'Stinkafrikaners' and social stereotypes: the Anglo Boer War reminiscences of L.J. Groenewald.

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158 New Contree, No. 46 (November 1999)

'STINKAFRIKANERS'

AND SOCIAL STEREOTYPES: THE ANGLO

BOER WAR REMINISCENCES OF L.J. GROENEWALD 1

John Bottomley

(Department of History, University of North West)

This is the use of memory: For liberation ...

liberation from the future as well as the past... History may be servitude, History may be freedom. See, now they vanish, The faces and places,

with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. 'Little Gidding' - T.S.Eliot 2

Since the advent of white settlement in Southern Africa, the Afrikaner nation has shared an unenviably analogous position to the children of priests and church elders - those whose demeanor is expected to be beyond reproach, but whom so often lapse into rebellion, or otherwise fail their parents and community, thereby engendering considerable disappointment.

From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, Afrikaners were subjecttothe unremittingly censorious scrutiny of 'others'; beginning with the Dutch East India Company, through the vacillating ministrations of the various Imperial governments, to the conscious marginalization of Afrikanerdom in the new South Africa.

In this millennial year, Tom Dreyer has written a novel entitled Stinkafrikaners - 'African Marigolds'. The obvious ambiguity in the title is an attempt to focus attention on the burgeoning predilection for 'Afrikaner-bashing' in our Rainbow nation.3

So deep-seated and pervasive is the opprobrium against the Afrikaner that it has been referred to as the 'primordial belief underpinning South African historiography:

Historians, no less than other people, have "primordial beliefs" - beliefs so deeply embedded in their own personalities as to preclude their being

1 Accession no. OM 5679/1, War Museum, Bloemfontein. I would like to thank Jan Schutte of

the Lichtenburg Museum, Ruth Scheepers and Pieter de Jager for their indispensable assistance with this paper.

2 'Little Gidding' in the "Four Quartets" in T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (1963), p. 219.

3 Tom Dreyer, Stinkafrikaners (2000), and an article by Stephanie Nieuwoudt in Bee/d, 20

September 2000 entitled, 'Dreyer flankeer met "low art"'.

158 New Contree, No. 46 (November 1999)

'STINKAFRIKANERS'

AND SOCIAL STEREOTYPES: THE ANGLO

BOER WAR REMINISCENCES OF L.J. GROENEWALD 1

John Bottomley

(Department of History, University of North West)

This is the use of memory: For liberation ...

liberation from the future as well as the past... History may be servitude, History may be freedom. See, now they vanish, The faces and places,

with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. 'Little Gidding' - T.S.Eliot 2

Since the advent of white settlement in Southern Africa, the Afrikaner nation has shared an unenviably analogous position to the children of priests and church elders - those whose demeanor is expected to be beyond reproach, but whom so often lapse into rebellion, or otherwise fail their parents and community, thereby engendering considerable disappointment.

From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, Afrikaners were subjecttothe unremittingly censorious scrutiny of 'others'; beginning with the Dutch East India Company, through the vacillating ministrations of the various Imperial governments, to the conscious marginalization of Afrikanerdom in the new South Africa.

In this millennial year, Tom Dreyer has written a novel entitled Stinkafrikaners - 'African Marigolds'. The obvious ambiguity in the title is an attempt to focus attention on the burgeoning predilection for 'Afrikaner-bashing' in our Rainbow nation.3

So deep-seated and pervasive is the opprobrium against the Afrikaner that it has been referred to as the 'primordial belief underpinning South African historiography:

Historians, no less than other people, have "primordial beliefs" - beliefs so deeply embedded in their own personalities as to preclude their being

1 Accession no. OM 5679/1, War Museum, Bloemfontein. I would like to thank Jan Schutte of

the Lichtenburg Museum, Ruth Scheepers and Pieter de Jager for their indispensable assistance with this paper.

2 'Little Gidding' in the "Four Quartets" in T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (1963), p. 219.

3 Tom Dreyer, Stinkafrikaners (2000), and an article by Stephanie Nieuwoudt in Bee/d, 20

September 2000 entitled, 'Dreyer flankeer met "low art"'.

