Who's got the map? The negotiation of Afrikaner identities in post-apartheid South Africa

Daedalus

Volumn 130, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 19-44

  Vestergaard, Mads ^a  

^a Psychiatric Centre Copenhagen   (Denmark)

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EID: 12244287261     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. This essay is in part based on fieldwork done in and around Cape Town and the Northern Cape in 1998.
2. When talking about population groups in South Africa (as elsewhere) one inevitably faces the problem of defining the boundaries of the groups - boundaries that are politicized and contested, as this essay will show. When I talk about Afrikaners I use the most widely accepted and used definition: whites who speak Afrikaans as their mother tongue. I will in this connection not deal with the fact that whiteness is also a contested category.
3. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 68.
4. The NP was founded in 1914 by J. B. M. Hertzog. In 1934, it formed the United Party, joining with Jan Smuts's pro-British South African Party. This fusion was a rejection of Afrikaner separatism and an alliance with British capital interests. As a reaction in 1934 D. F. Malan broke away from the NP and formed the Purified National Party, advocating for an exclusive ethnic Afrikaner nationalism. In 1939 Hertzog split from the fusion government, partly because of Smuts's support of the British in World War II, and formed the Afrikaner Party. It later merged with Malan's party - which had gained dominance in political Afrikanerdom - under the name United National Party. Under this name the party became the official opposition party in 1943 and narrowly won the elections in 1948. In 1951 it was renamed the National Party.
5. T. Dunbar Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 11.
6. Quoted in Willem Abraham de Klerk, The Puritans in Africa: A Story of Afrikanerdom (London: R. Collings, 1975), 214.
7. A wide range of literature deals with this issue. See, e.g., Aletta Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse (London: Verso, 1996);
8. Dan O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism 1934-1948 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1983);
9. and Hermann Giliomee, "The Development of the Afrikaner's Self-Concept," in Hendrik W. van der Merwe, ed., Looking at the Afrikaner Today (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1975).
10. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, 300.
11. Anthony Marx, "Apartheid's End: South Africa's Transition from Racial Domination," Ethnic and Racial Studies 20 (3) (1997). In 1910 the ratio of the per capita income of Afrikaner and English-speaking whites was 100 to 300. In 1933 it was approximately 100 to 240, and in 1974 it had been reduced to 100 to 120.
12. Giliomee, "The Development of the Afrikaner's Self-Concept," 29. The income differences nevertheless persisted, and in 1996 the average Afrikaner household earned R 1,000 less per month than its English counterpart (but R 4,000 above the national average). Data compiled by L. Schlemmer and supplied by Hermann Giliomee, personal correspondence.
13. See O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme.
14. These boundaries were not static, but were redrawn and altered in the course of the reign of the NP. They were nevertheless always defined by the nationalist movement and stayed within the discursive framework of Christian nationalism.
15. Deborah Posel, "Whiteness and Power in the South African Civil Service: Paradoxes of the South African State," Journal of Southern African Studies 25 (1) (March 1999): 115.
16. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991).
17. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1965).
18. See, e.g., Stuart Hall, "Introduction: Who Needs 'Identity'?" in Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity (London and Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996), 4;
19. and Craig J. Calhoun, Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford, U.K., and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994), 5.
20. "Monumental Fury Over Ronge's Jeers," Cape Argus, 4 April 1999; 〈http:// archive.iol.co.za/archives/1999/9904/30/ronge2704.html〉.
21. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdorn, 10.
22. Lars Buur, "Institutionalising Truth: Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals in the Everyday Work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission," Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Ethnography and Social Anthropology, Aarhus University, Denmark, 2000, 6.
23. "A Crowd of 2000 Gathers at the Voortrekker Monument," Independent Newspapers, 1997; 〈http://www.iol.co.za〉.
24. Antjie Krog, Country of my Scull (Johannesburg: Random House, 1998), 128, 238.
25. See Mahmood Mamdani, "Reconciliation without Justice," Southern Revue of Books (November/December 1996).
26. Convicted apartheid police spy Craig Williamson criticizes the lack of acceptance of involvement with the apartheid system when he says: "Our weapons, ammunition, uniforms, vehicles, radios and other equipment were developed by industry. Our finances and banking were done by bankers who even gave us covert credit cards for covert operations. Our chaplains prayed for our victory and our universities educated us in war. Our propaganda was carried by the media and our political masters were voted back into power time after time with ever-increasing majorities. It is therefore not only the task of the members of the Security Forces to examine themselves and their deeds. It is for every member of the society we served to do so." Truth and Reconciliation Report 4 (Cape Town: Juta Publications), 23.
27. See Isabel Hofmeyr, "Building a Nation from Words: Afrikaans Language, Literature and Ethnic Identity, 1902-1924," in Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, eds., The Politics of Race, Class, and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century South Africa (New York: Longman, 1987).
28. Afrikaans is far from an obscure language in South Africa. In 1994, 14.97 percent of the South African population spoke Afrikaans as their home language, making it the third most widely spoken language after isiZulu and isiXhosa. See South Africa Survey 1997-1998 (Pretoria: South African Institute for Race Relations), 100. As many have Afrikaans as their second language it is one of the most widely understood languages in the country.
29. Howard Barrell, "Throwing a Lifeline to a Language," Daily Mail & Guardian, 23 May 2000; 〈http://www.mg.co.za/mg/news/2000may2/23may-taal1.html〉.
