Changing ideas of Afrikaner/white identity

Max du Preez

is an acclaimed journalist, author and political commentator. This paper was read at the National Arts Festival's Wordfest in Grahamstown on 2 July 2005.

I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this Wordfest. It gives me the opportunity to do my bit for the important Word Festival movement in South Africa after I failed to turn up for a speaking engagement at the Stellenbosch Word Festival a few months ago. I am still persona non grata at my alma mater for withdrawing from that festival to protest the participation of a man with vile and dangerous racist views who also happened to have written a book. They call me an enemy of free speech.

I agree strongly that it is important at a function like that festival - and this one - that a wide range of views and analyses be hosted, politically incorrect or not. A word festival is the last place where censorship should be tolerated.

But we should all guard against a phenomenon we have recently witnessed in countries like the Netherlands and Germany, of nasty peddlers of hatred, bigotry and intolerance flying the flag of freedom of speech. We should protest when these charlatans champion one section of our constitution in order to undermine the entire spirit of that constitution.

At the heart of everything we're trying to achieve in this democracy of ours is our fight against racism and racial divisions and inequalities. We still call it our national question. It is the special role the universe has given South Africa to play in the world: to prove that in the country where all humanity originated, where racism was perfected as a religious ideology, there can be a positive co-existence of colours and cultures and classes. We are the test tube of all humanity.

That is why I believe universities and occasions like word festivals should never offer themselves as platforms for racist fundamentalists to spread their views and gain intellectual respectability. Don't ban them or lock them up, but don't do their dirty work for them.

I don't see anyone of that description on your invitation list, so I'm happy to be here. And forgive me for the long introduction, but I come from a family of dominees and missionaries. We have a tradition of conducting a little sermon before we say anything sensible. I did not forget that I am supposed to talk about Afrikaners' changing ideas of identity.

Anyone with a basic understanding of Afrikaner history will appreciate the deep irony of the fact that the undisputed political leader of the Afrikaners a mere century after the Anglo-Boer War is an English-speaking Jew. In fact, the Democratic Alliance's fox-terrier, Douglas Gibson, recently declared that Tony Leon was the biggest living Afrikaner icon. I can hear Hendrik Verwoerd mutter from his grave: Eish, 'n Rooinek-Jood! Something has gone horribly wrong!

We should not be surprised that Afrikaners are suddenly grappling with who they are and where they fit in. They had a near monopoly on political power and cultural prestige for half a century. For most of this time they wrote our history; their leaders were the national leaders; they dominated the security forces; theirs was the dominant culture; our national days were Afrikaner volksfeeste; Afrikaans was the language of parliament and the civil service; the Springbok rugby team was the pride of Afrikanerdom who were gracious enough occasionally to allow a non-Afrikaner to play.

Of course they were traumatised when most of their power, privilege and status evaporated almost overnight. It is not strange that they feel insecure and confused - the same has happened with every ethnic group in the world that has lost power and status in a short time. There are many comparisons we can make with groups in the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union, the only difference being that Afrikaners did not retaliate violently. I have always thought Afrikaners and Serbs have a lot in common, but both groups will probably protest at that statement.

Still, most Afrikaners were caught up for a while in the euphoria most other South Africans felt in the period immediately after the 1994 elections - largely because of the conciliatory and charismatic leadership of President Nelson Mandela and the fact that the then majority Afrikaner party, the National Party, was in a Government of National Unity with the ANC, with the NP leader, FW de Klerk, being one of two deputy presidents.

For a while, Afrikaners forgot about their worst fears of "black majority rule" and that "the blacks will do to us what we did to them". There were other sweeteners: their beloved national rugby and cricket teams could once again compete internationally; national conscription was abolished; international sanctions were scrapped; and the South African passport was again acceptable everywhere. In fact, during the first two years of democracy most Afrikaners were surprised that their lives had changed so little, and where their lives did change it was, in most cases, for the better.

It went so well that most Afrikaners would have told you then that they were enthusiastic members of the new South African nation. They sang "Shosholoza" with gusto and simply loved their black president with the number 6 rugby jersey at the rugby World Cup.

For a while there, white South Africans, and especially Afrikaners, thought they had at last found their new identity.

