Facts Concerning the Boers & the Greater White Afrikaans population.
There are often a lot of misconceptions in the West concerning the Boer people & the greater White Afrikaans people in general. When one actually takes the time to actually do some research on this topic one finds that the truth is often nothing like the myths & deceptions which have been perpetuated about them. Due to the effective propaganda campaign against them in the past -a number of misconceptions still persist among those who have not done the research & have let the mass media do the thinking for them. Most people in the West would appear to not know the first thing about this topic. The following information in this post aims at helping to set the record straight as it will consist of quoted excerpts of text relating to debunking a number of misconceptions which in turn will dispel a number of myths & reveal the truth from the scores of sources I have found over an extended period time time I have spent researching the topic.
The first thing which must be stated at the outset is that the Boers are a homegrown people who are indigenous to the African continent. The ancestors of the Boers did not come as colonists on behalf of a colonial power as they were taken from Europe by the Dutch East India Co / VOC & dumped at the Cape in order to farm for the said co. The VOC had no intention of starting a colony as their main goal was to create a victual station to supply the passing ships. The VOC was a trans national corporation which had interests in other parts of the world as well.
The Boers developed into a distinct homegrown people long before the actual colonial powers arrived in Africa. The Boers are the descendants diverse groups who arrived at the Cape through the VOC starting in the mid 1600s to the 1700s. The ancestors of the Boers & the White Afrikaans people in general include: Dutch / Frisian / French Huguenot / German / Flemish / Walloon & other groups. The White Afrikaans groups are often erroneously presumed in the West to be of "mainly Dutch" in origin -but the fact of the matter is that the Dutch origins accounts for only about 35 % or less of their roots. The French origins accounts for up to 25 % of their roots & their German origins accounts for about 30 % of their roots. Thus the White Afrikaans people are a rather homogeneous mixture of the various diverse national & ethnic groups who arrived at the Cape.
The Trekboers who began to trek inland starting in the 1690s & throughout the 1700s did so mainly due to their poorer economic status & lived as semi nomadic pastoralists who inadvertently expanded the boundaries of the Cape as the VOC attempted to exercise nominal control over them. The Trekboers broke away from the bulk of the White Afrikaans population who remained at the western Cape. The Trekboers who settled down as Grensboere or Border Farmers would be the ancestors of the Voortrekkers who would later trek en mass northwards & eastwards in order to escape British colonialism / border wars & land shortages.
The Boers of the frontier broke their ties to Europe early on & began referring to themselves as Africans. An important point to remember is that the Bantus did not penetrate the Kalahari Desert barrier hence when the ancestors of the Boers arrived at the Cape they only encountered the yellow-brown skinned Khoisan groups who were decimated in the north eastern regions of modern South Africa by migrating Bantus who arrived & displaced them in those regions.
The Boers of the Cape frontier & who later embarked in the Great Trek are often thought to have been pursuing the goal of obtaining their own State -but the formation of states was done only in reaction to constant British incursions into their region. It was mainly a reaction against British colonialism. The Boers of the past were in fact anarchistic not authoritarian.
The authoritarian tendencies of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists of the 20th cent was a break with the long standing Boer tradition of minimalist government. The Boers were the descendants of those of trekked away from the Western Cape where the bulk of those who would later be known as Afrikaners had remained. The Cape based Afrikaner was historically more loyal to the colonial powers while the Boers of the eastern Cape frontier had developed their own unique culture / dialect & world view & as such had developed early on a desire to be independent from the colonial power.
The Boers did not created Apartheid as they were marginalized by the more numerous Afrikaners within the new dispensation. The Afrikaner Nationalists themselves were not even the creators of Apartheid.
Though Apartheid in fact was started by the British & coined by early South African governments which preceded the Afrikaner Nationalists rise to power.
The White Afrikaans population is about one quarter French Huguenot in ethnic origin.
The Boers striving for freedom & independence are alleged to be so called right wingers. This is wrong & disputed by a number of Boer nationalists.
The Boers never wanted a unitary macro state which was imposed on them after the Anglo-Boer War. The Boers of the republics even fought two wars of independence against Britain in order to prevent the establishment of the unitary macro state Britain created & to maintain their indpendence in their internationally recognized republics.
The misconceptions about the Afrikaner Nationalists.
Part 1.
The Afrikaner Nationalists were often accused of adopting Nazi inspired political values when in fact their ideology was not taken from Nazism.
Part II.
Most Trekboers did not own slaves.
Note: The Boers did not come from just Holland but from France / Belgium / Germany / Asia & others as well.
Note: The Afrikaners in actual context tends to refer to those of Western Cape descent while the term Boer tends to refer to those who are of Trekboer & Voortrekker descent.
The Transvaal Republic & the Orange Free State were recognized by several European governments & the American government.
The Transvaal Vierkleur was present at an American political party convention in 1900 as a symbol of anti-imperialism. This flag including the Orange Free State Vierkleur turned 150 in 2007.
The situation in Southern Africa was far from a White vs Black paradigm as the following notes that alliances cut across racial lines.
Pretoria was not the only Boer capital. Pretoria is the most famous Boer capital & only became the capital of the British created South Africa after a long war by the British against the Boers during the Anglo-Boer War as a result of the gold discovered in the Transvaal Republic.
The Boers did not surrender after their capitals of Pretoria & Bloemfontein were taken over by the British in 1900 therefore the British stooped to committing war crimes against the Boer civilian population by burning down their homes & placing them into concentration camps.
The large scale forced relocation of Boer civilians into concentration camps began in earnest in March of 1901 where an estimated 27 000 Boer civilians -mainly children under sixteen- died in squalid conditions.
After the war Pretoria was a Boer capital in memory only as it would soon serve as the administrative capital of a pro-British Cape Afrikaner based establishment of the artificial super state known as the Union of South Africa. Then later the Republic of South Africa in 1961.
There was a brief rebellion by some Boer War era generals in 1914 to reestablish the Boer Republics but the pro-British Afrikaner regime of Louis Botha (who himself fought against the British during the war) but the leaders of the rebellion were captured & jailed.
The Boers of the past have become somewhat assimilated into a greater Afrikaner (a term which emerged after the war) culture due to the great destruction of their homes & way of life but a significant number of Boers in the former republics still to this day retain their culture & have not been assimilated by the Afrikaner establishment.
There is still rift between the Cape based Afrikaners & the Boers of the former republics which stems from their original cultural separation back in the 1700s when the ancestors of the Republican Boers began extending the boundaries of the eastern Cape through mass migration. The then Cape Dutch (Afrikaner) back in the Western Cape never had much sympathy for the Boers & their independent streak. The Great Trek of the Boers forever placed a gulf between them & their Western Cape cousins some even fought against the Boers during the Anglo-Boer War. Those from the eastern Cape who fought with the republican Boers were known as the Cape Rebels. During the 1960 referendum on South Africa becoming a republic: the Boers living in the former Republics -despite their small numbers as compared to their Cape cousins- swung the vote to its 51 % in favor of the republic.
The Boers who embarked on the Great Trek did so as local clans with little centralized leedership & settled in regions which were depopulated.
During the Great Trek there was an alliance between the trekking Boers & the Griquas & the Rolong.
The following explains in part what happened to the Boers during the first half of the 20th cent & how most suddenly became to be viewed as Afrikaners as a result of being co-opted by the more affluent Cape Afrikaners.
White Afrikaans people are being targeted with Nuremberg type laws.
The White Afrikaans people are not just descended from Dutch roots but are significantly descended from French Huguenots & Germans as well.
The White Afrikaans population is a composite of less than 40 % Dutch / up to 25 % French & about 30 % German.
The ancestors of the Boers did not come as settlers on behalf of a colonial power but were in fact taken from northern Europe & dumped at the Cape by a private corporation -the VOC - for the purpose of farming the land to provide produce for the victual post.
While a number of White South Africans became rich during the 20th cent the Boers have historically been poor & the current descendents of the Boers tend to be working class.
Afrikaans is often thought of as just a White language. Not so as it was first developed among the slaves at the Cape & adopted or rather influenced the language of the White settlers / arrivals. Dutch was language which had to be learned later as it remained the formal & written language of the region well into the 19th cent.
The ancestors of the Boers are often though to have come as settlers. Not quite as they were taken from Europe & dumped at the Cape to farm for the VOC. The French Huguenots came as refugees escaping political & religious persecution.
There are often a lot of misconceptions in the West concerning the Boer people & the greater White Afrikaans people in general. When one actually takes the time to actually do some research on this topic one finds that the truth is often nothing like the myths & deceptions which have been perpetuated about them. Due to the effective propaganda campaign against them in the past -a number of misconceptions still persist among those who have not done the research & have let the mass media do the thinking for them. Most people in the West would appear to not know the first thing about this topic. The following information in this post aims at helping to set the record straight as it will consist of quoted excerpts of text relating to debunking a number of misconceptions which in turn will dispel a number of myths & reveal the truth from the scores of sources I have found over an extended period time time I have spent researching the topic.
