Home History 322 lecture list Wallace G. Mills Hist. 322 13 White workers, Poor Whites and the Colour Bar

White Workers and Poor Whites

- the S. African War helped to expose conflicts and worsen labour relations with white miners and other skilled workers. At the same time, the war greatly speeded up the process of growing landlessness and migration of Afrikaners from the countryside into the urban areas; most had little education and few skills and this produced the ‘poor white’ problem. Both trends had profound effects on the history of South Africa in the 20th C. Increasingly, from the 1920s, the two trends tended to converge in a number of aspects. We shall deal with the skilled workers, most of whom were English-speaking, first.

White workers
 - there was great pressure on mining companies to keep costs low. Partly this was normal greed as return on investments tended to be high and there were high dividend payouts. However, gold mining in S. Africa was always capital-intensive (high capital costs for deep mines, large crushing machines and complex chemistry in cyanide process for extracting the ore); as well, gold in the ore has always been at fairly low concentrations. Because the capital costs are not avoidable, it has always been necessary to keep labour costs as low as possible. Any period of inflation or a drop in the price of gold created a squeeze on the mining companies.

- some mining jobs are very skilled—drilling and blasting as well as engineering as there is great need to ensure that mined areas are propped up adequately to prevent cave-ins.

- most of the skilled miners came from Britain and Europe; in South Africa, they had always been paid very high wages, much higher than pay for comparable work in Britain and Europe. However, African labour wages, with migrant labour and the contract system, were very low in comparison (1/6 to 1/8 of white wages). Thus, one major way to lower labour costs would be to lower the ratio of whites to Africans—to replace whites with African workers.

- naturally, white miners were not pleased with efforts to do this and the first decades of the 20th C saw this struggle between capital and white labour become increasingly violent.
Chinese Contract Labour (‘Coolies’)
- as the war loomed in 1899, there was a mass exodus of labour, both white and black (although some African mine workers were forced by the SAR government to work digging and building fortifications around the cities). All mines were shut down during the war.

- with the end of the war in 1902, Milner and his administration (dubbed ‘the kindergarten’) were anxious, indeed desperate, to get the mines back operating as quickly as possible as his government needed the revenues:
  1. the public in Britain were shocked and fed up with the costs of the war;
  2. Milner knew that he had only a short time to implement the changes (including anglicization policies) that would integrate the republics into the empire.
- white miners began to gravitate back rather quickly; most had simply moved their families to the British colonies. They had either joined the military forces or had found employment in ancillary activities related to the war. With the end of the war, most were anxious to get back to work.

- however, African workers were much slower to return. They had been dismissed abruptly (receiving no assistance such as many whites had received) and many were mistreated or had great difficulty getting home.

- this was the background for the importation of several thousand Chinese labourers on contract. While it did help to get some of the mines into operation again, the Chinese became a political disaster and nightmare.
- eventually, the campaign was so successful that Milner’s Administration was ordered to stop all further contracts; all Chinese workers in S. Africa were to have their existing contacts completed; then they were to be repatriated and removed from S. Africa. In the meantime, the Chinese were to be kept (to all intents and purposes, imprisoned) in mining compounds until the expiry of their contracts. While a few Chinese did manage to escape and even to remain in S. Africa (there were small numbers of Chinese from earlier periods who tried to help), most were in fact repatriated.
Trade Unions and activities
 - in order to bring the small trade unions together, a Witwatersrand Trade and Labour Council was formed in 1902. Later, a Transvaal Federation of Trades was formed in 1911.

- in 1912, a Trade Union Congress was held in Cape Town to organise unionists throughout the Union of S. Africa. In the Transvaal, unionists (most of whom were British) insisted on excluding non-Europeans; however, in the Cape, Coloureds were allowed to join. Transvaal unionists demanded segregation of Whites and blacks. [Exclusion tactics were also used widely by white trade unionists in the northern United States and Canada well into the 20th C.]
Rand Strikes
 - a series of strikes, which became increasingly violent, began in 1907. In 1913, there was another Rand strike which required British imperial troops to put it down. Smuts had been a virtual prisoner of the strikers and had made a number of promises to them.
- the strikers were reinstated and a judicial inquiry was set up; the inquiry reported that a number of the strikers’ grievances were legitimate.

- the unions of white miners were recognised and machinery was established to deal with future labour disputes.

