Bond of broeders: Anton Hartman and music in an apartheid state

Musical Times, Summer 2004 by Walton, Chris

After a brief spell at the Mines Training School, then another at the army, then another working at a local library, Anton enrolled for a BMus at the (English-speaking) University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied with Adolph Hallis, Percival Kirby and others. While still at Wits, Hartman took on a lowly job at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, where he met Jossie Boshoff, a girl his own age with singing ambitions who was working temporarily as a secretary in order to make ends meet. Hartman began accompanying her, in both senses of the word, and they married in 1944. There had, however, been a rival for Anton's affections in the shape of Anna Bender, a gifted local pianist. Whether or not her being Jewish was a factor that prevented their relationship from becoming permanent, we do not know. There were certainly close, traditional links between the Afrikaners and the Jewish community in South Africa (both being, in their own way, God's Chosen People, though not competing for the same Promised Land).1 Indeed, President Paul Kruger had even attended the official opening of the Johannesburg Synagogue in the late 19th century. To be sure, the arrival of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in the mid-i93os provided fuel for local antisemites (Hendrik Verwoerd being a prime opponent of further Jewish immigration); this in turn led South Africa to follow other countries by shamelessly introducing regulations to prevent a larger influx of Jewish emigres (one of those applicants turned down was the composer Viktor UlImann, who perished in the Holocaust). Nevertheless, there was in fact - quite different from in Germany - no tradition of institutional antisemitism in Afrikaner society. However, it is not impossible that Hartman felt it more appropriate to marry a fellow Afrikaner; or perhaps, in the middle of the second World War, the notion of marrying a man not unsympathetic to Nazi Germany went against the grain for Bender (and who could blame her?). The two nevertheless remained close, and she later became the official accompanist of the SABC under him, playing all the necessary keyboard parts in the SABC Orchestra under his baton (Mia Hartman remarks, disingenuously, that Anna and Jossie 'never became close friends', which probably means that they wanted to scratch each other's eyes out). It may seem an odd fact, but Hartman was in 1979 made an honorary member of the Jewish Guild of Johannesburg.

1944 was a busy year for Hartman. he not only married, but also graduated from Wits, and was appointed to the music commission of the 'Federation of Afrikaner Cultural Organizations' (hereafter 'FAK'), which functioned to a large degree as a cultural front for the Broederbond.2 This was Anton's first political-cum-artistic, administrative position. he also founded a choir, performing music from Heinrich Schutz to 20th-century works; he enrolled for his Master's at Wits (graduating in 1946); and in 1947, while seconded for a year to the SABC offices in Cape Town, he took conducting lessons from Albert Coates (one of several prominent musicians who made their home in South Africa during the 2oth century; it is thanks to Coates that the University of Stellenbosch, incidentally, today possesses Felix Mold's conducting scores of Wagner's music dramas). In the testimonial that he wrote for Hartman in early 1948, Coates judged him (in as much as testimonials can be trusted) 'a very gifted young musician and a man of fine character'. Later that year, the National Party surprised everyone by beating Jan Smuts' Union Party in a general election. The Afrikaners now took control of the country they felt had been wrested from them half a century earlier, and measures were rapidly put into place to ensure that they would not have to relinquish power again (such as lowering the voting age, which favoured the Afrikaners in that they formed the segment of the white population with the highest birthrate). Indeed, as apartheid was established in law, the economy surged, the white middle classes enjoyed ever higher living standards, and the National Party tightened its grip on power (it did not lose an election again until 1994).