The first thing which must be stated at the outset is that the Boers are a homegrown people who are indigenous to the African continent. The ancestors of the Boers did not come as colonists on behalf of a colonial power as they were taken from Europe by the Dutch East India Co / VOC & dumped at the Cape in order to farm for the said co. The VOC had no intention of starting a colony as their main goal was to create a victual station to supply the passing ships. The VOC was a trans national corporation which had interests in other parts of the world as well.
The Boers developed into a distinct homegrown people long before the actual colonial powers arrived in Africa. The Boers are the descendants diverse groups who arrived at the Cape through the VOC starting in the mid 1600s to the 1700s. The ancestors of the Boers & the White Afrikaans people in general include: Dutch / Frisian / French Huguenot / German / Flemish / Walloon & other groups. The White Afrikaans groups are often erroneously presumed in the West to be of "mainly Dutch" in origin -but the fact of the matter is that the Dutch origins accounts for only about 35 % or less of their roots. The French origins accounts for up to 25 % of their roots & their German origins accounts for about 30 % of their roots. Thus the White Afrikaans people are a rather homogeneous mixture of the various diverse national & ethnic groups who arrived at the Cape.
The Trekboers who began to trek inland starting in the 1690s & throughout the 1700s did so mainly due to their poorer economic status & lived as semi nomadic pastoralists who inadvertently expanded the boundaries of the Cape as the VOC attempted to exercise nominal control over them. The Trekboers broke away from the bulk of the White Afrikaans population who remained at the western Cape. The Trekboers who settled down as Grensboere or Border Farmers would be the ancestors of the Voortrekkers who would later trek en mass northwards & eastwards in order to escape British colonialism / border wars & land shortages.
The Boers of the frontier broke their ties to Europe early on & began referring to themselves as Africans. An important point to remember is that the Bantus did not penetrate the Kalahari Desert barrier hence when the ancestors of the Boers arrived at the Cape they only encountered the yellow-brown skinned Khoisan groups who were decimated in the north eastern regions of modern South Africa by migrating Bantus who arrived & displaced them in those regions.
The Boers of the Cape frontier & who later embarked in the Great Trek are often thought to have been pursuing the goal of obtaining their own State -but the formation of states was done only in reaction to constant British incursions into their region. It was mainly a reaction against British colonialism. The Boers of the past were in fact anarchistic not authoritarian.
The authoritarian tendencies of the Cape based Afrikaner Nationalists of the 20th cent was a break with the long standing Boer tradition of minimalist government. The Boers were the descendants of those of trekked away from the Western Cape where the bulk of those who would later be known as Afrikaners had remained. The Cape based Afrikaner was historically more loyal to the colonial powers while the Boers of the eastern Cape frontier had developed their own unique culture / dialect & world view & as such had developed early on a desire to be independent from the colonial power.
- An attempt to conciliate the Boer with grants of native land led to warfare with the latter. Expenses rose, and the Colonial Office decided that toleration of independent Boer republics might be the best short-run option. By 1854, the British had effectively withdrawn from Trans-Orangia. Timothy Keegan argues that British involvement in Trans- Orangia set off Boer state formation when some Boer leaders realized the opportunity that a real state could provide for capital accumulation (especially of land) through political means. What is fascinating is that the old Boer maatskappy ideal of ordered near anarchy had adherents who opposed creation of a proper state. This comes out in Keegan’s discussion of the British Orange River Sovereignty’s attempt to rally or coerce Boers into fighting Moshweshwe’s Sotho in 1851. Those who traded with the Sotho, had agreements with them, or found the British more threatening, refused to go on commando, and stated their satisfaction with their “friend” Moshweshwe.
- when the British invaded in 1795, a number of trekboers were in rebellion and had declared themselves a republic. It is important to remember that this tradition predated the coming of the British. Trekboer political notions were not too far from anarchy.
- Their Protestantism was another source of individualism.10 The Boers were united as maatskappy, a loose community of individual proprietors, the commando, a volunteer military arm of their society, and as co-religionists. More supervision than this they did not want. A Boer patriarch, sovereign on his own plek(place) with his wife, children, and retainers, and armed for defence of his family and property, corresponded quite well—like the Anglo–Celtic Southerner—to the ideal citizen of classical republican theory. Unlike the Southerner, who had some classical liberalism in his republicanism, the Boers were of a simpler school. Their nearest approach to liberalism was the notion of covenant. Thus it makes sense to think of the Boers as patriarchal, pastoral Calvinists living out a practical frontier anarchism.
The Boers did not created Apartheid as they were marginalized by the more numerous Afrikaners within the new dispensation. The Afrikaner Nationalists themselves were not even the creators of Apartheid.
- Apartheid was not invented in 1948 by Afrikaner Nationalists. The Nationalists were always eager to lay claim to apartheid, but this was a misleading element of their propaganda. Political parties are given to claims that they disagree with those who insist that they really agree. Apartheid was actually pioneered by the British colonial governments of Natal and the Cape Province.
Indirect rule of blacks was devised in the 19th century by Cecil John Rhodes in the Cape Province, and Lord Shepstone in Natal. Both of these territories were then under British colonial rule. The two key ingredients of indirect rule were integration of existing black political structures within the European-created state, by co-opting black chiefs, and confinement of blacks to the territory they had been restricted to by conquest. Black chiefs became salaried officials, on the payroll of the colonial authorities. In exchange, these chiefs kept order within their areas and assisted in local government of blacks. Black customary law was recognized, in a modified form, by the authorities. Rhodes passed laws requiring blacks to carry passes when travelling outside their reserves, a measure used in Russia, where it was known as the "internal passport".
The system that Rhodes and Shepstone built proved to be highly successful, allowing the authorities to govern without maintaining large standing armies or police forces. It drew sharp criticism from the Boers, then self-governing within their own states to the North. The Boers were concerned that the British policy would leave the blacks independent, hostile and uncivilized. Most importantly, the Boers were concerned that the farms, then the basis of their economy, would be starved of labour by the isolation of blacks. Instead, they advocated dispersing the blacks across the country, thus placing them into the labour market in the most efficient manner, and bringing them under the civilizing influence of white Christianity [Du Toit, 1991].
The disparity in policies towards the blacks was brought to an end by the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1903, which led to a unified government in 1910. The policy of the new government was an elaboration of the Rhodes/Shepstone system. With the passage of the Land Act of 1913, blacks were not permitted to own land outside reserves established by law, which were protected for their collective ownership. Blacks were not included in the political system created in 1910, and occupied an ambiguous position as subjects but not full citizens. Only the Cape had permitted some blacks to vote prior to Union, principally because they did so in insignificant numbers, and this continued within the Cape until black voting rights were abolished in 1936 and replaced with indirect representation. The thrust of race policy was to keep blacks within the reserve system as much as possible, maintaining a system of migrant labour rather than tolerating permanent settlement of blacks within white areas.
The point of Apartheid was not White supremacism but White survival as noted by an anti-apartheid Afrikaans historian. Herman Giliomee.
Giliomee also presents novel interpretations of both the onset of apartheid and of the government’s decision to abandon it. The sources of apartheid were multiple and complex. The idea had developed in the Dutch Reformed Church in the 1920s. Debating its missionary efforts toward the country’s African and Coloured communities, the Church concluded that these were separate communities in need of separate churches. This concept was soon extended to education, as the churches were largely responsible for the education of Africans, and Afrikaner intellectuals pressed to have the idea extended to secular domains. From this perspective apartheid did not derive primarily from racist motives: while not ignoring these, Giliomee argues that it sought not so much racial superiority over Africans as racial survival against Africans: "Afrikaner nationalists argued that their survival as a volk was inseparable from maintaining racial exclusivity, and that apartheid was the only policy that systematically pursued that end. But apartheid with its racist outcomes was not a goal in itself; political survival was" (p. 470). Apartheid also contained an element of trusteeship for Africans. Discussing the idea in Parliament, future Prime Minister Daniel Malan argued, "I do not use the term ‘segregation,’ because it has been interpreted as a fencing off, but rather ‘apartheid,’ which will give the various races the opportunity of uplifting themselves on the basis of what is their own" (quoted at p. 475).
Though Apartheid in fact was started by the British & coined by early South African governments which preceded the Afrikaner Nationalists rise to power.
- Everybody blamed the Afrikaner for apartheid, which is a load of rubbish. The Afrikaner only came into power in 1948. Apartheid was introduced by the British when they introduced the Act Of Union in 1910 and the blacks were left out of the government.
That the Afrikaner passed certain discriminatory laws in their tenure of power is true, but by 1970 these laws were being dismantled, the country was going in the direction of a federation. Unfortunately, the separate development policy that Dr Verwoerd had introduced was not allowed to be recognized by the international community and so never really got off the ground.
- Naturally, order amongst the different nations, forced together into one unnatural state, had to be maintained by unnatural measures - apartheid! Had the English not interfered, had the English not created this unnatural state, had the English not disregarded the ethnic identity of every previously free and self-governing people in Southern Africa, and had the English not erected signs saying "Europeans" and "Non-Europeans" the various nations of Southern Africa could have been spared ethnic friction and its resulting misery!
