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Baas or Klaas? Afrikaner Working-Class Responses to Transformation in South Africa, ca. 1977–20021

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2014

Danelle van Zyl-Hermann
Danelle van Zyl-Hermann*
Affiliation:
Centre for Africa Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa
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Abstract

White workers and white working-class politics have been neglected in the historiography of South Africa during the second half of the twentieth century. This article seeks to extricate white workers from this historiographical neglect and fracture homogenizing representations of white, specifically Afrikaner, experiences of democratization. It does so by reintroducing class to a debate dominated by race. Employing a discursive analysis sensitive to issues of class, it shows that white workers were confronted with democratizing change and disempowerment more than a decade before the end of apartheid and suggests that class politics continue to inform white responses in post-apartheid South Africa. In this way, it argues for a historical, discursive approach to uncovering the power dynamics of class and the complex intersection of working-class and racial identities in the late twentieth century.

Type
African Labor Histories
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 86 , Fall 2014 , pp. 142 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2014 

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Footnotes

1.

I am grateful to Megan Vaughan and Emma Hunter, participants at the fifth European Conference on African Studies, the editors of this special issue, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on this research and the development of this article.

References

NOTES

2. Davies, Robert, Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa 1900–1960: An Historical Materialist Analysis of Class Formation and Class Relations (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1979)Google Scholar; Johnstone, Frederick, Class, Race and Gold: A Study of Class Relations and Racial Discrimination in South Africa (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Lange, Liz, White, Poor and Angry: White Working Class Families in Johannesburg (Hampshire, UK, 2003)Google Scholar; van Onselen, Charles, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914, vol. 1 New Babylon, vol. 2 New Nineveh (Johannesburg, 1982)Google Scholar; Yudelman, David, The Emergence of Modern South Africa: State, Capital, and the Incorporation of Organized Labor on the South African Gold Fields, 1902–1939 (Westport, CT, 1983)Google Scholar.

3. For instance Katz, Elaine, A Trade Union Aristocracy: A History of White Workers in the Transvaal and the General Strike of 1913 (Johannesburg, 1976)Google Scholar; Krikler, Jeremy, The Rand Revolt: The 1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa (Johannesburg, 2005)Google Scholar.

4. O'Meara, Dan, “Analysing Afrikaner Nationalism: The ‘Christian-National’ Assault on White Trade Unionism in South Africa, 1934–1948,” African Affairs 77 (1978): 64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to O'Meara, the volk was represented as classless and “organically united through oppression by ‘British imperialism.’” O'Meara, Dan, Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948–1994 (Athens, OH, 1996), 136Google Scholar.

5. O'Meara, Forty Lost Years, 78.

6. Ibid., 78. American historian David Roediger has controversially dubbed these social privileges the “wages of whiteness.” Roediger, David, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, 2nd. ed. (London, 2007)Google Scholar.

7. Kenny, Bridget, “Servicing Modernity: White Women Shop Workers on the Rand and Changing Gendered Respectabilities, 1940s–1970s,” African Studies 67 (2008): 374 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 377.

8. O'Meara, Forty Lost Years, 146–48.

9. This article uses the terms “black” and “African” interchangeably to indicate those South Africans who would have be classified as black (“Bantus”) according to apartheid-era racial categorizations.

10. Hyslop, Jonathan, “Why Did Apartheid's Supporters Capitulate? ‘Whiteness,’ Class and Consumption in South Africa, 1985–1995,” Society in Transition 31 (2000): 36–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grundlingh, Albert, “‘Are We Afrikaners Getting Too Rich?’ Cornucopia and Change in Afrikanerdom in the 1960s,” Journal of Historical Sociology 21 (2008): 144–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also O'Meara, Forty Lost Years; Giliomee, Hermann, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (London, 2011)Google Scholar.

11. Blaser, Thomas, Afrikaner Identity After Nationalism (Basel, 2006)Google Scholar; Davies, Rebecca, Afrikaners in the New South Africa: Identity Politics in a Globalised Economy (London, 2009)Google Scholar; Vestergaard, Mads, “Who's Got the Map? The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Daedalus 130 (2001): 19–44 Google Scholar.

