Whipping Boys: South Africa's Limited Reform of Judicial Corporal Punishment in the 1960s and 1970s

In 1995, South Africa's Constitutional Court banned judicial corporal punishment of juveniles and soon thereafter legislation ended it for adults as well, marking an end to a practice that had been widespread since colonial times. During the apartheid period there was first a sharp rise in the use of judicial corporal punishment, contra the recommendations of the 1947 Landsdown Commission, and then a gradual decline after 1965, when legislation restored judicial discretion in cases where whipping had been mandatory since the early 1950s. The 1976 Viljoen Commission recommended a number of reforms, partially implemented in subsequent legislation, but continued to endorse the practice for young males. Using court cases, parliamentary debates and the commission reports, this article explores the motivations for redirecting and somewhat restraining apartheid's whip hand at the height of the system of white supremacy, in the 1960s, and following the 1976 reappearance of a widespread popular challenge spearheaded by youth. Official discussions indicate a tension between aspiring to meet the standards of what South African elites called 'civilised' countries and recognition of the state's need to enforce masculine discipline in what they termed South Africa's 'special' situation of white rule over a black majority termed 'primitive'. This article will explore the ambivalent reformist tendencies of the apartheid state at its height, while also analysing the gendered and generational hierarchies and tensions inherent in the application of this form of punishment exclusively to boys and young men.