But when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission started its sittings in early 1996, they were reminded of the realities of the New South Africa; of the deep-seated resentments still held by the black majority because of the injustices of centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid.

Former State President FW de Klerk, his cabinet and their police and army generals fought bitterly against the Truth Commission, and those who did testify before the Commission, did so reluctantly. De Klerk and his party actually twice challenged the TRC in court. De Klerk did apologise for the injustices of apartheid when he appeared before the TRC, but the language he used and the fact that he denied personal knowledge of or responsibility for excesses of the security forces undermined the impact of his apology on the minds of many black South Africans.

The white mantra at the time, and we still sometimes hear it, was: Why are you stuck in the past, why don't we take hands and build the future?

The result of these campaigns against the TRC was that probably a majority of Afrikaners believed it was not a fair process and that it had been devised to vilify the Afrikaner and the National Party. Still, they could not remain untouched by the overwhelming evidence, from victims and from perpetrators seeking amnesty, of gross human rights violations during especially the turbulent 1980s. This had to have had an influence on their thinking, and some analysts believe it contributed to the undermining of any tendency of significance planning the restoration of white rule.

Another turning-point in Afrikaner thinking and political life was the withdrawal, at FW de Klerk's insistence, of the National Party from the Government of National Unity in June 1996. The NP's new role as the official opposition, along with the predictable increase of negative rhetoric from the ANC, contributed to a new polarisation in mainstream Afrikaner political attitudes. The NP's move also led to the resignation of two of its most prominent reformers, Roelf Meyer and Pik Botha

Not even a change of name and leader could now save the National Party. Its alliance with the Democratic Party did not last long and its alliance with the ANC led to its eventually disbanding.

Polls now show that the vast majority of Afrikaners see the Democratic Alliance as their political home, with conservative and right-wing Afrikaners mostly supporting the Freedom Front, which became Freedom Front Plus late in 2003 after swallowing up the remainder of the old Conservative Party. The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) exists in name only, and the extreme right consists of a few tiny groups on the lunatic fringe, like the Boeremag.

The only logical continuation of the ideals of apartheid or "self-determination" inside a non-racial and democratic South Africa would be the concept of a volkstaat or autonomous Afrikaner homeland. The closest Afrikaners ever have ever come to this ideal is the town of Orania in the Northern Cape. The town was built in the 1960s by the Department of Water Affairs for people who were working on a canal below the Vanderkloof Dam, but abandoned when the job was done. A group of Afrikaners under the leadership of Carel Boshoff, son-in-law of former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, bought the town and an adjoining farm in 1991 to serve as the nucleus of an Afrikaner homeland. It still exists, with a good school and several ambitious agricultural projects, but it is riddled with infighting and there is no indication that it could expand into something much more than a village.

Orania is proof that the volkstaat idea is finally dead. And even the right wing now knows that Afrikaner or white "self-determination" is no longer an option. Any sense of identity will have to be found inside the fold of the broader South African nation.

Afrikaners finally put what they perceived to be the humiliation of the Truth Commission behind them. But as this was happening, another dramatic change occurred in South Africa: the gentle father figure of Nelson Mandela made way for Thabo Mbeki. The Peacemaker was replaced by the Manager. Reconciliation and reassurance made way for black assertiveness, affirmative action and black economic empowerment. Instead of being pampered, Afrikaners and whites were called "colonialists of a special kind" by their new president. Thabo Mbeki shifted the emphasis from nation building to African consciousness. His regular accusing references to the Two Nations, one rich and white, the other poor and black, made whites very nervous.

I wrote at the time: "Do what has to be done, Mr President, you govern the country. Stop the blaming game. You're the one who chose a Thatcherite economic policy. Change it or live with it."

The rest of the ANC, as well as black commentators, journalists and columnists, quickly took their cue from the president. Black people became far more forthright and outspoken in expressing their frustrations, resentments and criticisms of what they viewed as continued inequalities and prejudices. To be a bit of a Boer basher became a badge of honour. The latest excess in this regard was Malegapuru Makgoba's piece in the Mail and Guardian suggesting that white men can be rehabilitated only if they abandon all notions of an own cultural identity and start talking, eating, dancing and dressing like black people. I was tempted to ask him: What, like the black Englishman who is our president?

