Student Number : 8546313 -
PhD thesis -
School of Arts -
Faculty of Humanites / This thesis interrogates the extent to which the façades of, and
decorative programmes in, selected South African public and
commercial buildings erected during the decade 1930 – 40 may be
understood as important indexes of the various ideological, social and historical
concerns underpinning the construction of an imaginary of national belonging
during this period. In the context of rapid urbanisation, burgeoning
industrialisation, and rampant capitalism that characterise the period, issues of
nationalism and political power are brought into sharp relief, with three political
agendas competing for dominance: Afrikaner nationalism at one extreme and
British imperialism at the other, with, from 1933 to the end of the decade, the
insipid ‘South Africa First’ nationalism of the Smuts-Hertzog ‘fusion’ government
occupying a highly contested space somewhere between the two. I argue in this
thesis that the rhetoric of ‘unity in diversity’ that informs the fusion politics of
the 1930s, and particularly its expression in the decorative programmes of public
buildings provides for a more nuanced reading of the political and cultural
landscape of 1930s South Africa than has been the case to date, where the focus
has tended towards deconstructing the cultural nationalism of the 1930s in terms
of the rise of Afrikaner nationalism. Moreover, it also serves as a compelling
reference point against which to assess contemporary South African attempts to
re-narrate notions of nationhood, and the extent to which difficult arguments
around ethnicity, autochthony, and the construction of imaginary new ‘publics’
are articulated in post-apartheid public architecture.
Chapter 1 is a review of the literature that informs this thesis; both as regards
the art historical discourse on South African inter-World War art and
architecture, as well as theoretical issues arising from writing on nationalism,
national identity, and the role that art and architecture plays in evolving the
nation code. In Chapters 2 and 3, I consider the ways in which the notions of
identity arising from fusion politics are played out in the decorative programmes of two significant public buildings, South Africa House in London (1933) in
Chapter 2 and the Pretoria City Hall (1935) in Chapter 3. I argue that both
these buildings are classic examples of the manifestation in architectural terms
of the hybrid identity being forged by the centrist ‘South Africa first’ ideologues,
in so far as their decorative programmes express an uncomfortable alliance
between the entrenched values of British imperialism and a burgeoning
Afrikaner nationalism.
In Chapter 4, I contrast the decorative programme of the headquarters of the
new Afrikaner insurance companies SANTAM and SANLAM (1932) with that of
the new corporate headquarters of the Commercial Union Assurance Company
(1932), a British owned firm that had had a presence in Cape Town since 1863.
The differences in effect of the decorative programmes of these two buildings
serve to illuminate the extent of the ideological posturing of volkskapitalisme and
its construction of a ‘modern African/Afrikaner’ identity within the imperialist
heartland of Cape Town. These debates are brought into sharp relief by the third
example discussed in this chapter, the Old Mutual building (1940), the decorative
programme of which effectively conflates these concerns with modernity and
nationalism in order to construct a hybrid ‘South Africanism’ that neatly elides
Boer and Brit imaginings.
In conclusion, I show in Chapter 5 how the post-apartheid South African
situation presents an interesting case study in terms of constructing an
imaginary of national belonging rooted in similar notions of ‘unity in diversity’.
Examples here include important national architectural commissions like the
legislature buildings for the newly constituted provinces of Mpumalanga (1999)
and the Northern Cape (2003), as well as the new Constitutional Court in
Johannesburg (2004). In this chapter, I interrogate these debates, and conclude
by pointing to parallels with the case studies from the 1930s. The post-1994
examples in question have been widely celebrated as exemplary of a new and
appropriate response to the challenges of public building in democratic South
Africa. I suggest, however, that the lessons of the 1930s should serve as a
reminder that the ostensible dichotomy between ‘good’ (civic) and ‘bad’ (ethnic)
nationalism is perhaps not as natural and obvious as it may appear, and that
both are equally problematic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/2014 |
| Date | 15 February 2007 |
| Creators | Freschi, Federico |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 51337 bytes, 53373545 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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