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Chapter Four Negotiating Individual Identities: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Subculture1 Introduction Despite subcultural analysts’ contribution to a better understanding of the way in which individuals engage with and create culture, identity, as an analytical tool, rarely features in the literature. Unravelling the processes that contribute to the formation of identity reveals the way in which both individual and group identities are constantly negotiated and renegotiated over time and in space. As Stuart Hall succinctly puts it:

Identity becomes a ‘moveable feast’: formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us…The subject assumes different identities at different times, identities which are not unified around a coherent ‘self’. Within us are contradictory identities, pulling in different directions, so that our 2 identifications are continuously being shifted about.

The processes by which these multiple and contradictory identities are negotiated is the central focus of this chapter. It builds on the previous chapter which documented the group and collective identities which made the Ducktail subculture visible. In the context of the Ducktail subculture there was no single, monolithic and hegemonic identity, rather there existed multiple identities - of class, racial, ethnic and gendered kinds – which were constructed by subjects through their interaction with historical, economic, social and cultural circumstances and contexts. Here the focus shifts from the general to the specific and traces the gendered, racial and ethnic identities that youths embraced.

Sheilas, Cherries and Chicks: Marginality and Visibility As outlined earlier, one of the major strengths of subcultural studies is the way in which gendered (both masculine and feminine) identities have been plotted. However, very little can be learnt from these studies about the actual process through and in which these identities are constructed.3 In this section of the 161

chapter, the formulation of feminine, masculine and sexual identities will be discussed respectively with a view to highlighting the fluidity of power relations between male and female members of the subculture.

Although gender features in subcultural studies, these studies give more attention to masculinity, creating the impression that subcultures are terrains for boys and young men to experiment with their identities. Scholars such as Brake, Glaser, McRobbie and Garber have noted these shortcomings. None offer entirely convincing solutions. McRobbie and Garber make the boldest claims when they suggest that

Girls negotiate a different leisure space and different personal spaces from those inhabited by boys. These in turn offer them different possibilities for ‘resistance’, if indeed that is the right word to use4.

Brake however adopts a different perspective to the others narrowing down the subcultural space available to girls. He contends that:

Girls are present in male subcultures, but are contained within them, rather than using them to explore actively forms of female identity.5

In the case of ducktail femininity it is possible to identify three features of involvement with the subculture. Firstly, girls were peripheral in some areas and central in others. Secondly they carved out niches of autonomy for themselves to experiment with their identity and thirdly there were degrees of variability.

Glaser’s insights into the role of girls in subcultures rings true for the Ducktail case when he argues that there is ‘a very genuine element of female marginality in youth subcultures’.6 However, these notions of female marginality require qualification. Female marginality, in the argument of this chapter, was not uniform or fixed; it shifted depending on the context. Girls certainly featured in the ducktail subculture but more often than not they played a marginal role especially compared to boys. Mike Malony remembers:

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On the whole, it was an oke [guy] thing, we rode with guys and a few woes cherries [aggressive girls]…equality wasn’t considered, women drove ambulances in the war but this reverted back to traditionalism.7

Similarly, Isa noted with a tone of disappointment

Girls were not really independent, boys were chauvinistic, we tried but the boys were the main thing…It was important to have a boyfriend – you had to have a boyfriend.8

Women were central and independent in some areas of subcultural life and peripheral in others. For example, racing was an exclusively male pastime whereas dancing was an activity in which boys and girls participated. However, the extent of Sheila autonomy varied. For example, those Sheilas who were affiliated to the ‘mobile group’ (those who had access to transport), in particular, the motorbike element occupied a subordinate position compared to their male counterparts. Their membership of the group was dependent on their relationship with their boyfriends. If their relations were terminated so was the girl’s presence within the group. In some Ducktail gangs there was a ‘tradition’ that a female member could only have an intimate relationship with a male member of the group if she had sexual intercourse with every member of the gang.9 This affirms that the ‘cultural subordination’ of girls ‘is retained and reproduced’ by youths.10

A powerful dimension of the Ducktail subculture, as with the Teddy Boys and the ‘street corner’ culture in the USA, was escape into the street. The Sheilas’ presence on the street was not as marked as their male counterparts. Within the new teenage consumer patterns, initiated after World War Two, many activities confined girls to the home. For example, the experimentation with make-up, keeping up with fashion and listening to music were all activities that were pursued at home, although this was not necessarily one’s own.11

Female members carved niches for themselves in the subculture. This gave them a vehicle with which to experiment and explore their feminine identities. Although girls often occupied a subordinate position in relation to boys among the , they were not passive players in the subculture. They went out together in all girl groups to the bioscope, cafés, roadhouses and sessions. In this sense they 163

were quite independent. Some of the girls were even responsible for drawing boys into the group. As Isa recalls, ‘initially my present husband was not really involved, I changed him, I had to.’12

A further dimension of the variability within the female ducktail subculture related to aggression and violence. It seems that female members fell into one of two categories: the more passive and feminine on the one hand and the aggressive and more street wise on the other. It was this antagonistic and truculent streak in them which differentiated the ‘bad girls’ (the Sheilas) from the ‘good girls’ (those who looked like Sheilas in appearance only). Jane, a Sheila from the Southern Suburbs, remembers that, ‘if you were walking down the street and a group of Sheilas were approaching, you would have to cross the road to avoid being attacked.’13 Some girls occupied a central position within gangs, Els recollects:

I was always leader of the girls I beat half the guys as well…We didn’t use flick-knives, because there was a law against knives most of it was bicycle chains and knuckle-dusters.14

At times, girls were also involved in fights usually over their boyfriends. As Prop pointed out:

If another girl was to approach me, my chick [girlfriend] would sort her out for sure; sometimes the women were worse when fighting. Hey, they protected their property.15

More commonly, however, they supported and egged on their male counterparts in their excursions. Malony told the story of one fight where:

One of the cherries [girls] had taken off her shoe and started to hack at Eddie’s back with the stiletto heel. 16

Physical support was uncommon; verbal support was more usual. For example P.C.A. Galbraith of the South African Police [SAP] – who was investigating ‘delinquency and the ducktails in Johannesburg’ claimed that he heard a girl say, ‘Don’t hit them on the legs, play softball with their heads’.17

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Some Sheilas were also allegedly involved in petty crime ranging from prostitution to begging. According to Engelbrecht and his assistant researchers, older men used to try and pick up ‘or start something’ with the Sheilas.18 Whether or not Sheilas were drawn into full-scale prostitution is unknown and will remain so until further research is carried out. When begging, the girls used to ask passers-by for money for a bus fare. Once they received the money from one person they moved onto the next.19 Statistically the percentage increase in crime between 1945 and 1954, was almost fifty per cent higher amongst white girls than boys.

Table 11: Percentage increase in crime according to sex, 1945-195420 Crime by Age Group Girls Boys per cent of all crime: 8.7 per cent 4.7 per cent 7-16 years 1945 per cent for serious crime: 17.1 per cent 8.1 per cent 7-16 years 1954 per cent of all crime: 5.5 per cent 7.4 per cent 17-20 years 1945 per cent for serious crime: 11.8 per cent 7.4 per cent 17-20 years 1954

Although the percentage increases are substantial, the actual incidence of crime was still low. For example in 1945, girls (7-16 years) convicted of serious crime only comprised 0.3 per 10 000 of the population. In 1952 this rose to a still relatively small 1.3 per 10 000.21 It is difficult to establish whether or not these figures represent crimes committed by members of the subculture. It nevertheless seems quite probable that they do. Female members were thus not marginalised and subordinated into a kind of non-identity; they actively created and experimented with their own identity within the space of the subculture.

