(Un)sung Heroines

In the South African War (1899–1902), Boer women emerged as more heroic than their men folk. When Boer leaders succumbed to a truce, much discursive work ensued to domesticate Boer women anew in the face of their recalcitrance in accepting a peace deal with the British. But attempts to re-feminise Boer women and elevate Boer men to their ‘rightful’ position as patriarchs faltered in the topsy-turvy after the war. The figure of the volksmoeder, or mother of the nation, provided a nodal category that combined feminine care for the family and the volk, or fledgling Afrikaner nation, but the heroic narrative was increasingly displaced by the symbol of self-sacrificial, silent and passive motherhood, thereby obscuring women’s political activism. Today, a re-remembering of volksmoeder heroism, combined with feminist politics based on the democratic-era Constitution, opens up possibilities of Afrikaners breaking out of their white exclusivism to join the nascent democratic South African nation.