Reading 2 Afrikaner ID in Post Apartheid SA PDF

Who's Got the Map? The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa Author(s): Mads Vestergaard Source: Daedalus, Vol. 130, No. 1, Why South Africa Matters (Winter, 2001), pp. 19-44 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable...

Who's Got the Map? The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa Author(s): Mads Vestergaard Source: Daedalus, Vol. 130, No. 1, Why South Africa Matters (Winter, 2001), pp. 19-44 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027678 Accessed: 12-07-2015 10:03 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press and American Academy of Arts & Sciences are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Daedalus. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mads Vestergaard Who's Got theMap? The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa INTRODUCTION SINCE THE DISMANTLING OF APARTHEID, white people in South Africa have not experienced a tangible decline in living standards.1 Most still live in big suburban houses, drive expensive cars, and send their children to good schools. Despite the affirmative action program of the African National Con gress (ANC) government, unemployment remains low in the white population. On the surface, not much seems to have changed for white South Africans. But just below the surface, white Afrikaners must live with a host of new uncertainties. Over the last ten years, as a result of the effort to transform South Africa into a democratic and nonracial society, the pre mises for being Afrikaner?a white Afrikaans-speaker?have changed dramatically.2 The field of opinions among Afrikaners about recent changes can be usefully divided in two, using Pierre Bourdieu's notions of heterodoxy and orthodoxy.3 Heterodox Afrikaners welcome the new challenges and champion the opening of the social field, while the orthodox resist change and cling to established values. In order to understand the present situation of Afrikaners in South Africa today, itwill be useful to begin with a brief look at the history of Afrikaner identity. Mads Vestergaard is a researcher at the Copenhagen Centre, Denmark. 19 This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 20 Mads Vestergaard CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM The Nationalist Party (NP) electoral victory in 1948 and the initiation of the apartheid system were the culmination of the political success of a Christian nationalist Afrikaner move ment.4 This movement was launched early in the twentieth century by a group of intellectuals returning from studies in Germany and the Netherlands. As the movement became stron ger, it came to encompass a wide range of organizations. Apart from the NP, these included most significantly the Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret society; the Dutch Reformed Church; the Federation of Afrikaner Cultural Organizations; and a range of companies, such as the insurance giants Sanlam and Santam and the publishing house Nasionale Pers (National Press). Racial differences have been important in South Africa ever since the first European set foot in the country, but the new Afrikaner nationalists added an ethnic principle existing to the racial categorization by giving the label "Afrikaner" a new exclusive ethnic content. This was represented in the notion of the Afrikaner volk?a genuine, distinct people with their own volksgeist (to use Herder's term), called by God to fulfill its destiny as Christians, as a civilization?as a people.5 Piet Meyer, once chairman of the Afrikaner Broederbond (1958-1972) and a range of other nationalist bodies, captured this Christian nationalist definition when he stated: To Afrikanerdom belong only those who by virtue of blood, soil, culture, tradition, belief, and calling form an organic unitary society. This nation is by nature an organic wearer of authority with the patriarchal leader as chief bearer of authority of the nation, and with the members of the nation as active and coopera tive workers. The national Afrikaner state is in this sense also a medium of Afrikanerdom to protect and promote its own fulfilment of calling.6 This Afrikaner identity was based on values of God-fearing Calvinism, structures of authority patriarchal (husband and father, priest, school principal, political leaders?all of whom were representing God on earth), adherence to the traditions invented by the nationalist movement, conservative values such This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 21 as the fundamental importance of the nuclear family and het erosexuality, and, above all, the importance of whiteness.7 After 1948, the South African state apparatus was used to promote Christian nationalist morals and values, and a norma tive understanding of Afrikaner identity became entrenched. As apartheid policies took hold, it became increasingly difficult to question the authority of Christian nationalism.8 Economic upheaval was a central element in this mobiliza tion of ethnic consciousness. After the Anglo-Boer War (1899 1902), a lengthy rural crisis and rapid industrialization turned many Afrikaners from farmers into an impoverished urban proletariat. The living standards of Afrikaans-speaking whites were significantly lower than those of English-speaking whites, and in the cities they had to compete with blacks for jobs. Anthony Marx has argued that apartheid fundamentally was an attempt to solve intra-white social, economic, and political conflicts between the English and the Afrikaners.9 The apart heid state initiated a massive affirmative action program for Afrikaners: they staffed the government, received special funds for education, and were given preferential treatment in the awarding of business contracts.10 While most Afrikaners benefited enormously from apartheid economically, they had to comply outwardly with the prevail ing Christian nationalist credo. As generationsa result, of Afrikaners grew up in a social space where the boundaries of identity were sharply If drawn.11 they failed to embody the "good Afrikaner," they could not only lose their material privi leges, but also be ostracized from their communities, churches, or workplaces. In a recent article Deborah Posel pointed out that the privilege and power of Afrikaner civil servants func tioned as a "golden handcuff": jobs could be revoked just as easily as they were supplied. There are examples of Afrikaners who were dismissed simply because they were not members of the NP.12 Because Christian nationalists managed to