158 New Contree, No. 46 (November 1999)

'STINKAFRIKANERS'

AND SOCIAL STEREOTYPES: THE ANGLO

BOER WAR REMINISCENCES OF L.J. GROENEWALD 1

John Bottomley

(Department of History, University of North West)

This is the use of memory: For liberation ...

liberation from the future as well as the past... History may be servitude, History may be freedom. See, now they vanish, The faces and places,

with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. 'Little Gidding' - T.S.Eliot 2

Since the advent of white settlement in Southern Africa, the Afrikaner nation has shared an unenviably analogous position to the children of priests and church elders - those whose demeanor is expected to be beyond reproach, but whom so often lapse into rebellion, or otherwise fail their parents and community, thereby engendering considerable disappointment.

From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, Afrikaners were subjecttothe unremittingly censorious scrutiny of 'others'; beginning with the Dutch East India Company, through the vacillating ministrations of the various Imperial governments, to the conscious marginalization of Afrikanerdom in the new South Africa.

In this millennial year, Tom Dreyer has written a novel entitled Stinkafrikaners - 'African Marigolds'. The obvious ambiguity in the title is an attempt to focus attention on the burgeoning predilection for 'Afrikaner-bashing' in our Rainbow nation.3

So deep-seated and pervasive is the opprobrium against the Afrikaner that it has been referred to as the 'primordial belief underpinning South African historiography:

Historians, no less than other people, have "primordial beliefs" - beliefs so deeply embedded in their own personalities as to preclude their being

1 Accession no. OM 5679/1, War Museum, Bloemfontein. I would like to thank Jan Schutte of

the Lichtenburg Museum, Ruth Scheepers and Pieter de Jager for their indispensable assistance with this paper.

2 'Little Gidding' in the "Four Quartets" in T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (1963), p. 219.

3 Tom Dreyer, Stinkafrikaners (2000), and an article by Stephanie Nieuwoudt in Bee/d, 20

September 2000 entitled, 'Dreyer flankeer met "low art"'.

158 New Contree, No. 46 (November 1999)

'STINKAFRIKANERS'

AND SOCIAL STEREOTYPES: THE ANGLO

BOER WAR REMINISCENCES OF L.J. GROENEWALD 1

John Bottomley

(Department of History, University of North West)

This is the use of memory: For liberation ...

liberation from the future as well as the past... History may be servitude, History may be freedom. See, now they vanish, The faces and places,

with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. 'Little Gidding' - T.S.Eliot 2

Since the advent of white settlement in Southern Africa, the Afrikaner nation has shared an unenviably analogous position to the children of priests and church elders - those whose demeanor is expected to be beyond reproach, but whom so often lapse into rebellion, or otherwise fail their parents and community, thereby engendering considerable disappointment.

From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, Afrikaners were subjecttothe unremittingly censorious scrutiny of 'others'; beginning with the Dutch East India Company, through the vacillating ministrations of the various Imperial governments, to the conscious marginalization of Afrikanerdom in the new South Africa.

In this millennial year, Tom Dreyer has written a novel entitled Stinkafrikaners - 'African Marigolds'. The obvious ambiguity in the title is an attempt to focus attention on the burgeoning predilection for 'Afrikaner-bashing' in our Rainbow nation.3

So deep-seated and pervasive is the opprobrium against the Afrikaner that it has been referred to as the 'primordial belief underpinning South African historiography:

Historians, no less than other people, have "primordial beliefs" - beliefs so deeply embedded in their own personalities as to preclude their being

1 Accession no. OM 5679/1, War Museum, Bloemfontein. I would like to thank Jan Schutte of

the Lichtenburg Museum, Ruth Scheepers and Pieter de Jager for their indispensable assistance with this paper.

2 'Little Gidding' in the "Four Quartets" in T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (1963), p. 219.

3 Tom Dreyer, Stinkafrikaners (2000), and an article by Stephanie Nieuwoudt in Bee/d, 20

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examined rationally or tinctured by true empathy. One emotion runs so deep in the English-language literature on South African history that it can justly be labelled a primordial belief and in essence racist, namely that the Afrikaners are an irredeemably bad lot... No one seems to like them very much and a lot of historians dislike them a great deal.'

Stereotypical subterfuge: The creation of an Afrikaner daemonology

159

We must pursue those arcane ciphers or primal keys, the acquisition of which can explain away the prevailing stereotype of a delinquent community. The association of Afrikanerdom with such politically incorrect ideologies as apartheid, conservatism, nationalism and Nazism provides a partial explanation for the global censure of this people in the later twentieth century.