30. See Hofmeyr, "Building a Nation from Words," on the language movement.
31. Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, Tough Choices: Reflections of an Afrikaner African (Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 2000), 79.
32. Tough Choices: Reflections of an Afrikaner African Ibid., 81.
33. Marthinus van Schalkwyk, National Assembly, 24 March 1999, my italics.
34. There was even a special debate on the issue in Parliament in 1999.
35. Hermann Giliomee, "The Cultural Survival of Afrikaners/Afrikaans-speakers in a Democratic South Africa," paper prepared for a seminar on the South African Jewry, organized by the Jewish Board of Deputies, Johannesburg, 15-16 September 1998.
36. Melissa Steyn, "White Identity in Context: A Personal Narrative," in Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin, eds., Whiteness: The Communication of a Social Identity (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1999), 265.
37. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, 54. Norval points out that Afrikanerdom was constituted by excluding a series of Others who, apart from blacks, were English-speakers, imperialists, communists, Jews, coloreds, Indians, and so on - depending on context.
38. The political party favored by most whites - both Afrikaans- and English-speakers - is the Democratic Party, which has emerged as the main protector of white interests. A rapidly disintegrating NNP, together with the DP earlier this year, has formed the Democratic Alliance.
39. As mentioned earlier, the term volk has a very narrow ethnic quality to it, which is why one never hears anyone talk about the "Afrikaner volk" when it is meant to include coloreds. The category of "coloreds" has a specific meaning in South Africa; it is an apartheid category that includes a variety of people such as the descendants of Khoi and San people, Malays, and those referred to elsewhere as mulattos. Although contested, the label is still used today. Coloreds have Afrikaans as their mother tongue, and they outnumber white Afrikaans-speakers: 2.9 million as opposed to 2.5 million. See Census in Brief: The People of South Africa Population Census (Pretoria: Statistics South Africa, 1998).
40. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, 245.
41. Giliomee, "The Cultural Survival of Afrikaners/Afrikaans-speakers."
42. There are two main suggestions: the Northern Cape, where because of its scarce population Afrikaners can form the majority if enough move to the area, and the area around Pretoria, where the concentration of Afrikaners is the highest in the country.
43. It should be noted that there are great differences within Orania in terms of the view on the situation, the possibilities of the Afrikaners, and the legitimacy of the ANC government. In very general terms the political leadership tends to have a more positive approach to the new South Africa and recognizes the importance of being on good footing with the new rulers. This position is considered "too liberal" by some residents.
44. The Constitution reads: "The right of the South African people as a whole to self-determination, as manifested in this Constitution, does not preclude, within the framework of this right, recognition of the notion of the right of self-determination of any community sharing a common cultural and language heritage, within a territorial entity in the Republic or in any other way, determined by national legislation." Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996, chap. 9, 235.
45. Although the official position of Orania fully recognizes the legitimacy of the ANC government and is careful to avoid references to race, the town attracts a lot of people who disagree with the political leadership on these issues. Thus, some people will not negotiate with the government, and simply want to be outside South Africa because it has become "too black." Although the Oranians officially have discarded the discourse of natural identities, the primordial logic is nevertheless retained through the assumption that certain people will naturally identify with the same values.
46. The term Boer literally means "farmer" and has a very distinct white, conservative connotation.
47. Homosexuality is still considered a big taboo for many. NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk responded to allegations that he had a homosexual relationship with his gardener with the words: "I have never in my life had homosexual relations, I am a Boer son!" Daily Mail & Guardian, 8 May 1998.
48. Umberto Eco, "Towards a Semiotic Enquiry into Television Message," in W.P.C.S.3, University of Birmingham, 1972.
49. Mads Vestergaard, "Afrikanerdoom? Negotiating Afrikaner Identity in Post-apartheid South Africa," master's thesis, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 2000, 137.
50. Of these can be mentioned people like the lawyer Bram Fischer, the reverend Beyers Naudé, and the poet Breyten Breytenbach.
51. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, 218.
52. A wide range of alternative initiatives were launched as it became apparent to an increasing number of people that there was an acute need for political change. An example was the meetings between Afrikaner businessmen and the exiled ANC, at the initiative of van Zyl Slabbert. See van Zyl Slabbert, Tough Choices, 58.
53. Dan O'Meara, Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948-1994 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996), 14.
54. It is important to note that despite Mbeki's call for a pan-African African Renaissance, the South Africanness the ANC advocates for is strongly based on the nation-state, is very nationalistic, and is in that sense particularistic.
55. See Ernesto Laclau, "Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity," in Ernesto Laclau, ed., Emancipation(s) (New York: Verso, 1996), for a brilliant discussion of this philosophical and political problem.
56. See also Nic Rhoodie and Ian Liebenberg, Democratic Nation-Building in South Africa (Pretoria: HSRC Publishers, 1994), for a debate on nation-building in South Africa.
57. Statement to the Afrikanerbond, 27 July 1999; 〈http://196.14.83.132/ ancdocs/history/mbeki/1999/tm0727.html〉.
58. Goffman writes: "... these being stigma that can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family." See Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986), 14.
59. Vestergaard, "Afrikanerdoom?" 137. The tendencies outlined in the latter part of this essay can be seen as examples of how this negotiation of identity occurs.
60. van Zyl Slabbert, Tough Choices, 87 f.