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13. There are, of course, some exceptions, as some scholars have recently become more sensitive to the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. See, for instance, Jacob R. Boersema, “Afrikaner, Nevertheless: Stigma, Shame, and the Sociology of Cultural Trauma” (Ph.D. diss., University of Amsterdam, 2013); du Plessis, Irma, “Living in ‘Jan Bom’: Making and Imagining Lives after Apartheid in a Council Housing Scheme in Johannesburg,” Current Sociology 52 (2004): 879-908 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smuts, Johan, “Male Trouble: Independent Women and Male Dependency in a White Working-Class Suburb of Pretoria,” Agenda 20 (2006): 80-87.Google Scholar

14. This article draws on a larger research project with this goal. See Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, “White Workers and South Africa's Democratic Transition, 1977–2011” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, UK, forthcoming).

15. Eley, Geoff and Nield, Keith, “Farewell to the Working Class?” International Labor and Working-Class History 57 (2000): 18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (their emphasis).

16. Ibid., 21–22.

17. Todd, Selina, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910–2010 (London, 2014)Google Scholar, 363, see also 364–365.

18. Todd, The People, 364–65. Jones, Owen, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (London, 2011)Google Scholar employs the concept in a similar way.

19. Visser, Wessel, “From MWU to Solidarity—A Trade Union Reinventing Itself,” South African Journal of Labour Relations 30 (2006): 20–21 Google Scholar; Davies, Capital, State and White Labour, 286. According to Giliomee, 500,000 Afrikaners (family members included), or half of the Afrikaner population, were part of the organized white working class in the 1930s. Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 423.

20. Visser, “From MWU to Solidarity,” 21; see also O'Meara, Forty Lost Years and Davies, Capital, State and White Labour.

21. The 1926 Mines and Works Act determined that only whites could be granted certificates of competency.

22. Moodie, T. Dunbar, Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (Berkeley, CA, 1994)Google Scholar, 72; Crankshaw, Owen, Race, Class and the Changing Division of Labour Under Apartheid (London, 1997), 58–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Visser, “From MWU to Solidarity,” 22; Feinstein, An Economic History, 200–202, 211–23, 231, 236–37, 239–40.

24. Naas Steenkamp (Commissioner: Commission of Inquiry into Labor Legislation) interviewed by author, 23 August 2013.

25. Visser, “From MWU to Solidarity,” 23. The decline of the white working class was due both to the relative growth of the African labor force, and to the upward social mobility afforded to whites (particularly Afrikaners) by the NP's favorable employment and education policies. According to Davies, “between 1946 and 1960 the number of whites described in censuses as laborers … decreased by 61 percent, while the numbers in the new petty bourgeoisie increased by some 74 percent.” Davies, Capital, State and White Labour, 351. Nevertheless, Hermann Giliomee indicates that by 1980, 32 percent of Afrikaners were in blue-collar employment—in contrast to 41 percent in 1946, 40 percent in 1960 and 29 percent in 1990. Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 606.

26. Giliomee, Hermann, The Last Afrikaner Leaders: A Supreme Test of Power (Cape Town, 2012), 157.Google Scholar

27. Finansiële bundels (Rekenmeester), MWU archive, Solidarity Head Office, Pretoria; Visser, “From MWU to Solidarity,” 27.

28. Ibid., 27; van der Westhuizen, Christi, White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party (Cape Town, ZA, 2007):, 202–7.Google Scholar

29. Visser, “From MWU to Solidarity,” 28. See also Gwede Mantashe, “The Decline of the Mining Industry and the Response of the Mining Unions” (MA research report, University of the Witwatersrand, 2008): 80.

30. Visser notes that Flip Buys was the only applicant to the position of general secretary when Peet Ungerer retired, and that Buys was “unanimously…appointed” by the union's executive management. Visser, W., Van MWU tot Solidariteit (Centurion, 2008)Google Scholar, p.311.

31. Visser, “From MWU to Solidarity,” 28–32; Mantashe, “The Decline,” 82–83.

32. Ibid., 31, 35; Mantashe, “The Decline,” 74–76, 80–81.

33. Ibid., 33.

34. Solidarity's regular presence in the South African media testifies to this. For the scope of issues the organization was involved in, its participation in public debate and engagement with government, other unions, and civil society organizations, and its recognition as an influential organization speaking for Afrikaners, by 2002, see for instance, “MWU wil met Regering praat oor gelykheid” (Rapport, 2002-07-21), “Praat só met ANC” (Volksblad, 2002-07-26), “Discrimination in reverse” (Financial Mail, 2002-12-20), “ANC, MWU labour talks” (Citizen, 2002-02-27), “Restel-mylpaal” (Volksblad, 2002-12-11). Giliomee's references to the union (which he calls “highly respected”) and to Solidarity-related sources also testifies to its authority. See Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 683, 692, 696, 700–702, 706, 708, 710.

35. Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 661; Visser, “From MWU to Solidarity,” 33–35; Mantashe, “The Decline,” 74, 79–81.

36. van der Linden, Marcel, Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History (Leiden, NL, 2008), 17–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. Friedman, Seven, Building Tomorrow Today: African Workers in Trade Unions, 1970–1984 (Johannesburg, 1987)Google Scholar, 165.

38. Van der Linden, Workers of the World, 24–25, 29, 35.

39. Ibid., 32–33.

40. David Durie (Solidarity Manager: Administration) interviewed by author, 10 August 2011; Dirk Hermann (Solidarity Deputy General Secretary: Development) interviewed by author, 17 October 2011.

41. This was published irregularly in newspaper form as Die Mynwerker/The Mineworker until 1990, then as MWU-Nuus/-News until 2000, and bimonthly thereafter as Solidariteit/Solidarity magazine. For a discussion of the value of such publications for researching contemporary African history and the social and cultural histories of particular communities, see Pilossof, Rory, “‘For Farmers, By Farmers,’” Media History 19 (2013), 32-44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. A note on translation: The translation “master and servant” reflects the typical understanding of the idiom “baas en Klaas.” “Klaas” independently is simply a forename (hence its capitalization) and not the Afrikaans word for either “servant” or “slave”—it acquires this meaning by virtue of its use in combination with “baas,” or in a context in which a class relationship of subordination is being invoked, such as the case study provided here.

43. Krikler, Jeremy, “Re-thinking Race and Class in South Africa: Some Ways Forward,” in Wages of Whiteness and Racist Symbolic Capital, ed. Hund, Wulf D., Krikler, Jeremy, and Roediger, David (Berlin, 2010), 136–37.Google Scholar

44. Krikler, “Rethinking Race and Class,” 137.

45. All quotations from Die Mynwerker, 8 February 1984.

46. Die Mynwerker, 19 December 1973.

47. Die Mynwerker, 6 May 1979.

48. Die Mynwerker, 28 January 1981.

49. Kenny, “Servicing Modernity,” 384.

50. Die Mynwerker, 24 December 1986.

51. Die Mynwerker, 6 November 1985.

52. Kenny, “Servicing Modernity,” 383. Editor's Note: The strategic advantage for retail employers of replacing Afrikaner women employees with Black women is addressed in Bridget Kenny's “Report from the Field” in this issue of ILWCH, pp. 173–177.

53. Die Mynwerker, 14 November 1984, 12 December 1984, 24 July 1985.

54. Die Mynwerker, 19 March 1986.

55. Die Mynwerker, 9 April 1986, 22 July 1987, 26 August 1987.

56. Die Mynwerker, 12 December 1984, 25 September 1985, 22 January 1986.

57. Die Mynwerker, August 1988.

58. Die Mynwerker, May 1989.

59. MWU-Nuus, March 1993.

60. MWU-Nuus, October 1994.

61. MWU-Nuus, February 1996.

62. MWU-Nuus, May 1997.

63. MWU-Nuus, February 1998.

64. MWU-Nuus, February 1997.

65. MWU-Nuus, January 1998.

66. Solidariteit, 2001(3).

67. Solidariteit 2002(1).

68. Solidariteit 2002(7).

69. Steyn, Melissa and Foster, Don, “Repertoires for Talking White: Resistant Whiteness in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (2008): 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70. Steyn, Melissa, “Rehybridising the Creole: New South African Afrikaners,” in Under Construction: “Race” and Identity in South Africa Today, ed. Distiller, Natasha and Steyn, Melissa (Sandton, ZA, 2004), 70–85.Google Scholar

71. In interviews, Solidarity's current leadership spoke at length about its efforts to “express” or “put into words” its members' and Afrikaners' feelings and experiences in the new South Africa. Flip Buys interviewed by author, 25 October 2011; Dirk Hermann interviewed by author, 17 October 2011.