But what of the colonial and imperial phases spanning some 150 years? Why should metropolitan-based conquest states be antithetical to their peripheral surrogates? Why were metropolitan powers continually moved to condemn vestigial and often loyal conquest states using the same techniques of repression, the same justifications and vindications?

The answer would appear to lie with the utility of stereotypes - those conceptuall perceptual prisons by means of which colonial policy was enunciated. There is little doubt that the treatment of native populations (including both black and white in Southern Africa) flagrantly violated the behavioural norms of metropolitan societies. Britain was no paragon of virtue, as can be seen in the appalling treatment of both the Irish and the industrial poor 'at home'. It is hardly strange then, that colonial populations were so often treated as superfluous beings impeding the designs of the colonizer or as additional 'capital' to be exploited along with the other resources of the territory. Lebow points out that supporters of empire were loath to admit that some form of exploitation was the goal of colonial expansion.s The violent subjugation of peripheral powers created deep-seated anxieties because of the contradiction between the supposedly moral and religious imperatives of metropolitan society on the one hand, and the more inhuman aspects of colonial rule on the other. Colonial rule was therefore rationalized and defended as a noble cause - including the idea of being a 'White man's burden'.

Rene Guernon wrote 1941, that the Imperial period had been an extraordinary epoch: in which so many men can be made to believe that a people is being given happiness by being reduced to subjection, by being robbed of all that is most precious, to it, that is to say of its own civilization, by being

, Donald H. Akenson, God's Peoples, covenant and land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster

(1991), p. 51.

5 Richard Ned Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland. The influence of stereotypes on colonial

policy (1976).

examined rationally or tinctured by true empathy. One emotion runs so deep in the English-language literature on South African history that it can justly be labelled a primordial belief and in essence racist, namely that the Afrikaners are an irredeemably bad lot... No one seems to like them very much and a lot of historians dislike them a great deal.'

Stereotypical subterfuge: The creation of an Afrikaner daemonology

159

We must pursue those arcane ciphers or primal keys, the acquisition of which can explain away the prevailing stereotype of a delinquent community. The association of Afrikanerdom with such politically incorrect ideologies as apartheid, conservatism, nationalism and Nazism provides a partial explanation for the global censure of this people in the later twentieth century.

But what of the colonial and imperial phases spanning some 150 years? Why should metropolitan-based conquest states be antithetical to their peripheral surrogates? Why were metropolitan powers continually moved to condemn vestigial and often loyal conquest states using the same techniques of repression, the same justifications and vindications?

The answer would appear to lie with the utility of stereotypes - those conceptuall perceptual prisons by means of which colonial policy was enunciated. There is little doubt that the treatment of native populations (including both black and white in Southern Africa) flagrantly violated the behavioural norms of metropolitan societies. Britain was no paragon of virtue, as can be seen in the appalling treatment of both the Irish and the industrial poor 'at home'. It is hardly strange then, that colonial populations were so often treated as superfluous beings impeding the designs of the colonizer or as additional 'capital' to be exploited along with the other resources of the territory. Lebow points out that supporters of empire were loath to admit that some form of exploitation was the goal of colonial expansion.s The violent subjugation of peripheral powers created deep-seated anxieties because of the contradiction between the supposedly moral and religious imperatives of metropolitan society on the one hand, and the more inhuman aspects of colonial rule on the other. Colonial rule was therefore rationalized and defended as a noble cause - including the idea of being a 'White man's burden'.

Rene Guernon wrote 1941, that the Imperial period had been an extraordinary epoch: in which so many men can be made to believe that a people is being given happiness by being reduced to subjection, by being robbed of all that is most precious, to it, that is to say of its own civilization, by being

, Donald H. Akenson, God's Peoples, covenant and land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster

(1991), p. 51.

5 Richard Ned Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland. The influence of stereotypes on colonial

policy (1976).

examined rationally or tinctured by true empathy. One emotion runs so deep in the English-language literature on South African history that it can justly be labelled a primordial belief and in essence racist, namely that the Afrikaners are an irredeemably bad lot... No one seems to like them very much and a lot of historians dislike them a great deal.'

Stereotypical subterfuge: The creation of an Afrikaner daemonology

159

We must pursue those arcane ciphers or primal keys, the acquisition of which can explain away the prevailing stereotype of a delinquent community. The association of Afrikanerdom with such politically incorrect ideologies as apartheid, conservatism, nationalism and Nazism provides a partial explanation for the global censure of this people in the later twentieth century.