- A common misconception exists that the Afrikaners (Whites of West European descent who lived in southern Africa for 350 years) introduced the apartheid to South Africa when they assumed political power in 1948. This perception is widely promoted by Britain's liberal press, as well as the African National Congress, which now governs the country. The result is that Afrikaners are being demonized as not worthy of any form of self-determination, as they cannot be trusted with any power.
It also serves to justify the ANC's policies of black economic empowerment and affirmative action. Part of the ownership of all businesses, including commercial farms, should in the future be handed to black partners. A ceiling is placed on white employment, as the labour market "...should reflect the demographic realities of the country as a whole..." These measures are justified on the moral grounds of rectifying the injustices of the past, but is nothing other than a redistribution of wealth, a common philosophy in African history and based on the premise of collective guilt, widely promoted by the international liberal establishment. Politicians refer to those measures as the 'cuckoo syndrome'.
It must be remembered that South Africa became the Union of South Africa in 1910. After the Anglo Boer War, and up to 1910, the four colonies were governed directly by Whitehall in London. British Law was applicable to these colonies. The Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 as an autonomous state within the British Commonwealth.
The situation only changed in 1961 when South Africa left the Commonwealth and became the Republic of South Africa. In order to pin the responsiblility for the evolution of apartheid on somebody, it would be an interesting exercise to take a helicopter snapshot of South Africa's racial policies to establish where or when the apartheid system of racial segregation really originated.
- The Native Pass Law of 1809 was promulgated by the British Government, which required that every black person should carry an ID document, called a pass. Failure to do so was a criminal offence.
- In 1865, the British Governor, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, ruled that black people in Natal shall not have the right to vote.
- Apartheid in sport can be traced back to 1894 when Cecil John Rhodes prevented Krom Hendriks, a colored cricketer, to accompany the Cape team to England.
- The South African Native Affairs Commission (SANAC) was appointed by Lord Milner in 1903 and published their findings in 1905. Scholars today recognise their recommendations as having laid the blue-print not only for the policies of racial segregation from 1910 to 1948, but also apartheid and separate development up to 1990.
- Apartheid in the schools was introduced in 1905 when Rhodes introduced compulsory segregation of black and white children in Cape schools. No such laws existed in the two Boer Republics, where an easy relationship existed between the Afrikaner and the African, as children were largely home taught by their parents or visiting teachers.
- Lord Balfour, intervened in the house of Commons in London and warned about the dangers of extending the franchise to the 'natives' as the black community was known at the time. Chamberlain, Lord Milner, J.A. Froude, Anthony Trollope and Lord Bryce, among others, were dead-set against extending the franchise to the 'natives.' The South African colonies were to join the 'white' commonwealth in the form of the Union of South Africa to become 'a white man's country like Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
- The South African Act, which was adopted by the British Government in 1907, determined that only persons of European descent may be elected to parliament in South Africa.
- The infamous Native Land Act 2 of 1913 prohibited private ownership of land by black people. That is also the official cut-off date today for the land restitution process that is currently being implemented.
- Minister H.W. Sampson introduced the concept of job reservation in the Mines and Industry act of 1925.
- Interracial marriage or sex was prohibited between whites and others by the Natal Immorality Act of 1927. The Immorality act of 1957 was based on that act.
- General Smuts, then a leading light in the British Commonwealth, introduced separate representation of race groups in Parliament in 1936 so as to preserve the British dictate that South Africa shall be a white man's country. In that Act the blacks were removed from the common voters roll and the recommendations of the Lagden Commission were implemented, namely "separation of Black South Africans and White South Africans as voters". The term 'apartheid', was coined by Gen J.C. Smuts when he was Prime Minister, and not by Dr Verwoerd as politicians would have us believe.
- During Smuts' last term of office he introduced the Native Urban Area Act 25 of 1945 which determined that a black person may not be present in a white area for longer that 72 hours without a permit. (Similar to the provision in Russia where a resident of one city needs a special permit or visa to visit another city, even today.)
The concept of racial segregation was therefore firmly entrenched in South Africa after the Second World War when the National Party defeated the Pro-British United Party of General Smuts at the polls to become the new government.
The White Afrikaans population is about one quarter French Huguenot in ethnic origin.
- The Huguenots who arrived at the Cape of Good Hope at the end of the 17th century, consisted of only a fraction of the large-scale Protestant flight from France after the revocation of the Edict on Nantes in 1685. Nevertheless their numbers were large enough to have a considerable influence and leave a lasting impression on the young settlement at the Cape. As early as 1671 the first Huguenot refugee, Francois Villion (later Viljoen), arrived at the Cape. In 1686 the brothers Guillaume and Francois du Toit arrived. After the main stream of Huguenots arrived during 1688 – 1689, they comprised approximately one sixth of the free burgher population, after which individual arrivals continued sporadically until the termination of the state subsidised emigration in 1707.
The legacy of the Huguenots was however far reaching. Today thousands of their proud descendants carry with dignity surnames of which the spelling is unchanged from the original, such as De Villiers, Malan, Du Toit, Du Plessis, Du Preez and Malherbe; the spelling of others were localised, such as Viljoen, Cronjé, Pienaar, Retief and Senekal. Certain first names which the Huguenots brought with them are poplular amongst their descendants, especially male christian names such as Francois, Pierre, Etienne, Jacques and Louis. Research has shown that the contribution of the Huguenot genes to the Afrikaner people amounts to some 24%. Their descendants are proud of ancestors who sacrificed a great deal - even their country of birth - and were willing to suffer personally for their religious convictions.
A number of writers mention different characteristics of the Afrikaner nation which could be ascribed to the influence of the Huguenots: physical features such as a darker complexion and black hair, a cheerful disposition, stamina, artistic ability, individualism and a sense of independence, a love for personal and political freedom, courtesy, hospitality, humour and joyfulness, and ingenuity (the ability to make a plan).
A survey published in the Sunday Times Magazine of October 4th, 1981, indicated that of the 36 most common surnames amongst the white population, nine are of Huguenot origin. They are the surnames Nel, Du Plessis, Coetzee, Fourie, Du Toit, Le Roux, Viljoen, Marais and Du Preez. In the first four volumes of the South African Biographical Dictionary ("Suid-Afrikaanse Biografiese Woordeboek") articles of 25 individuals with the surname De Villiers appear, seventeen about Du Toit's, twelve on Malan's, nine on Joubert's, and eight on Viljoen's. Desendants of Huguenots can be found amongst the leaders and achievers on every terrain in South Africa - religious, social, economical, cultural, research and development in the areas of agriculture, science and engineering; sport and politics, as military leaders and statesmen, as poets and philosphers and authors.
The Huguenots did indeed leave a direct and indirect legacy in South Africa. They did not continue to live as an separate, clearly identifiable subgroup. Already early in the eighteenth century they were assimilated by the rest of the population at the Cape as a result of both political measures and their minority numbers. But despite their relatively small numbers, they nevertheless left an indelible mark on and made a valuable contribution during the early years of the settlement at the Cape of Good Hope to various areas - economy, education, technology, agriculture, culture, church life, religion, etc.
The Boers striving for freedom & independence are alleged to be so called right wingers. This is wrong & disputed by a number of Boer nationalists.
- Please note that the correct term is "Boer nationalists" and not "right-wingers". We are not an (extremist) element on the spectrum of the South African professional party-political comedy. We wish to be no part of this "rainbow spectrum". We do not consider ourselves bound in conscience by a constitution, laws, rules and statutes made on our behalf without any form of consultation with us or consent by us. If and when we do obey these oppressive laws, we do it out of a higher conscience, and out of respect for the semblance of the order of things. We have a right to resist an oppressive constitution and oppressive laws. Actions borne from coercion can never be interpreted as the giving of consent.
The Boers never wanted a unitary macro state which was imposed on them after the Anglo-Boer War. The Boers of the republics even fought two wars of independence against Britain in order to prevent the establishment of the unitary macro state Britain created & to maintain their indpendence in their internationally recognized republics.
- The Boers never desired to have a unitary state of a one-nation South Africa. It is sheer nonsense to allege that the so-called Boeremag wants to return to pre-1994 South Africa. Not one Boer supports the single nation-state created by the British empire after they cowardly killed nearly 27 000 Boer women and children during the Boers's Freedom War of 1899-1902, and in this evil manner forced the small, brave Boer army made up of farmers, fighting in their Sunday three-piece suits, to relinquish their two Republics to prevent all of their women and children to be murdered; 60 000 of their farms were completely destroyed in the criminal "scorched earth" policy of the British and left the Boers deeply destitute after they were thus forced to sign the peace agreement of Vereeniging.
Is the Boers the only people in South Africa wanting self-government? Did you know that very recently the Griqua people also rejected the territorial integrity of the unitary South Africa? So the the Rehoboth Basters too with respect to Namibia.
