Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa This book showcases new research by emerging and established scholars on white workers and the white poor in Southern Africa. Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa challenges the geographical and chronological limitations of existing scholarship by presenting case studies from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe that track the fortunes of nonhegemonic whites during the era of white minority rule. Arguing against prevalent understandings of white society as uniformly wealthy or culturally homogeneous during this period, it demonstrates that social class remained a salient element throughout the twentieth century, how Southern Africa’s white societies were often divided and riven with tension and how the resulting social, political and economic complexities animated white minority regimes in the region. Addressing themes such as the class-based disruption of racial norms and practices, state surveillance and interventions – and their failures – towards nonhegemonic whites, and the opportunities and limitations of physical and social mobility, the book mounts a forceful argument for the regional consideration of white societies in this historical context. Centrally, it extends the path-breaking insights emanating from scholarship on racialized class identities from North America to the African context to argue that race and class cannot be considered independently in Southern Africa. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Southern African studies, African history and the history of race. Duncan Money is a historian of Southern Africa whose research focuses on the mining industry. He is currently a researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden University, Netherlands and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the International Studies Group, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Danelle van Zyl-Hermann is a historian of race and class in modern South Africa. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of History, University of Basel, Switzerland. Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Africa This series includes in-depth research on aspects of economic, political, cultural and social history of individual countries as well as broad-reaching analyses of regional issues. Themes include social and economic change, colonial experiences, inde- pendence movements, post-independence governments, globalisation in Africa, nationalism, gender histories, conflict, the Atlantic Slave trade, the environment, health and medicine, ethnicity, urbanisation, and neo-colonialism and aid. Forthcoming titles: Miscegenation, Identity and Status in Colonial Africa Intimate Colonial Encounters Lawrence Mbogoni Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania Refugee Power, Mobility, Education, and Rural Development Joanna T. Tague Africans and the Holocaust Perceptions and Responses of Colonized and Sovereign Peoples Edward Kissi Photography and History in Colonial Southern Africa Shades of Empire Lorena Rizzo Women’s Lived Landscapes of War and Liberation in Mozambique Bodily Memory and the Gendered Aesthetics of Belonging Jonna Katto Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa 1930s–1990s Duncan Money and Danelle van Zyl-Hermann For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa 1930s–1990s Edited by Duncan Money and Danelle van Zyl-Hermann First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Duncan Money and Danelle van Zyl-Hermann; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Duncan Money and Danelle van Zyl-Hermann to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-37642-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00230-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Acknowledgements vii Foreword viii Introduction: Rethinking white societies in Southern Africa, 1930s–1990s 1 DUNCAN MONEY AND DANELLE VAN ZYL-HERMANN 1 Workers called white and classes called poor: The “White Working Class” and “Poor Whites” in Southern Africa, 1910–1994 23 JONATHAN HYSLOP 2 Rhodesian state paternalism and the white working- class family, 1930s–1950s 42 IVO MHIKE 3 Immigration and settlement of “undesirable” whites in Southern Rhodesia, c. 1940s–1960s 59 GEORGE BISHI 4 White people fit for a new South Africa? State planning, policy and social response in the parastatal cities of the Vaal, 1940–1990 78 BILL FREUND 5 Whites, but not quite: Settler imaginations in late colonial Mozambique, c. 1951–1964 97 CAIO SIMÕES DE ARAÚJO vi Contents 6 “Village Portugal” in Africa: Discourses of differentiation and hierarchisation of settlers, 1950s–1974 115 CLÁUDIA CASTELO 7 Labour and mobility on Rhodesia’s railways: The 1954 firemen’s strike 134 NICOLA GINSBURGH 8 The dog that didn’t bark: The Mufulira strike and white mineworkers at Zambian independence 154 DUNCAN MONEY 9 Social engineering and scientific management: Some reflections on the apartheid public service and historical process 173 NEIL ROOS 10 White workers and the unravelling of racial citizenship in late apartheid South Africa 194 DANELLE VAN ZYL-HERMANN Bibliography 215 Index 234 Acknowledgements The chapters collected in this book were presented and discussed during a February 2018 workshop, ‘Poor, Precarious, White? Rethinking white societies in Southern Africa, 1930s–1990s’, hosted by the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. The event was generously funded by a grant from the University of the Free State. For this, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Lis Lange, then Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), for her immediate enthusiasm and support for the pro- ject, which were key to facilitating the financial, intellectual and organisational support it received. We were thrilled by the suggestion from Leanne Hinves, Routledge’s editor for African Studies, to turn this intellectual project into a book and are grateful for the excellent support we have received from her throughout the process. This book has benefitted immensely from the intellec- tual generosity of colleagues in related fields. We were delighted when David Roediger, whose inspiring work played an important role in shaping the con- ception of this project, agreed to provide a Foreword to the book. Our heartfelt thanks to those colleagues who provided feedback on earlier drafts of the book. In particular, we would like to thank Ian Phimister, David Roediger, Deborah Posel and Rory Pilossof for their comments on the introductory chapter and extend a special thanks to Neil Roos for his intellectual input. We are also grateful for the suggestions received from the anonymous reviewers, which helped refine the book. We would like to warmly thank Jenny Lake and Ana Rita Amaral for their editorial and technical assistance in preparing the text. Finally, a special and heartfelt thank you to Ian Phimister. It has been a privilege and pleasure to benefit from his mentorship, encouragement and good humour, not to mention his expertise. This project is a product of and tribute to the convivial and supportive atmosphere which he facilitates at the International Studies Group. Foreword A lot was on my mind when I made opening remarks at a workshop held at University of the Free State: ‘Poor, Precarious, White? Rethinking white societies in Southern Africa, 1930s–1990s.’ The gathering of scholars there and the ideas discussed and exchanged provide the basis for this impressive book. The hope here is that some of those thoughts will help frame the book and, especially, help us think about how critical studies of whiteness do and ought to travel. Of all my positive impressions from the conference – from Neil Roos’s brilliant welcoming lecture to the important work being done by junior scholars – what perhaps struck me most was the inclusion of such great and varied work from beyond South Africa itself. Indeed, the confer- ence and this book represent the fullest flowering of a study of whiteness based in workplaces, unions, and everyday life yet produced. The implicit lesson, that taking white society beyond a particular national framework leads to new questions and new answers, pervaded the conference and shapes my remarks here. I taught at University of the Western Cape in 1991, a heady time in which that institution sometimes billed itself as UWC, the University of the Working Class. Its modestly named Marxist Theory Seminar sometimes drew upward of a thousand participants. I had not returned to South Africa in the