The Second World War was a dynamic time in the South African past -a time when war was not only fought against foreign enemies but also at home within the Afrikanerdom. The metaphorical battle on the home front had two sides. The one was resistance against the Smuts government's war effort, and the second was the Smuts government's actions to curb internal unrest. The main attempt to dampen the internal unrest manifested itself in the form of various emergency regulations and war measures. These regulations and measures affected the Ossewa-Brandwag, a dualistic organisation within the Afrikanerdom, which would eventually lead the resistance directly against the war effort. This article delves into the Smuts government's justification of the emergency regulations and analyses the impact thereof on the Ossewa-Brandwag.

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The emergency measures of the Union government under Jan Smuts had a strong impact on the Ossewa-Brandwag (OB) during the Second World War. The OB was especially targeted by the government because of its overt pro-German and anti-British stance and its active resistance against the war effort. The ideology of the movement was built upon a strong basis of Afrikaner nationalism in conjunction with National Socialism which was supposed to legitimise the movement as an alternative to party politics. OB members expressed Afrikaner nationalist sentiments which meant resistance against Britain with the goal of attaining an independent republic - the so-called "ideal of freedom". Consequently, the OB's active resistance led to high numbers of internment. This article focuses on the South African internment camps of the Second World War. The nationalist iconography reflected in the artefacts created by OB members during their internment are analysed within the broader context of Afrikaner nationalism and the ideology of the OB. The OB had a very specific brand of Afrikaner nationalism and the ideal of freedom, central to its ideology, was combined with existing Afrikaner nationalist goals and subsequently nationalist iconography manifested itself in internees' creative expressions of their own personal nationalist sentiments. The artefacts also reflect the integration of Afrikaner nationalist iconography and the OB's ideal of freedom with personal contexts of imprisonment illustrating how political myths can be reshaped to provide meaning for the present realities of contemporaries.