‘Africa is not for sissies’1: The race for dominance between white masculinities in South Africa

Abstract

This chapter offers a concise history of the competition for dominance between Afrikaner and white English-speaking masculinities in South Africa in the colonial era and during apartheid. This exploration is informed by perspectives on whiteness and masculinity as unstable, hierarchical, and plural constructs which operate via expulsion to create material and symbolic divisions based on ethnic identity and social class. The research departs from the establishment of British rule of the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century and highlights significant historical events such as the South African War (1899–1902), which figure as exemplars of the modes of competition, oppression, and emasculation that initially relegated Afrikaner masculinity to a lesser position. The momentous ascendency of the Afrikaners in the twentieth century is then discussed as significantly overturning the previously inferior status of Afrikaner masculinity to conversely mark white English-speaking South African men as liberal, effeminate, and deceitful, particularly in the milieux of the apartheid-era South African Defence Force.