But what of the colonial and imperial phases spanning some 150 years? Why should metropolitan-based conquest states be antithetical to their peripheral surrogates? Why were metropolitan powers continually moved to condemn vestigial and often loyal conquest states using the same techniques of repression, the same justifications and vindications?

The answer would appear to lie with the utility of stereotypes - those conceptuall perceptual prisons by means of which colonial policy was enunciated. There is little doubt that the treatment of native populations (including both black and white in Southern Africa) flagrantly violated the behavioural norms of metropolitan societies. Britain was no paragon of virtue, as can be seen in the appalling treatment of both the Irish and the industrial poor 'at home'. It is hardly strange then, that colonial populations were so often treated as superfluous beings impeding the designs of the colonizer or as additional 'capital' to be exploited along with the other resources of the territory. Lebow points out that supporters of empire were loath to admit that some form of exploitation was the goal of colonial expansion.s The violent subjugation of peripheral powers created deep-seated anxieties because of the contradiction between the supposedly moral and religious imperatives of metropolitan society on the one hand, and the more inhuman aspects of colonial rule on the other. Colonial rule was therefore rationalized and defended as a noble cause - including the idea of being a 'White man's burden'.

Rene Guernon wrote 1941, that the Imperial period had been an extraordinary epoch: in which so many men can be made to believe that a people is being given happiness by being reduced to subjection, by being robbed of all that is most precious, to it, that is to say of its own civilization, by being

, Donald H. Akenson, God's Peoples, covenant and land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster

(1991), p. 51.

5 Richard Ned Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland. The influence of stereotypes on colonial

policy (1976).

examined rationally or tinctured by true empathy. One emotion runs so deep in the English-language literature on South African history that it can justly be labelled a primordial belief and in essence racist, namely that the Afrikaners are an irredeemably bad lot... No one seems to like them very much and a lot of historians dislike them a great deal.'

Stereotypical subterfuge: The creation of an Afrikaner daemonology

159

We must pursue those arcane ciphers or primal keys, the acquisition of which can explain away the prevailing stereotype of a delinquent community. The association of Afrikanerdom with such politically incorrect ideologies as apartheid, conservatism, nationalism and Nazism provides a partial explanation for the global censure of this people in the later twentieth century.

But what of the colonial and imperial phases spanning some 150 years? Why should metropolitan-based conquest states be antithetical to their peripheral surrogates? Why were metropolitan powers continually moved to condemn vestigial and often loyal conquest states using the same techniques of repression, the same justifications and vindications?

The answer would appear to lie with the utility of stereotypes - those conceptuall perceptual prisons by means of which colonial policy was enunciated. There is little doubt that the treatment of native populations (including both black and white in Southern Africa) flagrantly violated the behavioural norms of metropolitan societies. Britain was no paragon of virtue, as can be seen in the appalling treatment of both the Irish and the industrial poor 'at home'. It is hardly strange then, that colonial populations were so often treated as superfluous beings impeding the designs of the colonizer or as additional 'capital' to be exploited along with the other resources of the territory. Lebow points out that supporters of empire were loath to admit that some form of exploitation was the goal of colonial expansion.s The violent subjugation of peripheral powers created deep-seated anxieties because of the contradiction between the supposedly moral and religious imperatives of metropolitan society on the one hand, and the more inhuman aspects of colonial rule on the other. Colonial rule was therefore rationalized and defended as a noble cause - including the idea of being a 'White man's burden'.

Rene Guernon wrote 1941, that the Imperial period had been an extraordinary epoch: in which so many men can be made to believe that a people is being given happiness by being reduced to subjection, by being robbed of all that is most precious, to it, that is to say of its own civilization, by being

, Donald H. Akenson, God's Peoples, covenant and land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster

(1991), p. 51.

5 Richard Ned Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland. The influence of stereotypes on colonial

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forced to adopt manners and institutions that were made for a different race, and by being constrained by the most distasteful kinds of work in order to make it acquire things for which it has not the slightest use for that is what is taking place.6

Joseph Conrad's oft-quoted appraisal of imperialism is equally relevant - "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much."7

Colonial subjects (both black and white) were treated as backward children, thus differentiating them from metropolitan populations. The divergence in the moral, legal and political codes applied to colonial populations was increasingly justified by such forms of stereotypical subterfuge. Other compelling colonial stereotypes included: 1) Natives were incapable of self-government; 2) The corollary was the need for the strong parental authority of the colonial power; 3) Colonial rule was in the best interests of the native; 4) The natives knew this; 5) The masses in Africa didn't want power, it was only the agitators who stirred them up; 6) The proper goal of colonial policy was to provide peace and honest administration - thus little attention was paid to the political aspirations of dominated populations.

