested instituting a living wage for African
men
in order to
"[m]ake a decent family life possible by ending the need for mother to
leave children to grow like wild animals while she seeks employment and
the children without the proper family and school elementary education
necessary for useful citizenship." In the same piece he speculated
that
the
illicit liquor trade in Johannesburg arose from the "low wages paid the
male Native workers. (a)
Husband's
wages alone
cannot
support
the
family. (b) Mother, as
should
be,
must
remain
home
and
look after
children at home and the home."4" The strain on masculine confidence
can be seen particularly in discussions around the effect of pass laws
that
restricted male mobility, made it difficult to find legitimate housing, and
kept wages artificially low.44 Many of these issues were debated in the
Joint Councils of Africans and Europeans
that
began meeting in
1921
and
were
composed
of
white
and
black
liberals,
both
women
and
men
concerned to work toward better race relations. The Johannesburg Joint
Council continually expressed concerns about the level of remuneration
needed
to
maintain
civilized living
standards.
Different
classes
of
Africans
were
provided
with
different
types
of
accommodation.
A
Johannesburg
report on
the
various lodgings required by Africans in
cities contrasted "the type provided for the 'blanket' or mine native"
that
was "quite unsuitable for a considerable class of natives who have, to
some extent, adopted European modes ofliving, possess their own furni-
ture, value privacy,
and
are prepared to pay for more acceptable hous-
ing." Moreover, this class
had
families to support. "Many Natives are
desirous of a much higher standard of living than their present economic
status allows
....
The average Native wages in vogue in Johannesburg
range from £3 to £5
...
per
month
...
out of which a
man
with
afamily
of
five has to strain to meet [the household] budget."45 The difficulty of
providing for this budget weighed heavier on men's shoulders, given
expectations about their role as breadwinner.
If
loss
of
income
threatened
the
new
family model,
government
attempts to restrict African mobility
threatened
the
balance of power
within families. Despite commitment to modernization, African men still
believed
that
masculinity involved the control of women. In Johannes-
burg in the 1920s
and
1930s African
men
resisted
the
issuing of night

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Natasha Erlank 665
passes to African women because it interfered with their control of their
womenfolk (as well as making women vulnerable to assault by male offi-
cials).
It
was not the states' place to control their women. According to
Kathy Eales, male resistance to female pass laws represented an attempt
by
African
men
to
counterbalance
eroding
public
status
with
the
preser-
vation of male authority in private. The same point is made by Helen
Bradford, who
wrote
that
"Black males survive
in
the
world
of
the
colonisers partly by asserting their dominance over black women." This
domestic male dominance signified
an
ambiguity in the middle-class
project
of
modernity
and
it
was
vigorously
challenged
by
African
women.
46
By
the 1940s references to masculinity were no longer tied to the vote.
This was, of course, largely in response to legislation
that
denied Cape
African
men
the right to vote in the same elections as whites. Instead,
views of masculinity were increasingly linked to traditional ethics
and
socialism as expounded by
the
ANC
Youth League. Founded in 1944,
partly to broaden the appeal of the
ANC,
the Youth League was viewed
by
many
as
an
enclave for middle-class
and
politically conservative
protest. The Youth League Manifesto, represented a transitional stage
between
the
previous generations' denial of tradition as a reason for
inclusion in the South African political universe and a later generation's
development of a
more
radical
tradition.
Ostensibly
it
was a call
to
action directed
at
female and male youth. However, the preamble refers
consistently
to
black
and
white
struggle as
masculine,
including
a
reference to
the
"emasculation of an entire community" achieved by
successive segregationist legislation.
47 This
metaphoric
construction
weighs against the commentary about the sexually-inclusive nature of its
membership. Lembede's comments at the start of this article show the
degree to which the new nationalist political community was still being
envisaged as a gender-exclusive one.
Nationalist
Politics,
Fraternal
Strategies,
and
the
Exclusion
of
Women
So
far I have discussed how African men involved in nationalist action
maneuvered according to a vision of politics as a masculine field. I still
need to link this discourse, however, into specific actions that excluded
African women from nationalist political forums. What follows
is
a dis-
cussion of the debate within the All-African Convention
(AAC),
a broad
African nationalist front, around the Hertzog bills, in which it
is
possible
to detect how the idea of a male political community actively excluded
women. The
AAC
proceedings help us to link male agency to the denial of
female political rights, specifically around the issue of a female franchise.
In 1935, the South African government under General Hertzog tabled
two bills in Parliament. The first included an extension of the
1913
Land

