Lecture 2 Cultural and ideological context:

Intro:
- Somewhere on the Border was first performed in South Africa at the
Grahamstown Festival in 1986. The plays performance attracted considerable
controversy. Most reviews, especially in the English liberal press, were positive. I
quote two examples: [slide 2]
- [The play] is like a report from hell. It is an impassioned, horror-struck revolt
against the brutalisation of militarism and the morons, political and otherwise,
who are responsible. (Humphrey Tyler, Reviews, The Sunday Tribune, 16
September 1990)
- The immediate impact for those who see the play is not merely somewhere.
Its here, in the hearts of all South Africans, where a scab covering secret
awareness of the horrible trauma experienced by those forced to fight and kill in
the name of [South Africa] is ripped away. (Gabalt MacLiam, Pact discovered a
play of impact, The Star, 21 February 1987.)
- However, some reviewers begged to differ. Willem Steenkamp, the official
historian of the war, argued the following:
- The play becomes childish in its attempt to make a statement. The five
troepies in the play are stereotyped characters... A sentiment throughout the
play is the desire to go out and kill blacks (I quote: Die Swart Gevaar). This is
not the aim of the SADF, which is there to ensure the security of the country and
the prevention of terrorism. (Willem Steenkamp, Playwright crosses line of
credibility, The Cape Times, 20 January 1987)
- The plays performances themselves were full of incident. I quote from an
article in the magazine Today:
- [Somewhere on the border] so enraged some pro-military citizens who saw it
when it was first performed in Johannesburg in 1987 that two of the cast
members were seriously beaten up, possibly (some think) by associates of the
Civil Co-operation Bureau, an organisation under investigation for dirty tricks,
perhaps even murder. After that, armed guards protected the cast wherever it
went. (Humphrey Tayler, Blood and Guts!, Today, September 16, 1990)
- What all of this indicates is that peoples judgement of the play was determined
by their view of the Border War, which was itself a controversial subject in 1980s
South Africa. In Somewhere on the Border, the characters themselves have very
different viewpoints about the war, and these viewpoints are shaped by their
political convictions. For Bombardier Kotze, and for characters like Mowbray, the
war is absolutely necessary to protect South Africa from the black, communist,
terrorist peril. For Campbell, the war is unjust and a continuation of apartheid
suppression. These differing viewpoints reflect the differing attitudes that white
South Africans had towards the Border War while it was being waged.

- So, in this lecture, I want to explore how white South Africa related to the
Border War. This is not to deny that black people also experienced the war
intensely. Far from it the overwhelming majority of those who fought in the
Border War were black, and the black population of southern Africa definitely
bore the brunt of the wars destruction. However, Somewhere on the Border is
primarily about young white South Africans fighting in the war, and their
attitudes towards it and the military. In fact, the play forces us to ask a
provocative question: given the realities of military service, can we not regard
white South Africans as victims of apartheid too?
- Now, to understand the way that white South Africa related to the Border war, it
is necessary to explore the broader cultural and ideological forces which
influenced white South African society in the 1970s and 1980s. This will be my
overall subject for today.
Afrikaner nationalism:
- [Slide 3] Perhaps the most important ideological force in apartheid South
Africa was Afrikaner nationalism. From 1948 to 1994, South Africa was ruled by
the National Party. This party had come to power by promising to uplift the
Afrikaners, and to turn South Africa into their domain; and these goals were what
guided the National Party throughout its rule. Apartheid was instituted to further
Afrikaner interests; and the Border War was thought to protect the Afrikaner
homeland.
- To understand Afrikaner nationalism, we have to go back to its roots in the
1930s. At this point, the Afrikaners were a downtrodden and marginalised
minority group. The Afrikaner republics had been defeated in the Anglo-Boer War
of 1899-1902 and were now British subjects, which was a severe blow to their
ethnic pride, and instilled a desire for self-rule. Afrikaners were hit hard by the
Great Depression of the 1930s, and most were forced to move to the big cities to
do industrial labour. This displacement resulted in widespread poverty among
Afrikaners. It also forced Afrikaners to compete on the labour market with black
workers, which created a fear of being overwhelmed by vastly superior black
numbers, and of uitbastering the corruption of the supposedly pure Afrikaner
racial heritage by interbreeding between the races.
- It was in response to these circumstances and fears that the majority of
Afrikaners turned to nationalist politics in the 1930s and 1940s. The Afrikaner
nationalist movement was led by people like D.F. Malan and Hendrik Verwoerd,
who had studied in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. These intellectuals were
very impressed by what they saw there they admired the way that Hitler had
enthused the German people with a new spirit of national pride, and had uplifted
them from their abject state after WWI. As racist nationalists, they also strongly
approved of Hitlers racial philosophy. When they came back to South Africa,
Malan, Verwoerd and the like set out to create a political philosophy and
movement which would do for the Afrikaners what Hitler had done for the
Germans.