J.M. Coetzee has subjected the utility of stereotypes in South Africa to closer scrutiny. Coetzee argues that the prevailing dogma about sfinkafrikaners has precluded any real empathy or intuitive understanding of the 'mind of apartheid' or 'lair of the heart' that were crucial in the growth of nationalist ideology and the social engineering underpinning apartheid8 _{According to Coetzee the belief that white settlers had}

betrayed their colonizing mission was central to the colonial convictions of both the Dutch and Imperial governments.

The degeneration of the white colonist in Africa was no peripheral matter because degeneracy threatened one of the major lynch pins of the Imperial edifice - the imaginary construct which argued that those who made the best use of the land deserved to inherit the earth. Thus, the right of cultivators who cleared and settled land (the colonialists! settlers), always took precedence over the right of hunter-gatherers who merely hunted and moved over the land. The task of colonialists was therefore to prove that they were better stewards of the land than the natives.

The 'idleness' of Dutch settlers in adapting to their rudimentary and non-acquisitive environment was soon to provoke criticism. In 1663 - just over ten years after White settlement began, Governor Wagenaar, Van Riebeeck's successor, wrote to the Dutch East India Company chamber that a half dozen free farmers should be recalled to

6 Rene Guemon, East and West (1941), pp. 133-134.

7 Quoted in preface by Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1994).

• J.M. Coetzee, White writing. On the culture of/etters in South Africa (1988) and "The mind of apartheid: Geoffrey Cronje (1907-)", Social Dynamics, 17, 1 (1991).

160 John Bottomley

forced to adopt manners and institutions that were made for a different race, and by being constrained by the most distasteful kinds of work in order to make it acquire things for which it has not the slightest use for that is what is taking place.6

Joseph Conrad's oft-quoted appraisal of imperialism is equally relevant - "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much."7

Colonial subjects (both black and white) were treated as backward children, thus differentiating them from metropolitan populations. The divergence in the moral, legal and political codes applied to colonial populations was increasingly justified by such forms of stereotypical subterfuge. Other compelling colonial stereotypes included: 1) Natives were incapable of self-government; 2) The corollary was the need for the strong parental authority of the colonial power; 3) Colonial rule was in the best interests of the native; 4) The natives knew this; 5) The masses in Africa didn't want power, it was only the agitators who stirred them up; 6) The proper goal of colonial policy was to provide peace and honest administration - thus little attention was paid to the political aspirations of dominated populations.

J.M. Coetzee has subjected the utility of stereotypes in South Africa to closer scrutiny. Coetzee argues that the prevailing dogma about sfinkafrikaners has precluded any real empathy or intuitive understanding of the 'mind of apartheid' or 'lair of the heart' that were crucial in the growth of nationalist ideology and the social engineering underpinning apartheid8 _{According to Coetzee the belief that white settlers had}

betrayed their colonizing mission was central to the colonial convictions of both the Dutch and Imperial governments.

The degeneration of the white colonist in Africa was no peripheral matter because degeneracy threatened one of the major lynch pins of the Imperial edifice - the imaginary construct which argued that those who made the best use of the land deserved to inherit the earth. Thus, the right of cultivators who cleared and settled land (the colonialists! settlers), always took precedence over the right of hunter-gatherers who merely hunted and moved over the land. The task of colonialists was therefore to prove that they were better stewards of the land than the natives.

The 'idleness' of Dutch settlers in adapting to their rudimentary and non-acquisitive environment was soon to provoke criticism. In 1663 - just over ten years after White settlement began, Governor Wagenaar, Van Riebeeck's successor, wrote to the Dutch East India Company chamber that a half dozen free farmers should be recalled to

6 Rene Guemon, East and West (1941), pp. 133-134.

7 Quoted in preface by Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1994).

• J.M. Coetzee, White writing. On the culture of/etters in South Africa (1988) and "The mind of apartheid: Geoffrey Cronje (1907-)", Social Dynamics, 17, 1 (1991).