An Oke thing? Competition & Conflict Masculine identities in the Ducktail subculture were generally defined by a combination of characteristics including: image (a preoccupation with appearance including dress, , attitude and language); individual and group competitiveness (pugnacity, fighting ability, conflicts over girls, motorbike and car racing); and finally sexuality (an emphasis on virility, the objectification of 165

and proclivity for girls and homophobia). Each of these factors was important in ensuring the acceptance of a male member within the subculture.

A central element of Ducktail masculinity – as with other forms of masculinity - was fierce competition. Alongside this, male members were also extremely loyal to one another. Rufus reminisces:

There was a strong sense of loyalty. If one of the guys was in an accident all the guys would club together to fix it even if it meant they couldn’t smoke for a while. If the guy lost his job because of the accident we would help the families out, it was a great effort.22

Such support was extended to fights, Terry recalls:

If it’s a one on one your mates stay out but if the other oke’s friends get involved there will be a full on barney [group fight].23

Tolson asserts that groups of boys and young men ‘devote themselves to the testing of masculine prowess - in fights, arguments, explorations of the local neighbourhood - and there is also a complex boyhood culture of mutual challenge.’24 A common expression of competitiveness was articulated through racing (discussed in Chapter Three). Challenges were also thrown out to traffic officers,

Riding away from the ore [police] was no problem, their cars were too slow and couldn’t handle like our bikes. Speed cops were a bit harder but their bikes were heavy and not too well maintained. They were mostly single carb 650 Triumphs or heavy 500cc BMWs…and they didn’t chase far.25

An even more common means of male competition was fighting. The possession of flick-knives and knuckle-dusters though illegal was common among ducktails. As Andre explains,

The flick-knife was prohibited by law as a dangerous weapon that was something, you knew which Indian shops, in downtown Pretoria, sold flick knives and we used to save money so that three or four guys could buy a flick knife and this was rotated amongst the guys just to have this thing26

Much the same went for knuckle-dusters. Terry maintains that:

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You could buy knuckle-dusters at those novelty shops under the counter though. I had a nice one it had little skulls on the rings. I didn’t have the need to use mine because I was trained boxer in the those days.27

Some ducktails made knuckle-dusters as a sideline. According to Gordon Verster:

There was a lot of aggro [aggression] at times. I remember there was this one guy an appie at ISCOR making knuckle-dusters….so you basically had an iron fist…flick-knives were illegal I never had one but I did have a cut throat …it was macho.28

Judging from the weaponry, violence was a central part of the process of masculine identification. The Ducktails not only assaulted each other but also challenged the authorities – policemen and army recruits. Colonel N remembers that in 1957 one of the new army recruits was assaulted by a group of obstreperous ducktails outside Café Rich in Church Street, Pretoria. After issuing passes to all new recruits the commanding officer instructed them to

go into Pretoria. The Ben Schoeman highway wasn’t there it was still the old Jo’burg road. At the ISCOR headquarters there was a circle called the Wawiel [Wagon] circle, the Wagon Wheel circle and the army youngsters the army gym people who couldn’t go to the gym and didn’t have transport, they sat there waiting because they knew that reinforcements would come from Johannesburg by motorbike. They had chains over the road and as soon as the motorbikes came they just pulled the chains up and they caught them and gave them a good hiding [beating] and the rest of the people went in to town and every Ducktail with a bit of long was confronted and his hair was cut and sometimes with scissors or clippers and even knives and they cleaned up [beat up] the Ducktails. At one stage on the corner of Paul Kruger and Smit Street the fire brigade was called in to try and disperse the people there and they were eventually convinced to withdraw and they called the police college to come and assist. The police recruits came out and they were already furious at this stage why were they called out so late but they wanted to come and help. Basically, after that a bloke [guy] in uniform could walk in Pretoria without being harassed but before that, it was a no go area for anybody alone in uniform.29

Similarly, Gen. Van der Merwe noted with a sense of pride:

We were tough cops you must remember that so there was no hesitation to get into a fight especially with Ducktails we said no lets see whose the winner but it was not criminality you don't stick a knife you give the guy a black eye shake his hand and take their Sheila and there you go30

More commonly, however fights occurred between members of the subculture especially in the streets outside sessions, bioscopes, cafés, and roadhouses. The 167

majority of fights occurred at the sessions and outside dance halls. At one dance, held in the Benoni City Hall in 1949, seven fights - involving 80 boys - broke out. Fighting was both a means of proving a member’s ‘manliness’ and an assertion of dominance over physically ‘weaker’ boys. Jackson contends that ‘violent practices are a part of the social processes that produce masculinity within a male- dominated society.’31

Sexuality: Subordination and Power The subject of sexuality has received a good deal of attention most notably from the disciplines of psychology and sociology.32 However as noted by Glaser and others, very little historical research has been undertaken into the subject. Tracing the development of sexuality and its expressions is a complex process, since this probes ‘the most intimate and unconscious areas of experience’33 which can not always be plumbed adequately through research methods such as interviews.34

The 1950s marked the beginning of a sexual revolution visible through youths’ open sexual expressions such as kissing and embracing in public. This conflicted sharply with the attitudes of their parents and conventional members of society who believed in monogamy, marriage and privacy in sexual and romantic engagements. The Ducktails rejected these sexual norms through their promiscuity and overt sexuality. Freed observed, with disapproval, that

It was not uncommon to find the Ducktails and their molls locked in passionate embraces in full view of passers-by. Some of the teenage girls we, were informed, had no parents or else did not know where they were. They just went about with the boys, and the boys changed their partners as often as their fancy dictated35

At the cinema, the Ducktails occupied the back rows. As Lynton Johnson explains,

That was my first experience of free out in the open sexuality, condoms were around, they were called French Letters – ‘Frenchies’ - you flipped a half crown and slapped it down on the counter in the right shops and they would hand it over the counter in little round tins. As little guys it was ‘Wow’ look if you found a tin at the back of the movie house, which meant that big things had gone on36 168

‘Bikers’ were known to

have the pockets cut out of their pants and they would never wear underpants and the girls used to you know ride like that and obviously fondle, that’s what used to go on.37

In this particular instance, girls were viewed as objects for their sexual pleasure, which girls were obliged to provide in return for a ride on the back their motorbike. Cliff Lott (a Teddyboy from Wales and then a Duckie in Durban) recalls, ‘the rule those days was: A ride for a ride – girls queued up. If they got on the pillion, it was expected of them and they did, never a problem’.38

In other instances ducktails’ attitudes towards women was shot through with ambiguity. In a second interview with Terry he remarked:

We weren’t really interested in woman that much you had a girlfriend but the guys from the scene came first...even if you had a permanent girlfriend you, well I, always had something on the side. Remember if your boyfriend [referring to female membership] was a ducktail you were alright.39

As Bones noted:

Having a girlfriend was important but I wouldn’t say it was a necessity, if you go to a party you had to have a squeeze...you had to bop and jive...40

An instrumental attitude therefore existed towards women. Perceptions towards women and sex also varied with age. From interviews, for example, it is clear that the younger boys were not as sexually active. In fact, it seems that they had very little interest in girls. Lynton Johnson remembers that boys

grew up for longer being curious, being shy, definitely a question broadly speaking of fools rushing in were angels fear to tread for a long while you were an angel and when the opportunity came round you sort of rushed in like a fool with a certain element...you know like that scene in Grease where girls giggling here and the guys were all boasting there but both of them were sort of too scared to get together. I think that was quite typical. The parties were often quite separated and you in fact were happier with your buddies...there was a very low key promiscuity in fact even as kids you sort of raised your if you heard that one of your mates had had sex and he would be sort of inclined with the sort of reverence with which you treated him to sort of enlarge on the reality of it all to a little bit more tainted picture...holding hands was quite ordinary but French kissing then you were really serious, fondling of any 169

kind was something that you relayed to everybody you could find because you felt that you had really crossed the threshold, “going steady” that was a big word then it really meant so much.41

Power struggles over girls occurred between some males. At times, females were viewed by males as the spoils after battle. Such competition was not confined to the ducktails but has been common to patriarchal cultures in general.

Clashes over women occurred on both an individual and on a group basis. For example, in 1952 Angelo Peter Kondos (age 19) was sentenced to a ₤ 30 fine or three months’ hard labour for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. The charge arose out of a stabbing, at the Benoni Town Hall, at a dance. Allegedly, the accused was interfering with the victim’s girlfriend, which led to a fighting challenge resulting in the stabbing of Charles Thomas Sayers in the shoulder.42 The protection of masculine prestige demanded defending a girlfriend’s ‘honour’, and being willing to do so violently. In one case a boy was assaulted because ‘the young man’s partner refused to dance with one of the drunk youths.’43 Girls were viewed, by boys, as sexual objects and possessions to be won through fighting. In such cases the model of masculinity that Ducktails adopted was sexist because women were perceived, either consciously or not, as anonymous objects to possess, as rewards after ‘battle’.

Competition for ducktail women was not restricted to the ducktails but extended to other more orthodox youth subsections. As Gen. van der Merwe – then, a junior police official recollects:

during my time in the police college, on off days, we got into the streets and we had confrontation with the ducktails because in those times we had to go on the streets in uniform with the so you’re completely the opposite of the other guys. But we were looking for trouble because some of those Sheilas were very nice looking ladies and we chaffed [chatted them up] them and you looked for trouble.44

The way in which girls were objectified was most apparent in the Ducktails’ display of collective chauvinism in the form of molestation and sexual harassment, which took place on the streets where girls were relatively vulnerable. Freed remarked that ducktails 170

gather several times a day near different commercial colleges in the Eloff Street area between De Villiers and Bree Streets and in the Plein Street area between Eloff and Hoek Streets. Here they wait for college girls to come out for their tea and lunch breaks in order to molest them with indecent suggestions. Some of the Ducktails, on whom we kept observation, were quite obviously under the influence of dagga and drink. Their shirts were hanging out of their trousers; they whistled after the girls, and touched their buttocks as they passed, and, in some cases, seized them in their arms and forcibly kissed them.45

In Bezuidenhout Valley ‘white youth gangs’ terrorised girls at Gunnion pass (which provided a short cut to Kensington) where they grabbed unaccompanied girls and exposed themselves to them. On these occasions, the Sheilas were

46 absent. In effect, the Ducktails were enforcing their ‘sexual hegemony’ over women through intimidation and denigration.

Homophobia and Prejudice The social environment in which Ducktails operated was heterosexist and explicitly homophobic. In 1939, Freed penned a report on the incidence of homosexuality amongst youths in Johannesburg. He depicted homosexuality as a dangerous and widespread ‘social evil’. Efforts were made by the office of the probation service to ‘combat this perversion - or perversity- in cases where it became manifest.’ Freed contended that ‘a social aberration of this nature, that strikes at the very root of the moral stability of the younger generation, should at all costs be eradicated.’47

Intimidation and sexual harassment was not restricted to girls but extended to homosexual men as well. Violent, unprovoked assaults and other brutal atrocities were carried out on homosexual men, the bulk of which were planned well in advance. According to Bones,

Another favourite pass time was ‘moffie bashing’ [gay bashing], ‘bunny bashing’ [beating up gay males]. If you knew a guy was gay you would go out of your way…Joubert Park at the station was one meeting place for moffies you would go there and then go to their flat with them, beat them and scale [steal] their stuff. 48

In Pretoria, Gordon Verster recalls that his group

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went out queer bashing…queers [gays] used to hang out near the Art gallery in Arcadia and the guys, just for the hell of it, used to go out and pick them up and then do a bit of queer bashing…we thought, well queers are a target - so zap ‘em.49

The worst of these reported homophobic attacks50 occurred in Hillbrow where there was an incident in which a gang of Ducktails

hunted down a group of queers [gays], they went to City Deep [to the abattoir] and they got hold of a few pig’s tails, they shave it so its only got a bit of hair on it - now with the pig’s tail all the hair lies one way - They went into Hillbrow that night and they hunted down the queers and each queer they found they grabbed and took one of these tails and they rammed it up their backside and they couldn't pull it out, it goes in one way and you couldn't get it out...The Duckies were very anti-queer.. one of the boys ended up in Hillbrow hospital and the tail had to be cut out.51

At times a similar kind of behaviour could be more sinister, manipulative and opportunistic. In Durban, Huthwaite alleges that some of the members of the Greyville ducktail gang

spoke of having ‘girl friends’ who were wealthy homosexual men. Often they were unscrupulous towards these people, accepting meals, presents and money from them and then refusing any sexual favours. One member said, ‘We just have what we can out of them, the best wines and food, and then, if they try to touch us, we punch them up.”52

In Port Elizabeth Terry remembers:

We didn’t assault anyone for no reason really, don’t go and assault a guy for no reason unless he’s a moffie. We used to set a trap, one of the okes would go for a piss and if one of the moffies looks and starts chatting him up a bit we would take him outside, bliksem [hit] him, scale [rob] him out: take his ring and his clothes.53

Homophobia was an integral part of Ducktail masculinity but it is not clear whether violent attacks were regularly committed. Ducktails were certainly prejudiced against homosexual men and statements such as: ‘We hated moffies, if you were a moffie you were taken out,’54 recur throughout oral testimonies. In this they conformed to mainstream culture’s bias. Homophobic acts were accepted and frequently endorsed by Ducktails and wider society.

The practices of masculinity within the Ducktail subculture and culture more widely reveal multiple masculine forms existed which were ‘cut across by, and 172

enmeshed within, other, differing relations of power.’55 The next part of this chapter moves on to discuss another set of power relations, that of race relations, with a view to exploring the colour of whiteness.

The Colour of Whiteness and the Conundrum of Racial Identities In South Africa and elsewhere ‘race’ is, and has long been, a prime factor in shaping not only youth identities but identities in general. David Goldberg intimates in his theoretical and philosophical account, race:

undertakes at once to furnish specific identity to otherwise abstract and alienated subjectivities...Like the conception of nation that emerges more or less coterminously, race proceeds at its inception by arming social subjects with a cohesive identity. It is an identity that proves capable of being stretched across time and space, that itself assumes transforming specificity and legitimacy by taking on as its own the connotations of prevailing scientific and social discourses.56

As a methodological tool ‘race’ has a long history in academic discourse which, as Miles points out, dates back to at least the late 1930s.57 Studies on race have become synonymous with explorations of black racial identities rendering the ‘related ideas of “race” and “black”…[as] contested to an extent that their use as analytical concepts is even more problematic.’58 The result is that the ‘epistemology and ontology of “race” are being studiously conjured out of consideration.’59 One reason for this Steyn explains is that

Whiteness has been theorized as the racial norm, the invisible center that deflects attention from itself by racializing the margins, and constructing them as the problem. Whiteness then believes in its own homogenous neutrality.60

However, it would be dangerously premature to discard race as an analytical category since one of the most glaring gaps in literature on racial identities is the general lack of systematic investigations into whiteness particularly here in South Africa.61 As Wong contends

‘Whiteness’ is a subject that asserts its centrality or dominance on social and cultural levels yet remains shrouded within a veil of transparency that ensures its absence thus evading the subject of discourse [in academic circles].62

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The absence of any consideration of ‘whiteness’ is also a major shortcoming of subcultural studies. Although most scholars investigate subcultures which are predominantly comprised of white membership, whiteness and the formation of white racial identities is not directly or explicitly explored. To repeat Coco Fusco’s warning racial identities ‘are not only Black, Latino, Asian, Native American and so on; they are also white. To ignore white ethnicity [and race] is to redouble its hegemony by naturalising it.’63

Since the popularisation of American studies on the intersection of class and race, ‘whiteness’ now occupies a central position on the research agendas of a spectrum of academic disciplines. The earliest calls for an interrogation of whiteness emerged within the realms of feminist, psychological and psychoanalytic theory. Initially, black feminists castigated white scholars for excluding race and for being ‘race blind’.64 In response, early studies on whiteness were geared towards providing a better understanding of racism (white on black – in both verbal and physical forms) in order to formulate ways of adopting ‘non-racist’ or anti-racist paradigms. Although enormously useful - particularly in post-Apartheid South Africa and in the context of democratic globalisation - to date less attention has been paid to examining the processes in which whiteness is invented, reinvented, constructed, reconstructed and expressed culturally, socially, politically and historically.