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666 Natasha Erlank
Act (that restricted African land ownership to approximately 8 percent of
the country, in the form of native reserves),
but
in the context of extended
trusteeship. The second called for the removal of Cape Africans from the
common voters' roll. These bills galvanized African sentiment across the
country. On the encouragement of leaders from several black opposition
groups, including the prominent
and
liberal intellectual D.D.T. Jabavu,
the
AAC,
an umbrella organization, was formed to debate and protest the
provisions of the Hertzog bills. Black South Africans thereafter used the
AAC
as a forum in which to discuss issues of citizenship and the fran-
chise.48
Its agenda was set forth at a meeting called in Bloemfontein in
December 1935, attended by approximately
400
delegates.
A text written prior to the meeting stressed the concept of denied mas-
culinity.
49
The
AAC
considered the effect of
the
bills on labor tenancy,
squatting, the protection of workers, and land quality within the reserves.
It also spoke of the grievances
that
oppressive laws occasioned. The
AAC
generally considered these issues only in terms of their effect on men
and
the ability of
men
to care for their families. In his summation of
AAC
activities in 1935, Jabavu referred to the way that lack of political influ-
ence emasculated Africans.
50
The solution to this problem was to recon-
figure masculinity for a political community. Under these circumstances,
a fraternal contract formed the basis of effective mobilization.
Voting rights for women
had
been
an
undercurrent
in
black
and
white debates over
the
removal of Africans from
the
common voters'
roll ever since Hertzog first raised the possibility of removal in 1926.
Women's suffrage
had
been debated by white South Africans, both with-
in Parliament and women's organizations since 1910.
51
Initially, some of
this debate included
the
idea of a nonracial franchise for women in the
Cape only, which Hertzog himself apparently favored in 1928. However,
it was not suffragist sentiment
but
Hertzog's attempt to whiten
the
vot-
ing population
that
led to white women receiving the franchise in 1930.
This increased the size of the white electorate in the Cape proportionate
to the black.
The extension of
the
franchise affected
the
ways
that
African
men
thereafter expressed their defense of the vote. Discussions of the need to
extend the franchise to all Africans included the issue of the female fran-
chise. According to
the
AAC,
because of
the
awarding of
the
vote to
European women, whites no longer needed to fear being "swamped" by
a black vote. This view was explicitly stated with respect to the introduc-
tion of a "civilization test" for black voters. "The convention
[AAC]
...
believes
that
such measures would adequately protect
the
interests of
the white population in whose favour the dice are already heavily loaded
in view of the extension of adult suffrage to White men and women." In
this context the matter of votes for black women received only cursory
treatment. Black male calls to extend the franchise contained
the
impli-

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Natasha Erlank
cit concession that black women need not
be
given voting rights. When
Xuma raised the issue of black women's suffrage at the
AAC
he
could
find only one example of a woman he felt was fit to have the vote. His
comments are recorded
in
a section entitled "Non-European
Women
who are fit to vote." Here he mentioned Charlotte Maxeke, whose quali-
fication for the vote rested on
her
being a mother rather
than
a political
activist,
an
echo of Xuma's beliefs about the proper place for women.""
Thus,
the
AAC
did
not
provide a
forum
for
the
inclusion
of
African
women. Its members became active in the alternative structures estab-
lished by the passing of the Hertzog bills,
but
continued their antipathy
to women's political rights. The Representation of Natives Act allowed
for the establishment of a sixteen-member Native Representative Coun-
cil (NRC), to act as
an
advisory
body
to
the
state. Most
of
the
men
mentioned
in this article served as councilors during
the
NRC's exis-
tence. Although the NRC has been discussed elsewhere as an organ of
African collaboration with racist state policies, its members
made
real
efforts
to
represent
African
needs
to
the
state
until
the
body
was
disbanded as a result of anti-government protest in 1951. During its exis-
tence the NRC continued to articulate demands for the extension
of
the
franchise to all African men
under
the terms of the act (Cape
men
had
been
placed on a separate voters' roll). Despite individual councilors'
suggestions
that
women
be
included in these motions, this never hap-
pened.
Even
within
the
workings
of
the
NRC, African
women
were
denied a vote.
In
1943,
the
Council drafted a report, entitled "Recess
Committee on Representation," to consider the extension of the limited
franchise. One of its provisions contained a decision to delay considera-
tion of a female franchise."'
Conclusion
In
the first part
of
the twentieth century African nationalists challenged
segregationist policies
but
also aspired to inclusion in the electoral poli-
tics of the South African state. Traditional forms of political representa-
tion, echoed in the Cape liberal model
that
emphasized equality for all
men on the basis of common culture, underwrote this aspiration. Because
both
conceptions of political inclusion were structured according to a
separation
between
private
and
public, political
representation
was
viewed as a masculine affair.
As
a result, nationalist political rhetoric
stressed
the
importance
of
masculinity. A
plea
to
the
restoration
of
masculinity
based
on
male control was appealing to
men
because it
reconfirmed the sexual division
of
labor, a division that also emphasized
the
superiority
of
male labor over female. African
men
of
the
middle
class, who were behind moves toward political rights during the period,
did not believe in female equality or women's equal political participation
with men's because they supported a view of gender relations derived