160 John Bottomley

forced to adopt manners and institutions that were made for a different race, and by being constrained by the most distasteful kinds of work in order to make it acquire things for which it has not the slightest use for that is what is taking place.6

Joseph Conrad's oft-quoted appraisal of imperialism is equally relevant - "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much."7

Colonial subjects (both black and white) were treated as backward children, thus differentiating them from metropolitan populations. The divergence in the moral, legal and political codes applied to colonial populations was increasingly justified by such forms of stereotypical subterfuge. Other compelling colonial stereotypes included: 1) Natives were incapable of self-government; 2) The corollary was the need for the strong parental authority of the colonial power; 3) Colonial rule was in the best interests of the native; 4) The natives knew this; 5) The masses in Africa didn't want power, it was only the agitators who stirred them up; 6) The proper goal of colonial policy was to provide peace and honest administration - thus little attention was paid to the political aspirations of dominated populations.

J.M. Coetzee has subjected the utility of stereotypes in South Africa to closer scrutiny. Coetzee argues that the prevailing dogma about sfinkafrikaners has precluded any real empathy or intuitive understanding of the 'mind of apartheid' or 'lair of the heart' that were crucial in the growth of nationalist ideology and the social engineering underpinning apartheid8 _{According to Coetzee the belief that white settlers had}

betrayed their colonizing mission was central to the colonial convictions of both the Dutch and Imperial governments.

The degeneration of the white colonist in Africa was no peripheral matter because degeneracy threatened one of the major lynch pins of the Imperial edifice - the imaginary construct which argued that those who made the best use of the land deserved to inherit the earth. Thus, the right of cultivators who cleared and settled land (the colonialists! settlers), always took precedence over the right of hunter-gatherers who merely hunted and moved over the land. The task of colonialists was therefore to prove that they were better stewards of the land than the natives.

The 'idleness' of Dutch settlers in adapting to their rudimentary and non-acquisitive environment was soon to provoke criticism. In 1663 - just over ten years after White settlement began, Governor Wagenaar, Van Riebeeck's successor, wrote to the Dutch East India Company chamber that a half dozen free farmers should be recalled to

6 Rene Guemon, East and West (1941), pp. 133-134.

7 Quoted in preface by Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1994).

• J.M. Coetzee, White writing. On the culture of/etters in South Africa (1988) and "The mind of apartheid: Geoffrey Cronje (1907-)", Social Dynamics, 17, 1 (1991).

160 John Bottomley

forced to adopt manners and institutions that were made for a different race, and by being constrained by the most distasteful kinds of work in order to make it acquire things for which it has not the slightest use for that is what is taking place.6

Joseph Conrad's oft-quoted appraisal of imperialism is equally relevant - "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much."7

Colonial subjects (both black and white) were treated as backward children, thus differentiating them from metropolitan populations. The divergence in the moral, legal and political codes applied to colonial populations was increasingly justified by such forms of stereotypical subterfuge. Other compelling colonial stereotypes included: 1) Natives were incapable of self-government; 2) The corollary was the need for the strong parental authority of the colonial power; 3) Colonial rule was in the best interests of the native; 4) The natives knew this; 5) The masses in Africa didn't want power, it was only the agitators who stirred them up; 6) The proper goal of colonial policy was to provide peace and honest administration - thus little attention was paid to the political aspirations of dominated populations.

J.M. Coetzee has subjected the utility of stereotypes in South Africa to closer scrutiny. Coetzee argues that the prevailing dogma about sfinkafrikaners has precluded any real empathy or intuitive understanding of the 'mind of apartheid' or 'lair of the heart' that were crucial in the growth of nationalist ideology and the social engineering underpinning apartheid8 _{According to Coetzee the belief that white settlers had}

betrayed their colonizing mission was central to the colonial convictions of both the Dutch and Imperial governments.

The degeneration of the white colonist in Africa was no peripheral matter because degeneracy threatened one of the major lynch pins of the Imperial edifice - the imaginary construct which argued that those who made the best use of the land deserved to inherit the earth. Thus, the right of cultivators who cleared and settled land (the colonialists! settlers), always took precedence over the right of hunter-gatherers who merely hunted and moved over the land. The task of colonialists was therefore to prove that they were better stewards of the land than the natives.

The 'idleness' of Dutch settlers in adapting to their rudimentary and non-acquisitive environment was soon to provoke criticism. In 1663 - just over ten years after White settlement began, Governor Wagenaar, Van Riebeeck's successor, wrote to the Dutch East India Company chamber that a half dozen free farmers should be recalled to

6 Rene Guemon, East and West (1941), pp. 133-134.

7 Quoted in preface by Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1994).

• J.M. Coetzee, White writing. On the culture of/etters in South Africa (1988) and "The mind of apartheid: Geoffrey Cronje (1907-)", Social Dynamics, 17, 1 (1991).