Ruth Frankenburg’s contention that whiteness in American society is comprised of a set of overlapping relationships and dimensions is a useful starting point for this study. She asserts that

whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. Second, it is a ‘standpoint’, a place from which white people look at ourselves, at others, and at society. Third, ‘whiteness’ refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and un-named.65

Similarly, in the South African context, whites were placed in a structurally privileged position economically, politically and socially. This privilege has been extensively explored in relation to members of white Afrikaans speaking communities [the National Party’s major constituency post 1948]. However other 174

whites, English speaking South Africans for example, have rarely featured in academic investigations of race. The central aim here is to transcend a narrow and exclusive focus on Afrikaans speakers by accounting for the ‘cultural practices’ of a more generalised whiteness as expressed by youths. This goes beyond works written by Richard Dyer, Toni Morrison66 and others which have focussed on representations of whiteness in literary texts and films. In such studies, the major conclusion is that whiteness is ‘unreadable’ or transparent. This Steyn points out, is changing:

Whiteness Studies are shifting as new studies challenge the assertion that whiteness is still invisible, and call for more nuanced analyses of whiteness.67

It will be argued here that unpacking and understanding racial identities in South Africa requires a fundamentally historical approach. Frankenburg cautions:

Nor is white culture (in fact, culture in general) a material and discursive space produced and reproduced in a vacuum. Whiteness is inflected by nationhood, such that whiteness and Americanness, though by no means coterminous, are profoundly shaped by one another. Thus there are ways, for example, in which British whiteness and U.S. whiteness are similar to and different from one another, and those differences and similarities are traceable to historical, social and political processes. Similarly whiteness, masculinity, and femininity are coproducers of one another, in ways that are, in their turn, crosscut by class and by the histories of racism and colonialism.68

Race and racial identity in particular is thus a

relational category, one that is coconstructed with a range of other racial and cultural categories, with class and with gender. This coconstruction is, however, fundamentally asymmetrical, for the term whiteness signals the production and reproduction of dominance rather than subordination, normativity rather than marginality, and privilege rather than disadvantage.69

Through the prism of the Ducktails it will be suggested here that the colour of whiteness was reified into a range of ambiguous forms, shaped from three elements: subcultural identity (such as racism, territoriality and pugnacity), individual identities (including ethnicity, class and gender) and the virulent and ubiquitous apartheid state.

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Relations between blacks and whites was a conundrum in ducktail subcultures; comprised of a contradictory combination of acceptance and rejection of the ‘other’. Some groups of ducktails established instrumental relations across the colour bar while others committed racist assaults. Prop explains these equivocal attitudes, as follows:

We were racists, in those days racism was open and general thing. If there was a black in their way they would kick him. Some would say hey kaffir voetsak [get lost] Indians were like coloureds they were more respected ‘cos that’s who you bought your jeans from’. Some duckies used to joll with coloureds ‘cos they scored [supplied] this and that and there was also coloured gangs. Some coloureds were even ducktails’.70

His testimony reveals that, at times, the same group displayed these contradictory behaviours and that ducktails registered different shades of blackness as acceptable (coloureds for example). Generally relations between blacks (Africans in particular) and whites were strained and hostile. Thus, for some members of the subculture their whiteness intersected with their racist beliefs in the extreme form of brutally assaulting members of the African, coloured and Indian communities. Racism, however, was not displayed homogeneously. There was – and is - in existence an array of ‘racisms’ expressed in diverse ways ranging from verbal to physical abuse. Young – drawing on the work of Joel Kovel – explains that two types of racists can be identified namely:

the dominative racist who acts out her or his supremacist beliefs with the overt intention of subjugating blacks; and the averse racist. The averse racist is a complex 'ideal type' according to Kovel and may experience a range of feelings and actions which vary in intensity and level of development...71

In a similar vein, Paul Gilroy urges scholars to discuss, ‘racisms in the plural. These are not just different over time but may vary within the same social formation or historical conjuncture.’72 This holds true for the Ducktails. For example, there were instances where members of the African community were accepted socially usually in an instrumental fashion, such as in the provision of entertainment or dagga [marijuana]. The members of the ‘coloured’ band that played at the rock ‘n roll sessions in Durban ‘were treated as friends and, an important sign of acceptance, dagga was smoked with them.’73 For those 176

ducktails who were unemployed, it was advantageous for them to engage in the illicit liquor trade with blacks. Rufus recalls:

Some of the duckies were on the outers [down and out] – they didn’t work. They would buy booze for the blacks on condition that the black bought some for them.74

Frequenting shebeens75 was part of ducktail activities. This occurred usually to attain alcohol rather than with a view to socialising across the colour line. Gordon recalls a rather amusing venture:

One of the cases with the police…we had a party in the old railway reserve in Pretoria you had the little houses very close together and you had a house at the front and one at the back so we were having this party and we ran out of booze and a couple of guys jumped on their ysters [motorbikes] and they went to a shebeen in one of the black slum areas but the police had the shebeen under surveillance. Well the okes bought some liquor and as they pulled away the police came in pursuit (you know the scorpions [police] they wanna vang [catch] you) but the bikes lost them. So we get back to the party but now in the meantime the guy on the southern side is getting up tight about this party with all this Rock ‘n Roll and its two in the morning so he has phoned Pretoria Central Police station. They put bikes, liquor, party this must be the guys and they pitched up. There was a knock on the door and one of the ducktails, old George Knox, opens the door and slams this dude with his fist – the guy was in plain clothes and as this policeman falls back there was just badges and caps. So we all turned ran out the back jumped the fence landed in a chicken coop one guy grabbed a chicken and we ran there was a lone policeman guarding the cars because the rest were chasing after us. He saw at least fifteen ducktails storming down on him so he moved out the way. We jumped on our bikes and ended up at the Hamburger Hut.76

Hilton from Orange Grove similarly claimed, ‘We would go to the shebeen but we were scared of the police. The older guys weren’t, they would give them lip.77 White youths who went on jolls to black townships instilled panic in the authorities, as Freed – a well known commentator on ‘juvenile delinquency’ in the 1950s - noted,

White Ducktails in jeans and colourful shirts have been known to take their “quacktail” tarts to brothels in African areas. Here they meet the African tsotsis dressed in zoot suits, and their black molls dressed in “Suzie Wong” skirts. They are sometimes joined by Indian boys and girls from Fordsburg. Kwela music or rock-'n-roll records are played, to liven up the party, and when brandy is taken and “giggleweed” smoked, the colour line in sex is speedily forgotten. We were informed that this experience was supposed to represent a “new sort of thrill for the degenerates of both sections of the population.”78

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Multi-racial social interaction as described above was a rarity, firstly because it was becoming increasingly difficult to engage in inter-racial mixing due to far reaching apartheid legislation, and secondly because of the prevalent notions of racism and white superiority.