- other bodies were appointed to examine other issues, such as the 8-hour day, wages, cost of living, miners’ health and the problem of silicosis (black lung). Fairly early, compensation programmes were established for white miners suffering from silicosis and other respiratory diseases. [Decades went by before anything similar was offered to African miners; most Africans were migrants who worked only for specific terms and not continuously. However, many returned for several contract periods so they too began to suffer from the accumulated effects.]

Natal Coal Strike
- in 1913, a strike began in Natal coal mines, and by Jan. 1914, this had become a general strike. This time the government reacted very strongly; it declared martial law and brought in thousands of troops to suppress it. Smuts acted very highhandedly and ordered the illegal deportation of 9 union strike leaders to Britain.

- the government went on to pass a Riotous Assemblies Act and a Criminal Law Amendment Act which gave the government and officials wide powers to prohibit meetings, to arrest leaders and speakers if they deemed these to endanger the peace. [The tendency to give government officials wide discretionary powers was not something started by the post-1948 National Party government, even if the latter carried the tendency to extreme lengths.] Legislation also prohibited compulsion to join unions or to induce workers in public services to break contracts (i.e., go on strike)—i. e., this was intended to prevent general strikes.

- however, the government did pass some remedial legislation and increased compensation for white victims of silicosis as well as compensation for all workers injured on the job.
Rand Strike or Rebellion 1922
 - although things were fairly quiet during the war, after 1918 all the problems returned in spades. Inflation during the war had sent costs, wages, etc much higher and the post-war depression did not bring them back down to prewar levels. Then the drive to return currencies to a gold standard had the effect of lowering both the real and the relative price of gold.

- as a result, the mining companies were attempting both to lower wages and to reduce the ratio of white workers to African workers. Remember too that the 1920s was the period of a major ‘red’ scare (in Canada, the federal government used Mounties on horseback like Cossacks to suppress the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919).

- Smuts tended to see things from the employers’ point of view. As prime minister, he took strong measures in reacting to the Rand strike of 1922, which he treated as Bolshevism. He sent troops to suppress the strike and there was shooting in the streets for 3 or 4 days with a significant number of casualties.

- these actions alienated miners and other white workers; they supported the Labour Party which called for ‘white labour’ or ‘civilised labour’ policies. They wanted protection for white workers and were calling for ‘colour bar’ provisions to be enforced by law; they had been attempting to get these up to this point by collective bargaining.
[The term ‘colour bar’ refers to legal restrictions which explicitly discriminate by reserving jobs and occupations on the basis of colour or ‘race’. The reserved jobs and occupations can be held only by persons of the designated colour or ‘race’, usually whites.]
- these concerns fitted very nicely with the concerns of the National Party led by Gen. Hertzog about poor whites, most of whom were Afrikaners. Instituting a colour bar was the basis for a coalition of the National and Labour Parties to create the Pact Government 1924-28. Also, successive governments sought to solve the ‘poor white’ problem by raising the education levels so that increasingly the children were enbled to move into skilled jobs and occupations and thus part of the trade union movement.
Wage disparities
 - the situation was glaring: per capita GNP was very low. Yet wages showed enormous variation. Whites in large cities were paid at a level comparable to (even higher in some cases) those in the US, Canada and Australia where per capita GNP were very much higher.

- wages and income in small towns and in the country were much lower, even for whites. Coloureds and Indians, even when skilled tradesmen, were paid substantially lower wages than whites. Finally, African wages were extremely low.

- in other words, the wages of a few, privileged whites were made inordinately high by underpaying most other members of society, most egregiously in regard to African workers.

- these disparities were entrenched and protected by law; apartheid was a vast attempt to buttress them and deepen them. Only now since the transition to majority rule are the disparities beginning to be addressed and the hope is that they can eventually be eliminated. However, the problem was built up over 70-80 years and resolving it cannot be done overnight.

- this fact, that white workers in S. Africa demanded these disparities, segregation and the colour bar, has been a source of immense difficulty for Marxist scholars. In their desire to place all the blame for segregation and later apartheid on the shoulders of the capitalists, they have frequently tied themselves into knots. The theory says that all workers’ interests are similar; thus, they should be cooperating. As a result, the marxists come up with convoluted explanations of how the capitalists manage to mislead white workers and use divide and conquer tactics to put white workers and African workers at loggerheads. The presumption is that white workers would never be guilty of racism and prejudice on their own so there must be some other explanation.