For the Boers, it is not a matter of race. However, our language, culture, ethnicity and religious world-view do play a key role, and rightly so. If we have no right to depend on such, then please put up a fight at the UN and get them to scrap their most sacred covenants on the rights of peoples.
We mention race, because we are often accused of it. We must take this opportunity though to inform you that, if the Boers now had to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, most Boers would prefer to suffer under Mandela's yoke rather than under De Klerk's lies. But to tell you the truth, we are not interested to be the subjects of either Mbeki or Mugabe, of either Blair or Bush, of either Tony Leon or the "Afrikaners" Van Schalkwyk and De Klerk - the latter two least of all. You can appreciate that as a people we are deeply disgusted by those who callously signed away the last remnants of our already dented self-determination without even bothering to consult us about the effects on us.
Another point of grotesque confusion that we need to clear up, is that Boers are not "Afrikaners". None of your co-workers seem to have any understanding of this. All Boers are aware of the systematic subterfuge and distortion of "identity" that has been the result of the makings of the Broederbond and the National Party, based upon the then image of the British imperialist gentleman. This artificial identity was meant to wean away the Boers from their strong identify, from their history, from their nationalism, and thus weaken them.
The ISS should take note that the Boers never wanted a singular state with a single government ruling all the peoples of the sub-continent. The Boer Republics were taken from them with violent force. Even the terms of the peace treaty of Vereeniging in 1902 stated unambiguously to see to the restoration of Boer independence as a people before any political rights be bestowed upon the African peoples.
But we Boers are not colonialists or imperialists. The Boers never engaged in any "Christianizing" mission work to convert the heathens as did the American, Scottish and German missionaries. Our forebears wisely thought it best not to interfere with those values and views that other people cherish and hold sacred. The Boers made no bones about the fact that they were not great supporters of the capitalist system, as it was seen to be nothing else than another form of Imperialism. No wonder then that the Irish, the Russians, and so many others from Europe joined in the defense of our freedom. The Boers never sought to "civilize" and "develop" other racial and cultural groups from a position of cultural superiority. The Afrikaners tried it for many ears, and failed dismally in more than one way.
Take note that the Boers today have good reason to be immensely frustrated and angered. We have not only lost all forms of the partial self-determination we previously enjoyed, through the treacherous dealings of Afrikaner politicians, but have lost virtually all rights to make a decent living and bringing up our children with good values and good learning.? All indications are that the marginalizing of the Boer will only get worse under the present regime, which is regarded by us as illegitimate.
Even Afrikaners hostile to the Boer aspirations, like the well-known historian Prof. H. Gilliomee, has stated that De Klerk shamelessly broke his promises and public commitment to counsel with his people about changes to be introduced into South Africa and it is openly admitted that during the vote of 1994 the count of the vote was stopped midway and the ANC declared the winner, and that De Klerk's National Party was given extra percentage of the vote for allowing the ANC to be declared the winner.
The misconceptions about the Afrikaner Nationalists.
Part 1.
The Afrikaner Nationalists were often accused of adopting Nazi inspired political values when in fact their ideology was not taken from Nazism.
- Playing the Nazi card.
Jordan was right to make his disclaimer, for the missing element in the equation of apartheid with Nazism has always been the absence in South Africa of evidence of a deliberate plan to exterminate blacks comparable to the Nazis' final solution of the "Jewish problem". ANC minister Kader Asmal attempted to grapple with that problem in the 1996 book that he co-authored with his wife Louise and Trinidad-born Ronald Suresh Roberts, Reconciliation Through Truth: a Reckoning of Apartheid's Criminal Governance. They wrote of "striking similarities" and "substantial overlap" between the two policies. They conceded, however, that "the systematic process of hi-tech Nazi exterminations had no equivalent in South Africa" and that apartheid was not "a duplication of Nazi policies". But they reasoned: "apartheid nonetheless amounted, under international law, to a form of genocide . . . There were no gas chambers, but there can be genocide without gas chambers, which is what many apartheid dumping grounds achieved."
But comparing the National Party to Nazis plays too well on the international stage to let such historical niceties get in the way. In June 1992, after the massacre of more than 40 Boipatong residents, an event which led the ANC to break contact with the De Klerk government, Nelson Mandela said: "Just as the Nazis in Germany killed people simply because they were Jews, the National Party regime is killing our people simply because they are black." (It later transpired that invaders from the nearby KwaMadala Hostel were responsible for the massacre without the alleged police involvement.) Less than a year later, in an address to the British Parliament, Mandela likened the "pernicious system of racism in South Africa" to the "similar system in Nazi Germany". In his evidence to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Aboobaker Ismail, former head of Umkhonto special operations, justified the ANC bombings in which civilians died by comparing them with Allied bombing of German cities during the Second World War. These were considered legitimate targets, he said, because the Allies were seen as "liberators from the Nazi beast".
The equation of the NP with the Nazi Party now provides the rationale for the ANC attack on the merger between the New National Party and the Democratic Party. The ANC characterises the pact as an attempt by right-wingers, in the words of ANC propaganda chief Smuts Ngonyama, "to come together for a final onslaught". According to Ngonyama "The New National Party comes from the old racist National Party and the Democratic Party comes from the old United Party. Both their ancestors have been involved in quarrels on how best to oppress the African majority. That quarrel has ended and the two parties now totally agree that the African ruling party should be rigorously opposed at all costs."
The ANC's inclination to smear its white opponents as overt or covert neo-fascists might be an effective propaganda stratagem. But it is based on an inaccurate interpretation and application of history. The National Party certainly had a period of flirtation with Nazism. But in the end its leader during the war years (1939-45), D.F. Malan, fought and won a political battle for the soul of Afrikaners against the overtly fascist movements seeking their allegiance. By the 1948 election the NP had established itself as the premier political voice of Afrikaner nationalism. The fascist movements - Ossewabrandwag, the Grey Shirts and the New Order - were withering on the sidelines. The NP rejected the Führer principle, the idea of an infallible leader. Instead it practised democracy within its own ranks and advocated a restricted form of parliamentary democracy.
The rejection of Führerism, a fundamental tenet of Nazism, had an important consequence: NP leaders who had served their purpose or who had overrun their time were prevailed upon to give way to new men (Malan in 1954, B. J. Vorster in 1978 and P.W. Botha in 1989 come to mind). The advent of the three men who led the NP between 1966 and 1944, Vorster, Botha and F.W. De Klerk, was marked in each case by a new surge of reformism, taking the NP further away from the original apartheid doctrines. While powerful or kragdadige Afrikaners led the NP, none attained the status of Führer and none was able to lead the Afrikaner people to a Götterdämmerung. Instead there was a gradual process of reform and renewal, leading - in response to demographic, economic and political pressures - to abandonment of fundamental apartheid doctrines and eventually to De Klerk's momentous decision to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
While Malan rejected the fascist notion of dictatorship by a Führer in favour of a limited form of democracy for whites, the United Party of J.C. Smuts led South Africa into the war against Nazi Germany. Whatever its limitations as a vehicle for democracy in South Africa, the UP was a strong opponent of fascism in Europe and its local variants, particularly the Ossewabrandwag. And whatever his deficiencies as a reformer within South Africa, Smuts was not an admirer of Nazism. Acclaimed as an international statesman abroad, he helped draw up the UN charter and recognised that segregation had fallen on evil days.
Another pivotal Nazi notion, expansionist wars against neighbouring states to obtain lebensraum, was not adopted by the NP. On the contrary, as Heribert Adam noted in his seminal book on apartheid, Modernising Racial Domination, apartheid ideologues wanted to sacrifice land to neighbouring states in order to reduce the number of blacks within a territorially truncated South Africa. Military incursions into neighbouring states in the 1970s and 1980s was prompted by an attempt to create a cordon sanitaire against ANC guerrillas, not a quest for lebensraum.
Though some Afrikaner leaders flirted transiently with Nazism, Christianity was a far more important and enduring influence on the NP's ideological evolution. Long before the ferment of the 1980s when successive Afrikaner leaders concluded that apartheid was neither politically viable nor scripturally justifiable and when Afrikaner theologians were rejecting as heresy earlier attempts by their brethren to vindicate apartheid, Christianity critically influenced the evolution of apartheid ideology. As the Afrikaner political analyst Hermann Giliomee observed recently, Afrikaner theologians and intellectuals sought to provide apartheid with "an ethical basis".
Three early but seminal influences were the writings in the 1950s of Afrikaner theologians Ben Marais (Colour:Unsolved Problem of the West), A.D. Keet (Whither South Africa?) and the poet and intellectual N.P. Van Wyk Louw (Liberale Nasionalise). Two common themes ran through their publications: rejection of oppression as the solution to the perceived threat to Afrikanerdom by the black majority and, as a corollary, postulation of complete territorial segregation as an ethical alternative to baaskap. Long before NP politicians punted the notion of separate or parallel development, Van Wyk Louw was writing about a fifty-year plan to transform existing policy into one aiming at the eventual formation of two states, one for blacks and one for whites. That was his "new liberalism", his version of the political notion, "separate but equal". Van Wyk Louw's influence on Afrikaner thinking was profound and continued to percolate through Afrikanerdom long after his death in 1970. Afrikaner survival was not enough. As Gilomee put it, Van Wyk Louw stood for voortbestaan in geregtigheid or survival in justice. It became a powerful notion in Afrikanerdom, one that was taken up by a succession of Afrikaner religious and intellectual leaders in later years. Later flagbearers were Beyers Naude, of the Christian Institute, Fred Van Wyk of the Institute of Race Relations, and Johan Heyns, a moderator of the Nederduitse Geformeerde Kerk.