- The political philosophy they developed, Afrikaner nationalism, had a number of

key, immutable ideas, which were most clearly outlined in Nico Diederichs 1935
pamphlet, Nationalism as a philosophy of life and its relation to
internationalism. Firstly, Diederichs believed that individual man was as
nothing, and could only develop as a human being in a group and the supreme
group, of course, was the nation. This meant that every person was called upon
to fulfil themselves through membership in a national community:
[Slide 4] - Man is not only called upon to be a member of a community, but
also and especially to be a member of a nation Only through his dedication to,
his love for and his service to the nation can man realise the rounded and
harmonious development of his full personality The nation is the supreme
fulfilment of the individual life. (Sparks, 165-6)
- Furthermore, the Afrikaner nationalists believed that nations were created by
God, and that God intended them to remain separate. To quote Diederichs again:
- God willed that there should be nations to enhance the richness and beauty of
His creation. Just as He destined that there should be no deadening uniformity in
nature but that it should present a rich diversity of plants and animals, sounds
and colours, forms and figures, so, too, He willed that at the human level there
should be multiplicity and diversity of nations, languages and cultures. (Sparks,
166)
- Now, this does not sound too bad yet, especially to modern cultural relativists.
[Slide 5] However, we must remember that the Afrikaner nationalists did not
just believe that there should be separate nations they saw the Afrikaner nation
as one with a special mission, given to them by God, to subdue and control the
savage nations of southern Africa. In Afrikaner mythology, God made a covenant
with the Afrikaner at the battle of Blood River in 1838, when the Voortrekkers,
with Gods help, defeated 3000 Zulu warriors. From now on, the Afrikaners were
the nation that would do Gods will in Africa. In 1910, on the anniversary day of
the battle of Blood River, Martinus Steyn, the last president of the Orange Free
State, had this to say:
- When Pretorius [the general in charge of the Voortrekker forces at Blood River]
broke the neck of the barbarian, God placed the kaffers under the white mans
guardianship This is a burden that the white man will have to carry forever!
(Martinus Steyn, quoted in Best of Bitterkomix vol. 1, p. 11)
- Aside from believing that it had a God-given mandate to control South Africa,
Afrikaner nationalists also believed that white people were inherently superior to
black people, and that mixing between the races was abominable. Here is Allister
Sparks summary of the thought of Geoff Cronje, one of the formulators of the
Afrikaner nationalists racial beliefs:
- It was beyond question, he said, that blacks were physically, mentally,
spiritually and morally inferior to whites. They lacked the intelligence, they had a
higher crime rate, their health was poorer and they were more decadent in every

way. It followed, therefore, that racial mixing would degrade the whites. (Sparks,
177)
- This set of outlandish beliefs laid the ideological groundwork for apartheid. By
creating separate territories for different ethnic groups, the NP would be fulfilling
Gods design on earth, which needed nations to exist separately so that they
could preserve their uniqueness. By keeping blacks under control, the NP would
be living up to Gods requirement that the Afrikaner subdue the savage nations
of Africa, and lead them towards Christianity and civilisation. And by preventing
intercourse between the races, social and otherwise, the NP would be preserving
the white races superiority.
- OK, so what does all this craziness have to do with the Border War? I wouldnt
claim that Afrikaner nationalism in its extreme form was the reason for South
Africas actions in Namibia and Angola. I doubt that the coldhearted generals
who directed the war, or the average soldiers who fought it, were much
concerned with Gods plan for the separate development of nations. However,
what is important is that the ideology of Afrikaner nationalism affected almost all
of South African culture in one way or another, and that it helped to create a set
of beliefs among white people which made them support the war.
- [Slide 6] One area where Afrikaner nationalism had a major influence was
education. Soon after coming to power, the NP made their philosophy of
teaching, Christian National Education, the basis for the education of all white
South African children. Christian National Education had the goal of initiating
white children into apartheid culture through indoctrination. What is particularly
important was that all white children who went to state schools were taught
within this system English children as well as Afrikaans. According to one writer,
the broad aim of Christian National Education was to inculcate the following
values:
1. Strictly Calvinist, puritanical religious obedience and conformity.
2. Obedience to authority especially religious, school or army authority and, as
the means for such a habituation, the authority of parents. The fathers role in
Afrikaner society is directly linked to other patriarchal authorities such as church
and state particularly in its military function.
3. Racial exclusivity Miscegenation on any level was one of the great taboos
even ordinary friendships across the colour line would earn a white person the
label of kaffirboetie.
4. Sexual conformity Sexual activity outside Christian marriage was punishable
by hellfire, and all forms of deviance were considered both a heinous sin and a
criminal perversion. Afrikaner men were not homosexuals, nor were Afrikaner
women lesbians. (Gregory Kerr, The Big Bad Bitterkomix Handbook, p. 137)
- As such, the NPs education system indoctrinated white children to accept
apartheid, to believe that South Africa had to be defended from savage
aggressors, and, importantly, to respect the authority of the government. This