- certainly, white workers tended to perceive that their interests were in direct conflict with those of Africans and there can be no doubt that employers (capitalists) used or tried to use this. But did the capitalists create the perceptions in white workers who were not capable or likely to develop them on their own? It is really far-fetched to argue so.

- furthermore, this requires explaining away the fact that capitalists opposed the colour bar and it was white workers who used their political power to get it implemented.
Interpretations of apartheid
 - a similar problem arose with regard to interpretations of apartheid and its implementation. The marxists insisted that it was driven almost entirely by ‘capitalism’, thus discounting the effects of nationalism and racism as inherent forces in their own right (that is, marxists tend to reduce ideas to being tools of manipulation being exploited by capitalists and their lackeys; everything is, according to them, determined by the so-called ‘objective facts’ of economic forces and relationships. Ideas, such as nationalism and racism, are not ‘objective facts’ and cannot determine behaviour on their own.)

- it is true that Afrikaner nationalists had been concerned to promote the advancement of Afrikaners in business, even during the 1920s and 30s. In power after 1948, they were able to do much more: government contracts could be directed to Afrikaner owned/managed businesses; the large number of government owned corporations came to be staffed overwhelmingly by Afrikaner managers. However, this seems to me to be a case where political power was used to take over and build control over capitalism rather than the other way around.

- even more, this marxist interpretation has to ignore the fact that business tended to oppose apartheid. Harry Oppenheimer was a long time opponent and financed the Progressive Party for many years. Helen Suzman represented a very exclusive area in Johannesburg where the capitalists lived! It is true that most capitalists were persuaded to live with apartheid by a combination of carrot and stick policies. As a stick, the government could use its clout in the economy and its regulatory functions to disadvantage companies that failed to get into line. With its massive pass laws and systems of permits under influx control, the government had control of much of the African labour supply. However, as a carrot, the government offered employers very cheap African labour by depressing African wages. Throughout the 1950s and early 60s, nominal African wages remained virtually unchanged; this meant that with inflation, real African wages were in fact declining. Marxist scholars made much of this fact as evidence that capitalists were behind apartheid and driving its implementation.

- however, a very interesting event took place in the early 1960s. By that point and partly as a result of government policies, secondary manufacturing had grown considerably. However, much of this manufacturing was of cheaper textiles and goods. Whites preferred better quality and luxury goods for their consumption and the real market for many of these S. African products were the other ethnic groups. In other words, the other peoples, especially Africans, were becoming important not just as workers but also as consumers. But to become bigger consumers, Africans needed more income—ergo, higher wages. Working through the Chamber of Commerce, business proposed that all business employers raise wages together. The government was strongly opposed to this and in the end the increases were not very large. Why was the government so opposed? Obviously, the situation for gold was a big factor. The price was fixed at US $36 an ounce (this fixing of the price of gold by the United States in the 1930s was abandoned only in the early 1970s; since then it has been allowed to float); any increase in African wages which increased costs would result in some marginal mines becoming uneconomic. With worldwide condemnation growing, the S. African government relied on the gold to maintain its economic position and to provide a positive balance of payments. However, it has also been suggested that it had other psychological reasons—the desire to maintain absolute dominance. Also, keeping African wages low was a way of maintaining availability of servants for larger numbers of Afrikaner working class whites (actually, all whites).

- later, by the 1970s, capitalism began to experience even more dissatisfaction with apartheid. As a result of the growth in the economy, there began to be a growing shortage of skilled workers. Most of these skilled jobs had been reserved for whites, either through legislation of the colour bar or through trade unions (apprenticeships necessary for accreditation in many skilled jobs were controlled by white trade unions). However, there were no longer enough whites to go around. Thus, businessmen (including Afrikaner businessmen) began to exert growing pressure for change. In the event, for another 10 years or so, the government raised rather than removed the colour bar, but this was not at the behest of the capitalists who argued that the colour bar should be removed entirely.
Trade union reactions 1970s
 - with the growing pressures for change, some trade unionists recognized that the colour bar was likely going to come down and that the prohibition on trade unions among Africans was likely going to end. They argued that it would be better to bring non-whites into the whites only trade unions; they hoped that in this way the whites would retain some control rather than be left behind entirely. This, of course, required changes in the law, but the government was still unwilling to admit that its apartheid policies were a failure and doomed.

- in any case, the change was too slow or Africans were no longer willing to play second fiddle to white trade unionists. They began to form African trade unions and eventually, the government was forced to deal with and recognize them.

