The Influence of Early Apartheid Intellectualisation on Twentieth-Century Afrikaans Music Historiography by Carina Venter Submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree Masters in Musicology at the Stellenbosch University Department of Music Faculty of Humanities Supervisor: Stephanus Jacobus van Zyl Muller December 2009 The financial assistance of the Department of Labour (DoL) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the DoL. Declaration By submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the owner of the copyright thereof (unless to the extent explicitly otherwise stated) and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. December 2009 Copyright © 2009 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved 2 Acknowledgements I have come to the end of one road and the beginning of another. As I pause at the juncture of these two roads, I reflect with an immense sense of gratitude on the past two years of my life. So many individuals have played decisive roles, not only in the research that constitutes this thesis, but also in the fostering of my intellectual development, ethical sensibilities and spiritual well-being. In many different ways, each of these individuals and their views matter and have become important to me. While I am sure that the work presented here is imperfect in many ways, the generous contributions of those who accompanied me on this road have made it better than it would have been without them. My thanks goes to the National Research Foundation for two years of generous financial support. Without their support, full-time study would not have been possible. I want to thank Dalena Roux for patiently enduring my forays into musicology and for her keen insights into life, music, and in particular for the many meaningful hours spent alongside her in the company of an absorbing and commanding shared passion: the cello. I also want to thank Anneke Lamont for ably and sensitively accompanying me on numerous excursions across the vast spaces of cello repertory. Without Chris Walton, this thesis simply would not have been. I want to thank him for countless e-mails, discussions, undergraduate lectures, advice, and direction and for the important and mammoth role he played in channelling my interests towards history and musicology. Closer to my present home, I want to thank all my musicology graduate colleagues at the University of Stellenbosch. Here I have to single out Hilde Roos, Annemie Stimie and Santie De Jongh whose intellectual companionship and friendship enriched and lightened up many a demanding day. I also want to thank every participant in the weekly Thursday research seminars at the Stellenbosch music department for sharing and stimulating creative ideas and fruitful discussions. Santie De Jongh has to be thanked for always responding punctually and excellently to all of my archival or documentation queries. Perhaps more than any other individual, I am indebted to Stephanus Muller who has been my academic supervisor for the last number of years and whose overall contributions are difficult to measure. He has patiently listened to me on countless occasions, argued, directed, corrected, and led the way in a manner always characterised by astute understanding and palpable interest. I want to thank him for instilling in me a sense of scholarly and personal confidence, a love for literature, history, music and for investing precious time and energy in my intellectual honing. My parents, family and close friends have been steadfast and unwavering in their love, ardent support and sustenance. To my beloved parents and family in particular, and to my closest social companions, I want to extend my thanks for teaching me the wonderful gift of living and giving. To my parents, family and close friends, and to each of the individuals mentioned above, I dedicate this thesis. Finally, I cannot but become silent in worship before my single Rock and Refuge for blessing me in abundance. 3 Abstract This thesis attempts to understand questions of our past in the present. It is broadly premised on the assumption of complicity as an interpretive frame in which the relationship between Apartheid intellectualisation and Afrikaans music historiography can be elucidated. Its protagonists are Gerrie Eloff, Geoffrey Cronjé, H.F. Verwoerd, Piet Meyer, Jan Bouws, Rosa Nepgen and Jacques Philip Malan. In each of the four chapters, I attempt to construct metaphors, points of intersection or articulation between Apartheid intellectualisation and Afrikaans music historiography. Music is never entirely absent: for Apartheid ideologues such as Geoffrey Cronjé and Gerrie Eloff musical metaphors become ways of enunciating racial theories, for the Dutch musicologist Jan Bouws music provides entry into South Africa and its discourses, for J.P. Malan music becomes a conduit that could facilitate national goals and for Rosa Nepgen music constitutes the perfect domain for and the gestating impulse of her own often ornate national devotions. Some of the themes addressed in this thesis include the language and metaphors of Apartheid intellectualisation, discourses of paranoia, struggle, purity, contamination, the ‘Afrikanermoeder’ (‘Afrikaner mother’), the cultural language of Afrikaner nationalism and the reciprocity between cultural fecundity and dominance of the land. The final denouement comprises a positing of the Afrikaans art song ‘O Boereplaas’ and the singing soprano Afrikanermoeder who emerges as the keeper of Afrikaner blood purity, guardian of her race and prophet of its fate and future. 