"Kan die vrou haar volk dien deur haar huis?": Afrikanerpolitiek en vrou in die Ossewa-Brandwag, 1942 tot 1954
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Date
2015-06
Authors
Blignaut, Charl
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of the Humanities, University of the Free State
Abstract
The “Ossewa-Brandwag” (OB or Oxwagon Sentinel) was a mass-movement of Afrikaners following a
non-party political strategy in order to gain power in a white dominated South Africa. The organisation,
which gained its highest support during World War II, was openly anti-British, pro-German and followed
a National-Socialist agenda together with strong undercurrents of Afrikaner Christian (Calvinist)
Nationalism. Despite the movement’s explicit stance against party politics, it inevitably transgressed
these boundaries and came to blows with the upcoming “Herenigde Nasionale Party” (HNP) leading
to a bitter fight which deepened the rift in Afrikanerdom. Although previous histories of the OB focused
mainly on the battle between the two protagonists of the saga, namely Commandant General (CG)
JFJ van Rensburg of the OB and Dr DF Malan of the HNP, OB women also took part in the political
discourse of the 1940s. This article examines how women of the Ossewa-Brandwag interpreted their
own political position in the movement and how they regarded their place in the OB itself and in broader
South African and Afrikaner politics. The exercise of female power in a patriarchal society is extremely
constrained and therefore OB women had to manoeuvre themselves within the confines of the dominant
gender ideology, articulated in the so-called “volksmoeder (mother of the nation) discourse”. The aim
of this article is to show how women in the OB bought into the normative limitations and boundaries of
conventional womanhood and even legitimized and defended their subservient position. An emphasis is
also placed on how women interpreted the confines of the dominant gender ideology.
Description
Keywords
Ossewa-Brandwag/Oxwagon Sentinel, Afrikaner women, Gender history, South African history, Volksmoeder/mother of the nation, Afrikaner nationalism
Citation
Blignaut, C. (2015). " Kan die vrou haar volk dien deur haar huis?": Afrikanerpolitiek en vrou in die Ossewa-Brandwag, 1942 tot 1954. Journal for Contemporary History, 40(1), 102-124.