The trail that they started out on led after much soul-searching to the rejection of the central tenets of apartheid, including - on the grounds of impracticality - the idea of grand apartheid or territorial partition. It ended with the negotiated settlement that marked the birth of a non-racial South Africa.
Survival in justice is, of course, the complete antithesis of survival through suppression and subjugation. The onus is on those who equate Afrikaner nationalism with Nazism to demonstrate irrefutably that it entertained genocidal intentions towards blacks in the same way as the Nazis advocated the final solution for the "Jewish Problem". It is not enough to point to the massive disruption and suffering wrought by forced removals. Evil though relocation at gunpoint is, it is not evidence of genocide, particularly when the authorities responded to adverse publicity with attempts to improve the plight of the "discarded people", as the victims of relocation became known. Close study of forced removal in South Africa identifies the objective as a belated and futile attempt at territorial segregation of the races, not a genocidal campaign against black people. It is true, of course, that blacks were made to bear the cost, in terms of human suffering and lost lives, for plans devised by apartheid social engineers. But the reams of theorising about apartheid contain no equivalent of Mein Kampf sanctioning the mass murder of people deemed to be inferior.
If the apostles of apartheid were as ruthless and efficient as the Nazis - which is what the equation of the NP with the Nazi Party implies - it would be logical to anticipate a reduction in black numbers. That is not the case, however. Giliomee, quoting the demographer Jan Sadie, notes that the black population grew twice as fast in the last decade of white government as in the decade before the advent to power of the NP in 1948. Black life expectancy rose from 38 to 64 and infant mortality declined from 175 to 55 per 1000 births, he adds in an article published in Beeld. In retrospect it is clear that the faster than anticipated growth in the black population was a major factor in gradual loss of control over black people, particularly in the townships, by the white minority government.
The increase in coloured life expectancy and the decrease in coloured infant mortality is even more spectacular. According to figures quoted by Giliomee in his 1996 presidential address to the Institute of Race Relations, between 1950 and 1980 the life expectancy of coloured men rose by ten years and that of coloured women by 15, while coloured infant mortality fell by two-thirds between 1970 and 1985.
Devoid of the notions of Führerprinzip - the doctrine which lauds dictatorship, expansionist wars for lebensraum and genocide as a final solution, apartheid cannot, and should not, be equated with Nazism. The South African Communist Party (SACP) is closer to the mark when it describes the situation in pre-liberation South Africa as "colonialism of a special type". It has much in common with kindred forms of colonialism, in which the colonised society is structured and exploited in the interests of the colonisers. In a recent speech to the Justice Colloquium Penuell Maduna, the justice minister, concedes as much when he describes apartheid as "an offshoot of colonialism".
Many of the policies pursued under apartheid - control over the movement of indigenous people, denial or restriction of their civil rights, corralling of them into reservations, and placing them on the lowest rung of a racial hierarchy dominated by whites - are similar to those of colonial powers and settler governments elsewhere in the world. In apartheid South Africa, however, as the SACP notes in The Path to Power, the colonial ruling class and the oppressed colonial people were located "within a single country". Provided one recognises the importation of slaves to the Americas as a feature of colonialism, that definition can be held to apply to the Deep South in the United States before racial segregation was swept away by the civil rights campaign. Speeches by NP politicians when they began to implement apartheid policies after the NP's 1948 election victory show that their frame of reference was not Nazi Germany but the Deep South in the 1950s.
If there is scant historical justification for equating the NP's apartheid policy with Nazism, there is still less justification for characterising the policies of the DP, the NNP and, hence, the Democratic Alliance as neo-Nazi. Their policies endorse the values enshrined in the 1996 Constitution, including equal rights and opportunities for all South Africans, irrespective of race. Their agenda is not vastly different from that of ANC. Though they question the means deployed by the ANC, particularly its commitment to equality of outcomes and its re-emphasis of race as a criterion for differential treatment, their vision of the future is essentially similar: a non-racial, democratic and open society. They share the same declared ends but believe their route is safer and shorter. They are actively seeking to recruit black people to their ranks, not to suppress them.
Perhaps they have attracted the vitriol of ANC propagandists because they are feared as potentially successful competitors for the black vote. The ANC, which still regards itself as the sole and authentic representative of the people, is demonising the liberal opposition just as it demonised its rivals during the liberation struggle. By constantly comparing liberals to the genocidal Nazis, the governing party hopes to inculcate in them a paralysing sense of shame and to undermine the opposition's constitutional right to exist.
Focus 20, December 2000. Patrick Laurence is an assistant editor on the Financial Mail.
Part II.
At the same time, to off-set the popular appeal of the Ossewabrandwag, D.F. Malan of the National Party decided to reorganise the Party to make it more accessible to grassroot members. The size of the Party units was decreased, making it possible for even the smallest grouping of Afrikaners to form their own political cell. The aim was to educate the ordinary member in the political faith and to make them feel necessary to the decisions of their political superiors.
Given the sympathies of some Afrikaners for the Ossewabrandwag during the war years, certain authors, critical of later Afrikaner race policies, were quick to equate the post-1948 apartheid state with the Nazi state of the 1930s and 1940s. Given the universal criticism heaped upon the Nazis and the general scorne voked by apartheid, the analogy was a tempting one,and one which could be readily understood and appreciated abroad. Such a one-to-one equation, however, obscures more than it reveals. Although some right-wing Afrikaners did identify with NaziGermany, in real terms Nazi influence in South Africa was rather limited.
The relationship between Afrikaner nationalism and German national socialism appeared to be mainly that of mutual ideological sympathy rather than deep seated structural similarities. Afrikaner nationalists differed from their German counterparts in terms of their belief in the doctrine of Christian nationalism as opposed to the crudepseudo scientific Social Darwinism of the Nazis. Afrikaners felt no need to exterminate what they considered the inferior races,and although Afrikaners respected strong leaders,there was no cult of the Führer. Afrikaner nationalism owed its characteristics and direction more to the development of specific indigenous historical ideas, related to nineteenth-century Boer republican impulses and local conditions as indicated, than to the adoption of a rigid ideology which originated outside the country.
Most Trekboers did not own slaves.
- Working for pastoralists.
Few stock farmers or pastoralists, for example trekboers, were slave owners.
Between 1688 and 1783 less than half of the stock farmers owned slaves and many of these only one slave. Slaves in these areas did domestic work and some of them looked after cattle and sheep. Workers who looked after that cattle and sheep had to carry guns to protect the animals and worked far from the farmhouse. Slaves were not allowed to carry guns and it was easy to run away if you worked without close supervision, especially if you worked in the frontier areas.
Therefore, the stockfarmers farmers preferred to use the Khoekhoe and San, two indigenous groups, to look after their animals. The Khoekhoe, traditionally being pastoralists themselves, also had more experience working with animals. Domestic work included cooking, cleaning the house and taking care of the farmer’s children. Some slave women also helped to make things like soap and butter that could be sold on the market to supplement the farmer’s earnings.
- Landless poor whites.
- recent interpretations tend to stress more mundane factors and motivations for the movement. The migratory habits to acquire more land, which were firmly established by trekboers throughout the 18th C, had been bottled up for 40-50 years and there were growing numbers of landless white males. In trekboer society, this was a terrible situation and fate. Their only course was to become a ‘bywoner’ to some relative or other farmer with land. As such, they would provide services (usually as an overseer) and be allowed to use some land for a few cattle or agricultural purposes. This meant that their status was only a bit better than non-white servants.
- this interpretation sees the ‘Great Trek’ as merely the bursting of the dam that had bottled such migrations up for over 2 generations.
Piet Retief’s Manifesto.
- Retief was one of the most influential of the Great Trek leaders. Among those who joined the Great Trek, he was a bit unusual in a couple of respects. He was much better off than most trekkers; at one time he owned over 20 lots in Grahamstown as well as farm properties. As can be seen from his letter (it was translated for publication in the Grahamstown Journal), he was better educated than most who were illiterate or just barely literate.
- Retief’s so-called manifesto has too often been accepted uncritically and without analysis of context. Not all the assertions can be accepted at face value. It must be analysed carefully and critically.
- for example, the complaint about the abolition of slavery and the process of compensation for a long time went unexamined and was repeated innumerable times as a factor in the trek (by both friends and critics).
-however, investigation revealed that slavery was not common in the eastern frontier areas from which almost all the Voortrekkers came. Besides, no new slaves could be imported after 1807 and the prices of the existing slaves had risen markedly. Very few (if any) Voortrekkers had ever owned slaves. Retief’s only known connection was that at one time he had borrowed money from an ex-slave woman!