- African trade unions went on to form the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) which developed into a powerhouse during the 1980s:
- COSATU has close ties with the ANC and supports the ANC in elections, but has remained independent. In the period since the transitional government took over, it has criticized and even clashed with the ANC dominated government on some issues affecting African workers.
Poor Whites
 - we need to look at some to the after effects of the S. African War. Actually, the war, for the most part, speeded up problems and trends that were already visible before the war rather than causing them.
Migration of whites, especially poor whites, to cities
- landlessness, that recurring problem from the 18th C, had reemerged in the republics by the 1880s. The instinctive reaction was to trek further; several attempts were made to move into areas in Bechuanaland and even to organise large treks such as had been launched during the period of the Great Trek. Most of these had been stopped as a result of pressure exerted by Rhodes and the British government. When the BSA Co. took over the Rhodesias (Zambia and Zimbabwe), that had in fact cut off that possibility. However, Afrikaners made up a significant portion of the Rhodes’ Pioneer Column and the subsequent white settler population of Southern Rhodesia, but most had come from the Cape.

- some of the landless whites also began an urban migration to the Rand very early. They had great difficulties because they were poorly educated and had few skills. Thus, they had little except their white skins to differentiate them from Africans. As the government of the SAR expanded, it tried to help them. Thus, some were employed in the ZAR Police (ZARPs as they were known). Many of these had shown great susceptibility to corruption. Other Afrikaners had plunged even deeper into the seedy side of city cesspools as henchmen for pub keepers and brothel-keepers.
[The official name for the northern republic was Dutch—Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek; in Afrikaans, it is Suid-Afrikaanse Republiek which makes the acronym the same as in English—SAR.]
- this urban migration was in fact a source of great complaint and concern about the emergence of a modern Sodom and Gomorrah in the SAR; they felt that too many Afrikaners were being corrupted. Of course, this is a traditional reaction of agrarians to cities. However, this concern was a significant factor behind the demand that no concessions should be made to uitlanders—if their complaints were not resolved, maybe the foreigners would go away and life would return to the way it had been.

- in the 1890s, there had been legislation and programs to get Afrikaners to stay on or to return to the land. Also, there was a program to provide Afrikaners with building lots in the city—‘burger right erven’ (i.e., all burgers [male citizens] had the right to a building lot).

- the war greatly speeded up the above processes. All the disruptions, especially the farm burnings, had cut landless whites loose from the land. The loans and reconstruction grants did little or nothing for them.

- the destruction speeded up the impoverishment of other marginal farming families. Economic development had already started the process as it was ‘raising the bar’ as far as standards of living were concerned. Much of the old trekboer way of life had allowed a high degree of self-sufficiency; they did not need to buy very much and therefore it didn’t matter that they did not have much income. The new standards of living (better education, better houses, pianos and other more formal furniture, etc.) required a substantial income. While the economic development and the growth of cities provided economic opportunities and markets, taking advantage often required more investment. Also, many farms did not allow the production of marketable produce on a large enough scale. Those who could not keep up by generating much larger incomes were undergoing a relative impoverishment and being left behind. Now, even the ownership of land was not sufficient to maintain one’s status above that of ‘poor white’; it was necessary to maintain higher, ‘civilised’ standards of living. Wartime inflation added to costs further.

- marginal farmers might have struggled on and succumbed more slowly, but the farm burnings had destroyed their viability. Many of these families used the grants and loans to try to return to the land, but more and more subsequently gave up the struggle and migrated also.
- in addition, farming may have lost much of its appeal (“How do you get them back on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?”). Increasing numbers found it preferable and probably more profitable to lease their land (either for rent or for a share of the crop—‘squatting’ as it was called in South Africa) to African farmers. As we shall see, trying to stop this trend was a major factor behind the 1913 Land Act.
 - the migration became a virtual flood. With little education and few skills, these people were not in a good position. They were competing with Africans who were forced to accept wages only 1/6 or 1/8 of what whites needed to be paid if the whites were to maintain the new ‘white’ or ‘civilised’ standards of living. They would not perform menial and physical labour because it was ‘Kaffir work’. As these poor whites migrated to the cities, especially Johannesburg, they were forced to live in slums and many preferred to beg rather than do ‘Kaffir work’. By the 1920s, there were tens of thousands of these people. The effects and ramifications of poor whites cannot be exaggerated.

