The Politics of Mythology: the Genealogy of the Philip Myth

Abstract

Political myths have played a crucial role in legitimising apartheid and white domination in South Africa. This article explores the history of one such political myth: the mythology surrounding the nineteenth century missionary leader John Philip. I foreground the links between the Philip myth and the changing political and ideological contexts within which it was mobilised over the course of 150 years. While the roots of the Philip myth lie in the racial polemics of conservative settler ideologues in the Cape Colony during the 1830s and 1840s, Philip had slipped into historical obscurity by the middle of the nineteenth century. It was only during the 1880s and 1890s that he was resurrected by the massively influential settler historian G.M. Theal. The reasons for Theal’s construction of a full blown Philip myth are related to his political project of colonial nationalism and his growing interest in the ideologies of Social Darwinism and scientific racism. Although Philip evoked scant interest among Afrikaner nationalist historians during the early 1900s, he was yoked into the service of segregationist ideology during the 1930s and 1940s as the symbol of the meddling outsider at a time when Afrikaner nationalist historiography was becoming increasingly overt in its racism. During the apartheid era the myth of John Philip was popularised as it was transported from the relatively narrow domain of professional historians into the wider domain of public politics. Against the backdrop of intense apartheid zenophobia and heightened tensions between the apartheid state and left-wing churches, prime ministers and school teachers invoked, John Philip reinvoked the spectre of this historic enemy of white South Africa.