In the year of the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, these so-called Africanists were making a mockery of the non-racial essence of this proud document.

The Zimbabwe disaster played right into this. Mbeki's apparent solidarity with the dictator of Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe, and his silence on the way white Zimbabweans were treated and their land repossessed, made Afrikaners fearful and paranoid. Is this the real face of the ANC? they asked one another. If Robert Mugabe is treated like a hero by black South Africans, doesn't that mean that deep down they want to do to us what Mugabe did to his white citizens? they asked.

I will return to the issue of Africanism shortly.

To compound Afrikaner insecurity, ANC structures started changing the names of towns and cities, especially ones named after Afrikaner heroes, and they did that unilaterally, without trying to convince the white inhabitants of those places. The proposed name change of Pretoria to Tshwane is an example, and one that is stirring up deep emotions.

Former progressive Afrikaners who stood up to the apartheid government joined forces with old conservatives who learnt to use the language of progressives and sang in the same choir.

So here we are in 2005. There's no going back to apartheid or Afrikaner hegemony of any kind. Where do Afrikaners think they fit into this new society?

Ton Vosloo, chairman of Naspers and Sanlam and a powerful voice among Afrikaners, was quoted in Die Burger in September 2002 as saying: "It is not to spread panic when one says that the Afrikaner people are in a crisis with red lights flashing on their survival path. The examples of marginalisation are numerous; the places where spaces to exist had been conquered, negotiated and established on own initiative are increasingly being questioned."

In the last few years the internal debates among Afrikaners, in newspapers, on the internet and in discussion groups, have regressed to the questions whether the Afrikaner was "sold out" by FW de Klerk and his lieutenants during the negotiations with the ANC leading up to 1994, about the perceived unjustness of affirmative action and black economic empowerment, and, of course, about the future of the Afrikaans language. Lobby groups like the Group of 63, Solidarity and the Pro-Afrikaanse Aksiegroep sprang up to campaign for "minority rights" and the preservation of Afrikaans.

The most important trigger of Afrikaner insecurity remains the Afrikaans language. Many Afrikaners feel the downscaling of their language in schools, universities, courts, the security forces and the public service is a very real threat to the continued existence of Afrikaans as a viable language. And their language is what most Afrikaners define their ethnic identity in terms of. Afrikaans dies, we die, is how some of them have expressed it.

Yet Afrikaans is flourishing in many ways, more than any other indigenous language in the country. Afrikaans popular and rock music have experienced exponential growth during the last two decades, and more books, newspapers and magazines are published in Afrikaans than in any other indigenous language on the African continent. Steve Hofmeyr sells more cd's than any other artist in southern Africa. Hundreds of thousands of people attend the Afrikaans cultural festivals in Oudtshoorn and Potchefstroom every year, while smaller festivals in Nelspruit and Bloemfontein are growing fast. There is a privately-owned satellite television channel in Afrikaans, kykNet. The debates and discussions on the mainly Afrikaans website LitNet are so lively and popular that its success is studied by other internet entrepreneurs and cultural groups worldwide.

It is not uncommon these days to read a letter to an Afrikaans newspaper or internet chat room angrily protesting the treatment of Afrikaans, just to see at the bottom of it that it was written from New Zealand or Australia or Britain or Canada. Many of those who care so deeply for Afrikaans, who see their own identity so dependent on the survival of Afrikaans, have left the country well knowing that their children will have English as a first language and at most speak Afrikaans only at home.

For many decades Afrikaners tended to doubt English-speaking South Africans' loyalty to South Africa because so many of them had access to a British passport. Afrikaners, they always told themselves, are going nowhere. Well, more Afrikaners than any other ethnic grouping are leaving South Africa nowadays. Tens of thousands of Afrikaners have emigrated during just the past few years, mostly to New Zealand, Australia, Britain and Canada. They claim affirmative action and the high crime rate as their main reasons for leaving - and, of course, the bad treatment their language is getting from the state.

By the way, I also believe Afrikaans is under threat. If current trends continue, Afrikaans will, a hundred years from now, most certainly exist only as the language a small group of people speak at home. But the state-driven downscaling of Afrikaans would only be partly to blame. Afrikaners are the worst enemies of their own language.

