Maverick Africans. Hermann Giliomee

that the men in her party decided to give up exclusive white power.

      Conclusion

      Along with other women on both sides of the Atlantic, Afrikaner women were denied public office and the vote for more than two centuries after the founding of the settlement at the Cape. Nevertheless their legal position was probably stronger than that of any women in Europe or the European colonies. They could claim a fixed part of the estate and played a major role as partners of their husbands in running the farms. Their role was crucial in the forging of a racially exclusive Afrikaner people and a predominantly white church. Women demanded a share of the decision-making on the Great Trek. The last two years of the South African War were above all characterised by the unbending refusal of the republican women to surrender, something unique in the history of European settlement.

      From the 1870s onwards several developments, especially the introduction of primogeniture and urbanisation, undermined their position. Afrikaner women, however, refused to join in the suffragette movement as a separate cause, because they considered the taalstryd and the rehabilitation of the Afrikaner poor as more important than promoting women’s rights.