present themselves as the only true representatives of the Afrikaner people, they were able to conflate political and theological concerns. Oppos ing apartheid meant opposing not only one's own people, but also, ultimately, the will of God. This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 22 Mads Vestergaard POST-APARTHEID ORDER Since the election of 1994 and the adoption of the new Consti tution in 1996, white minority rule has been supplanted by black majority rule as South Africa tries to reinvent itself as a democracy. Liberal democratic values have replaced the puri tanical credo that was so central to apartheid. The easing of censorship, the legalization of abortion, the abolition of the death penalty, and protective laws regarding sexual orientation make the new South Africa not only more liberal than the apartheid state, but also more liberal than many Western de mocracies. The new Constitution upholds a range of basic rights that were denied during apartheid, such as the abolition of different types of discrimination, the freedom of religion, the freedom of expression, the freedom of association, and the freedom to travel and live wherever one wishes. With the fall of the apartheid regime, the Christian national ist elite lost the political power to define Afrikaner?or any other?identity, leading to a reopening of the social field. A cacophony of voices has been raised in debate about what it means to be an Afrikaner. These voices both constitute, and are reactions to, the situation in which Afrikaners have found themselves after the end of apartheid: the collapse of Christian nationalist power, in a context where the old Afrikaner identity is badly tarnished by its association with apartheid and its incompatibility with new liberal norms. Above all, it has be come illegitimate to express one's identity along racial lines? especially if one is a white South African. THE CHANGING STATUS OF AFRIKANER SYMBOLS As Benedict Anderson has argued, a national identity is formed through the use of collective symbols.13 In order to assert a new South Africa, a range of new national symbols has been con structed to replace the old symbols of apartheid. Abandoning the old symbols has had particular significance for Afrikaners, because the symbols used to imagine Christian nationalist Afrikaner identity were also the national symbols of apartheid South Africa. South Africa's national day was the "Day of the This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 23 Covenant," a commemoration of the covenant Afrikaners made with God after their victory over the Zulus in the Battle of Blood River in 1838. The Voortrekker Monument outside Pretoria was a celebration of the Afrikaners' Great Trek. The national anthem was an Afrikaner anthem; the flag was an Afrikaner flag. The streets were named after heroes from nationalist Afrikaner history, and airports and dams bore the names of Afrikaner politicians. In his pioneering work on the sociology of religion, Emile Durkheim pointed out that the totem of a group is sacred because it functions as the materialization of the "spirit" of the group?of its collectivity.14 The worship of the totem is a cel ebration of the group itself. Some recent scholars would argue that totems are not symbolizations of something already exist ing, but, on the contrary, that this "something" only exists through symbolization.15 It is by the act of worship that we create?or "imagine," in Anderson's term?the very object of our worship. Arguably, the disappearance of old Afrikaner symbols has a radical impact on the reproduction of collective Afrikaner identity. Some old symbols have certainly changed. The national cal endar has been revised: the Day of the Covenant has been adopted by the new regime, but renamed the "Day of Reconcili ation." New holidays have been established that celebrate black history and the values of the new nation; example, Youth for Day (on the anniversary of the Soweto uprising), Freedom Day, International Human Rights Day, Heritage Day, Workers' Day, and National Women's Day. At the same time, few monu ments have been removed, and even fewer desecrated. This is likely in part due to an apparent government strategy not to upset the white population. Furthermore, monuments such as the Afrikaans Language Monument in Paarl and the Voortrekker Monument are tourist attractions and a source of revenue that benefits the general economy. But while these monuments have survived, the reverence that once surrounded them has not. Two years ago, for example, a television called the personality Voortrekker Monument "big stupid," and it and suggested that be painted pink and become a site for a gay club or a drug rave.16 The post-apartheid state does not censor such state This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24 Mads Vestergaard ments, but the remarks provoked an outcry among certain orthodox (in the Bourdieuian sense) Afrikaner groups. The strong reaction clearly showed the emotional signifi cance national monuments still have for some Afrikaners? either as a positive identification with the Christian nationalist values of the past, as an emblem or of a disgraceful past that is best ridiculed and rejected. In this way, monuments and other become centers of contestation and debate over ab symbols stract issues of collective identity. REWRITING HISTORY The status of national Afrikaner symbols reflects a changing general delegitimization of Afrikaner national history. An im portant part of Christian nationalism was the writing of a national history, which in essence went as follows: God specific made the Afrikaners his Chosen People by leading them through immense suffering at the hands of the British, and by giving them in battles against the heathen blacks.17 This nar victory rative lent substance to the nationalists' sense of themselves as Afrikaners and explained their right to rule South Africa ac cording to "the will of God." In the new democratic order, this national history is being challenged. As a consequence, new history books are being written, historical events are publicly reinterpreted in speeches and media presentations, and school curricula are being changed as the deeds of black South Africans play a more prominent role in a new national narrative. To give one example: at the banks of Blood River, the monument celebrating the Afrikaner victory over the Zulus in 1838 is now being augmented by a new monument to commemorate the Zulu victims of the battle. The of the Anglo-Boer War is being similarly rewritten, to