I have long been of the view that the new taalstryd, the campaign for Afrikaans, is not so much a language struggle as it is resistance against a loss of power and prestige, an expression of frustration at being marginalised.

With one or two exceptions, the campaign for Afrikaans is driven by people who use the issue as an expression of their dissatisfaction with the present social and political order. Too many of these taalstryders are ethnic chauvinists who use Afrikaans as a stick to beat the ANC with and to whip up emotions against it. Far too little has been done to sell Afrikaans as a friendly indigenous language, as a treasure belonging to all South Africans. And the debate around the future of Afrikaans should be taken further than an incestuous ethnic brawl: all South Africans should be engaged in this debate.

So in 2005, those whites with no plans to emigrate are faced with one obvious solution to their identity crisis: they can declare themselves - and be accepted as - Africans. I raised this debate in 1999, strongly claiming my right to be called an African. From the black side I was accused of opportunism and of trying to steal black people's identity after my people had already stolen their land. A prominent commentator said that as a white Afrikaner I was like a kangaroo born at the Pretoria Zoo: born here and welcome here, but always to be regarded as an alien. From white English-speakers the reaction was voiced by Ken Owen in a column in Business Day: Who cares a hoot whether Max du Preez was a Patagonian goose? he asked.

Ken misunderstood why it was important for me to be called an African. To me and to many other whites and Afrikaners it means an acknowledgement by the majority that we are not settlers, not immigrants, not visitors to Africa. "One settler, one bullet" does not apply to me. I have as much right as any black South African to full citizenship of and participation in the affairs of this nation.

The debate has moved on since then, and most black commentators, including the PAC and Azapo, if they still exist, state formally that Afrikaners and whites could potentially be Africans. But they add that while black South Africans are automatically African, whites have to earn that honorary title. Beyers Naudé deserved to be called an African, they would say. And I suspect many would say Max du Preez doesn't, because he is sometimes disrespectful of the black political leadership. The fact that I disrespected the previous white leadership far more aggressively doesn't seem to make a difference.

The African debate started resurfacing in Afrikaans newspapers a few months ago. Several letter writers called themselves Euro-Africans, as in African Americans. The historical fact that black Americans' ancestors were forcibly taken to America while Afrikaners' ancestors came to Africa as imperialists somehow passed them by. Perhaps a Euro-African is similar to a kangaroo born in the Pretoria Zoo.

But most of the participants in the recent debates seem to understand that being African is not only about being born from ancestors who have been in Africa for 350 years, but also about a commitment to this continent and its people. In most of the letters I saw a desperate need for recognition, a desire to truly belong.

I believe all Afrikaners are indeed Africans. But unfortunately many of them are not very good or loyal Africans.

One of the few prominent whites still popular with the new elite, and someone very careful never to offend them, is poet and author Antjie Krog. Even Antjie recently asked: What do black South Africans expect from us? What do they want white South Africans to do and to be? Please tell us!

Perhaps the William Makgobas and Christine Quntas and even my good comrade Xolela Mangcu should now stand up and tell us what the hell they mean when they talk about Africanism and Africanist. They should explain why we should not think it is just a camouflage for black narcissism.

If it's about being black, I'll understand. And I'll know there's nothing I can do about it. I can have a sex change and become a woman, I can start speaking Sesotho at home, I can change my religion, but I can never become black.

But if it's truly about this continent, about the spirit of Africa, then I'm confused. If they're trying to tell me it's about ubuntu, I'll be even more confused. To me ubuntu is like a virgin on Rhodes University campus - you hear a lot about it, but you never get to see it.

I simply see a new black elite desperate to be European or American. Isn't Eugene TerreBlanche more "African" in his khaki with his animal skin hat, his mieliepap and Klipdrift and brandewyn than the black yuppies I see hanging out at the in-spots in Sandton and Melville? (And they speak only English to one another ...)

So, I have a strong sense that a large portion of Afrikaners and whites are losing their short-lived sense of belonging, of being an integral part of the nation of South Africa.

