Between Communism and Non-Racialism: A Spatial-Genealogical Reappraisal of the Springbok Legion, 1941–1954

As an organisation created as a ‘union of the ranks’ during the Second World War, the Springbok Legion lobbied for the socio-economic and political interests of soldiers from 1941 to 1954. An under-appreciated role was its advancement of non-racialism amongst white activists and how this informed the development of Congress politics in the 1950s. Accounts of the Springbok Legion, especially in the latter half of the organisation’s existence, alleged that the Legion was an unofficial extension of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), largely owing to the presence of prominent communists in the leadership of the Legion. Instead of offering a dualistic and reductive appraisal of the Legion as either a militant front for the CPSA or merely a soldier’s welfare organisation, this article argues that the Springbok Legion was a space in which social values and identities relating to national belonging, duty, and citizenship amongst white South Africans were amalgamated, contested, renegotiated, and reconstituted. The Springbok Legion offered white South African liberals, progressives, and radicals avenues of ulterior political expression and social identity that developed non-racialism as a salient political discourse, which saw its full fruition in the 1950s.