Troubling Images explores how art and visual culture helped to secure hegemonic claims to the nation-state via the construction of a unified Afrikaner imaginary Emerging in the late nineteenth century and gaining currency in the 1930s and 1940s, Afrikaner nationalist fervour underpinned the establishment of white Afrikaner political and cultural domination during South Africa’s apartheid years. Focusing on manifestations of Afrikaner nationalism in paintings, sculptures, monuments, buildings, cartoons, photographs, illustrations and exhibitions, Troubling Images offers a critical account of the role of art and visual culture in the construction of a unified Afrikaner imaginary, which helped secure hegemonic claims to the nation-state. This insightful volume examines the implications of metaphors and styles deployed in visual culture, and considers how the design, production, collecting and commissioning of objects, images and architecture were informed by Afrikaner nationalist imperatives and ideals. While some chapters focus only on instances of adherence to Afrikaner nationalism, others consider articulations of dissent and criticism. By ‘troubling’ these images: looking at them, teasing out their meanings, and connecting them to a political and social project that still has a major impact on the present moment, the authors engage with the ways in which an Afrikaner nationalist inheritance is understood and negotiated in contemporary South Africa. They examine the management of its material effects in contemporary art, in archives, the commemorative landscape and the built environment. Troubling Images adds to current debates about the histories and ideological underpinnings of nationalism and is particularly relevant in the current context of globalism and diaspora, resurgent nationalisms and calls for decolonisation.

This new approach to the social history of Afrikaner nationalism looks into the diverse causes for the rise of a political movement which was to shape South African history profoundly during the 20th Century. In the 1930s Afrikaner nationalism transformed itself from a populist into a cultural nationalism, becoming politically radicalised at the same time. The nationalist symbol of the oxwagon was used not only by the National Party, but also by the extra- and antiparliamentarian mass movement Ossewabrandwag, which was founded in 1939. Drawing on a broad range of archival resources the social history of this extremist organisation is analysed, showing local and regional differences. The Ossewabrandwag as a nationalist movement counted a considerable part of the Afrikaans white population among its members. Therefore, the Ossewabrandwag can be understood approprately only in the context of radical Afrikaner nationalism. Given that the potential for political radicalisation in the white South African population was considerable, ideological influences from overseas played merely an additional role. The book looks into the reasons for the mass participation in the Ossewabrandwag. In addition it analyses the organisation's fight with the National Party and its illegal and treasonable activities. In this context the book discusses which ideological influences on the apartheid policy can be identified as coming from organised right wing extremism.