history stress the participation of black soldiers; a monument to their memory has also been erected in the Orange Free State. A crucial contribution to the r??valuation of Afrikaner his tory has been the South African Truth and Reconciliation Com mission (TRC). In public hearings, victims came forward to tell their stories and publicly describe a catalog of abuses related to abduction, torture, or severe ill-treatment"?terms that "killing, This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 25 had been carefully selected by the TRC and defined in the mandate of the commission.18 This process has been central to the creation of the new South Africa, as it affirms one of its fundamental apartheid was against a "crime premises?that humanity." The stories of cruelty and suffering subvert the image of Afrikaner nationalists as righteous Christians preserv ing civilization in Africa. The reactions to the TRC among Afrikaners have varied widely. Some, like state former president P. W. Botha, have called it everything from "a circus" to a "witch hunt for Afrikaners," denouncing it as an ANC ploy to even old scores with longtime enemies. Some prominent Afrikaners have, not surprisingly, expressed outrage at the new challenges to Chris tian nationalist history. At a celebration of the old Day of the Covenant, Pieter Mulder of the Afrikaner party the Freedom Front declared that "Afrikaners will not allow their history to be questioned!"19 Still, some other prominent Afrikaners have welcomed the opportunity to come to terms publicly with a painful past. In Country of my Scull, a book about the TRC, the Afrikaans poet and journalist Antjie Krog recounted some of the stories that came out of the hearings, which she covered for extensively national radio. Her experience led her to reflect on what the hearings meant to her as an Afrikaner. In the book she writes of her own reaction after F. W. de Klerk had denied any responsibility for the crimes of the past: Speechless I stand before the Archbishop. Whence will words now come? For us. We who hang quivering and ill from this soundless space of Afrikaner past? What does one say? What the hell does one do with this load of decrowned skeletons, origins, shame and ash? And later: Was Apartheid the product of some horrific shortcoming inAfrikaner culture? Could one find the key in Afrikaner songs and literature, in beer and braaivleis? How do I live with the fact that all the words used to humiliate, all the orders given to kill, belonged to the language of my heart?20 This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 26 Mads Vestergaard Krog's impassioned response remains somewhat unusual: it is a well-known fact that the majority of whites cannot identify with the stories of violent atrocities retailed by the TRC.21 Most say that they did nothing wrong, they just lived their lives as good law-abiding citizens. They never tortured or killed any body. That they were beneficiaries of a system?kept in place with the help of those who committed the human-rights viola tions., at the expense of nonwhites-?is rarely acknowledged*22 LANGUAGE A third area in which a fundamental aspect of Afrikaner iden tity has been challenged is language. The promotion of the one Afrikaans language was of the most important features of the nationalist Afrikaner movement, and it became a vehicle for mobilizing a pan-South African Afrikaner identity at the start of the twentieth century.23 During the apartheid years, the government turned Afrikaans into the official language of state. But since 1994, Afrikaans has had to find its place among ten other official It has been replaced by English as the languages.24 official language of command in the army and the police. And in television broadcasts, it now has to share airtime with pro grams in the other official languages, Afrikaans, like the other key ideological in Afrikaner ingredients nationalism, was taught in the public schools. favoring of The public white schools in general and Afrikaner schools in par ticular at the expense of black education has created one of the major South Africa. As a result, problems facing post-apartheid the public schools are under increasing pressure to offer educa tion in languages other than Afrikaans. The use of Afrikaans in schools is likely to decline, because many colored Afrikaans to be taught in English, which is widely per speakers prefer ceived to improve their career opportunities in the new South Africa, while Afrikaans still carries the stigma of being the "language of apartheid." Different Afrikaners have reacted differently to the highly emotional issue of the status of Afrikaans. On the one hand, some argue that Afrikaans should now be used without any This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 27 special arrangements to protect it. The language has never been as alive and well as it is today, exactly because it has shed its burden of being the official language of oppression. Instead of moaning about the possible extinction of Afrikaans, one should simply keep using it. And many do. The arts scene is with bands and writers using Afrikaans as their me blooming dium ofexpression. The of number copies of Afrikaans novels has increased. A champion of this line of argument is play wright Pieter Fourie, one of the managers of the annual Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in Oudtshoorn, where about a hundred thousand people gather for Afrikaans theater and music. According to Fourie, the festival celebrates the new vibrancy of the language and the wide variety in the types of Afrikaans spoken in different parts of the country and Namibia. Fourie's festival, by highlighting unorthodox ways of using the language, challenges the notion of suiwer ("pure") Afrikaans, which was so important to the Christian nationalists. But other observers, especially academics, are more worried. Facing the global domination of English at the expense of smaller vernaculars, such as Afrikaans, and the local domi nance of the Nguni languages, such as isiZulu and isiXhosa (spoken by almost 40 percent of the population as their home language), some scholars fear that the smaller languages, in cluding Afrikaans, will die unless something is done. Their concern has spurred the of a number formation of groups devoted to promoting the status of the Afrikaans language, such as Stigting vir Afrikaans ("Foundation for Afrikaans") and Afrikaanse Taal-en Kultuurvereninging ("Afrikaans lan guage and culture society"). The most recent, and perhaps most significant, of these