Shutting down of migration after 1780s.
- the earlier expansion had left some land not taken up behind the leading edges and the pushing back of the Xhosa in the early wars in the 19th C had made some land available (however, the 1820 settlers had also been assigned much of that); nevertheless, the voracious appetite for land among trekboers meant that by the 1830s, landlessness had grown. In effect, the on-going migration that had characterised the 18th C had been dammed up for almost 50 years. Thus, the Great Trek can be viewed as the bursting of the dam. Thus, the Great Trek can be seen as merely the resumption of the earlier process.
- this interpretation is supported by the fact that late in the 19th C when the problem of landlessness again reemerged in the South African Republic (Transvaal), a couple of attempts were made to organise new treks farther into the interior (into Zimbabwe or Angola). These efforts were blocked by Rhodes who wanted to ensure that it was the British Empire that got these areas. However, these aborted attempts to leave the Boer republic could hardly be viewed as attempts to ‘preserve the Afrikaner nation’ from extinction of assimilation.
Law forbidding migration north of the Orange River.
- the rumours about the proposed treks beyond the Orange River had been circulating for 3-4 years and the government had been considering what it could do in such a case. Again rumours were that troops were to be sent to the drifts (fords) in order to intercept and prevent the treks. Retief and the trekkers were trying to forestall such actions.
- one of the ways to do this was to influence public opinion and sympathy. Many of the grievances were probably included to appeal to those Afrikaners who were not going on the trek. The slavery abolition surely falls into this category. The slave owners lived mostly in the western province area and none of them were joining the trek; however, raising the issue was sure to get their sympathy.
Disobedience of lawful authority.
- this is a sin in much of Calvinist tradition. Earthly authority and government is a surrogate for Divine authority; the Calvinist definition of sin is rebellion against God. Thus, rebellion against earthly authority becomes by projection rebellion against God.
- the only exception is when earthly government is so evil and wicked that disobedience and rebellion is justified. Thus, some of the arguments (not so much by Retief but by others in the movement) were designed to show that this was true of the British administration in the Cape.
Nationalist piety and sacrifice?
- this came to be the major assertion of Afrikaner nationalists in later generations. F. van Jaarsveld challenged this idea in the 1960s in The Awakening of Afrikaner Nationalism; he was roundly denounced for this heresy and there were demands that he be fired from his job in the Univ. of Potchefstroom for Christian National Education.
- he argued that a sense of ‘national identity’ was very little or not at all developed; Trekboers certainly recognised the differences in language, religion, etc. between themselves and the British;
- they had certainly developed a way-of-life and a set of values that were distinctive, but they were also significantly different from people of Dutch descent in the western province areas of the Cape. The latter regarded the Trekboers as rather wild, semi-barbarous frontiersmen and the sense of common identity was limited and incomplete. The westerners followed the Trek with interest and probably with a good deal of sympathy, but they certainly did not see the trekkers as the saviours of some mystical Afrikaner ‘nation’.
- even more significantly, the trekkers themselves had only a limited sense of unity; only severe danger could unite them. Mostly, their loyalties were to individual leaders. Repeatedly during the next 30 years or so, they fought and bickered with each other. They were not even united on religion; two new Reformed churches were started (they left the NGK behind in the Cape as it was too ‘liberal’ and required well educated clergy). One of these new churches (known as the ‘Dopper Church’) was very austere; even singing of hymns was regarded as too worldly and the only music allowed was the singing of psalms (this was the church of Paul Kruger).
- van Jaarsveld argued that a true sense of national identity did not emerge until after the British annexation of the South African Republic in the 1870s; then a series of national meetings to oppose the annexation and the successful revolt against the British—the ‘1st War of Independence’—did bring a sense of identity among the Boers of the Transvaal.
- this feeling of nationalist identity was only fully developed and confirmed in the period leading up to and including the South African War (‘2nd War of Independence’ for Afrikaner nationalists).
- certainly, I tend to put a good deal of emphasis upon ‘land hunger’; however, not all landless trekboers joined the migration and others, like Retief, were not landless so other factors were involved as well.
- As far back as 1809, Hottentots were prohibited from wandering about the country without passes, and from 1812, Hottentot children who had been maintained for eight years by the employers of their parents, were bound as apprenticed for ten years longer. The missionaries were dissatisfied with these restrictions; both of them were removed by an ordinance passed July, 1828, when vagrant Hottentots began to wander over the country at will. Farming became almost impossible; the farm-laborers became vagabonds and petty thefts took place constantly.
Early in 1834, Sir Benjamin D'Urban, called "the Good," was appointed Governor. A legislative council was then granted the colony, but its powers were not great.
The Boers had never been greatly in favor (many opposed it strongly) of slavery, but they had yielded to the general custom and over three million pounds was invested in slaves throughout the colony in 1834. Sir Benjamin D'Urban proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves, who had been set free throughout the British Empire, in August, 1833. This freeing was to take effect in Cape Colony on the 1st of December, 1834.
The news of the emancipation was felt to be a relief, but the terms on which it was conducted were productive of unending trouble. The slave-owners of Cape Colony were awarded less than a million and a quarter for their slaves -- and the imperial government refused to send the money to South Africa; each claim was to be proved before commissioners in London, when the amount would be paid in stock. To make a journey of one hundred days to London was, of course, impossible to the farmers; they were at the mercy of agents who made their way down to the colony and purchased the claims, so that the colonist received sometimes a fifth, sometimes a sixth, or less, of the value of his slaves. The colonists had hoped that a vagrant act would have been passed by the Council when the slaves were freed, to keep them from being still further overrun by this large released black population, but this was not done.
The Cape based Afrikaners passed Grand Apartheid not the Boers.
The architect of Grand Apartheid Hendrik Verwoerd was from Holland. D F Malan who ran on an Apartheid expansionist platform was from the Western Cape. The Apartheid laws were crafted at Stellenbosch Universit & most National Part members were asscoiated with the Univ.
The Boers were not colonial as they were anti colonial & developed into an indigenous homegrown ethnic group.
It would be entirely wrong to regard the trekboers as members of an exotic civilisation transplanted to the South African interior: these new-comers had become as much a part of Africa as its indigenous people and as the Bantu who, all unknown to them, were at the same time migrating southwards down the continent.
- The trekboers are a product of Africa. They broke all connection with Europe and their homeland Holland. The Afrikaner and his language grew out of this movement, and this could be considered as another of the migrations of Africa but by a white African tribe this time.
Note: The Boers did not come from just Holland but from France / Belgium / Germany / Asia & others as well.
- Boer Family, 1886. The Boers (Afrikaans for farmers) were of Dutch descent. Recognised by many Africans as a tribe, the were a semi-nomadic cattle owning people.
- The Afrikaners are Africa's only true indigenous white tribe of Africa. They even speak their own language, Afrikaans formed over many years through the coming together of various cultures and nationalities in the Cape.
Note: The Afrikaners in actual context tends to refer to those of Western Cape descent while the term Boer tends to refer to those who are of Trekboer & Voortrekker descent.
- This tribe traces its origins to the first permanent settlement of Dutch colonists who arrived in 1652 and to the French Huguenots, Protestant refugees from catholic France who came to the country shortly thereafter.
The Transvaal Republic & the Orange Free State were recognized by several European governments & the American government.
- The Republic was now in possession of a Convention, which from the nature of its provisions seemed to promise a peaceful future. In addition to Great Britain it was recognized in Holland, France, Germany, Belgium, and especially in the United States of America. The American Secretary of State at Washington, writing to President Pretorius on the 19th November, 1870, said: "That his Government, while heartily acknowledging the Sovereignty of the Transvaal Republic, would be ready to take any steps which might be deemed necessary for that purpose."
The Boers were not after the wealth of Africa.
The trekboers' slow advance through the extremity of Africa may have been sporadic and casual but it went on with the inevitability of an incoming tide, each individual trekker party representing a wavelet which lapped across another section of the wilds. And their expansion had a different quality from anything which had occurred before. These pioneers were not inspired by the explosion of an ambitious will, by the lure of a rich country's plunder, or by the drag of newly discovered gold. Their advance was a communal quest for increased freedom combined with a feeling for seclusion, a resentment of authority and an abiding curiosity about the veld which lay beyond the next line of hills.
- The discovery and exploitation of mineral wealth (diamonds and gold) is undoubtedly the biggest factor in the creation of modern South Africa, but trekboers had little role in that; in fact, they often wanted to impede that development.
Afrikaans is often erroneously thought to be just a dialect of Dutch. This is not the case at all as Afrikaans is in fact a distinct homegrown language with muti cultural roots.
Is Afrikaans not a creole of Dutch?
In the late nineteenth century, when most research on Afrikaans was based not on empirical, historical and etimological studies, but rather on the personal opinions of famous scholars, Afrikaans was regarded as a creole of Dutch. During the early twentieth century, however, several Dutch, German, English and South African scholars spend years studying early manuscripts, Netherland dialects, and modern linguistic theory, and were able to prove that Afrikaans is indeed not a creole, but a full language in its own right.