made it much easier to convince young white men to go fight on the border. The
SADF capitalised on this system by working military training into the education
curriculum. In the 1970s, a compulsory subject called Youth Preparedness was
introduced to South African schools. For two classroom periods every week, male
schoolchildren were required to do army drills and to familiarise themselves with
the weapons they would be handling in the Border War, and they were
indoctrinated to believe in the military strategies and objectives of the SADF.
- [Slide 7] One can see the effect of Afrikaner nationalist indoctrination in
Somewhere on the Border. Its primary spokesman is, of course, Bombardier
Kotze. Here he explains the us against them racial rationale of the border war:
KOTZE: You think you different. But its us against them, Kammel, and you on
our side if you like it or not.
CAMPBELL: Thats not what I believe, Bombardier.
KOTZE takes a fold of loose skin on Campbells hand between his thumb and
forefinger and starts twisting.
KOTZE: What colour is this, Kammel?
CAMPBELL falls to his knees.
What colour, you cunt?
CAMPBELL: Aargh, white. White!
KOTZE: And dont you forget it! (17)
- Kotze also articulates the fear of the swart gevaar which was provided as the
rationale for protecting South Africas border:
- Look out there. What you see? You see South Africa. What else? Blackness. Die
Swart Gevaar. You here to watch that, not to play silly buggers. Watch it! Its
black and dangerous.
- Finally, Kotze also repeats the dominant Afrikaner nationalist characterisation of
apartheids enemies as communists and terrorists, under the control of
international communism:
- That terrorists is going to Russia for training and then coming back here to stir
shit. There is two kinds of terrorists. Namely, dead terrorists and live terrorists.
The second two of these kinds is the problem. They just want to kill and destroy.
(26)
Selling the war the NP and the media:
- [Slide 8] However, the National Party did not limit itself to indoctrinating
schoolchildren. We must remember that apartheid South Africa was a totalitarian
state. In addition to controlling the government, judiciary, and army, the NP also
had almost complete control over all forms of media in South Africa. It ran the
SABC, the only public television broadcaster. It ran Naspers, South Africas
largest news and print media group. The media outlets it did not own were
controlled through censorship. Thus, the NP had great control over what white
South Africans knew and thought about the Border War.