groups calls itself "Group of 63." A highly varied assortment of Afrikaner intellectuals, it "brings together perhaps a broader range of political thought than has gathered around any Afrikaner cul tural project since early last century."25 The members of the "Group of 63" argue that the battle for protecting Afrikaans should be seen as a larger project of protecting minority lan guages in South Africa as such. They are at pains to stress that the group is concerned with not only white Afrikaans-speakers, This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 28 Mads Vestergaard but also with colored Afrikaans-speakers. They also stress that they have no sympathy with the discredited ethnic politics that eventually led to apartheid.26 AFRIKANERDOM IN A NEW CONTEXT The democratic Constitution has established new rules for dis cussions of issues of identity and group rights. The "Group of 63," for example, tries to cut across racial divisions and avoid white exclusionism; it tries to distance itself from the apartheid past and to speak the language of "minority rights." The end of apartheid has made it necessary for Afrikaners to establish a new sense of identity in a new context. The influen tial co-founder of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, a liberal politician, scholar, and Afrikaner, deals with the issue in his latest book, Tough Choices: Reflections of an Afrikaner African. Because the "Afrikaner" has been identified in the past with intolerance, he argues that "Afrikaners will have to apply themselves imaginatively to the task of establishing they are in the new South Africa. who In the process they will have to free themselves from a part of their history and work to create a new one."27 Van Zyl Slabbert believes that "Afrikaners" should consist of all Afrikaans-speak ers, regardless of color, but he also asserts the need to formu late a new set of specifically "Afrikaner" values. Despite call ing for such values, he does not specify any particular one, apart from saying that they should be nonracist and inclusive.28 South Africa afterapartheid has become a virtual battle where different actors are trying to define Afrikaner ground Collective history, and language are central identity. symbols, to these debates. Within this complex field of negotiations, it is possible to map out certain positions and trends. THE REPOSITIONING OF THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT The old of Christian nationalism are now busy repo guardians sitioning themselves in the new order. A common tendency among them is an effort to distance themselves from narrow Afrikaner nationalism. Like van Zyl Slabbert, they wish to This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 29 redefine Afrikaner identity along linguistic lines. In this way, major players and once the most zealous protectors of white ness?such as the New NP (or NNP: the prefix signals change), the Afrikaner Bond (its name changed from Afrikaner Broederbond, to include women), and the Federation of Afrikaner Cultural Organizations?have all tried to include the roughly three million colored Afrikaans-speakers. Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the leader of the NNP, put it clearly in a speech in Parliament recently: "We in the New NP say there are no colour or political requirements to be an Afrikaner. It is an inclusive concept based on only one criterion: language."29 In the business sector, a similar trend is evident. Well-known Afrikaner companies are struggling to recast themselves in order to appeal to all South Africans. A good example is the old nationalist publishing house Pers Nasionale (National Press), which has changed its name to "Naspers," a less nationalistic sounding brand name. Naspers now publishes a significant number of English as well as Afrikaans titles. Similarly, the newspaper Die Burger, the old NP mouthpiece, now has a readership that is 50 percent colored. giant The insurance Sanlam is selling shares to non-Afrikaners and arranging "cul tural understanding" workshops in order to integrate new non white colleagues into the company. And the old Afrikaner Volkskasbank has merged with an English bank to form a new bank, called ABSA. DEPOLITICIZATION OF AFRIKANER IDENTITY Many Afrikaner organizations, academics, and politicians have expressed concern that their culture and language are under serious threat in the new South Africa.30 One of the more prominent ones is the historian and political scientist Hermann Giliomee, who seems to conflate culture and without language, specifying exactly what that culture consists of. And because he believes the language is under threat, by default so too is the culture.31 At the same time, there is a marked tendency to depoliticize Afrikaner identity. "Ordinary Afrikaners" seem not to worry much about their "cultural survival," as I discovered in my This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 30 Mads Vestergaard fieldwork in and around Cape Town. Opinion polls also indi cate that most Afrikaners are mainly concerned with issues like education, the economy, jobs, and, all,above crime. These concerns are shared by most other groups in South Africa. In fact, many Afrikaners prefer not to associate themselves with an ethnic identity at all. When asked, individuals who formerly have called themselves "Afrikaner" now increasingly might define themselves according to their profession, their geographical location, or simply as "South African." THE RETURN OF RACE Despite the efforts of the new democratic government, South Africa remains thoroughly racialized. When Afrikaners try to evade the of race, their actions and statements are implications to be interpreted within a racial context. Thus, when a likely white person makes a statement, it is perceived as a white person speaking?making a white statement. Race remains one of the main organizing principles in social life. In a recent article, Melissa Steyn puts it this way: "... I cannot remember a time when I was not aware of the fact that Iwas white, that it was the single most important fact about my existence, that it determined every aspect of my life." Else where Steyn remarks that "their existence as 'blacks' made me 'white.'"32 In the Christian nationalist construction of the Afrikaner Self, blacks functioned as the Other.33 They were less civilized, corrupt, unfaithful, disorderly, incompetent, irratio nal, and so on. In post-apartheid South Africa, it is, of course, no longer legitimate to express such ideas publicly, but racial stereotyp ing