The Black Peril and Miscegenation: The Regulation of Inter-racial Sexual Relations in Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1933

Posted in Africa, Canada, Dissertations, History, Law on 2012-05-26 15:33Z by Steven

The Black Peril and Miscegenation: The Regulation of Inter-racial Sexual Relations in Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1933

McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
September 1991
140 Pages

Katherine Gombay

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree  of M.A.

For over forty years, at the turn of this century, the white settlers of Southern Rhodesia devoted considerable energy to the discussion and the regulation of inter-racial sexual relations. The settlers’ worries about maintaining their position in power were expressed, in part, in the periodic outbreaks of ‘black peril’ hysteria, a term which well-captures white fears about the threat that African men were thought to represent to white women. Although voluntary sexual encounters between white women and black men were prohibited from 1903 onwards, no such prohibition existed for white men in their relations with black women. The white women made several attempts to have legislation passed prohibiting such liasons, and failed largely because in doing so they were perceived to be challenging the authority of the white men. The regulation of interracial sexual intercourse thus served to reinforce the white male domination of Rhodesian society.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1—Setting the Scene: The White Settlement of Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1903.
  • Chapter 2—1903-1916: The Black Peril and the Immorality Acts.
  • Chapter 3—The Miscegenation Debates, 1916 -1930.
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography

Read the entire thesis here.

Tags: , , , ,

Islands and autochthons: Coloureds, space and belonging in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe (Part 1)

Posted in Africa, Anthropology, Articles, Media Archive, Social Science on 2011-12-21 02:10Z by Steven

Islands and autochthons: Coloureds, space and belonging in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe (Part 1)

Journal of Social Archaeology
Volume 4, Number 3 (October 2004)
pages 405-426
DOI: 10.1177/1469605304046423

Julia Katherine Seirlis
Department of Anthropology
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

This article, the first in a two-part series, examines the ramifications of the complex relationships between race and space for definitions of the nation and national identity in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe. Most generally, the workings of race and space helped polarize Rhodesia and Zimbabwe between what was set up as ‘white’ and ‘black’, and limit the struggle for power and claims on belonging to those two poles. Racial identity was inscribed into spatial sensibilities and organization so that white space (the city) functioned as a series of islands and black space (the countryside) activated organic assertions of autochthony. More specifically, race and space informed the creation of an intermediate racial category, ‘Coloured’, with no substantive claim to a ‘real’ or ‘full’ identity and with no authoritative claim to the physical soil of the country.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , , , , ,

‘The rivers of Zimbabwe will run red with blood’: Enoch Powell and the Post-Imperial Nostalgia of the Monday Club

Posted in Africa, Articles, History, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United Kingdom on 2011-11-15 20:34Z by Steven

‘The rivers of Zimbabwe will run red with blood’: Enoch Powell and the Post-Imperial Nostalgia of the Monday Club

Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume 37, Issue 4 (December 2011)
pages 731-745
DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2011.613691

Daniel McNeil, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
Newcastle University, United Kingdom

In his influential account of post-colonial melancholia, Paul Gilroy suggests that contemporary reports of violence in Southern Africa reveal Britain’s inability to work through its grim history of imperialism and colonialism. Gilroy’s study links recent discussions of tragic Southern African themes to Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968. However, it does not mention Powell’s critique of Britain’s ‘post-imperial nostalgia’ in a speech about Rhodesia later that year. This is not entirely surprising – the Conservative Central Office did not disseminate Powell’s call for Britons to move beyond sentimental attachment to ‘kith and kin’ in Rhodesia, and Rhodesian sympathisers in the Conservative Monday Club attempted to work around Powell’s refusal to support the ‘White Commonwealth’. Moreover, Powell opposed non-white ‘communalism’ whether he was emphasising the importance of the British Empire to English identity or challenging the ‘harmful myth’ of empire as an English nationalist. Consequently, this article uses archival material relating to the Monday Club and the Rhodesian Ministry of Information in order to document three of the main strands of post-colonial melancholia that apply to Powellite figures on the right who defended (white) minority rule in Rhodesia and/or demonised (non-white) minority cultures in the United Kingdom. The first main strand of post-colonial melancholia involves the belief that racial intermixture will lead to violence and economic instability. The second emphasises the importance of strong white rule to limit racial violence and industrial retardation. The third attempts to contest and then seize the position of victim, alleging one set of standards for the ‘civilised’ West and another set of standards for ‘failed, incompetent and pre-modern states.’

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , , , , , ,