How art helped build Africana nationalism in apartheid South Africa

In this revised excerpt from the preface to Troubling Images: Visual Culture and the Politics of Afrikaner Nationalism, the book’s editors assess how art and design helped shape Afrikaner nationalism.

British scholar Michael Billig writes in Banal Nationalism: “If the future remains uncertain, we know the past history of nationalism, and that should be enough to encourage a habit of careful skepticism.”

Perhaps this warning has never been more true or more relevant than during the second decade of the new millennium. It is characterized by a marked shift towards right-wing populism and nationalism.

The historical background and circumstances underlying the rise of Afrikaner nationalism belong to a different era of international politics. But it is fundamentally rooted in the experiences of people who are denied social and economic power. They were people whose political and cultural activities were marginalized by imperialist policies.

Indeed, with hindsight we can see that both the imperialist regime and the international community were slow to grasp the depth of the humiliation of the Afrikaners after the South African War.

As a result, they were unprepared for the rapid rise of Afrikaner nationalism in the first three decades of the 20th century.

Against the backdrop of a resurgence of nationalist sentiment around the world, there seems to be an opportunity to reassess the mechanisms by which nationalism has been established and maintained. This is important, if only because it reminds us of the need to be attentive to the risks posed to liberal democracies.

Theorists in the humanities have conducted extensive research to understand the drivers and effects of Africana nationalism and identity. However, no book we have come across thus far is dedicated solely to critical engagement with the wide range of visual representations and responses to Afrikaner nationalism.

visual culture and politics

Troubling Images focuses on expressions of Africana nationalism in paintings, sculptures, monuments, cartoons, photographs, illustrations, and exhibitions. In doing so, it provides a much-needed critical account of the relationship between the visual culture of Afrikaner nationalism and Afrikaner political and cultural domination in South Africa.

Visual culture was one of the key mechanisms for rationalizing and normalizing apartheid and the Afrikaner nationalist ideology that underpinned it. It was a multifaceted and broad field. It has extended from images accessed in private homes via print culture and television to those that may be encountered in public spaces via monuments, sculptures, art exhibitions, and more.

In apartheid South Africa, images that challenged the status quo tended to be suppressed, and their creators were threatened. Visual discourse related to Afrikaner nationalist ideals and values ​​was also celebrated.

South Africans had limited opportunities to view state propaganda through a critical outsider’s lens. The country’s pariah status and academic and cultural boycotts limited opportunities for international connections.

influence of whiteness

White South Africans who were born and came of age during apartheid tend to fully realize its effects only in hindsight. Repeated exposure to biased rhetoric meant that even those who attempted to criticize nationalist views were influenced by that bias.

In an article titled “How to live in this strange place?” Samantha Bice, published some 16 years ago, called for shame and withdrawal from public life as the appropriate response for white South Africans to the appalling racial injustice perpetrated on them.

Although controversial, her position highlights the fact that ten years after the end of apartheid, people are still coming to terms with the long-term effects of its rule.

For white South Africans, this involved critically engaging with questions about their own responsibilities. The rise in critical whiteness studies in the new millennium is also firmly linked to the need to question the pre-1994 South African discourse. And that includes visual discussion.

It stands to reason that the current reclaiming of an active blackness from decades of systematically imposed inferiority should be accompanied by a critical rethinking of whiteness and its strategies of domination and domination.

living monument

Images celebrating images of Afrikaner nationalism remain visible and sometimes even prominent in South Africa. The public domain contains a large number of sculptures commemorating key figures of white Afrikaner fictional character.

South Africa has a significant amount of architectural monuments remaining. There is the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, the Women’s Monument in Bloemfontein and the Language Monument in Paarl. Their conservation can be understood in the light of the National Heritage Resources Act (1999). It aimed to ‘enable and encourage local communities to nurture, preserve and pass on their heritage to future generations’.

However, the appropriateness of this approach is increasingly being questioned. Since Marion Walgate’s sculpture of Cecil John Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town, many monuments in South Africa have suffered some form of desecration.

In this context, the discussion of Africana nationalism and visual images raised in this book seems timely.

Troubling Images: Visual Culture and the Politics of Afrikaner Nationalism is available from Wits University Press. Order your copy here.