remains. The concerns of ordinary Afrikaners with schools and crime are overtly devoid of racial thinking. But if one scrutinizes how they are formulated and explained by the white political opposition, as well as by individuals, it is clear that racial prejudices often lie behind these concerns.34 For example, I interviewed a fifty-seven-year-old Afrikaner who worked for the Department of Education. He explained the problems in black schools this way: "The teachers cramp three classes together in one room, about eighty to ninety kids, in order for This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 31 the two others to sit outside?they are like lizards, they like to sit in the sun. That is why there always are chairs outside. Africans just have a much more lazy way of doing things and they're never in a hurry." When he described the white schools, his mood brightened: "There the kids WANT to be better and the teachers WANT to take it to a higher level! The black kids have no ambitions." Racial stereotypes are most obvious when white make people such generalizations about how black people behave. But some times the stereotyping is subtler, as when a weak South African economy is said to be due to the black government's inability to run a modern don't have what it takes," economy?"they simply as it has been put to me more than once. The persistence of racial reasoning (thinking in terms of racial categories) also comes out in the effort to redefine Afrikaner identity along linguistic lines. Every time I heard a white Afri kaans-speaker insist that an Afrikaner is solely defined as "some one who speaks Afrikaans" nonwhites), the (thereby including context or content of their statement indicated that the Afrikaner they talked about was without any doubt a white Afrikaans speaker. There was, in short, a discrepancy between the explicit and implicit meaning of their words. The speech by van Schalkwyk referred to earlier is an ex ample. After declaring that language alone makes one an Afrikaner, he goes on to say that the NNP is fighting a battle "... to convince Afrikaners that there is no salvation in the Ian Smith option of mobilising whites on the basis of their anger and their fear," and that the NNP does not support a volkstaat for the Afrikaners. This is not because there is no room for coloreds in the proposed volkstaat, but because the NNP does not want "the Afrikaners to isolate themselves."35 This is clearly a reference to white to white Afrikaners Afrikaners?indeed, who are also white separatists. SEPARATISM Whereas there is a conspicuous attempt to depoliticize and deracialize Afrikaner identity, there are nevertheless other voices in the current debate. Some Afrikaner intellectuals still uphold This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 32 Mads Vestergaard the paramount importance of whiteness and Afrikaner ethnic identity and argue for an independent volkstaat for Afrikaners. The idea of a volkstaat dates back to the middle of the 1980s. It stems from right-wing Afrikaner discontent with the NP government. One of the organizing principles of apartheid was territorial segregation through the system, "homeland" which allocated 13 percent of the country to blacks so whites could reign over the remaining area. The policy was never fully realized, and in 1985 the NP government gave up on the idea of total territorial segregation and stated that it would restore citizenship to all blacks permanently residing in "white ar eas."36 In response, some critics of the NP policy change pro posed that the homeland system be inverted: white Afrikaners could withdraw to a smaller area of the country and leave the rest to black majority rule. The NP, like the rest of the nation alist establishment, rejected this proposal, and tried instead to remain in power by introducing a range of transformation policies, including the creation of a tricameral parliament that incorporated Indians and coloreds. As we know now, this strat egy ended in failure: the NP finally had to surrender power to the ANC. While the NP released Nelson Mandela and initiated the transformation process that would lead to democracy and a united South Africa, the dream of a separate volkstaat lived on. At the end of the 1980s there were disagreements as to where such an area should be, but in 1991 the first steps were taken toward creating an Afrikaner homeland. According to Giliomee, there are now several dozen organizations in South Africa that hope to create a volkstaat.37 Lately the Freedom Front has accepted that it is unlikely that Afrikaners will get an indepen dent country and have settled for an area with relative au tonomy?for example, a new province.38 The most serious effort to create an Afrikaner homeland has occurred in Orania, a little town consisting of prefab houses, located in the Karoo semi-desert in the Northern Cape, border ing the Orange Free State. Here, a group of separatists has founded "a growing point of a future volkstaat"?a province they imagine filling an arid area between Orania and the Atlan tic Ocean. After initial problems persuading Afrikaners to re This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 33 settle, Orania now has more than six hundred inhabitants, and property values have doubled. The town contains a high-tech dairy farm with a thousand cows, is South Africa's biggest producer of pecan nuts, and has a biodynamic grape farm that produces fruit for overseas export. One of the town's two schools is fully computerized with all the pupils having their own computer beginning in grade 1. A local server is being built to provide Internet access to Oranians. It is one of the very few places in South Africa where there are no nonwhites?not even working as domestic workers or doing manual labor. Orania does not want to be part of the new South Africa and has thus not accepted the new national symbols of the country. Its residents celebrate their own holidays, hoist their own volkstaat flag, and have their own museum. The extent to which Oranians imagine themselves to be "outside" South in Africa is evident the way they talk about "exporting products to South Africa." The argument of Oranians is that Afrikaners as a group will die out in the new South Africa, because they form too small a minority.39 They do not trust the ANC government to leave space for them, despite minority rights being guaranteed in the Constitution. To illustrate their fears, they refer to the changing of school curricula, the new collective symbols, the new re counting of South Africa's