In almost every weekly issue of the Benoni City Times en Oosrandse Nuus, from 1946 onwards, references are made to attacks by white youths on members of the black community. The form of the assaults varied and ranged from common assault to attacks with knives, knuckle-dusters and bicycle chains.79 By 1947, assaults which included all types of attacks had increased by 13 per cent.80 They usually followed a particular pattern, as an anonymous letter to the Rand Daily Mail described:

The native was held by three or four white youths, while at least ten others struck, kicked or hit him with sticks until he was unconscious. Then, of course, he could be jumped on. All this was done to cries of ‘maak hom dood’ [kill him]. When I inquired what the native had done, I was told that he had pushed against a white woman. Later, I heard that one of the defenders of white women declare that, as a native was a bobbejan [monkey] and not a man, he could be struck while down.81

The ‘normal’ modus operandi was to beat the victim into submission to the extent that they would collapse to the ground, and then they were subjected to a series of kicks to the head, which at times resulted in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) or death. This pattern is of significance because the victim (as most Ducktails were aware) was placed in a defenceless position and could therefore not identify the assailants thereby reducing the chances of punishment.

In most cases involving Ducktails the assaults were random and were unprovoked. However, there was an instance of one black man being assaulted (he later died of head injuries) by three youths (between the ages of 18 and 22) in 1955 because he had allegedly called them ‘Ducktails’.82

In South Africa segregationist and apartheid policies served to sharpen the definition of racial boundaries in the city and firmly entrench the parameters for the ‘geographies of exclusion’83 for African communities. Black victims of the Ducktail’s violence were assaulted in public places (including the city streets - 178

outside cafes, bioscopes, in the suburbs, on railway platforms and sometimes in trains)84 in white residential areas. For example, in 1951 seven white youths (between 19 and 22) attacked an African security guard outside Lido Café (located next to the Lido Bioscope) in Prince's Avenue, Benoni. They were sentenced to 18 months imprisonment with hard labour, six months of which were suspended for three years for culpable homicide (the injuries were so severe that they resulted in the death of an innocent guard).85 In this instance ‘neighbourhood sentiment tend[ed] to fuse together with racial antagonisms.’86 Their territoriality and spatial identities were therefore intertwined with their whiteness. This territorial dimension indicates firstly the condescension to blacks (moving unmolested into black territory) which was an overarching frame of white superiority. Secondly, it reveals the intersection of racial identity and territoriality, Gilroy contends that

the intersection of territoriality and identity in urban black [white] cultures provide a further clue to the character of contemporary 'race' politics. It demands that the role of distinctively urban processes and experiences are recognised…We must therefore confront the extent to which the cultural politics of 'race' reveals conflict over the production of urban meanings and situate the meanings that have already been identified as constitutive of 'race' in their proper place as contending definitions of what city life is about.87

Racially motivated assaults in this period were not confined to South African youths alone – they also took place internationally. Cliff Lott claims of the Teds in the UK, ‘we used to go Paki bashing. It was a sport, even the police stood aside and told us to go for it.’88 Two of the most widely reported racist attacks, in which the Teddyboys played a role, occurred in Notting Hill and Nottingham in 1958. Their actions were allegedly a result of their frustrated class positions Gilroy cites Fyvel:

riots were started by nine very ordinary working class boys, six of them only seventeen, with previously blameless records…upon hearing of the previous race riots in Nottingham, the nine armed themselves with coshes and iron bars and, as if in a dream, they began to walk through the streets of Notting Hill and savagely attack any coloured pedestrians they met, beating them to the ground (Fyvel, 1961, p.62).89

Racist attacks also occurred in the United States. For example, the last two cases of lynching (at least those that were reported) apparently occurred in the mid 179

1950s - Emmett Till in 1955 and Mack Charles Parker in 1959.90 Assaults carried out by ducktails are reminiscent of the many lynching incidents that occurred in the Reconstruction period in the United States.91 Both forms of racist violence were carried out in groups,92 and were unprovoked or were carried out for imaginary and trivial reasons. Smead – discussing lynching - points out the assailants ‘acted without the authority of law to punish their victim for some real or imagined legal, social, or racial transgression.’93 Ida B Wells’s views on lynching, which Royster cites, are particularly useful. She maintains lynching was ‘an act of terror perpetrated against a race of people in order to maintain power and control.’94 Within the context of apartheid South Africa and black resistance against it (for example, in 1952 the Defiance Campaign was launched; in 1953 the multiracial Congress Alliance was established) assault can perhaps be viewed as one way in which whites responded to African resistance and how they patrolled the boundaries of whiteness by reasserting their dominance through aggressive outbursts.

However, racially motivated attacks also need to be placed within the context of South Africa’s tumultuous history of miserable and overt racism. Racism was not peculiar to the Ducktails but rather saturated the identities of most white South Africans. In this way, ducktails racial identities were similar to the parent culture. The unprovoked assault of African people was not confined to youths alone. One needs only to consult the local press and in particular the Rand Daily Mail to find regular references to instances of white men (over forty and fifty) carrying out brutal attacks on Africans. As with the youths these assaults were committed publicly and for no apparent reason. From this it is clear that racial antagonism in the form of white on black assault is an illustrative example of the ‘practice of white superiority.’95

This racial territorialisation, as pointed out above, was reinforced in the 1950s by Group Areas legislation. This was a period in which urban planning or rather urban re-structuring was a pivotal aim of the apartheid government. Urban segregation and racial zoning was extended and entrenched through amendments 180

to the Natives (Urban Areas) Act in 1952, through the enforcement of the ‘section ten’ provisions and especially through the consolidation of the Group Areas Act in 1957 and 1966.96 Accompanying this, the government launched an intensive slum clearance programme in the 1950s to remove ‘black spots’ in the cities. Neighbourhood boundaries shifted considerably in the 1950s as a result of the enforcement of residential apartheid briefly described above. The assault of blacks was an expression of territoriality and not only a means of maintaining spatial boundaries but also of monitoring racial interaction between black and white communities.

A strong sense of racial superiority, leading all too often to violence was instilled by impalpable forms of socialisation in the home and in the school. Le Roux notes of the 1950s and 1960s,

Racial stereotypes which we acquired at home were mostly reinforced at school…the attitudes of our teachers, preachers, parents and friends left us no doubt that Africans were very different from whites and had to be treated as a separate, inferior group…beliefs of racial superiority were fostered by most.97

Lynton Johnson when discussing the racism of the ducktails relates it to socialisation:

We were all swept over with the same broom. We all grew up basically blind. There were those who obviously didn’t grow up that way and they became the exiles…we all lived in fear and dread of having a black stay on our property after hours and having a black in your home for a meal was something you didn’t do however well you got on with your buddy at work who wasn’t really your buddy because you didn’t want anyone calling you a ‘kaffirboet’ [black brother].98

In a similar vein Terry explained:

We were brought up knowing we were the superior race. I grew up knowing that you don’t mix with them, they were below your standard of education, just below you.99

Ducktails were extremely race conscious. They conformed politically to the hegemonic racist paradigm of the National Party state through their aggressive acceptance of the dominant social expectations and prejudices, which dehumanised members of the African community. Expressing prejudices 181

resentment and dislike in a violent manner overlapped with their ‘politics of resentment’100 and became a normality and abhorrent form of entertainment.