- The greatest weapon that the NP had to make white South Africans support the
war was censorship. Laws such as the Defence Act and the Protection of
Information Act gave the NP the power to censor any public dissemination of
information about the war that ran counter to its interests. This censorship was
necessary for two reasons.
- Firstly, many of the SADFs operations in Namibia and Angola were illegal
under international law, and the United Nations imposed sanctions which would
punish South Africa economically for its military actions. Therefore, many of the
SADFs operations were carried out in secret, and could not be reported. A good
example was Operation Savannah in 1975-6, when South Africa invaded Angola
for the first time. Often, troops in Angola would be listening to P.W. Botha making
radio speeches categorically denying that there were any South African troops in
Angola.
- Secondly, the NP and SADF did not want South Africans to know what it was
doing on the border, since revealing the extent, cost and casualties of its
operations might adversely affect the publics support for the war. So, radio and
television reports, for example, could not specify where exactly war events were
taking place. The radio programme Forces Favorites, which played requested
songs for soldiers, could only dedicate the songs to so-and-so, somewhere on
the border.
- Further, the government censored, as far as it was able, all cultural products
which contested its version of the war. Books, magazines, films and music were
either censored or banned outright. This affected Akermans play; it was banned
from being published, though it was allowed to be performed.
- [Slide 9] However, aside from suppressing the free flow of information and
dissent, the government produced propaganda which depicted the war positively.
It made sure that the news which did reach the South African public through the
SABC and Naspers was reassuring. Here, for example, is a transcript of a section
of the nightly news on the SABC in 1981:
- As, over the weekend, South Africans rejoiced at the splendid victory of the
Springboks in New Zealand, other of the countrys representatives were
returning from the battlefield in Angola. Their mission, too, was splendidly
accomplished There is good cause for pride in the performance of our men in
New Zealand and Angola.
- The NP and SADF also supported the production a number of pro-war cultural
products. Chief among these were films. In the 1970s, the government heavily
subsidised fiction films, documentaries, and TV dramas which pro-NP and proSADF. These ranged from serious, supposedly factual documentaries like The
Battle for Bridge 14 to lighthearted but insidious comedies like Boetie Gaan
Border Toe. Here is one historians summary of the general message of these
films. Pay close attention, because it is exactly these messages that the play
Somewhere on the Border subverts:

- [Slide 10] The pro-war message was achieved through a parallel

demonization of the liberation movements and lionisation of the security forces,
combined with an explicit scorn for members of the liberal media, draft dodgers,
and females active in the anti-conscription movement. The rank-and-file of the
security forces depicted in these films are likable, noble individuals who respond
to terrorist atrocities with measured, precise, overwhelming force. Furthermore,
their immediate superiors (i.e. the generals and politicians) are shown to be not
only reasonable, but also well informed enough to suggest semi-omniscience
Moreover, the rationality (and, indeed, the moral imperative) of opposing the
forces of terror is incontrovertible. (Beyond, 65)
- Finally, we must also note that government propaganda was often directed to
the young men who would have to go fight the war. Such propaganda tapped
into a deep-seated aspect of white culture: the great value placed on
masculinity, on being a man, and the assumption that military duty was the
ultimate test and proof of masculinity. A historian explains:
- [Slide 11] The iconic image of the South African soldier resonated throughout
South African culture and encouraged many men and their families to relish the
prospect of sharing in an esteemed masculine endeavour where they would be
transformed from boys into men The troepie was admirable and masculine, a
mans man. It was active service on the border that provided the ultimate
symbol of militarised masculinity, however. It was the grensvegter who, in the
words of Paratus, the SADFs official magazine, was shrouded in myth and
legend, a Rambo-type figure. (Beyond, 78)
- We can see an example of how the government sold this image of the South
African soldier in a photo-comic published by the SADF, Rocco de Wet:
Grensvegter. [Slide 12]
- Ridiculous as all this may seem, the NP and SADFs censorship and propaganda
was effective in getting white people to support the war. A 1984 opinion poll
came to the following conclusion:
[Slide 13] Most whites hold the defence force in high esteem for its role in
upholding the state in the face of internal revolution, in protecting the national
frontiers against the apparent southwards march of international communism.
Most, to use the metaphor employed by white parliamentarians, see it as a
necessary shield for the Republic behind which order is upheld The majority of
whites, if not the majority of South Africas population, also wax enthusiastic
about Defence Force actions conducted over national borders. (Beyond, 76)

Conscription:
- So, we can see that white South Africa was facing a total onslaught of NP
indoctrination and propaganda. [Slide 14] However, the majority of young men
who went to fight on the border did so not because they believed in the war, but
because they had to. In 1967, the South African government instituted