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668
Natasha Erlank
from precolonial patriarchal structures and Christian domestic ideology.
According to
them,
a
modern
family life
marked
out
their
status
as
members of a civilized middle class eligible for European rights and privi-
leges. Black nationalist activity, therefore, was not only premised on the
exclusion of women,
but
also relied on
the
exclusion of women for its own
legitimation.
Within this context it is no wonder
that
African
men
never promoted
female political activity.
As
Z.K. Matthews
put
it, "Experience shows
that
no Legislature, however well intentioned, ever gives
proper
consid-
eration to the legitimate interests
of
those not represented in it." Thus
the vote was "a
true
reflex
of
Bantu tradition
...
where children
and
females are barred."54
NOTES
Thanks to Clive Glaser, Shireen Hassim,
and
Sheila Meintjes for comments
on
an earlier
version of this article.
1.
Sheridan
Johns,
ed., Protest
and
Hope, 1882-1934, vol. 1 of From Protest to Chal-
lenge: A
Documentary
History
ofAfrican
Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964 (Stanford:
Hoover Institution Press, 1972), 317. In this article "African" refers to people
of
African
descent
(Bantu speakers) living in South Africa. The
term
"black" refers
to
a
broader
community
of people discriminated against by racist legislation, including coloreds
and
Indians.
2. "Bantu
and
Politics,"
c.
1935,
AD
843,
Xuma
Papers, box
0,
Department
of
Historical
Papers, University of
the
Witwatersrand
(hereafter cited as Wits).
3. See Phil Bonner, "The Transvaal Native Congress, 1917-1920: The Radicalisation
of
the
Black Petty Bourgeoisie
on
the
Rand,"
in
Industrialization
and
Social Change in
So11th
Africa, ed. Shula Marks
and
Richard Rathbone (London: Longman, 1982), 270-
313.
4. Cheryl Walker, Women
and
Resistance in South Africa (Cape Town: David Philip,
1991); Julie Wells, We
Now
Demand:
The
History
of
Women's Resistance
to
Pass
Laws
in
So11th
Africa (Johannesburg:
Witwatersrand
University Press, 1993). Walker's pref-
ace contains a good review of this literature. Shireen Hassim, "Identities, Interests,
and
Constituencies:
The
Politics
of
the
Women's
Movement
in
South
Africa, 1980-1990"
(Ph.D. diss., York University,
2002).
5. Walker, ix-xiii.
6.
Helen
Bradford,
"Women
and
the
Beerhall
Protests
in
the
Natal
Countryside
in
1929," in Class, Comm11nity,
and
Conflict, ed. Belinda Bozzoli (.Johannesburg: Ravan,
1987), 292-323;
Natasha
Erlank, "Gender
and
Christianity amongst Africans Attached
to
Scottish
Mission
Stations
in
Xhosaland
in
the
Nineteenth
Century"
(Ph.D.
diss.,
University
of
Cambridge, 1999); Deborah Gaitskell, "Devout Domesticity? A
Centmy
of
African
Women's
Christianity
in
South
Africa,"
in
Women
and
Gender
in So11thern
Africa
to 1945,
ed.
Cheryl
Walker
(Cape
Town:
David
Philip,
1990),
251-72;
and
Deborah
Gaitskell, "Wailing for Purity: Prayer Unions, African Mothers,
and
Adolescent
Daughters, 1912-1940," in Industrialization
and
Social Change in South Africa, 338-57.
7-
Glenda
E.
Gilmore, Gender
and
Jim
Crow (Chapel Hill: University
of
North Carolina
Press, 1996); Helen Bradford, "Mass Movements
and
the
Petty Bourgeoisie: The Social

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Natasha Erlank
Origins
of
ICU Leadership,
t924-1929,''
Journal
of
African History 25, no. 3 (1984):
295-310;
Frene
Ginwala, "Women
and
the
African National Congress,'' Agenda, no. 8
(1990): 78; Iris Berger, Threads
of
Solidarity (Bloomington:
Indiana
University Press,
1992); Mia Roth, "Josie Mpama: The Contribution
of
a Largely Forgotten Figure in
the
South African Liberation Struggle," Kleio 27 (1996): 120-36.
8. Ginwala, 78.
9. Laura Chrisman, "Fathering
the
Black Nation of South Africa," Social Dynamics 23
(Summer
1997): 57-73; Elaine Untcrhalter, "The Work of
the
Nation: Heroic Masculinity
in South African Autobiographical Writing of
the
Anti-Apartheid Struggle," Journal
of
Development Research
12
(December
2000):
157-78.
10.
See, for example, Hazel Carby, Race Men (Cambridge:
Harvard
University Press,
1998); Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leczdership, Politics,
and
Culture in the
Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of
North
Carolina Press, 1996).
11.
Bonner;
Bradford,
"Mass
Movements
and
the
Petty
Bourgeoisie"; Alan
Gregor
Cobley, Class
and
Consciousness: The Black Petty Bourgeoisie in South Africa, 1924-
1950 (New York: Greenwood Press,
1990);
Tim
Couzens, '"Moralising Leisure Time':
The Transatlantic Connection
and
Black
Johannesburg,
1918-1936,'' in Industrialization
and
Social Change. The black middle class is generally referred to in
the
South African
literature as
the
black petty bourgeoisie because it never achieved bourgeois power over
resources.
12. Bradford, "Women
and
the
Beerhall Protests."
13.
Jane
Starfield, "'Not Quite History': The Autobiographies
of
H.
Selby Msimang
and
R.V. Selope
Thema
and
the
Writing
of
South
African History,'' Social
Dynamics
14
(December
1988):
17; Kathy <