South African Whiteness and Ethnic Prejudice A consideration of race alone is not enough to encapsulate the diverse, cosmopolitan and multicultural nature of white South African society - ethnicity is another element that informed the colour of whiteness. The question that will be addressed here is whether whiteness occupies a more important position in the construction of identities – and ducktail subcultural identity – than ethnicity. What needs to be unpacked and measured is the ‘content of ethnic identities: do they resonate with the experiences of whites, or are they rather symbolic assertions of little practical consequence.101 Alba contends:

If ethnic identity is to have a social, as opposed to a merely personal significance, it must be linked to activities and relationships that have an ethnic character, the behavioural correlates of identity: how is it typically expressed in terms of such culturally linked behaviours as food habits and holiday rituals? Is it rooted in social structures between relationships to others that are forged on the basis of common ethnicity? Unless ethnic identity is linked to behaviour, it cannot contribute to ethnicity as a social form.102

Within South African historiography, ethnicity has received much attention over the last forty years. However, the bulk of these studies focus on African communities while very little has been written about the materiality of ethnicity in white communities. Controversy has arisen over how precisely to define ethnicity and ethnic identities. Two major approaches can however be isolated. The first perspective emerges out of psychoanalytic work undertaken on identity, most notably by Erik Erikson, where ethnic identity is viewed as an integral dimension of the psyche. The second stems from the influence of psychology’s ‘theory of the self’,103 in which the relationship between structure and the individual’s psyche is stressed as opposed to narrowly focussing on purely psychological factors. The latter perspective is more useful because of the way in which historical context, structure and the individual’s identity can be considered. In South Africa and elsewhere, white ethnic identities were, at times, produced by a mixture of ethnicities. It is possible for example, to be a British-Afrikaans South African. 182

Members of the ducktail subculture came from different ethnic backgrounds including English, Afrikaans, Italian, Greek and other immigrant groups as a result of a massive influx of immigrants into the country through Smut’s 1946 immigration scheme that sought to ‘recruit European skills to beat the manpower shortage’.104 In this period, 51.4 per cent of immigrants were dependants.105 On arrival to South Africa, youths retained their ethnic roots. As Lynton Johnson explains of the 1950s;

Until I left school I never had any Jewish friends, any Afrikaans friends I didn’t know a Greek, didn’t know an Italian..never anywhere did we come across anyone who wasn’t English we did the Brit thing we stuck together…there was ethnic strongness, certain areas were more favoured here by various ethnic communities..we were all fighting identities at that time. If you were English you were proud of it and the same goes for Italians, Greeks…you weren’t going to let it get watered too quickly by way of outside influence because you were a minority in every way: you were a minority in your language group, in the numbers that you were..you were a minority in that you weren’t accepted by the English who were a minority to the Afrikaners who weren’t accepting anybody. So everybody was in a sense secular. In Natal of course the extra added advantage was that it was so frightfully colonial….the English speaking South Africans were so Royalist….when I came up here to my mum in Boksburg I met Afrikaans neighbours and when we moved to Benoni to Lakefield which was a very elite suburb and was very very Jewish in fact we were the only Christians in the street. 106

This influx and the social dislocation and insecurity that families experienced in moving to a new country, led the youths forming themselves into ethnically based groups in search of security, familiarity and a sense of belonging. Immigrant communities formed ‘clubs’ (for example, the Italian club and the Portuguese club) as cultural links that not only provided security for one another but gave them space to share leisure time. In this case, Wright and Hamilton’s definition (based on the ideas of Anderson and Sharp) of an ethnic group is useful:

[It] has certain similarities with, but differs from, a ‘cultural group’, a ‘racial group’, and a ‘nation’, it exists as a mental construct, an ‘imagined community’.107

There is evidence to suggest that a few ducktail gangs were ethnically based. According to Andre (who was a ducktail during school and joined the South African Defence Force later) the; 183

Lebanese, Syrians, Portuguese all formed groups, they were also part of the culture but maybe it is because of language and the background that they associated with each other. In these years in Pretoria there was not such a large community of Lebanese people. But there was in the East Rand, Benoni and those areas. There you had the Tough Wheels and the Zackies, Koeries and all these Lebanese groups. But those guys were very dangerous they were on the verge of being criminal you know they were the Breekers when I was a young cop in the early sixties I remember those elements…they actually ruled Benoni…108

Similarly, Mike Malony recalls that particular ducktail groups were ethnically exclusive;

I went to Germiston Boys High which was a bit of a skommie [scummy] school and there were Portuguese and Lebanese there and there was a bit of conflict there they were tough guys. They also followed the fashion and had the Ducktail hairstyle and the stovepipe trousers. But they were quite ethnically based. There was quite a lot of Jews but the Jews in Germiston were sort of one level above. They were organised into families. There wasn't that many immigrants due to the government’s clamp down on immigration. 109

In the ducktail case ethnic exclusiveness was most visible amongst Lebanese members and for this they gained notoriety. For example, Lynton recalls the power that the Lebanese community110 exercised over Benoni

Here in Benoni the boxing fraternities the Lebanese the Zachies and that crowd, you knew of them they just happened to be in Benoni they had far reaching tentacles into Jo’burg. You treated them with a healthy respect you, you didn’t want to be on the wrong side of them..so you trod lightly…they were very ethnically based.111

Similarly Fred comments:

The lebs they were a clique on the their own. The lebs had their shebeens as well. I remember one in Malvern..the Syrians in Germiston the guys used to come from Krugersdorp to buy their own dop. The Lebs they were bad they were the knife gang. If you supported the shebeen they wouldn’t hurt you. They didn’t mix much with the community.112

Max, initially a ducktail in South Italy who moved to South Africa in the early 1960’s maintains;

184

When I arrived in South Africa there was still ducktails but it wasn’t strictly territorial it was organised more around clubs. I remember I went to Rossettenville to a Lebanese club with this girl, the following weekend I went 7 or 8 of theses guys came to me and they said ‘Forget it! If you want to dance here you dance and then you go home you don’t go out with our women’.113

The Greek based gangs also gained a reputation for being parochial and violent. As Max remembers;

There were different gangs, I heard of there was a rumour there was Greek gang, an Italian and I don’t know if it was Lebanese or Portuguese that would go (it was a treat for them) around to other clubs to start fights. They were very violent people. Especially there was this Greek gang what they used to do they used to keep a razor blade, in their hand (between their fingers) the facial razor blades, you would be fighting with them and then your face would be covered with blood you would feel it. It is so small you couldn’t see it. There was an Italian group who went to the Greek club and the one guy ended up in hospital his face was nearly destroyed because of this razor blade…so the following week they went to the Greek club and turned the place upside down. There was no 16, 17 year olds they were older 20 to 30…but mainly Afrikaans in the down town. Kensington Italian & British, South Portuguese but I can’t say they were ducktails they used to protect their own nationality.114

In a separate incident, Max recollects a fight that occurred with a Portuguese group of ducktails over a woman:

We had a big fight in Judiths Paarl we went to the bioscope – I can’t remember the name. I started talking to this Portuguese girl during the interval, you always used to come out of the bioscope these Portuguese guys started to fight with us but I mean really fight. My brother Roberto (17 years old), there was two or three against him he had been beaten so badly he forgot if he was still in Italy, what year it was. We had to go next door to the café and put ice on his head…Remember in that time there was the Italian club, the Lebanese club, the Portuguese club, the Greek club in Johannesburg…if you want to go there you had to go 3 or 4 and most of the time it ended up in fights. Remember we all couldn’t speak English.115

The bulk of new immigrants were not proficient in English or Afrikaans. This became another point of conflict. Max, for example, on arrival in South Africa, could not speak in either of the official languages of the time. From interview material, it seems that Afrikaners expressed hostility towards immigrants for this reason;

185

My brother encountered lots of problems with the Afrikaners I used to walk him to work. I used to take a bus to work, my brother got off after me. These people started to pick up a fight with my brother at the bus stop so I went with him. They always said something but I did not understand I did not know if they were speaking Afrikaans or English. One thing I did pick up was ‘pora’ they probably thought we were Portuguese…A lot of fights in Hillbrow was with Afrikaners who were not from Johannesburg they were coming from Roodepoort and Pretoria.116

Further research is needed to explore more fully how these new immigrants adapted to South African life.

