Daniel Conway

The British in South Africa: Continuity or Change?

‘But what exactly do you mean by “The British in South Africa”?’ Pauline was asked on a hot summer’s afternoon in the garden of Claudia’s London house in 2010. Now in her 80s, Claudia was born in South Africa and had grown up in the province then known as Natal (now Kwazulu-Natal). Of British ancestry, she identifies as ‘white South African’, and remembers being advised by the passport office of the new National Party government of 1948 that she should relinquish her British passport if she wished to remain a South African citizen. Although she subsequently came to live in the United Kingdom for most of her adult life, she has continued to make regular visits to the house in which she had lived as a child, in the leafy suburbs of Pietermaritzburg, and still feels that she is, first and foremost, South African. She maintains good contact with her neighbours, an eclectic mixture of white South Africans, Afrikaners1, British, and mixed heritage Europeans. Many have histories of South African residence spanning several generations, while others have arrived relatively recently, due to the various assisted passage schemes of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, which encouraged and eased white immigration. ‘I’m not sure the term has any meaning anymore,’ Claudia continued. ‘We are all just “white”‘.

The British in South Africa: Conclusion

We began this book posing the question of whether Britishness is a salient identity in contemporary South Africa. Of course, Britishness, Englishness, and of course, Irish, Welsh and Scottish identities, have always been constitutive parts of whiteness in South Africa, as well as a key dynamic in defining the colonial, cultural and institutional history of the country. These identities extend beyond those who were born in the United Kingdom to their descendants and the English-speaking white community. As Dubow argues, Britishness, as an identity or set of values, could be admired and incorporated by Afrikaans-speaking whites and black South Africans, as evidenced by Nelson Mandela’s expressed admiration for English values and modes of behaviour (2009). But what of a British identity today? To what extent is it meaningful to identify a group as ‘the British in South Africa’?

Space and Place in South Africa

The final approach to the Mimbangu1 Eco-estate in Kwazulu-Natal is a good half-mile of rutted and dusty unmade road through the bush, and the small car Pauline is driving bounces along it, up to the thatched security booth and firmly locked, high-level wooden gates. A smiling guard appears, gun in holster, and laughs at the reason for the visit — ‘Why you want to research us right out here?’ — before letting her through with a friendly wave. The other side of the gate is more established: in the distance a rolling golf course stretches out over the cliffs to the dazzling blue sea in the distance, horses graze in fields with the sun on their backs, and vast colonial-style mansions, surrounded by acres of beautiful gardens, dot the landscape. Pauline drives several miles along the road flanked by a 20-foot high metal perimeter fence, topped with the ubiquitous barbed wire and security cameras, before eventually pulling in in front of her destination: a luxurious modern villa with verandas, surrounded by rolling lawns.

Narratives of Continuity and Change: British Social and Political Attitudes in South Africa

The Guardian newspaper’s South Africa correspondent, Rory Carroll (14/8/2006), published a valedictory article about his time living in the country, shortly before he moved to a different country. Carroll explained, This never really became home. Partly it was running to the airport every other week for overseas trips; partly it was being white and European; but mainly it was because South Africa was such a fraught place to live. The anxiety about crime, the crunching on racial eggshells, the juxtaposition of first-world materialism with third-world squalor — it all added up.

Landscapes of Belonging: Negotiating Britishness in South Africa

Susan had returned to Britain with her husband and young daughter in the early 1970s, but faced with an economic recession, they returned to South Africa within a few years. Now living in retirement on her own, she explained, ‘I say I am South African … I haven’t got my citizenship, and I intend doing something about it, even now at this stage in my life, because I still say, no, I’m South African.’ Asked what she meant by this statement, Susan replied that if she was watching a rugby match on the television, she would always support South Africa if they were playing against England. Susan has no desire to return to Britain, a country that she feels has changed beyond her recognition, but Daniel noticed in her home a large picture of an English country church and village and beside it a watercolour painting of that same image: ‘That’s the village I grew up in,’ said Susan. A nostalgic and personal connection remains at least, even if there is a conscious and stated disavowal of Britain.

Transnational and Translocal Identities: Settling in South Africa

Steve came to South Africa in 1981. A working-class man from the northeast of England, he had completed his apprenticeship as a builder in the mid-1970s, at a time when the United Kingdom was in the depths of recession, and work was hard tofind: ‘And I just thought, “No! I’ve got to move on!”’ Just as in the popular British TV series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet!, which featured a group of Geordie1 brickies2 who travel to Europe tofind work, Steve migrated to Germany, then to Holland, and on to the Middle East in search of employment. After making a sum of money, he returned to the UK, and then received an invitation from an old workmate — ‘in those days it was a telegram!’ — that said, ‘There’s a job going in South Africa — do you fancy it?’ He took the train down to London to take a ‘skills test’ and a medical exam, followed by a course ‘you had to do in those days to get into South Africa’, and ‘two weeks later I was on the aeroplane!’

The Landscapes of Un/belonging in South Africa

Louise came to Johannesburg in 1996, after marrying Alan, a South African man she had met through work. Although Alan was happy in England — he had left South Africa in the 1980s because of ‘all the troubles and difficulties’ — Louise, then in her mid-30s, was ready for adventure. Alan still had family in the poor white suburb to the east of Johannesburg in which he had grown up, and had even been offered his old job back by an ex-boss who missed him. So Louise persuaded him to return: ‘I said, “Come on, Alan! Let’s go and do it. Let’s go and see if we can make a go of it!” … because I wanted to find out all about South Africa and what South Africa was all about.’

The Historical, Political and Social Dynamics of British Migration to South Africa

At the age of 88, Peter sits in his immaculately ordered home in a retirement village just outside of Cape Town. Peter recalls that, shortly after the Second World War, he was offered the choice between teaching positions at an Anglican seminary in Wales or in Grahamstown, South Africa. Financial support from the South African Governor General’s Fund and the desire to try something ‘new’ and escape the harsh conditions of the British winter of 1946–1947 persuaded him and his wife to choose South Africa. They arrived four months before the victory of the National Party in 1948.