‘From Cape to Katanga’: South African Expansionism, White Settlers and the Congo (1910–1963)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers the history of South African imperialism and claims over a white Southern Africa, throughout the period between 1910 and 1963, and how it affected colonial rule and practice in the Belgian Congo. The article thereby adds to our knowledge of South African claims in the wider Southern African region and calls for a better understanding of external, and trans-imperial, anxieties underlying colonial rule in the Belgian Congo, and particularly in the mining province Katanga. The central hypothesis is that the South African danger confronted colonial rule in a dual way: in its territorialism, but also in its utopia of a white controlled Southern Africa. Either could lead to a loss of empire. Focusing in particular on Katanga, the article argues that migration, labour, development and settlement policies increasingly aimed at preventing the creation of a ‘white man’s country’ akin to South Africa. The immediate postwar years, 1918–1922, were a defining moment, when South African influences and trans-imperial white labour solidarity in Katanga were particularly strong. Ultimately, this article analyses two clashing models of empire in Africa – one of autonomous white settler rule against centralised European metropolitan interests – and their implications for racial relations and colonial practice.