Relations between English and Afrikaans speaking whites appears to have been quite different. For example, Mike Malony believes that ethnic conflict between English and Afrikaners did not erupt in the subculture or between members affiliated to the movement. In school days, it was not uncommon for fights to break out. Lynton Johnson noted:

In school it was like that if you walked past an Afrikaans school your gonna get panelbeated and visa versa. Ja in those day I dunno stupid ‘eh’?117

The subculture however glossed over ethnic (or linguistic) differences between English and Afrikaans speakers. This was made easier through the adoption of slang. In the case of the ducktails, proficiency in argot also transcended the ‘ethnic’ and linguistic divides that the government sought to entrench through single medium education. As Prop remarks,

There wasn’t conflict between English and Afrikaans. There was more Afrikaners than English – rebel boere. I would say that 80 per cent of the guys were Afrikaans but they had that slang 90 per cent of the words were English.118

Alba, drawing on Gillian Stevens, points out ‘important aspects of ethnic culture are embedded in language and thus are accessible only to those who know the mother tongue.’119 However in the ducktail case the members invented their own language in the form of a unique blending of English and Afrikaans to create their own argot. The way in which slang smoothed over ethnic differences contradicting government policies of fostering separate ethnic identities within the white community. Immigrant youths were also proficient in ducktail argot because of the injection of Americanisms and Cockney Rhyming slang. As a 186

whole their use of slang is one way in which ethnic boundaries were broken down.

Their slang both reflected and re-informed their whiteness being replete with racist innuendoes and allusion to violence and crime. For example, charras denoted Indians, kaffirs referred to blacks, clean up referred to fighting; a rort was usually a group fight, a clink or cooler was a prison; scale a jammie literally meant to steal a car, and bunny boys or queers referred to homosexual men.120 Language, then, was one obvious marker of their South African ethnic identity. The solidarity that was expressed was white South African. This whiteness was however in tension with the whiteness that was held up by the dominant culture and in particular it was in opposition to the form of whiteness that the government sought to maintain (more will be said about this in the next three chapters).

Conclusion This chapter was devoted to deconstructing individual identities – gender, race and ethnicity – which were not always embraced by all of the members of the subculture. What it indicates is the way in which individuals retain numerous and various identities. No single, monolithic or cohesive identity exists rather there are multiple identities (racial, ethnic, gendered and collective or group identities, for example) configured in social, cultural, political and economic spaces which are shaped further by social circumstances and locality. Identity then, ‘is actually something formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth. There is always something ‘imaginary’ or fantasized about in its unity. It always remains incomplete, is always ‘in process’, always being formed.’121 The transitory and fluid nature of identity is summed up in Achille Mbembe’s assertion that the subject:

mobilizes not just a single ‘identity’, but several fluid identities which, by their very nature, must be constantly ‘revised’ in order to achieve maximum instrumentality and efficacy as and when required.122

187

There was a collective identity which made the ducktails visible as a subculture. However, as this chapter has demonstrated, this subcultural identity was intermeshed and intertwined with ethnic, racial, and gendered identities. In its entirety, the hedonistic, apolitical, and rebellious characteristics of the subculture were in stark contrast to more mainstream society. Youth culture, as Brake contends:

also offers a collective identity, a reference group from which to develop an individual identity, ‘magically’ freed from the ascribed roles of home, school and work. It provides a cognitive material from which to develop an alternative career, kept secret from, and in rebellion with, the adult world.123

The way in which society and the government responded to this ‘rebelliousness’ is the central focus of the second part of this thesis. 188

ENDNOTES

1 Parts of this chapter appear in K. Mooney, “‘Ducktails, Flick-Knives and Pugnacity’: Subcultural and Hegemonic Masculinities in South Africa, 1948-1960 in Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, December, 1998 and K. Mooney, ‘Identities in the Ducktail Youth Subculture in Post World War Two South Africa’ in Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, March 2005. 2 S. Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’ in S. Hall, D. Held, T McGrew (eds.), Modernity and Its Future (London, Polity Press, 1993), p. 277. 3 For an overview of studies on South African masculinities see R. Morrell, ‘Introduction’ in R. Morrell, Changing Men in Southern Africa, pp. 6-18. 4 A. McRobbie & J., Garber, “Girls and Subcultures” in Gelder, K & Thornton, S, The Subcultures Reader (London, Routledge, 1997), p. 115. 5 M. Brake, The Sociology of Youth Culture, (London, Routledge & Paul, 1979), p. 141. 6 C. Glaser, ‘Anti-social Bandits: Juvenile Delinquency and the Tsotsi Youth Gang Subculture on the Witwatersrand, 1935-1960’, PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1990, p. 164. 7 Mike Malony, interview, 18/03/1998. 8 Isa Bucholtz, telephonic interview, 28/08/1997. 9 This only occurred in certain instances, Jane, interview, 03/09/1995. 10 McRobbie and Garber, ‘Girls and Subcultures’ in Gelder and Thornton, The Subcultures Reader, p. 116. 11 Ibid., p. 115. 12 Isa Bucholz, interview, telephonic interview, 1997. 13 Jane, interview, 1995. 14 Els de Niet, interview, Kempton Park, 1997. 15 Prop, interview, Kempton Park, 1997. 16 Mike Malony, interview, 1998. 17 NASA (National Archives of South Africa), VWN (Department of Social Welfare), 747, SW109, vol. 3, letter from P.C.A. Galbraith to the Station commander Hospital Hill, Johannesburg, 11/02/1956. 18 G.K. Engelbrecht, ‘Jeugmisdaad areas en aanverwante verskynsels’, PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1964’, p. 128. 19 Ibid., p. 131. 20 NASA, VWN, SW109/4, J. D. Venter, ‘The Extent of Juvenile Crime in South Africa’, p. 47. 21 Ibid. 22 Rufus, interview, Kempton Park, 11/09/1996. 23 Terry van der Bergh, interview, Pretoria, 13/01/1998. 24 A. Tolson, The Limits of Masculinity, (Great Britain, Tavistock Publications, 1977), p.32. 25 Mike Malony, interview, 18/03/1998. 26 Andre, interview, Pretoria, 7/11/1996. 27 Terry van der Bergh, interview, Pretoria, 13/01/1998. 28 Gordon Verster, interview, Pretoria, 8/06/1997. 29 Col.N, interview, Pretoria, 24/07/97. 30 Gen van der Merwe, interview, Pretoria, 7/11/1996. 31 D. Jackson, Unmasking Masculinity, A Critical Autobiography (London, Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1990), p.188. 32 The two predominant approaches include biological (essentialist) and social construction theories. The latter category can be divided further to include discourse analysis, psychoanalytic and symbolic interactionist perspectives. It is not within the scope of this chapter to dispute these theories or to engage in a conceptual debate around 189