4 Opsomming Hierdie tesis probeer om vrae uit ons verlede in die hede te verstaan. Die aanname van komplisiteit verskaf ’n premis en interpreterende raamwerk waarbinne die verhouding tussen Apartheid-intellektualisering en Afrikaanse musiekhistoriografie belig kan word. Die protagoniste van hierdie tesis is Gerrie Eloff, Geoffrey Cronjé, H.F. Verwoerd, Piet Meyer, Jan Bouws, Rosa Nepgen en Jacques Philip Malan. In elk van die vier hoofstukke poog ek om metafore, punte van kruising of artikulasie tussen Apartheid-intellektualisering en Afrikaanse musiekhistoriografie te konstrueer. Musiek word nooit buite rekening gelaat nie: vir Apartheid-ideoloë soos Geoffrey Cronjé en Gerrie Eloff word musikale metafore maniere hoe teorieë oor ras geformuleer kan word, vir die Nederlandse musikoloog Jan Bouws verleen musiek toegang tot Suid-Afrikaanse kulturele diskoerse, vir J.P. Malan word musiek ’n kanaal waardeur nasionale doelstellings vloei en vir Rosa Nepgen verteenwoordig musiek die ideale omgewing en teelaarde vir haar eie en gereeld oordadige nasionale lofuitinge. Sommige van die temas wat in hierdie tesis aangespreek word sluit in die taal en metafore van Apartheid intellektualisering, diskoerse van paranoia, stryd, suiwerheid, kontaminasie, die Afrikanermoeder, die kulturele taal van Afrikanernasionalisme en die wederkerigheid tussen kulturele oplewing en oorheersing van Suid-Afrika. Die tesis word tot slot gevoer deur ’n besinning oor die Afrikaanse kunslied ‘O Boereplaas’ en die singende sopraan, die Afrikanermoeder, wat na vore tree as die bewaarder van Afrikaner-bloedsuiwerheid, oppasser van haar ras en die profetes van die volk se lot en toekoms. 5 Table of Contents Declaration………………………………………………………………….2 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………3 Abstract……………………………………………………………………..4 Opsomming…………………………………………………………………5 Introduction…………………………………………………………………7 Chapter 1……………………………………………………………………17 Chapter 2……………………………………………………………………53 Chapter 3……………………………………………………………………81 Chapter 4……………………………………………………………………117 Bibliography………………………………………………………………..139 6 Introduction [I] listen to Themba and scan the room again. I see that I had missed an important detail. Themba’s bags are packed. Next to the bed, ready for travel, are two suitcases and three plastic packets. He watches as I make a note. ‘I’m threatened, I’m not settled,’ he says. I write down these words. I stare at them on the page. In the last ten months there have been a few moments like this. Since April 16th 2006, when Richard was abducted by a group of men from the Cape Flats and shot in the back of the head, there has been something new and uncomfortable about the way I live in my country. Sometimes it takes a sentence, a small thing somebody else says, to explain to me what’s different (Bloom, 2009: 7). Meshed in this non-fictional account are various elements of what historian R. W. Johnson called South Africa’s Brave New World.1 Themba Jacky Koketi is a citified South African with a rural upbringing. He is in his twenties and lives in a room in an old carpet factory in Johannesburg. Water, electricity and proper sanitation are not part of his residential luxuries. Themba, without any of the social and economic securities taken for granted by South Africa’s privileged classes (still mostly white South Africans), has completed a degree in arts with a major in psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), afterwards going on to two honours degrees in psychology and social work respectively. This remarkable achievement makes of Themba an examplar of success in the brave new South Africa that came into being after the formal abrogation of Apartheid. Yet he is threatened. The reason for his unsettledness (it seems that his bags are always packed) is recorded one page earlier in the chapter: Last Monday, says Themba, there was a police raid. It was four o’clock in the morning and he was woken by shouts and banging. He went outside and found the residents kneeling on the pavement in rows. He was ordered by a large policeman to join them, and so the broken glass cut into his knees too. The policemen demanded identity books. A man with no documents was pushed into the back of a van. Two men who tried to run were shot with rubber bullets. The senior superintendent, an Afrikaner with close-cropped hair, called everyone a bastard. He stood on the pavement and shouted, ‘You fucking bastards! You're all fucking bastards!’ (2009: 6).