Some of the most favourable and valuable academic materials were published in Dutch and Afrikaans, but one or two books with less favourable opinions were written in English. Since English is far more widely understood than Dutch, many English speaking people read only the English books proclaiming Afrikaans to be a creole, thereby resulting in the worldwide mistaken belief that Afrikaans is indeed a creole.
Is Afrikaans not merely a simplified version of Dutch?
If you believe this, you might as well believe that French is a simplified version of Latin. While it is true that to the casual observer Afrikaans might look and sound like a watered down version of Dutch, Afrikaans actually boasts many linguistic features not found in Dutch at all. In fact, you might say that modern Dutch and modern Afrikaans are both dialects of late medieval Dutch.
- Afrikaans, the modern version '''is more than merely a Dutch derivative''' as some would suggest.
Inextricably linked for the last century with the development and application of apartheid within South Africa, the immense reach and value of this language has often been overlooked within the wider political climate.
While the Dutch, who arrived in South Africa in 1652 and established a colony in Cape Town, are largely credited with the birth of the language, the version spoken today is an accumulation of many other influences. The Dutch dialect established after 1652 incorporated terms and phrases handed down from sailors who had been shipwrecked off the Cape coast after it became clear that the horn of Africa presented another viable trade route. These phrases, of both english and portuguese origin, soon found their way into the dutch dialect.
In addition, the language took on a more oriental flavour with the arrival of a slaves in the Cape, primarily of Malay extraction, but also from other eastern regions and nearby African islands including Madagascar.
This spiced the language considerably, and when the accents, dialects and phrases of the original inhabitants of the land were added to the mix, it became evident that Afrikaans was a completely different animal to its Dutch parent.
The Hottentots, original Koi inhabitants as well as the Xhosa and the Zulu people all contributed in their fashion to the language as it spoken today.
From this, three main dialects emerged, Cape Afrikaans, Orange River Afrikaans and Eastern Border Afrikaans. The Cape dialect is mostly enfused with the language spoken by the Malay slaves who worked in the Cape and spoke a form of broken Portuguese, the Orange River dialect developed with the influence of Koi languages and dialects developed in the Namakwaland and Griqualand West regions and the Eastern Border Afrikaans evolved from the settlers who moved East towards Natal from the Cape.
- This unique language "just grew' from the soil of South Africa. In the human melting pot of the Cape it was inevitable that, from the original Dutch spoken by the first settlers, a colloquial form would be evolved by people such as the Khoikhoi and slaves from Malaya, Indonesia, Madagascar and West Africa.
These diverse peoples all needed to communicate and a modified version of Dutch, with many words from the other languages, was used as a language common to all. It developed further as Huguenot settlers added words and altered the sound of other words.
The struggle to gain recognition for Afrikaans as a written language was directed and carried out from Paarl. The Language Route centres on Dal Josaphat where a number of farms and buildings are to be found in which many of the events relating to the struggle for recognition of the language and the First Afrikaans Language Movement took place.
- Erroneously some have claimed the Afrikaans language to be the language of the 'Baas'. Afrikaans is the result of bringing together the East and the West, the North and the South. It was and should be the language that celebrates our cultural diversity rather than the language of exclusion. On the other hand those who attack Afrikaans is attacking not the language of the white man, but also the legacy that our slave stamouer have left behind in the development of this language.
The Taal movement—Afrikaans.
- the main leaders in this movement were the Du Toit brothers in Paarl. Afrikaans (at the time almost always referred to as ‘die Taal’—the Language) was a spoken, not a written language. It was a simplified version of Dutch which probably had originated among the slaves and/or Khoikhoi servants. Because young children were raised mostly by nannies, this was the language most whites learned first . Over many generations, the Taal was usually the first language of young children. Dutch remained the official language of government and the Dutch Reformed Church and thus it had to be learned later. Dutch was the written language.
The Transvaal Vierkleur was present at an American political party convention in 1900 as a symbol of anti-imperialism. This flag including the Orange Free State Vierkleur turned 150 in 2007.
- That's what comes of looking at what was going on exactly a century ago. It would be fun to have a sort of joint Boer War/Philippine Insurrection centennial celebration before time runs out. I'll try to find a vierkleur flag to bring. Actually, some of those flags were in evidence at the Democratic convention of 1900, carried by a few democrats who imagined 1) that the Boers were fighting against imperialism and that 2) imperialism was generically bad. True enough, but the two wars did add to the growing Anglo-American sense of being in it together, although there was some disagreement as to who would be the senior and who the junior partner in the brave new world order of the 20th century. Now, after all those wasted Rhodes scholarships, we know, even if Tony Blair hasn't quite gotten it. Having seen the Boers and Filipinos defeated, the great powers failed to draw the lesson that guerrilla war might have a future.
The situation in Southern Africa was far from a White vs Black paradigm as the following notes that alliances cut across racial lines.
- Revisionist writings on 19th-century South Africa make one thing abundantly clear: there was a multiplicity of contending forces not reducible to Britons and Boers. In addition to the missionary- sponsored Griqua states already mentioned, there was an array of chiefdoms, some of them sufficiently consolidated and centralized to be termed native states. These include at least the Zulu kingdom, the Pondo, the Swazi, and Lesotho. These societies existed in a pluralistic environment in which changing combinations of trade, small-scale warfare, and diplomacy were the method of survival. Alliances cut across racial and cultural lines, and it was not unusual to see Boers allied with Griquas or Africans against some current opponent (which could include the Empire). Participants in the 1815 Slagters Nek rebellion had seriously negotiated with a neighboring Xhosa chief for support in driving out the British. Martin Legassick notes that while Boers expected their servants “to be non-white: they did not expect all non-whites to be their servants” (another possible contrast with the Empire). When necessary or expedient, individual Afrikaners or whole communities might live in alliance with, or even under the theoretical jurisdiction of, a native chief. Andries Pretorius and Hendrik Potgieter, Voortrekker leaders, were torn between being leaders in the European sense or transforming themselves into African chiefs who happened to be white.
Pretoria was not the only Boer capital. Pretoria is the most famous Boer capital & only became the capital of the British created South Africa after a long war by the British against the Boers during the Anglo-Boer War as a result of the gold discovered in the Transvaal Republic.
The Boers did not surrender after their capitals of Pretoria & Bloemfontein were taken over by the British in 1900 therefore the British stooped to committing war crimes against the Boer civilian population by burning down their homes & placing them into concentration camps.
The large scale forced relocation of Boer civilians into concentration camps began in earnest in March of 1901 where an estimated 27 000 Boer civilians -mainly children under sixteen- died in squalid conditions.
- Even in Britain, prominent voices began speaking out against the slaughter. Lloyd George, who later served as Prime Minister during the First World War, vehemently denounced the carnage. During a speech in Parliament on February 18, 1901, he quoted from a letter by a British officer: "We move from valley to vally, lifting cattle and sheep, burning and looting, and turning out women and children to weep in despair beside the ruin of their once beautiful homesteads."
Lloyd George commented: "It is a war not against men, but against women and children."
Another future Prime Minister, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, declared in Parliament on June 14, 1901: "When is a war not a war? When it is waged in South Africa by methods of barbarism."
Michael Davitt even resigned as a member of the House of Commons in "personal and political protest against a war which I believe to be the greatest infamy of the nineteenth century."
John Dillon, an Irish Nationalist member of Parliament, spoke out against the British policy of shooting Boer prisoners of war.
From: Boer Data.
After the war Pretoria was a Boer capital in memory only as it would soon serve as the administrative capital of a pro-British Cape Afrikaner based establishment of the artificial super state known as the Union of South Africa. Then later the Republic of South Africa in 1961.
There was a brief rebellion by some Boer War era generals in 1914 to reestablish the Boer Republics but the pro-British Afrikaner regime of Louis Botha (who himself fought against the British during the war) but the leaders of the rebellion were captured & jailed.
The Boers of the past have become somewhat assimilated into a greater Afrikaner (a term which emerged after the war) culture due to the great destruction of their homes & way of life but a significant number of Boers in the former republics still to this day retain their culture & have not been assimilated by the Afrikaner establishment.
There is still rift between the Cape based Afrikaners & the Boers of the former republics which stems from their original cultural separation back in the 1700s when the ancestors of the Republican Boers began extending the boundaries of the eastern Cape through mass migration. The then Cape Dutch (Afrikaner) back in the Western Cape never had much sympathy for the Boers & their independent streak. The Great Trek of the Boers forever placed a gulf between them & their Western Cape cousins some even fought against the Boers during the Anglo-Boer War. Those from the eastern Cape who fought with the republican Boers were known as the Cape Rebels. During the 1960 referendum on South Africa becoming a republic: the Boers living in the former Republics -despite their small numbers as compared to their Cape cousins- swung the vote to its 51 % in favor of the republic.