the term sexuality. What needs to be stressed is that for the most part these approaches view sexuality in male terms and little effort is made to account for the way in which sexual identities are constructed in particular historical conjunctures. See Tolson, The Limits of Masculinity. 33 Tolson, The Limits of Masculinity, p.18. 34 When dealing with sexuality in various discussions with former ducktails it seems that at times my age and gender affected the discussions. Some withdrew and avoided answering questions on sexuality. 35 L.F. Freed, Crime in South Africa: An Integralist Approach (Cape Town, Juta, 1963), p.75. 36 Lynton Johnson, interview, Kempton Park, 6/03/97. ‘Smooching’ in the back rows of the cinema is mentioned in most interviews and in questionnaires. 37 Mike Milroy, interview, Kempton Park, 10/04/1997. 38 Cliff Lott, questionnaire, 17/07/1997. 39 Terry van der Bergh, interview, Pretoria, 13/01/1998. 40 Bones, interview, Kempton Park, 22/04/1997. 41 Lynton Johnson, interview, Kempton Park, 6/03/97. 42 Benoni City Times en Oosrandse Nuus, ‘Sequel to Dance Fight’, 1952. 43 Benoni City Times en Oosrandse Nuus, ‘Hooligans Terrorise Dancers’, 25/02/1949. 44 Lt. General Dries van der Merwe, interview, Pretoria, 7/11/1996. 45 Freed, Crime in South Africa, p. 97. 46 Glaser, ‘The Mark of Zorro’ : Sexuality and Gender Relations in the Tsotsi Subculture on the Witwatersrand”, in African Studies, 51, 1, 1992, p.59. 47 University of the Witwatersrand, Historical and Literary Papers, A1212/ck, ‘Report on Homosexuality in Johannesburg’ by L. F. Freed, 23/2/1939. 48 Bones, interview, Kempton Park, 22/04/1997. 49 Gordon Verster, interview, Pretoria, 8/06/1997. 50 This story seems to be mythical no court records, press or medical reports were located. Nevertheless it is a memory which the interviewee told and reminisced about. 51 Rufus maintains that he was not involved in this it was something that he had heard about. 52 Z. M. Huthwaite, ‘The Problem of the ‘Ducktail’ in the Greyville Area of Durban’, MA dissertation, University of Natal, 1961, p. 91. 53 Terry van der Bergh, interview, Pretoria, 13/01/1998. 54 Ibid. 55 L. Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men (London, Virago Press, 1990), p. xi. 56 D. T. Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, (USA, Blackwell, 1993), p. 5. 57 As a category of classification ‘race’ has a longer history. R. Miles, Racism after Race Relations (London, Routledge, 1993), p. 3. 58 Ibid.; p. 5. 59 P. Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (South Africa, Hutchingson, 1987), p. 12. 60 M. Steyn, “Whiteness Just Isn’t What it Used To Be” White Identity in a Changing South Africa, (New York, State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 162. 61 A. Bonnett, White Identities: Historical and International Perspective (Essex, Prentice Hall, 2000) and M. McGuiness, ‘Geography Matters? Whiteness and Contemporary Geography’, in Area, 2000, 32.2, pp. 225-230. Melissa Steyn’s book ‘Whiteness Just Isn’t What it Used to be’ is one exception in South African studies. 62 L.M. Wong, Di(s)-secting and Dis(s)closing Whiteness: Two Tales About Psychology in K. Bhavnani & A. Phoenix (eds), Shifting Identities, Shifting Racisms (London, Sage, 190

1994), p. 136. 63Cited in D. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics and Working Class History, (New York, Verso, 1992), p. 12. 64 See for example: L. Young, Fear of the Dark: 'Race', gender and Sexuality in the Cinema' (London, Routledge, 1996). 65 R. Frankenberg, The Social Construction of White Women, Whiteness Race Matters (United Kingdom, Routledge, 1993), p. 1. 66 R. Dyer, White (London, Routledge, 1997) and T. Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (USA, Picador, 1993). 67 Ibid.; p. xxix. 68 R. Frankenburg, White Women, Race Matters: the Social Construction of Whiteness (London, Routledge, 1993), p. 1. 69 Ibid., pp. 236-7. 70 Prop, interview, Kempton Park, 11/09/1996. 71 Cited in Young, Fear of the Dark, p. 25. 72 Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black, p. 38. 73 Huthwaite, ‘The Problem of the ‘Ducktail’’, p. 120. 74 Rufus, interview, Kempton Park, 11/09/1996. 75 Shebeens were illegal bars and alcohol outlets usually run by members of the African community. 76 Gordon Verster, interview, Pretoria, 8/06/1997. 77 Hilton, interview, Rosebank, 23/07/1997. 78 Freed, Crime in SA, p. 83. 79 Engelbrecht, ‘Jeugmisdaadareas’, p. 142. 80 The Star, 23/04/1947. 81 Rand Daily Mai en Oosrandse Nuus, "Brutality near City Hall', 17/09/1947. 82 The Star, "Native died of Assault: Two Young Men Fined 25 Pounds", 18/11/55. 83 Sibley in S. Westwood & J. Williams, Imagining Cities: Scripts, Signs, Memory (London, Routledge, 1997), p. 9. 84 The Star, "Mayor calls Meeting to Discuss Race Relations", 15/08/1947. 85 Benoni City Times, 'Seven Europeans Convicted of Culpable Homicide: Sequel to Attack on Native', 23/01/1951. 86 R. E. Park, ‘The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behaviour’ in Gelder & Thornton (eds), The Subcultures Reader, p. 18. 87 Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black, p. 228. 88 Cliff Lott, questionnaire, 17/07/1997. 89 Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black, p. 82. 90 In 1964 three civil rights leaders were lynched and 1981 a black and a white man were lynched. H. Smead, Blood Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986), p. xi. 91 Victims were randomly preyed upon as was the case with lynching or even of the vigilante attacks in the mid 1980s, in South Africa, the targets were not activists or leaders of resistance and protest groups. See N. Haysom, ‘Mabangalala: The Rise of the Right Wing in South Africa’, Occasional Paper No 10, Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1986. 92 An eyewitness claimed that gangs consisting of up to twenty-five youths attacked blacks and whites in the city centre see Rand Daily Mail, "Clean Up the City's Jackals", 8/10/47. 93 H. Smead, Blood Justice, p. x 94 J.J. Royster (ed.) Southern Horrors and Other Writings: the Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 (Boston, Bedford Books, 1997), p. 3. 191

95 Frankenberg, The Social Construction of White Women, p. 55. 96 T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History (London, Macmillan, 1992), p.538. 97 Cited in T.D. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975), p. 198. 98 Lynton Johnson, interview, Kempton Park, 6/03/97. 99 Terry van der Bergh, interview, Pretoria, 13/01/1998. 100 A. Pred, ‘Somebody Else, Somewhere Else: Racisms, Racialised Spaces and the Popular Geographical Imagination in Sweden’ in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, (29:4, 1997), p. 389. 101 R. D. Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (New York, Vail- Ballou Press, 1990), p. 74. 102 Ibid., p. 26. 103 Ibid., p. 22. 104 Davenport, South Africa, p. 320. 105 Of the total 252 454 immigrants 129 946 were dependants. See Chapter Two, table 6. 106 Lynton Johnson, interview, Kempton Park, 6/03/1997. 107 Cited in J. Wright and C. Hamilton, Ethnicity and Political Change before 1840, in Morrell’s Political Economy and Identities in Colonial Kwa Zulu Natal: Historical and Social Perspectives (Durban, Indicator Press, 1996), p. 17. 108 Andre, interview, Pretoria, 7/11/1997. More research is needed to establish which occupations immigrants engaged in after their arrival. Statistically, 51.4 per cent of immigrants were dependants. See I.J. Donsky, ‘Aspects of the Immigration of Europeans to South Africa, 1946-1970’, MA dissertation, Rand Afrikaans Universiteit, 1989, p. 77. 109 Mike Malony, interview, Kempton Park, 12/06/1997. 110 Gangs identified as Lebanese retained an ethnically exclusive and competitive culture. This requires further research. 111 Lynton Johnson, interview, Kempton Park, 6/03/1997 112 Fred, interview, Jet Park, 11/09/1996. 113 Max Villani, interview, Kempton Park, 14/11/1996 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid. 116 Max Villani, interview, Kempton Park, 14/11/1996. 117 Lynton, Johnson, interview, Kempton Park, 118 Prop, interview, Jet Park, 11/09/1996. 119 Alba, Ethnic Identity, p. 84. 120 Slang was obtained from interviews, press cuttings and from L.F. Freed, Crime in South Africa. 121 S. Hall, The Question of Cultural Identity’ in The Polity Reader in Cultural Theory (London, Polity Press, 1994), p. 122. 122 A. Mbembe, ‘Provisional Notes on the Postcolony’, Africa, 62 (1): 3-37, 1992, p. 5 cited in R. Werbner, ‘Introduction: Multiple Identities, plural arenas’ in R. Werbner & T. Ranger (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa (London/New Jersey, Zed Books Ltd, 1996), p. 1. 123 Brake, Sociology of Youth Culture, p. 166.