Heimat in the veld? German Afrikaners of missionary descent and their imaginings of women and home

Abstract

the depiction of Germans abroad by Stefan Manz as “extremely heterogeneous groups or individuals” is as applicable to South Africa as anywhere else. So is the apparent contradiction of self-proclaimed ‘Germanness’ alongside significant evidence of German- South Africans’ successful integration into local society. Keeping in mind, as Joan W. Scott summarises it, that identities are ascribed, embraced and rejected in complex discursive processes, and accepting the notion of culture as performance, I attempt to illustrate in this study how actors who would have been ascribed a ‘Germanness’ in South Africa in the first half of the twentieth century embodied different roles - at particular moments in time, as well as over time. I find the term “occasionalism”, coined by cultural historian Peter Burke, very productive: “on different occasions (moments, locales) or in different situations (in the presence of different people) the same person behaves in different ways.”