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Holland because of their 'indolence' and 'debauched lives'. The company replied that 'our people, when abroad, are at all times with difficulty induced to work'. The suggestion was made that Wagenaar should make more use of slaves. Some thirty years later Grevenbroek complained that too much good fortune had bred sloth amongst the free farmers. Almost at the end of Dutch East India Company rule, Le Vaillant was still criticizing the profound inactivity of the settlers.9

Imperial intolerance

The censure of settlers intensified with the arrival of the Imperial government. From the Second British Occupation of the Cape, the Boers were again judged and found wanting, which was hardly surprising given the inherent Victorian prejudices oftheir new conquerors, as Robinson and Gallagher pointed out

Upon the ladder of progress, nations and races seemed to stand higher or lower according to the proven capacity of each for freedom and enterprise. The British at the top, followed a few rungs below by the Americans, and other 'striving, go-ahead Anglo-Saxons. The Latin peoples were thought to come next, though far behind. Much lower still stood the vast oriental communities of Asia and North Africa where progress appears unfortunately to have been crushed for centuries by military despotisms or smothered under passive religions. Lowest of all stood the 'aborigines' whom it was thought had never learned enough social discipline to pass from the family and tribe to the making of a state.'o

Similarly, Coetzee writes:

The idea of cultural progress, the idea that cultures can be ranged along a scale of evolutionary ascent from "backward" to "advanced." Through this schema the European enabled himself to see in South Africa, layered syncronically one on top of the other as in an archeological site, hunters, pastoralists and even agriculturalists in the process of regressing to nomadic pastoralism, all of whom, belonging to "simpler" stages of evolution, could be understood as "simple" people thinking simple thoughts."

Lord Durham of Canada was even more forthright in his assessment ofthe national and racial arrogance of his countrymen. "It is not anywhere a virtue of the English race to look with complacency on any manners or laws which appear strange to them;

• Coetzee, White writing, p. 29.

10 R. Robinson. J. Gallagher and A. Denny, Africa and the Victorians. The official mind of

Imperialism (1981 -2nd edition), p. 2.

11 Coetzee, White writing, p. 10.

Sfinkafrikaners' 161

Holland because of their 'indolence' and 'debauched lives'. The company replied that 'our people, when abroad, are at all times with difficulty induced to work'. The suggestion was made that Wagenaar should make more use of slaves. Some thirty years later Grevenbroek complained that too much good fortune had bred sloth amongst the free farmers. Almost at the end of Dutch East India Company rule, Le Vaillant was still criticizing the profound inactivity of the settlers.9

Imperial intolerance

The censure of settlers intensified with the arrival of the Imperial government. From the Second British Occupation of the Cape, the Boers were again judged and found wanting, which was hardly surprising given the inherent Victorian prejudices oftheir new conquerors, as Robinson and Gallagher pointed out

Upon the ladder of progress, nations and races seemed to stand higher or lower according to the proven capacity of each for freedom and enterprise. The British at the top, followed a few rungs below by the Americans, and other 'striving, go-ahead Anglo-Saxons. The Latin peoples were thought to come next, though far behind. Much lower still stood the vast oriental communities of Asia and North Africa where progress appears unfortunately to have been crushed for centuries by military despotisms or smothered under passive religions. Lowest of all stood the 'aborigines' whom it was thought had never learned enough social discipline to pass from the family and tribe to the making of a state.'o

Similarly, Coetzee writes:

The idea of cultural progress, the idea that cultures can be ranged along a scale of evolutionary ascent from "backward" to "advanced." Through this schema the European enabled himself to see in South Africa, layered syncronically one on top of the other as in an archeological site, hunters, pastoralists and even agriculturalists in the process of regressing to nomadic pastoralism, all of whom, belonging to "simpler" stages of evolution, could be understood as "simple" people thinking simple thoughts."

Lord Durham of Canada was even more forthright in his assessment ofthe national and racial arrogance of his countrymen. "It is not anywhere a virtue of the English race to look with complacency on any manners or laws which appear strange to them;

• Coetzee, White writing, p. 29.