compulsory conscription. All white men had to serve between 9 and 12 months in
the army. In the middle 1970s, this period of service was extended to two years.
Military service entailed a long period of training, and required at least 6 months
of combat deployment in South Africas border warzones. Conscription was
severely enforced, and those who did not report for military duty faced up to six
years in prison. Between 1967 and the end of conscription in 1993, about
600,000 white males served in the South African military, and 350,000 of them
were involved in operations in the Border War.
- Although the SADF was reliant on conscription to supply its troops, conscription
ultimately helped to turn many white South Africans against the war. Why?
Firstly, the problem with conscription was that it meant that non-professional
soldiers went to the border, witnessed what the SADF was doing first-hand, and
then came back to civilian life. Although the Defence Act forbade conscripts
revealing anything about the armys activities, the returning soldiers did tell
people what their military service was like, and what they had experienced on
the border was often very different to the vision of the war that the government
was selling to white South Africans. This increasingly made the civilian
population question government propaganda. Furthermore, the civilian
population began to notice that military service had done serious psychological
damage to conscripts. In the middle 1980s, many newspapers and academic
researchers began finding connections between military service and the
exponential rise of white male suicide rates, as well as the increase in so-called
family murders cases where white men would murder their families and then
kill themselves. At this point, the SADF offered no psychological debriefing or
counselling to troops, many of whom were suffering post-traumatic stress, or, in
the word of the time, were bosbefok fucked up by the bush war.
- It was partially for these reasons that organised opposition to conscription
arose. The leader in this movement was the End Conscription Campaign (ECC),
formed in 1978. It was a coalition of English liberal anti-apartheid organisations
opposed to the war. What the ECC also realised was that, by attacking
conscription, one could start turning whites against apartheid. This is because
conscription is what made many whites face the realities of apartheid rather
than just enjoying the benefits of white rule, conscripts were also victimised by
the apartheid system. Therefore, mobilising whites against conscription was the
first step in mobilising them against apartheid. (One could argue that this is also
the logic of Somewhere on the Border by showing the reality of military service,
it hoped to make audiences realise what apartheid was doing to white South
Africans as well, and therefore turn them against apartheid.)
Cultures of protest:
- [Slide 15] Of course, the ECC was part of a larger wave of white opposition to
apartheid that gathered strength in the 1980s. In 1983, over four hundred church
groups, unions, and smaller anti-apartheid political organisations collaborated to
form the United Democratic Front, or UDF. The UDF was allied to the ANC, and
had over three million members. Importantly, the UDF was completely non-racial,

and was not banned by the apartheid government. This meant that white South
Africans could now take part in the struggle without joining the ANC in exile or
going underground.
- This rise of political protest also coincided with a massive increase in cultural
protest. Thousands of artists, writers, playwrights, filmmakers and musicians
used their art to protest against apartheid policies. Now, the field of South
African protest art is much too big to discuss in one lecture. I will therefore limit
myself to highlighting a few features which are interesting in relation to the play
we are studying.
- Firstly, it is interesting to note that the culture of protest in white South Africa
drew a lot of its energy and ideas from the global youth protest movements of
the 1960s and 1970s, such as the American hippie counterculture and the
student protests of May 68 in Europe. This is hardly surprising, especially when
we consider that these global movements were in large part responses to the
Vietnam War, a war that had many similarities to the South African Border War.
You can see the influence of the counterculture in Campbells hippie jive talk in
Somewhere on the Border. The NP greatly feared the influence of the global
counterculture, thinking that it would corrupt the white youth of South Africa. It
banned such 60s protest anthems as the Bob Dylans The Times They Are
aChangin and Blowin in the Wind. The NP were justified in their fears,
because many South African musicians started using rocknroll to protest
against apartheid.
- The most remarkable instance of such musical protest was the Volvry
movement, a group of musicians who toured South Africa in the late 1980s,
spreading dissent on university campuses and in rock clubs. What was significant
about Volvry was that these guys were singing in Afrikaans thus using the taal
of the National Party against it. To conclude this lecture, I want to play you one of
the greatest Volvry songs, Bernoldus Niemands Hou My Vas, Korporaal. The
song is a satire of the NP propagandas vision of the SADF conscript. Instead of
turning boys into men, the song shows us that the armys requirement of blind
obedience turns men into babies, and that the troepies want to survive and go
home rather than protect South Africa from the total onslaught. The song was, of
course, banned by the SABC. The version Im going to play was recorded live on
the Volvry tour, and the interaction with the audience shows us just how
liberating this music was you can hear it in the way that an audience member
relishes being able to say korporaal se moer at the end of the song. Ive
provided my own inelegant translation of the lyrics: [Slide 16]

Conclusion:
- To conclude, I think that what I have said today goes some way towards
explaining the great cultural impact that Somewhere on the Border had, and the

controversy that surrounded it. Many white South Africans supported the war,
and were not happy with what they saw as the plays subversion of the South
African military effort. However, the play also tapped into a rising tide of
opposition to the Border War and to apartheid, and resentment at what the SADF
was doing to young South African men. These are subjects which Nicola Lazenby
will explore further in her lectures next term. For now, I thank you for your
attention, and I hope that this has been useful.