Maverick Africans. Hermann Giliomee
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African Republic, or Transvaal (1852), and the Republic of the Orange Free State (1854). The two republics experienced different paths of development. In the so-called British Sovereignty, which existed between 1848 and 1854 prior to the establishment of the Free State, British farmers who moved there tended to appeal to the British imperial state to back up their land claims, provide roads, create markets, and subordinate the local Africans. On the other hand, many Afrikaners in the territory attached no priority to creating a state, much less a British colonial state. Nor did they want a firm border separating white-occupied territory from black-occupied or a severing of contact with or expulsion of the Sotho; some indeed made their living by exchanging Sotho wheat for lead and gunpowder. They did not mind asking the Sotho leader Moshoeshoe for papers ratifying their land claims.
In his book Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order, Tim Keegan notes that Richard Southey, the highest British official in the territory, admitted that burghers in the contested area along the Caledon River in the east preferred the rule of the Sotho chief Moshoeshoe to that of the British government. Southey’s appeals to the burghers ‘to put down the common enemy of the white man’ went unheeded. Josias Hoffman, who would become the first Free State president, objected to a plan to expel some 3 000 Sotho from the Caledon River Valley. ‘The natives will not consent to remove and will revenge such unjust treatment,’ he wrote and added: ‘If Southey thinks that he can bind the Boers to the British government by giving them all the land, he is mistaken and knows neither the Boers nor the natives.’10
Within three decades of its establishment in 1854, the Republic of the Orange Free State achieved a remarkable degree of stability. This can be attributed to its agrarian character, its relatively homogeneous electorate, and the absence of large concentrations of wealth. English-speakers and the few Germans who dominated commercial and professional life in the towns had a leavening effect. There was no xenophobia, and even in the 1890s the state welcomed foreign settlers. The Free State combined republicanism with an inclusive sense of nationhood, similar to that espoused by the Afrikaner Bond in the Cape. It was, as Lord Bryce, the British constitutional expert, remarked, in many ways ‘an ideal commonwealth’.11
But at the same time it was not a modern, liberal order. There were no political parties and only whites could vote. As the great liberal historian Leonard Thompson once commented, if the Free State had not been dragged into the war between the Transvaal and Britain in 1899, racial exclusion might well have been phased out in the Free State. In his testimony before the South African Native Affairs Commission (1903–5) C.H. Wessels, who had served as chairman of the Free State Volksraad, advocated extending the vote to intelligent coloured people and to black property-owners.12
Unlike the Free State, the republic between the Vaal and Limpopo was for all practical purposes a failed state until Paul Kruger became president. Leading by personal courage, strong conviction and passionate oratory, Kruger spread the message that without republican independence the Transvaal Afrikaners could not survive as a people with their own language, beliefs and livelihood. But Transvaal leaders prized the Republic’s control over its own destiny much more than pan-Afrikaner unity. One progressive opponent of Kruger, Schalk Burger, chairman of the first Volksraad, declared that ‘the word Africander should be interpreted as Transvaler. Everyone from beyond the borders of the Republic must be viewed as a stranger, no matter if he came from the Free State, the colony, England, or Holland.’13
Few would have predicted at the time of Union in 1910 that the colonial Afrikaners of the Cape and ex-republican Afrikaners would come together in a formidable nationalist movement that dominated South African politics until 1994. It was not Calvinism or racism that was decisive in the formation of Afrikaner nationalism but the Westminster-style electoral system, which favoured the largest ethnic group in the electorate.
Chapter 3 analyses the earliest manifestations of nationalism among the Afrikaner. The literature on this topic was long dominated by F.A. van Jaarsveld, who in his book The Awakening of Afrikaner Nationalism (1961) argued that its first manifestation was the revolt of the burghers of Transvaal against British annexation in 1880–1 and the expressions of solidarity by Afrikaners in the Orange Free State and Cape Colony. But this response was short-lived. No structures of co-operation were put in place and, after the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in the mid-1880s, economic competition between the Transvaal and the Cape eroded the feelings of solidarity among Afrikaners across South Africa.
Chapter 3 argues that it was the establishment of Afrikaner financial institutions in the western Cape, in particular the Stellenbosch District Bank, that provided the spur for the earliest manifestations of Afrikaner nationalism. It is significant that the decision to establish Nasionale Pers took place in the home of the manager of the District Bank. Nasionale Pers (now Naspers) has been publishing De Burger (later Die Burger) since 1915. Almost exactly a century later it was the biggest company in Africa measured in terms of market capitalisation.
During the twentieth century the mines and industries replaced agriculture as the dominant sectors of the economy. While other colonies also had rich mineral resources, there was nothing that could be compared to the vast mineral wealth of the Witwatersrand. The discovery of gold transformed South Africa. But much of South Africa’s gold ore is low-grade. Because it was sold at a low, fixed price it could only be mined by very cheap labour. Furthermore, low-grade land, together with poor and uncertain rainfall, was responsible for many of the problems in agriculture.
Despite the deposits of gold, South Africa’s economic development remained stagnant until the early 1930s. In 1931 Jan Hofmeyr, who would soon become minister of finance, wrote that it was an illusion to believe that South Africa was a rich country with vast mineral resources and boundless agricultural possibilities. The gold mines, the only reliable source of foreign exchange, were a wasting asset, the manufacturing sector was sluggish, and agriculture was ‘no easy oyster for man’s opening’. The country was in a race against time to provide food and work for a rapidly growing population.
Hofmeyr warned that the future of ‘white civilisation’ was at risk if the country failed to develop a modern manufacturing sector speedily. He concluded that ‘from the shadow that these things bring … South Africa in our day does not find it easy to escape’.14 In a despairing mood Jan Smuts, leader of the South African Party, wrote: ‘There has never been such a test to our economic civilization, and it is still a question whether we can pull through without serious challenge to our spiritual heritage.’15 But a sudden jump in the gold price would put South Africa on a quite different level of growth and development.
It was at this point, in the year 1929 to be precise, that the word ‘apartheid’ appeared in print for the first time. This occurred in a pamphlet reporting on a conference held in Kroonstad to discuss ways in which the Dutch Reformed Church could intensify its efforts to promote Christianity among Africans. The DRC’s dilemma was that it was then lagging far behind other churches in this field. DRC leaders were keen to expand the church’s work among Africans but they also knew that a steady flow of African members into existing congregations would cause major tensions. The church tried to deal with this by accepting what Richard Elphick calls ‘the equality of believers’ while rejecting the equality of all individuals regardless of colour in secular life.
As chapter 4 explains, it was in fact a decision by the DRC in 1857 condoning segregated worship that set the Afrikaner churches and the Afrikaner community on this road. Hence in explaining how apartheid became part of the South African political system, we need to consider not so much what the National Party did to the Afrikaner churches but what these churches did to the NP. Chapter 4 considers the ecclesiastical origins of apartheid policy in detail.
1.
‘Allowed such a state of freedom’: Women and gender relations in the Afrikaner community before enfranchisement in 1930
The history of Afrikaner women remains a neglected field.1 The main reason is the absence of diaries, letters and other written records at a time when rates of literacy were low. Historians have not deliberately suppressed the role of women in the history of the Afrikaners, but because of the absence of documentation they have missed a lot. Significantly it was not a trained historian but Karel Schoeman, a novelist, who, in his published biographies