Dr. Lindie Koorts
In March 1919 a group of Afrikaners stood on the deck of a Dutch cargo ship while Tafelberg receded into the distance. They thought of themselves as men of the land, literally and figuratively.
Most had grown up as the sons of farmers. For those born in the Transvaal, ‘Boer’ carried both an occupational and a nationalist identity. It was a name rooted in struggle.
What they did not possess were sea legs. Sea Point was still in sight when the first of their number began to hurl, followed in quick succession by three more.
They had been forced to accept passage on this particular ship, since no passenger ship would allow them on board, for fear of its British sailors going on strike in protest against these ‘traitors’ to the Empire.
They were a deputation of the National Party, headed to the Paris Peace Conference to make a case for the restoration of the two erstwhile Boer republics, which had been defeated by Britain in the South African War and had since been incorporated into the Union of South Africa.
Although they dared not say this out loud to each other or their followers, they knew that their mission was nothing more than a symbolic act. Nevertheless, they would formally lay Afrikaners’ grievances before the world powers.
Although they enjoyed the privilege of their race (to which they hardly gave a thought), they believed they were second-class citizens in the face of English hegemony. The English language and its speakers dominated the civil service, the courts and the schools. English was the language of commerce, and while the English community prospered, the ranks of Afrikaners who belonged to the class of so-called poor whites continued to swell.
After four weeks the deputation reached New York, where they stood in awe of the city’s mushrooming skyscrapers. They visited Washington D.C. and marvelled at its beauty. At the White House, they were received by President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary. Wilson himself was in Paris, at the peace conference.
From New York, they boarded a passenger ship (again under the Dutch flag) that took them to Plymouth. In London, they wrote to the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, requesting an interview, but Lloyd George was also in Paris. Hence, they headed across the Channel.
Once in Paris, they wrote to both Wilson and Lloyd George requesting interviews. Wilson’s secretary informed them that the president’s diary was full. Lloyd George ignored their repeated letters but relented after more than a month.
They were received somewhat stiffly, whereafter the leader of the deputation, General J.B.M. Hertzog launched into an emotional account of the Afrikaners’ daily humiliations at the hands of their English-speaking compatriots. Lloyd George listened politely and then asked them two questions: what were the sentiments of the Union’s African population and how many Afrikaners served in the Union cabinet?
Hertzog couldn’t give an adequate answer to the first question. To the second, he grudgingly conceded that the majority of the cabinet were Afrikaners.
The Union’s Prime Minister was an Afrikaner, General Louis Botha. At his side stood General Jan Smuts. They were veterans of the South African War and had since advocated for a policy of conciliation between the English and the Afrikaners.
Botha had kicked Hertzog out of his cabinet in 1912 for the division he sowed between the two white communities.
The meeting was a failure. Two days later, Lloyd George sent the deputation a letter. ‘It is quite clear,’ he wrote, ‘…that you do not claim to speak for the whole people of the Union, nor even for the whole people of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, nor even for the whole of the Dutch-speaking people of those provinces. You represent the wishes of a party whose adherents are almost entirely drawn from the older Dutch-speaking population of South Africa, and whose policy, as a recent vote in the Union Parliament showed, is supported only by the representatives of the National Party.’
It was a takedown that echoes in Afrikaner politics to this day. Who speaks on behalf of Afrikaners?
The perception of Afrikaners as a homogenous whole loomed large throughout the twentieth century, especially as the nationalist movement grew substantially in the decades that followed. After 1948, the National Party could claim to represent the majority of Afrikaners, until it began to fracture in the 1980s.
It was during this decade, in 1987, that a very different delegation boarded a plane to Dakar to meet the ANC in exile.
More than half consisted of Afrikaners – their names reading like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the Afrikaner intelligentsia. Led by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Breyten Breytenbach, they included academics, journalists, writers and activists.
The so-called Dakar Safari infuriated P.W. Botha, who considered it treachery. Yet their action was a symbolic gesture that carried a powerful message: the oft-repeated Afrikaans phrase, ons is nie almal so nie (we are not all like that). They did not purport to speak on behalf of all Afrikaners – but P.W. Botha and the National Party did not speak for them.
The Dakar delegation demonstrated a wider historical reality, which is still overlooked by the grand nationalist narratives that dominate our discourse – be it Afrikaner or African nationalist. Nationalists present themselves as a cohesive whole and a united front, but that never stands up to scrutiny.
While white Afrikaners do carry common cultural markers – the Afrikaans language being the most prominent, followed closely by the Calvinist faith – the community also has differing regional, class, gender and political identities. Jokes abound among Afrikaners about their inability to agree on anything, and their tendency to split off into new churches and political parties.
In the post-1994 era, the Afrikaner community has continued to fracture. The National Party no longer exists, and Afrikaner voters are mostly spread between the DA and the FF+.
The fact that the DA draws more Afrikaner voters than the FF+ demonstrates that many Afrikaners still vote along racial lines, but the majority no longer vote for an ethnic party, opting instead for what is considered strategic voting.
The most prominent Afrikaner institution, the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), has bled members. Many turned their back on the church for its erstwhile complicity with apartheid. Today, the church faces an existential crisis, as deep rifts have emerged between a progressive faction that seeks to face up to the complicity of the apartheid past and who advocates for the rights and inclusion of LGBTQ+ members; while a conservative faction, opting for a fundamentalist theology, threatens a schism.
Within this fractured environment, the right-wing Solidarity movement has stepped into an organisational vacuum. Progressive Afrikaners, cognizant of the role that a network of Afrikaner cultural, economic, religious and political organisations had played in the mobilisation of nationalism, now shun formal organisations – or at least organisations deemed to be ethnic in nature.
In contrast, Solidarity expanded from a white trade union to a network of organisations that some describe as a state within a state – with the crucial exception of a political party. It has never allowed itself to be tested by the ballot box, and deliberately so.
It claims between 200,000 and 350,000 members, which it often multiplies to claim representation of each member’s presumed spouse and two children, thereby purporting to represent more than a million of the estimated 2,7 million white Afrikaans speakers. Its juggling of numbers dodges scrutiny with the skill of a Springbok wing.
In the past year, two furious debates have raged in the Afrikaans media. In April 2024, the ‘Afrikaner Declaration’ sought to create a deputation of Afrikaner organisations to engage with the government on matters about Afrikaners.
However, apart from the Afrikaner Bond, all of the non-political organisations that signed the declaration were drawn from the Solidarity Movement. Notable in their absence were the DRC and other religious bodies. FEDSAS, which represents school governing bodies, made it clear that it represents all schools, not only Afrikaans-medium schools.
The Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuur Vereniging (ATKV) and the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (SAAWK) remained aloof, both have committed to advancing the interests of the wider Afrikaans-speaking community, of whom only 40% is white. Opinion columns expressed fury at Solidarity’s attempt to speak for all Afrikaners.
The same anger is again raging in the Afrikaans press, following Solidarity’s deputation to Washington D.C. The NGO Betereinders (Better-enders, a wordplay on the South African War’s Bitter-enders), has launched the ‘Not USA but You SA’ campaign. Again, the arguments are clear – ons is nie almal so nie and they do not have a mandate to speak for all of us.
The dilemma that Afrikaners outside the Solidarity kraal face is that their voices are not heard, as they do not have organisations to speak for them. Yet, given their fraught association with ethnic organisations, it is unlikely that a progressive competitor will emerge to challenge Solidarity any time soon.
* Dr Lindie Koorts is a historian at the University of Pretoria.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.