- as we shall discuss later, Africans were being subjected to similar forces and pressures. While most of the miners were migrant workers, growing numbers of Africans were moving to the cities where they too congregated in slums, often close to white slums on the periphery of the cities.

- most of the poor whites were Afrikaners and there was growing concern among Afrikaner nationalists in particular about how the poor whites would be affected by urbanisation and the competition with Africans. There was a great fear that without great social and economic differences and distances, whites and blacks would begin to integrate socially and eventually sexually. The poor Afrikaners would lose their culture and the Afrikaner nation might well disappear as a result of this haemorrhaging. Thus, much of the political history of S. Africa in the 20th C can be seen as efforts to maintain and increase the distances, socially, economically and physically from Africans and other non-whites by raising the standards of living and status of the poorer whites. These efforts had two major prongs.
1. Segregation and the ‘Colour Bar’
 - in the Cape Colony in the 19th C, differences in wealth had been sufficient for most purposes in maintaining separation so laws had not been thought necessary. Now, more explicit segregation policies and laws began to be implemented in the 1920s; to a considerable extent, apartheid and the Group Areas Act after 1948 were merely taking these segregation policies to their logical and extreme conclusion.

- the implementation of the ‘colour bar’ laws was an attempt to ensure that whites got jobs and incomes that would allow them to at least meet minimum ‘white’ standards of living. The government could exercise direct control in its own employment and passed laws to ensure this. Not only did this apply to the government bureaucracy, but to the post office (which controlled telephones) and the railways, which were government owned. After World War 2, government ownership expanded to a number of other industries, including oil from coal and steel industries.

- indirect means were often used to achieve the same objectives in the private sector. As noted earlier, white miners tried to use collective bargaining to ensure that skilled jobs were reserved for them and that a fixed ratio of white workers to Black workers had to be employed. Laws began to enforce this. Sometimes, it was done on the basis of ‘safety’ laws (for example, only whites could handle explosives). The specific ratios were not necessarily written into law but were policy; government could use various means to get compliance (firms which did not comply might never be given government contracts, enforcement of tax laws could be tougher on firms not complying, etc.). White trade unions were also used. Laws required that in order to practice some trades individuals had to have completed apprenticeship programs and be certified; then, white trade unions were given control of the apprenticeship and certification programs.
2. Keeping the Platteland White and Afrikaner
 - this involved keeping as many Afrikaners as possible on the land as farmers and providing these farm families with adequate income. The kind of Afrikaner nationalism which triumphed in the 20th C held that Afrikaners were an agrarian people; this was part of their uniqueness and identity. Thus, preserving the agrarian character of the ‘Afrikaner nation’ became a high priority. The beswarting (literally, ‘blackening’) of the white farming areas (platteland) as whites left and Africans took over was bemoaned as a looming catastrophe. As a result, there was an unending torrent of laws, policies and programs:
- the 1913 Land Act was merely one of the early laws, designed to assist white farmers by eliminating African competitors, providing ample cheap labour and ending ‘squatters’ (African cash tenants and sharecroppers). We shall discuss this act in detail in a later lecture.
[Recently, the plight of ‘poor whites’ has again become an issue in South Africa; the argument is that with the end of apartheid, poor whites are once again exposed and impoverished.]
Afrikaner Nationalism and the South African War
- as was noted in an earlier lecture, Afrikaner nationalism was growing, but was still embryonic prior to the Jameson Raid and the South African War. The war went much further in consolidating nationalist identity among Afrikaners. Overwhelmingly, Afrikaners in the Cape opposed the war and several thousands actually joined the Boer forces in fighting the British. Politics were polarised in the Cape, but some English speaking politicians joined with the Bond (even a few Afrikaners continued to support Rhodes and the Progressive Party) so politics in the Cape Colony never became divided entirely along ethnic lines.

- the war added greatly to the sense of persecution, and as we noted earlier, a sense of persecution feeds nationalism. Just as the war was about to begin, the SAR government (Smuts is given most of the credit for drawing it up) published A Century of Wrongs; it went back and rehearsed all the grievances and wrongs allegedly perpetrated by the British against Afrikaners from the arrival of the British in S. Africa in the 1790s.

