Preliminary Programme

South Africa's apartheid-era Population Registration Act required all South Africans to be registered into one of four race categories. This was never an easy process, particularly in Cape Town where the boundaries between white, coloured and black were fluid. Using Anglican marriage records, we analyse the characteristics of 74 people (0.2%) who reclassified themselves to understand why some would choose to reclassify and others not. Our results show the human side to this dark episode of South African history. (Show less)

Thanks to ground breaking work on the history of illegitimacy and bridal pregnancy, scholars now have a rough idea of the shape and extent of these phenomenona in post-industrial Europe. However, the relative importance of different factors in prompting couples to engage in sex before marriage remains open to debate. Interregional comparisons, and research on illegitimacy and bridal pregnancy ratios outside of Europe, are ways in which scholars might begin to disentangle the economic from the social, and the voluntary from the involuntary when grappling with this immensely complex and diverse phenomenon. Employing methods from the digital humanities and the newly-transcribed, individual-level baptism and marriage records of seven Anglican parishes in early twentieth century Cape Town, this paper aims to shed light on extramarital pregnancy and its determinants during this tumultuous period. We look simultaneously at the effects of social class, race, age, literacy level and migrant status in assessing the likelihood of an extramarital pregnancy. The relationship between the status of a child’s birth and the type of baptism they received is also tested. We conclude that despite the common expression of censorious attitudes, the dynamics of family formation within the Cape Colony – and more particularly within Anglican Cape Town – remained extremely fluid, with extramarital sexuality functioning as an ordinary part of social and courtship processes, especially in coloured and working-class communities. (Show less)

Women’s age at marriage and age gap at marriage are two well-known indicators of women’s agency, or freedom to make decisions. This paper proposes a third marriage-related measure of women’s agency, the existence of an antenuptial contract at marriage. Politicised women in Cape Town in the 1920s and 1930s certainly believed that having an antenuptial contract was essential to women’s rights. Those involved in organisations furthering women’s rights petitioned to parliament to create awareness surrounding the loss of women’s rights that occurred at marriage if couples did not sign an antenuptial contract. Marrying in community of property sentenced women to the position of legal minors. The time period also provides opportunities to understand how important events, such as the two World Wars, and white women gaining the vote in 1930, affected the decision to buy an antenuptial contract. For instance, when the Second World War started, couples in the Mother City marrying in community of property (and therefore without an antenuptial contract) increased by 20% from pre-war figures. An article in a Cape Town newspaper, reported that couples preferred to spend their money on their honeymoon than on an antenuptial contract. To explore the effects of an antenuptial contract on women’s age at marriage and age gap at marriage, we use 90 000 newly transcribed Anglican and civil marriage records from Cape Town for the years 1910-1950. The marriage records include information on the ages of the bride and groom, whether or not the couple signed an antenuptial contract and what their jobs were at marriage. Women’s occupations are thus also used to understand whether or not having an antenuptial contract can be an indicator of women’s agency. Were women that signed an antenuptial contract more likely to be older than average when they married, closer in age with their husbands and have a job? (Show less)