The Boers who embarked on the Great Trek did so as local clans with little centralized leedership & settled in regions which were depopulated.
The Trekboers headed for the Middle Vaal River, but they were totally decentralized and traveled in small groups, so the Boer advance was very uneven. Boer families tended to settle in regions that were depopulated by Mfecane/Difaqane, and organize themselves as local clans with little centralized leadership. Instead of a centralized state, the Boers tended to produce many small "Boer Republics."
During the Great Trek there was an alliance between the trekking Boers & the Griquas & the Rolong.
- The Trekboers found African allies among the Rolong people who wanted Boer military help against the Ndebele. A combined Boer/Griqua/Rolong attack drove the Ndebele north of the Limpopo in 1837. But then the Boers claimed right of conquest over the Ndebele kingdom and the Rolong were shunted aside to fulfill Boer labor and tax demands.
The following explains in part what happened to the Boers during the first half of the 20th cent & how most suddenly became to be viewed as Afrikaners as a result of being co-opted by the more affluent Cape Afrikaners.
- The 1930s – the Myth Machine and the “Good Afrikaner".
The “Boer worker" was the focus of the culture-brokers’ attentions in the next decade as the urban labour market became an arena in which Afrikaner intellectuals sought to capture the cultural allegiance of the urbanising Afrikaans-speaker. The 1930s were a period of economic insecurity, the worldwide Depression exacerbated locally by the drought and increasing urbanisation.53 The perceived need for Poor White “upliftment" – both educational and economic – was infused with ideas of ethnic identity and history. This economic quest required unity. Dr N Diederichs, a Nationalist politician and chairman of the Broederbond, agonising about the abyss between Afrikaner haves and have-nots, argued that it was “essential to create unity so that the poor can identify with us and feel one with us". Shared heroes were necessary to promote social unity, a fact demonstrated by the proliferation of historical works produced by nationalists in this period. It may also be argued that in any situation of social stress (the drought and depression had rendered this a time of social anxiety), there is a socio-psychological craving for heroes, which facilitated the intellectuals’ agenda.56 In order to mobilise Afrikaners, nationalism needed to have mass appeal. As Tom Nairn has noted, wherever nationalism was manufactured, the new middle-class intelligentsia had to “invite all the masses into history; and the invitation card had to be written in a language they understood". In the 1930s, in the run-up to the Great Trek celebrations, Afrikaner culture-brokers (a class consisting of teachers, clergy, academics, lawyers, newspaper editors and lower-level civil servants) had perfected this part of the enterprise. Benedict Anderson has pointed out, however, with respect to Nairn’s formulation, that “it still has to be explained why the invitation came to be seen as so attractive".57 This is a harder question to answer. Why did the public welcome Marais in the way they did?
While Afrikaner nationalism was not the only discourse available for Afrikaners, it proved successful with the majority.58 Alienated by the values and culture of the new urban environment, they turned predominantly to the “balm of traditional culture".59 Mobilisation had to be through that which was there, as Nairn has noted, so “[t]he middle-classes, therefore, had to function through a sentimental culture sufficiently accessible to the lower strata".60 Having made slight economic advance, the intellectuals led through aggressive cultural assertion and mobilisation.61
They used the Great Trek Centenary to manufacture a period of heightened nationalism.62 Romantic versions of voortrekker history were promoted, men grew long beards, women adopted voortrekker dress, and many babies were baptised Ossewania, Kakebenia and Eeufeesia.63 Central to these activities was the idea of the “imagined community" – the voortrekker republics, rooted in the heroic, rustic past – promoted in works of popular history by Preller and JD Kestell.64 Marais was also co-opted to produce such articles as “Enige Merkwaardige Afrikaners" (Certain Noteworthy Afrikaners) and “Twee Dapper Afrikaner Meisies" (Two Brave Afrikaner Girls) and “Van Oudae en Oumense in Pretoria" (About the Olden Days and Old People in Pretoria).65 He was called upon to defend the Boer image against the criticism levelled decades earlier by John Barrow, who perceived them as backward and unprogressive farmers.66 The works of voortrekker hagiography by Preller, Kestell and Marais created a climate of ancestor worship, the platteland equivalent of Shintoism, that functioned as foundation myths that defined and legitimised the polity.
Just as in the case of the Great Trek celebrations, the Afrikaner intellectuals promoted the celebration of “volksdigters" (popular or national poets). The Language Movement cultivated emerging writers and provided a publishing space for their work. Popular magazines like Die Huisgenoot and Brandwag created a personality cult around selected literary figures.67 Marais was vigorously promoted by Preller as the “first poet", as has been discussed, from the mid-1920s onwards. His work was eagerly solicited and enjoyed by the public, one editor asking: “When is there going to be something by Mr Marais in the paper?"68 By the 1930s there was public interest in his work from complete strangers and Marais was coming to be thought of as a “Good Afrikaner".
White Afrikaans people are being targeted with Nuremberg type laws.
- The reason why Afrikaners need to withdraw from politics really is very simple: it's a matter of physical survival. The Jews of Germany were pushed from public participation by the Nuremberg laws; the Afrikaners are facing the same reality with the so-called Black Economic Empowerment policies of the ANC-regime.
Mbeki is a Black Nazi, not a leader of South Africa: his Black Economic Empowerment policy benefits only his own Xhosa tribe and display nationalist-socialism in its purest form. They have even made Nuremberg-type laws to exclude Afrikaners from land-ownership and are causing them to disappear from public life - exactly what happened to the Jews under the Nazi yoke.
More than 260,000 Afrikaners have already lost their jobs over the past 10 years due to the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy of the ANC regime. More than 440,000 Afrikaners now live below the breadline ($60 a month) - yet are being denied any government aid or food-handouts even from non-governmental aid agencies because they belong to the so-named "previously advantaged" group.
cont.
Unlike the Jews under the Nazi yoke, the Afrikaners don't need laws requiring them to wear Stars of David to identify them publicly: their ethnic-European appearance and Afrikaans language very clearly identify them as "the enemy of democracy" - the term of preference used by Thabo Mbeki when he speaks of Afrikaners, or "whites" as he prefers to refer to this social group.
His latest speeches by ANC officials are particularly interesting for the subtle warnings they contain against Afrikaners, referring to some as "good Afrikaners" - also inferring that most however are the enemy. This is outright hate-speech.
An analysis of Mbeki's speeches over the years makes his sentiments against Afrikaners very clear indeed and his actions. He's intent on erasing the Afrikaner identity and history from the landscape of South Africa, as he can't even stand to see Afrikaans names.
The White Afrikaans people are not just descended from Dutch roots but are significantly descended from French Huguenots & Germans as well.
The White Afrikaans population is a composite of less than 40 % Dutch / up to 25 % French & about 30 % German.
The ancestors of the Boers did not come as settlers on behalf of a colonial power but were in fact taken from northern Europe & dumped at the Cape by a private corporation -the VOC - for the purpose of farming the land to provide produce for the victual post.
While a number of White South Africans became rich during the 20th cent the Boers have historically been poor & the current descendents of the Boers tend to be working class.
Afrikaans is often thought of as just a White language. Not so as it was first developed among the slaves at the Cape & adopted or rather influenced the language of the White settlers / arrivals. Dutch was language which had to be learned later as it remained the formal & written language of the region well into the 19th cent.
The ancestors of the Boers are often though to have come as settlers. Not quite as they were taken from Europe & dumped at the Cape to farm for the VOC. The French Huguenots came as refugees escaping political & religious persecution.
posted by Ron. at 10:43 AM
2 Comments:
Very Good Blog Ron, Im very impressed!
There are one or two excellent titles you might enjoy as well, and they are available on www.archive.org as library copies that have been digitized and free ebook downloads. That makes sharing some of our lost history increadably easy.
You might want to check out:
My Reminisances of the Boer War. By Gen Ben Viljoen
The Real Paul Kruger, by 3 authors.
and to understand where this new world order began, there is also a copy of:
"Last will and Testament of Cecil John RHodes"
Thank you, once again, for your excellent blog, and I will definately be looking into more of your articles
From The Boers in SA
Fox (Johan) Odendaal
PS: The institute of historical review, also has a fantastic book "The Boer War" by Mark Weber. www.ihr.org
you should get into contact with them, and maybe do a presentation at one of the next meetings.
Very Good Blog Ron, Im very impressed!
There are one or two excellent titles you might enjoy as well, and they are available on www.archive.org as library copies that have been digitized and free ebook downloads. That makes sharing some of our lost history increadably easy.
You might want to check out:
My Reminisances of the Boer War. By Gen Ben Viljoen
The Real Paul Kruger, by 3 authors.
and to understand where this new world order began, there is also a copy of:
"Last will and Testament of Cecil John RHodes"
Thank you, once again, for your excellent blog, and I will definately be looking into more of your articles
From The Boers in SA
Fox (Johan) Odendaal
PS: The institute of historical review, also has a fantastic book "The Boer War" by Mark Weber. www.ihr.org
you should get into contact with them, and maybe do a presentation at one of the next meetings.
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