Not quite white? not quite black? not quite South African?: Constructions of race, nation and immigration in South Africa

Abstract

This paper will examine the development of immigration policy, legislation and practice from 1913 to 1939. It will explore how constructions of race have informed official discourses around immigration as well as their manifestation in legislation and practice. Immigration legislation is a tool used by governments of nation states to control who will be allowed to become new members of the nation. While immigrants can be seen as potential builders of the nation; they can also be seen as potential contaminators, particularly of the blood of the nation. Examining who is considered to taint the nation, the undesirables or the unwanted will be used to uncover the intersections between official ideas about race, nation and blood and the ways that they are manifested practices of control. The category of discourse and the use of discourse as an analytical tool is not unproblematic. The paper will both identify and pay attention to some of the gaps in the ways that discourse has been used to uncover processes of power and control. The paper will first clarify the way that the term discourse will be used here. It will then examine the period between 1913 and 1924 when initial attempts were made by the Union to exclude undesirable immigrants. Third, the debates leading to the implementation of the Immigration Quota Act of 1930 will be explored. Finally, the paper will examine the discussions behind the enactment of the 1937 Aliens Act. There are essentially three basic categories or types of immigration to South Africa, white, contract and clandestine. The legislation discussed here was largely directed at controlling white immigration. The paper will, therefore, focus on attempts to control the entry of white immigrants, and in particular, Jewish immigrants. Non-white immigration to South Africa has a distinct history. It was largely controlled by separate legislation or bi-lateral agreements or circumvented legal controls altogether. Because of the unique histories underlying non-white immigration, it will not be discussed here. Others have looked at immigration in this period. Bradlow (1978) presents a detailed but uncritical historical account in her thesis "Immigration to the Union 1910-1948: Policies and Attitudes". Government records from 1924 onwards were closed at the time she was writing limiting her access to the debates that took place around the introduction of the 1930 and 1937 Acts. Shain (1994) in the Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa provides a background to this paper. His analysis focuses on the creation of popular images of Jews in the print media, novels and plays. He establishes how antisemitism was woven through South African (white) culture from the early years of settlement at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He does not address to any great extent how the antisemitism of white society was expressed within the state. So, it is hoped that although this ground has been visited before this paper will present new insights as well as original material. The paper ends with an examination of the debates underlying the introduction of the 1937 Aliens Act. This Act together with the 1913 Immigrants Regulation Act has formed the basis of almost all subsequent legislation controlling the entry of aliens to South Africa. The draft Aliens Act released at the end of 1995 is again founded on the 1913 and 1937 Acts. This paper should therefore not be seen as an episode in history but a prelude or an introduction to discourses that are developing today as the nation state of South Africa is reconfigured.