history, and the new regime's affir mative action program for blacks. They argue that Afrikaners cannot be free under such circumstances. Only if they build an independent state will they be able to survive as a distinct group. It is not without reason that many Oranians feel threatened in the new South Africa, because they uphold a Christian na tionalist identity that has now become illegitimate. But al though they have a statue of one of the main architects of apartheid, H. F. Verwoerd, they in no way argue along racist lines for a reversion to apartheid. On the contrary, they are painfully aware of the altered of power and the new landscape rules of legitimacy. Like the nationalist organizations, the Oranians know that they have to make race "appear to disap pear." For their project to succeed, it must be formulated in a way that does not allow them to be officially labeled racists. To be labeled as such would effectively mean exclusion from the This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  34 Mads Vestergaard constitutional framework of the new South Africa, and it is exactly within the new Constitution that the people in Orania find the possibility for self-determination.40 Hence, there is a paradox: the Oranianshighly are skeptical new South of the Africa, and doto benot want part of it, but at the same time the new Constitution of South Africa gives legal protection to them. Leaving the Blut und Boden rhetoric of the old Afrikaner nationalists behind, they couch their Christian nationalist val ues in legitimate cultural terms, coupled with sophisticated arguments about the value of voluntary association.41 Even though coloreds, like Afrikaners, can make solid claims to Dutch roots and to Afrikaans as their mother tongue, non white Afrikaans-speakers are notregarded by Oranians as being Afrikaners at all. Since the Oranians are aware that most of the traditional Afrikaner organizations now include non whites, they call themselves "Boere-Afrikaner." This label sets them apart from other Afrikaner groups, and also defines the (racial) purity of their own ranks.42 As one young Oranian put it, speaking of colored Afrikaners, "I think they have a crisis. I am proud of being an Afrikaner, proud of being a Boer. And if they are not proud of being blacks, it's not my problem. Why do they have to take on my nationality?" ALTERNATIVE AFRIKANERDOM A very different expression of current Afrikaner identity is to be found among young artists. Like the separatists, many artists politicize Afrikaner identity and display a high degree of self consciousness as white Afrikaners. But unlike the separatists, they are extremely skeptical of the established values long associated with the group. A good example of this is the cartoon magazine Bitterkomix. It was founded by two art students from the University of Stellenbosch in 1992. They have since published nine issues together, turning Bitterkomix into an institution within Afrikaner youth culture. According to thirty-one-year-old Conrad Botes, one of the founders, the magazine has a distinct goal: to under mine the patriarchal authority represented by father, priest, This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 35 and principal. Under apartheid, such figures customarily left no space for independent thinking and questioning?people simply had to obey. According to Botes, repressive Christian national ist values still inform the everyday experience of many Afrikaners.43 His publication's antiauthoritarian agenda is evi dent in itswildly anarchistic content. One finds everything from explicit sex to violence and blasphemy in its irreverent pages, as its creators with the taboos of Christian consciously play nationalism, deconstruct historical myths, and ridicule the ste reotypes of the Afrikaners. There are numerous other of how "traditional" examples Afrikaner values are Afrikaners. being challenged by young Apart from graphic artists, there are a multitude of bands, writers, playwrights, and performers who are eager to chal lenge and provoke. Many of them appropriate traditional Afrikaner iconography, using old symbols in new ways, to wage a kind of "semiotic warfare."44 For example, guerrilla young DJs mix techno beats, popular Afrikaner songs from the 1970s, and tunes made famous by Miriam Makeba and other black artists. These Afrikaner artists articulate a somewhat ambivalent position, summed up by a young painter who told me: "I am an Afrikaner, though I hate the Afrikaners!" These artists recog nize that they belong to a group with a certain skin history, color, and language. They express themselves in that language, for other Afrikaners. They nevertheless resent most of what is associated with an Afrikaner?and so being they make fun of traditional values, morals, and so on.45 The "alternative Afrikaners" today claim to be more a col lection of individualists than a subculture as such. Whereas the Afrikaner establishment during apartheid promoted an authori tarian collective identity, the Afrikaner artists are an exploring explicitly antiauthoritarian identity with fluid boundaries, open to all kinds of global as well as local African influences. Resistance to the Christian nationalist establishment is not a new phenomenon. to the apartheid But due firm con regime's trol over the social field, earlier resistance took the form largely of isolated dissidents voicing opposition to the system at great This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 36 Mads Vestergaard personal cost.46 Many were incarcerated by the regime, and most were subject to constant harassment by the security police and ostracized by their own local community. From the late 1970s apartheid experienced escalating an crisis, and despite the efforts regime, of the Afrikaans white speakers started asking critical questions about the political order. Boundaries that had attained a certain naturalness started to appear ideological and arbitrary.47 In the 1980s discontent had mounted on both sides of the NP, and although the regime tried to control the criticism, the task of censorship became increasingly difficult to execute.48 In this context, a new wave of protest among young Afrikaners developed, which for the first time gained widespread support among large sections of Afrikaner youth. A pivotal element in the movement was rock music, and a central event was the Vo?lvry ("free as a bird" or "outlawed") Tour in 1988.49 For the first time activities such as these were allowed by the regime. As the political negotiations transformed the country into a democratic post-apartheid society, the counterculture among young Afrikaners remained alive. Post-apartheid South Africa and its liberal democratic constitution, with the protection of fundamental civic freedoms, has made it easier than ever to voice opposition and alternative views?without running the risk of persecution. Young Afrikaner artists take full advantage of this right and have taken up the challenge of discussing what it means to be Afrikaner in South Africa in their own way. But as opposed to van Slabbert's call for the formulation of a Zyl new set of values that unite Afrikaners, they refuse to fix the identity. They simply say "we are Afrikaners, but we are not Christian nationalist Afrikaners," and they leave the rest open. CHANGE: PROS AND CONS No matter their political views, all Afrikaners would agree that the coming of a multiracial democracy has radically trans formed their social world. Above, I have described some ele ments in this transformation and mapped out some of the re sponses to it. Some Afrikaners have resisted the new reality, This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 37 while others have welcomed it. A policeman from Paarl in his late thirtiesput it this way: "there is more fresh air now, society has opened up. There is not the same political propaganda. It is to disagree without being ostracised. I am not forced possible to be a Boer... there is no one me to be member of pressuring the church or different organisations." Hitherto untried possi bilities have opened up and one can be an Afrikaner in several new ways. Consider, for example, the Afrikaners who are members of the ANC. Two of these are Wilhelm Verwoerd (grandson of the late prime minister H. F. Verwoerd) and his wife, Melanie Verwoerd. The latter, who is member of Parlia ment, last year began a speech in the national assembly during a debate on the TRC report with the words: "Today I want to speak my mother tongue as a proud young Afrikaner, as well as a very proud member of the ANC." Melanie Verwoerd claims an identity by combining two: "Afrikaner" and "mem ber of the ANC"?positions that during apartheid were incom patible and even mutually exclusive; they were privileged signifiers on separate sides of an "us and them" construction. The ANC was the Other that was threatening the existence of the Afrikaner Self. That these two identities can now be combined is a distinc tive feature of the new situation of Afrikaners in post-apartheid South Africa. But the situation is still precarious. Although many Afrikaners are adapting relatively well to the new South Africa, others feel alienated. As one woman in her late forties told me: "The South African Broadcasting Corporation doesn't show good programmes anymore, it is all black culture and music. It is like being in a foreign country and then turning on the TV?it is alien to us!" Separatist politicians try to reach such people by offering the volkstaat as an alternative. For some Afrikaners, it can seem that the loss of the old order is the loss of order as such. The new South Africa is experienced as a chaotic place without moral or religious values. A woman in her mid-forties ex pressed it to me this way in an interview: Look, things are getting very much entangled and mixed....The main thing?my God is now placed on the same pedestal as other Gods. In every school the State gives money to. And that's not good for me. And very much different languages and things is in the This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  38 Mads Vestergaard same school and outlook on things, outlook on history, outlook on the future. So that is, I can't be free in that. My children isn't free that I can bring them up the way Iwant to bring them up. That's clashing, I think it is a recipe for an unstable country. There is so much different backgrounds and the way you think about things and how to order things, it is culturally different and then you can't understand each other very well. CONCLUDING REMARKS South Africa is still in a process of transformation; the socio economic disparities caused by forty years of systematic dis crimination cannot be reversed with only six years of demo cratic governance. The country also faces an equally difficult challenge in trying to establish a sense of shared humanity. There is a need to create a new national South African identity, a sense of solidarity, that cuts across old divisions. But the new rulers cannot force a new standard, and cannot refuse to accept diverging opinions, beliefs, and values. Minority rights and protection are important parts of a liberal democracy, which is what South Africa strives to be. The ANC government clearly has difficulties accepting particularist identity claims, since they stand in an uneasy relationship with the effort to forge a new universal national identity.50 Liberal democratic nation-building, as attempted in South Africa, contains the paradox of forging identity and at the same time accepting difference?negotiating between universalism and particularism.51 In their role as nation-builders, presidents Mbeki and Mandela have repeatedly tried to include the Afrikaner community in the new South Africa. In a statement last year, Mbeki declared that "Afrikaners are Africans. And we are all Africans... our endeavor our because [is] to accept shared legacy and our inextricably bound destiny."52 Even though Afrikaners are offered a chance to beaccepted as a part of Mbeki's vision of an African Renaissance in the new South Africa, as Afrikaners it is only under certain conditions. As a group they to some extent carry what Erving Goffman has called a "tribal stigma"53 and are constantly at risk of being labeled "people against transformation," reactionary, racist, or This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 39 the like. There is therefore a requirement that they prove their loyalty to the new South Africa?more than any other group of South Africans.54 Minority rights, such as articulated the UN, were meant by to protect fragile, weak minorities against the oppression of the strong, wealthy majority. This is not the case with the Afrikaners: they are not weak, and they are as a whole wealthier than the majority. But more importantly, they are the old power elite? the oppressors. This makes a difficult case for those Afrikaners claiming their constitutional right to minority protection. But one could say that the latter poses a real to the challenge Constitution. When discussing minority protection and cultural survival it is important