Cultural Entrepreneurs, Proto-Nationalism and Women's Testimony Writings: From the South African War to 1940*

Abstract

Women cultural entrepreneurs were busy in promoting the development of proto-nationalism in South Africa in the aftermath of the 1899–1902 South African War. The work of some key cultural entrepreneurs who solicited and published women's testimonies about the wartime concentration camps instituted by the British military provides the focus of discussion. Boer testimonies were presented as factual ‘I-witness’ statements; they also followed a proto-nationalist line and were published and distributed in women's nationalist networks, playing an important part in everyday forms of state formation from 1902 to 1940. During this period, the making of Afrikaner ethnic identity was symbiotic with the making of proto-nationalism and then nationalism with cultural politics mapping closely on to state formation. Within this, women's role as cultural entrepreneurs and political brokers was crucial, with the centrality of the concentration camp deaths within a mythologised ‘history of Afrikanerdom’ resulting from their activities rather than being provided by masculine nationalism.