10 R. Robinson. J. Gallagher and A. Denny, Africa and the Victorians. The official mind of

Imperialism (1981 -2nd edition), p. 2.

11 Coetzee, White writing, p. 10.

Sfinkafrikaners' 161

Holland because of their 'indolence' and 'debauched lives'. The company replied that 'our people, when abroad, are at all times with difficulty induced to work'. The suggestion was made that Wagenaar should make more use of slaves. Some thirty years later Grevenbroek complained that too much good fortune had bred sloth amongst the free farmers. Almost at the end of Dutch East India Company rule, Le Vaillant was still criticizing the profound inactivity of the settlers.9

Imperial intolerance

The censure of settlers intensified with the arrival of the Imperial government. From the Second British Occupation of the Cape, the Boers were again judged and found wanting, which was hardly surprising given the inherent Victorian prejudices oftheir new conquerors, as Robinson and Gallagher pointed out

Upon the ladder of progress, nations and races seemed to stand higher or lower according to the proven capacity of each for freedom and enterprise. The British at the top, followed a few rungs below by the Americans, and other 'striving, go-ahead Anglo-Saxons. The Latin peoples were thought to come next, though far behind. Much lower still stood the vast oriental communities of Asia and North Africa where progress appears unfortunately to have been crushed for centuries by military despotisms or smothered under passive religions. Lowest of all stood the 'aborigines' whom it was thought had never learned enough social discipline to pass from the family and tribe to the making of a state.'o

Similarly, Coetzee writes:

The idea of cultural progress, the idea that cultures can be ranged along a scale of evolutionary ascent from "backward" to "advanced." Through this schema the European enabled himself to see in South Africa, layered syncronically one on top of the other as in an archeological site, hunters, pastoralists and even agriculturalists in the process of regressing to nomadic pastoralism, all of whom, belonging to "simpler" stages of evolution, could be understood as "simple" people thinking simple thoughts."

Lord Durham of Canada was even more forthright in his assessment ofthe national and racial arrogance of his countrymen. "It is not anywhere a virtue of the English race to look with complacency on any manners or laws which appear strange to them;

• Coetzee, White writing, p. 29.

10 R. Robinson. J. Gallagher and A. Denny, Africa and the Victorians. The official mind of

Imperialism (1981 -2nd edition), p. 2.

11 Coetzee, White writing, p. 10.

Sfinkafrikaners' 161

Holland because of their 'indolence' and 'debauched lives'. The company replied that 'our people, when abroad, are at all times with difficulty induced to work'. The suggestion was made that Wagenaar should make more use of slaves. Some thirty years later Grevenbroek complained that too much good fortune had bred sloth amongst the free farmers. Almost at the end of Dutch East India Company rule, Le Vaillant was still criticizing the profound inactivity of the settlers.9

Imperial intolerance

The censure of settlers intensified with the arrival of the Imperial government. From the Second British Occupation of the Cape, the Boers were again judged and found wanting, which was hardly surprising given the inherent Victorian prejudices oftheir new conquerors, as Robinson and Gallagher pointed out

Upon the ladder of progress, nations and races seemed to stand higher or lower according to the proven capacity of each for freedom and enterprise. The British at the top, followed a few rungs below by the Americans, and other 'striving, go-ahead Anglo-Saxons. The Latin peoples were thought to come next, though far behind. Much lower still stood the vast oriental communities of Asia and North Africa where progress appears unfortunately to have been crushed for centuries by military despotisms or smothered under passive religions. Lowest of all stood the 'aborigines' whom it was thought had never learned enough social discipline to pass from the family and tribe to the making of a state.'o

Similarly, Coetzee writes:

The idea of cultural progress, the idea that cultures can be ranged along a scale of evolutionary ascent from "backward" to "advanced." Through this schema the European enabled himself to see in South Africa, layered syncronically one on top of the other as in an archeological site, hunters, pastoralists and even agriculturalists in the process of regressing to nomadic pastoralism, all of whom, belonging to "simpler" stages of evolution, could be understood as "simple" people thinking simple thoughts."

Lord Durham of Canada was even more forthright in his assessment ofthe national and racial arrogance of his countrymen. "It is not anywhere a virtue of the English race to look with complacency on any manners or laws which appear strange to them;

• Coetzee, White writing, p. 29.

10 R. Robinson. J. Gallagher and A. Denny, Africa and the Victorians. The official mind of

Imperialism (1981 -2nd edition), p. 2.