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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | 'The Healing Touch': The Guild of Loyal Women of South Africa, 1900-1912 |
Authors: | Van Heyningen, Elizabeth B. Merrett, Pat |
Year: | 2002 |
Periodical: | South African Historical Journal |
Issue: | 47 |
Period: | October |
Pages: | 24-50 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Great Britain |
Subjects: | colonialism Anglo-Boer wars women's organizations History and Exploration Women's Issues Ethnic and Race Relations Politics and Government organizations Historical/Biographical |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582470208671433 |
Abstract: | In February 1900 some loyalist Cape Dutch women united with English loyalists to form the Guild of Loyal Women of South Africa 'to maintain and foster the spirit of loyalty to the Queen and fidelity of the British Empire'. They seized the opportunity to engage in political debate on the grounds that women, inherently peacemakers and healers, could effect reconciliation of the races - the Dutch and the English - in a divided land. The notion of reconciliation was shaped, however, by a Cape-centred perspective: usually the Guild women thought in terms of reconciliation with their fellow colonials, the Cape rebels, rather than the republicans. The route the Guild took, reinforcing male stereotypes of the nurturing role of women as peacemakers and healers, rather than challenging them, made it possible for it to slip into the interstices of public life. The South African War was the trigger for the formation of the Guild, but it was also the product of 'fin de siècle' transitions occurring in South Africa and the Western world. By 1900 the position of women was changing rapidly. In imperial terms the most significant contribution made by the Guild was in the care of the war graves. In the long term, the Guild was too unrepresentative of South African women for it to survive long in post-Union South Africa. Its narrow outlook meant that its support base was limited after the war. In 1911-1912 the Guild wound up its affairs and closed its branches. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |