Hermann Giliomee: Historian. Hermann Giliomee
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parents were dyed-in-the-wool Nationalists, I was not worried that our decision would result in a family squabble. Nonetheless, I decided to inform my parents of our decision by way of an ambiguous letter that read more or less like this:
For the sake of the children we have decided that our ways should part, and that we should sever a relationship that was once beautiful and precious, regardless of how hard it may be. We know that you will be shocked, but it is better that we part ways now instead of later.
I elaborated further in the same vein, and wrote right at the end: “What we would actually like to tell you is that we have decided to vote Progressive.” My mother told my father: “They’re not getting divorced, they’re going to vote Prog,” and then added in relief: “The bloomin’ fools.”
Chapter 4
Apprentice
Prof. HB Thom had been rector of the US when I enrolled as a first-year student in 1956. In 1967, his shadow still hung over the History Department which he had headed from 1937 to 1954. His writings were not the “volksgeskiedenis” Gustav Preller had produced at the beginning of the century, but a form of academic historiography with a clear nationalist agenda. Among the documents preserved in Thom’s private papers is a letter from a student who thanked him because his classes had transformed him from a “louwarm” (lukewarm) to a “vuurwarm” (red-hot) Afrikaner.29
Thom was the “history man” par excellence of the Afrikaner nationalists of the 1940s and 1950s. In speeches and articles during this era, he called on historians to be faithful to the demands of their discipline. They had to research the facts thoroughly and at the same time approach Afrikaner history in a way that would serve the spiritual welfare of the volk.
For Thom, the light that Afrikaner historians cast on the past had to help the Afrikaners understand their political challenges. The key feature was the momentous struggle the Afrikaners had waged for a large part of their history to maintain their belief that they could develop within their own community, in spite of unsympathetic governments and great isolation. In so doing, they had developed a sense of self-worth.
Another aspect was racial policy. According to Thom, a study of the past would show how deeply the principle of racial segregation was rooted in the Afrikaner past, and how persistently the Voortrekkers had advocated an “authentically Afrikaans” policy of “differentiation”. In his biography of the Voortrekker leader Gert Maritz he wrote of “the brave generation of unforgettable Afrikaners who … with their primitive muzzle-loading rifles freed the greater part of South Africa from barbarism and conquered it for white civilisation”.30
From the late 1940s Thom had been involved in the planning of the first complete academic history of the country, viewed through the lens of Afrikaner nationalism. The two-volume work of more than 1 400 pages appeared in 1955 under the title Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika (History of South Africa). Two of the three editors and several of the 23 contributors had a connection with Stellenbosch, and specifically with the History Department. At the start of my first year of study, students were told that those who intended to major in history had to buy the two volumes.
While the work was presented as the first scientific history in Afrikaans, the past was still seen as a battle between “civilisation” and “barbarism”. Some of the writers still used derogatory terms for indigenous people. The first volume of Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika provides a chronological overview of the European settlement. It starts with a chapter titled “The discovery of South Africa”, as if no one had lived at the southernmost tip of Africa before 1652. The first third of the book contains virtually no mention of the San (“Bushmen”) or the Khoikhoi (“Hottentots”), except for passing remarks about the “rapacity” of the Hottentots and the “obstacle” represented by the Bushmen to white advance.
The first mention of the Xhosa people on the colony’s eastern frontier comes on page 178, where the text refers to “the terrible depredations” perpetrated by the Xhosa, who had moved across the Great Fish River boundary in “great hordes”. There is no reference to the “depredations” committed by the frontier farmers’ commandos.
The second volume of Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika contains a chapter entitled “The native people of South Africa”. It states that the “Bushmen” soon “ceased to play any role”, and that the “Hottentots” “bartered away” their cattle wealth. As to where the black people had lived prior to 1652, it was merely said that existing knowledge in this regard was very limited.
The best chapter in the two-volume work was PJ van der Merwe’s interpretation of the Dutch East India Company’s native policy. He explained well how the Company, with its gaze focused on the sea and maritime trade, devoted little attention and limited funds to the frontier conflicts. In the absence of troops or a police force, the frontier farmers had to fend for themselves in defence of their families’ lives and property. But Van der Merwe, too, erred in arguing that the Fish River, which Governor Joachim van Plettenberg had proclaimed as a boundary after consultations with a few minor Xhosa chiefs, was supposed to apply as a boundary to all other Xhosa groups in the territory as well.
The two volumes assumed without any argument that white people had the right to exercise political control over the greater part of South Africa. This view of history underwent a radical revision during the 1960s. Radiocarbon dating of artefacts showed that Bantu-speaking communities had occupied the region between the Limpopo and the Vaal as far back as the eleventh century. Subsequent archaeological finds have placed the first black occupation south of the Limpopo several centuries earlier. By the 1750s some of the western Xhosa had already settled west of the Fish River. This was twenty-five to thirty years before Van Plettenberg proclaimed his boundary and the first trekboers (white migrant farmers) arrived in the area.
The first volume of the Oxford History of South Africa (1969), edited by Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson, provided a good summary of the new research. At the time when the Voortrekkers crossed the Orange River, vast parts of the interior were indeed depopulated in the wake of the Mfecane, a period of devastating conflicts among black communities that had resulted in a great loss of life. On the other hand, it was indisputable that black and coloured people had occupied vast parts of southern Africa long before white people first landed in Table Bay. The NP government and many of the Afrikaner historians preferred to avert their eyes and pretended that this information could be wished away.
There was a reason for this: for the NP of the 1960s, the historical right to the land had become the cornerstone of the ideology of apartheid. Apartheid was no longer based on white superiority but on white people’s supposed right to more than 80% of South Africa’s land, which was considered “rightfully theirs” on historical grounds.
Missiologists, anthropologists and sociologists were in the forefront of the academics who helped construct the ideology of apartheid. There were few historians in their ranks.
They had no problem, however, with the vision of South Africa as a predominantly white country. This view was also reflected in the Afrikaans press. Schalk Pienaar, one of the most respected Afrikaans journalists, wrote:
South Africa is by no means Bantu territory wrested from its rightful owners by the white man. There were no established Bantu homelands in South Africa when Van Riebeeck landed at the Cape in 1652. The Whites moving northwards and the Bantu moving southwards did not meet until more than a century later. If newcomers is the word one wants, then the Bantu are as much newcomers to South Africa as the Whites.31
In 1968 Prime Minister John Vorster declared: “We have our land and we alone shall have authority over it.”32 The “land” Vorster had in mind was the entire territory of South Africa except for the 13% that was classified as black areas.
By the time I embarked on my postgraduate studies in 1960, NP politicians had stopped using crude and hurtful terms in public when referring to people who were not white. The main reason for this change was Britain’s policy of granting independence to its colonies in Africa, which had started with the “liberation” of Ghana in 1957. The NP government was quick to embrace the new terminology. All nations were