This is partly inevitable and a result of our bitter history. It is partly a result of our inability to transform our economy faster and more radically, for as long as the majority of whites are seen as rich and privileged and the majority of blacks are seen as poor, white South Africans will be resented and regarded as intruders and robbers and they will therefore feel unwanted and insecure. It is partly a result of President Thabo Mbeki's knee-jerk reaction to occasionally smack whites on the head for being white and not supporting the ANC.

But let me focus on two other, more important reasons why Afrikaners presently feel insecure and unloved.

The first is that Afrikaners have an extraordinarily poor understanding of South African history. Here is little sense of the people who inhabited these parts thousand of years before the Portuguese seafarers "discovered" southern Africa in 1488. There is no understanding of the black civilisations that existed in this region many centuries before the first whites settled here. Afrikaners and whites know almost nothing of the advanced spirituality and intricate social and legal structures of the black farming communities who occupied most of present-day South Africa long before colonialism. They know only of those black kings and chiefs who clashed with the British colonialists or the Voortrekkers and who were in most cases subjugated by superior firepower.

However crude it may sound, it is still true that deep down many Afrikaners view their ancestors as brave, pioneering Christians who had achieved much to civilise the southern tip of Africa and tame the inferior cultures living there. Their heroes and battles were so glorified for so long that it is hard for even critical thinkers to see them in a different light now. Afrikaner nationalism came into existence as a reaction to British imperialism, but its lifeblood soon became the resistance to uhuru and black domination.

The ignorance of the history of the black struggle against domination is even more alarming. Few whites know of the Sol Plaatjes and Pixley Semes, the John Dubes and Albert Luthulis. Until 1990 most whites hadn't even heard of Oliver Tambo. To many Afrikaners the ANC was always the movement of stone throwers and bomb planters, the dangerous stooges of Moscow. They had to believe that, otherwise they wouldn't have been so prepared to send their sons to die on the borders in the battle against encroaching black liberation.

How can we expect people with such a limited, flawed understanding of our past and the political culture of the majority to have an understanding of who their new nation is and where they fit in?

(Of course, it probably equally true that black South Africans have a flawed understanding of white history.)

The second reason for white insecurity I want to highlight is the lack of progressive Afrikaner and white leadership and debates on the real issues. Many former progressive Afrikaners who stood up to the apartheid government have in recent years joined forces with old conservatives and are now singing in the same reactionary choir. Others have withdrawn from public life. The negative and pessimistic voices have become the strongest in public debates.

Too many of the handful of new progressive voices in Afrikanerdom believe their obligation is to paint Thabo Mbeki and the ANC as the New Messiah. They, like Marthinus van Schalkwyk, are viewed as sycophants by other Afrikaners, not as critical voices who can lead debates.

And the trouble with that great Afrikaner icon Tony Leon is that he and his party could never liberate themselves from their old style of opposition to the old National Party. In the process they are making no contribution to Afrikaners' struggle to define a new identity. Instead, in their zeal to monopolise the Afrikaner vote they often merely reinforce Afrikaners' prejudices and misunderstandings.

Having said all this, I have to add that there are a significant number of Afrikaners, especially younger people, entrepreneurs and professional people, who are thriving in the new post-apartheid society and who are committed to helping build the new democracy. It is such a pity that most of them don't bother any longer to contribute to the current debates among Afrikaners.

I have concentrated mostly on the position of Afrikaner identity and insecurity, because I am an Afrikaner and thus I am reluctant to speak on behalf of English-speaking whites.

But may I just remark that English-speaking whites have been withdrawing from participation in our national affairs even more since 1994 than they did during the days of Afrikaner rule. Still, the ANC's recent statement that Afrikaners have been more embracing of the new order than English-speakers was not only a piece of absolute nonsense, it was pure political opportunism.

The way the ANC leadership and the present government have turned their backs on the white left is truly disgusting. I'm not talking about the former parliamentary opposition, I'm talking about those whites, most of them English-speaking, who put their careers and lives on the line in the fight for a non-racial democracy. Nothing illustrates this better than the refusal to appoint Geoff Budlender to the High Court Bench - very few jurists in this country have his proud and brave record of opposing apartheid and serving justice.

A last word. It seems as if Afrikaners and white South Africans are waiting for the black majority to determine their new identity for them. Perhaps this reactive attitude is the main reason why the white identity crisis is still so acute.



LitNet: 12 July 2005

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