to be aware of the concept of culture and identity on which the discussion is based. As we have seen, there are very different ways of being Afrikaner, and it is only a small section of Afrikaners who "play the minority card." In these circumstances, many Afrikaners feel understandably ambivalent?open to change, yet wary of what may change bring. One should heed the words, in closing, of Frederik van Zyl Slabbert in his book Tough Choices: "Whether I like it or not (and quite separate my from subjective battle), my social is also that of an Afrikaner.... Not a vanguard Afrikaner identity or a devout, sombre-suited one; not an uptight culture vulture Afrikaner or a free-and-easy, 'alternative,' Woodstock one, but a rapidly ageing, confused and sometimes lost Afrikaner, nev ertheless."55 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For inspiration, support, and help, I am to Owen Sichone, Lars Buur, grateful Steffen Jensen, Flemming Daugaard, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Tim Slee, and the Center for Development Research in Copenhagen, ENDNOTES !This essay is in part based on fieldwork done in and around Cape Town and the Northern Cape in 1998. This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 40 Mads Vestergaard 2When about groups in South Africa (as elsewhere) one inevi talking population tably 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. Iwill in this connection not deal with the fact that whiteness is also a contested category. 3Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 68. 4TheNP 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 inWorld 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 itwas renamed the National Party. 5T. Dunbar Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 11. 6Quoted inWillem Abraham de Klerk, The Puritans in Africa: A Story of Afri kaner dorn (London: R. Collings, 1975), 214. 7A wide range of literature deals with this issue. See, e.g., Aletta Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse (London: Verso, 1996); Dan O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism 1934-1948 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1983); and Hermann Giliomee, "The of the Afrikaner's Self-Concept," in Development Hendrik W. van der Merwe, ed., Looking at the Afrikaner Today (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1975). 8Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, 300. 9Anthony 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 itwas approximately 100 to 240, and in 1974 it had been re duced to 100 to 120. 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. 10See O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme. nThese 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. This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions  The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities 41 12Deborah Pose?, "Whiteness and Power in the South African Civil Service: Para doxes of the South African State," Journal of Southern African Studies 25 (1) (March 1999): 115. 13Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991). 14EmileDurkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1965). 15See, 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; and Craig J. Calhoun, Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford, U.K., and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994), 5. 16"Monumental Fury Over Ronge's Jeers," Cape Argus, 4 April 1999;. 17Moodie, The Rise of Afrikaner dorn, 10. 18Lars Buur, "Institutionalising Truth: Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals in the Everyday Work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Com mission," Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Ethnography and Social Anthro pology, Aarhus University, Denmark, 2000, 6. 19"ACrowd of 2000 Gathers at the Voortrekker Monument," Independent Newspapers, 1997;. 20AntjieKrog, Country of my Scull (Johannesburg: Random House, 1998), 128, 238. 21See Mahmood Mamdani, "Reconciliation without Justice," Southern Revue of Books (November/December 1996). 22Convicted apartheid police spy Craig Williamson criticizes the lack of accep tance 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 Our for our operations. chaplains prayed victory and our universities educated us in war. Our was carried propaganda our masters were into power by the media and political voted back 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 we served to do so." Truth and Reconciliation society Report 4 (Cape Town: Juta Publications), 23. 23See Isabel "Building a Nation from Words: Afrikaans Language, Lit Hofmeyr, erature and Ethnic Identity, 1902-1924," in Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, eds., The Politics of Race, Class, and Nationalism in Twentieth-Cen tury South Africa (New York: Longman, 1987). 24Afrikaans is far from an obscure language in South Africa. In 1994, 14.97 per cent 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 This content downloaded from 146.230.128.242 on Sun, 12 Jul 2015 10:03:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 42 Mads Vestergaard Race Relations), 100. As many have Afrikaans as their second it is language one of the most understood in the country. widely languages 25Howard Barrell, a Lifeline to a Language," Mail & Guardian, "Throwing Daily 23 May 2000;. 26See Hofmeyr, a Nation from Words," on the movement. "Building language 27Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, Tough Choices: Reflections ufan Afrikaner African (Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 2000), 79. 28Ibid., 81. 29Marthinus van Schalkwyk, National Assembly, 24 March 1999, my italics. 30There was even a debate on the issue in Parliament in 1999. special 31Hermann 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. 32Melissa 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. 33Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, 54. Norval points out that Afrikanerdom was constituted a series of Others who, apart by excluding from blacks, were communists, Jews, coloreds, English-speakers, imperialists, Indians, and so on?depending on context. 34The political party favored by most whites?both Afrikaans- and English the Democratic Party, which has emerged as the main protector speakers?is of white interests. A rapidly disintegrating NNP, together with the DP earlier this year, has formed the Democratic Alliance. 35As mentioned earlier, the term volk has a very narrow ethnic to it, which quality 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