- more were added during the war:
- however, the extreme nationalism which became dominant by 1948 took time to evolve and develop. Many Afrikaners were caught up in the generosity and concessions made at the peace settlement and after. Louis Botha and Jan Smuts especially typify this approach.
- in a situation of colonial autonomy, they could reconcile themselves to being part of the British Empire; Smuts even came to be called ‘Handyman of the Empire’ (although when the term was used by many Afrikaners it was not a compliment). He became commander of British forces for a time in the East African campaign; he became a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and an important contributor to the League of Nations idea (Woodrow Wilson is usually given most of the credit, but Smuts was chairman of a subcommittee of the Imperial War Cabinet which worked on the idea from 1917 on).

- with the creation of the Union, such Afrikaners adopted the idea of a partnership of the whites of S. Africa in a common bilingual white S. African identity. In the Transvaal, they set up bilingual schools for whites as a means of building and consolidating this identity. Botha and Smuts felt that the British threat had largely passed or was at least diminishing as Britain progressively withdrew from South Africa and Afrikaners were the majority of the white (and dominant) population.
Hertzog’s Nationalism
 - other Afrikaners were unhappy about the Botha/Smuts approach and became especially concerned about the Afrikaans language and culture. They did not agree that the threat was ended; the domination of mining, industry and economic life by non-Afrikaners was virtually complete as Afrikaners were almost absent from these areas.

- moreover, English language and culture could draw overwhelming support from abroad; Afrikaans language and culture was restricted to a small, poor population in S. Africa and was at a severe disadvantage in competitive terms. In a free market, they believed that Afrikaans would lose out. Parents would want their children to get ahead in business and the professions so would choose English language education. Books, literature and culture of all sorts would flood in from abroad and Afrikaans could not compete. [Interestingly, this same concern was a major reason why the National Party government refused for so long to introduce television to South Africa.]

- even before the Union, Gen. Hertzog and others in the OFS had been concerned about education even though anglicization pressures were much less than anywhere else in S. Africa. Education in fact provided the issue which led to the split; Hertzog and a number of followers formed the National Party in 1913-14.

- in the light of later developments, Hertzog and his followers too seem relatively moderate. In talking about the dangers of anglicization, Hertzog was perceived to be anti-British and opposed to whites of non-Afrikaner background.

- Hertzog felt that the long-term outcome of bilingualism could be a merging of the white groups into one; he was not opposed to this outcome (unlike Malan and his followers in the 1930s and after). However, he believed that a laisser-faire approach would mean that the united group would be largely English, not Afrikaans. Therefore, he wanted to ensure that Afrikaans was preserved and would continue into the future. In other words, any merger should be towards Afrikaans; alternately, both languages would continue, but with both communities oriented to S. Africa.
- in the 1920s, the issue of education and bilingualism was fought mainly on the provincial level (where education responsibility lay) in the Transvaal. Unlike the Canadian federation where provinces are sovereign in their areas of jurisdiction, provinces in South Africa were subordinate and the head of the provincial government administration (the Provincial Administrator) was appointed by the Union cabinet. Thus, once the National/Labour Pact government came to power in 1924, Hertzog got to appoint the administrator. At the same time, National Party candidates got elected to the Provincial Council. They then pushed for and established unilingual schools (English and Afrikaans) for white children; they also passed laws which forced the children of Afrikaner parents to go to Afrikaans schools, regardless of what their parents might want. [There are a lot of similarities with the concerns and actions of Québec nationalists regarding education in the last 3 decades— Bill 101, etc.]
 - on the question of republicanism and remaining in the British Empire, Hertzog and his followers were willing to compromise. Hertzog did not join those who rebelled in 1914, but he did argue that South Africa should not participate in Britain’s war.
- he did play a role in the 1920s in defining dominion status and autonomy—the Statute of Westminster in 1931. He accepted this status as guaranteeing everything that S. Africa needed and thus full independence from the British Empire was not necessary. However, he did want to build up the South African identity by getting a South African flag and national anthem; as a compromise, the Union Jack along with the flags of the 2 Boer republics were retained in miniature in the centre of the S. African flag and God Save the King was retained as a co-anthem.
 - by about 1930, Hertzog thought that he had achieved most of his aims. Certainly, he began to talk about a common South African identity (including whites only, of course) and to use Afrikaner in the literal sense of ‘African’, meaning any white who was born in and who regarded South Africa as his/her home. Afrikaner nationalists noted that English speaking whites referred to Britain not only as ‘the mother country’ but also as ‘home’; Afrikaners had no home but South Africa. [Hertzog’s nationalism in a number of respects is similar to that of Henri Bourassa in early 20th C Canada.]

- Hertzog thought, not without justification, that most other whites would think pretty much like Afrikaners on racial issues.

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