Meet the volk of Orania
New book follows the changes in Afrikaner thinking,
THIS book was published in 2016, three years after the death of Nelson Mandela, at a time when his dream of a Rainbow Nation was seemingly fading. Kajsa Norman, a London-based investigative journalist specialising in dictatorships and conflict zones, has focused on those Afrikaners who divorced themselves from the mainstream, fearing that their language, culture and therefore their “entire people” could become extinct.
Norman concentrates to a large extent on those Afrikaners who retreated into the “breakaway republic” of Orania where they endeavoured to construct a Utopia for white Afrikaners, because here, they believe, in the safety of their own homeland, with their own flag and currency, they can once again dictate the rules.
She explores the origins and the history of Orania in an attempt to understand not only the rationale but also the supporting sentiments of this “breakaway” Afrikaner homeland.
We need to remind ourselves while reading this book that this does not apply to all Afrikaners: After World War II, many prominent Afrikaner thinkers engaged the concept of surviving with justice (“oorlewing met geregtigheid”), first publicly raised by Afrikaans poet NP van Wyk Louw.
Norman commences her main narrative with the December 16 “Blood River” commemoration of 2011. In an effort to try and lay bare the origins of these “white fears” within their enclave, she interrogates a series of “December 16” events, including the original one of 1838, the Battle of Blood River at Ncome, in KwaZulu-Natal.
She follows the changes in Afrikaner thinking and consciousness through successive December 16s: 1866, when Afrikaners come to rest in Natal with the building of the Church of the Vow; 1881, the first Boer War of Independence; and the rise of Afrikaner nationalism from 1912 after the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910.
In 1938, a century after the “Blood River” battle, there was widespread Afrikaner participation in the re-enactment of the Great Trek. This is where, she asserts, the “Volk” started building their own future, and by 1949 they were seeing Communism as the main source of evil (“Die Rooi Gevaar”).
The year 1960 saw the Sharpeville massacre, and a year later the creation of Umkhonto we Sizwe; by 1987, the governing National Party had started to break up. Yet things were changing: by 1998, Ncome had become a new heritage site, facing the old Blood River “laager” monument, reinterpreting belatedly the events of 1838 from the point of view of the Zulu nation.
In 2008 a third re-enactment of the Great Trek took place and about 5 000 people arrived at the Blood River site. It seems as if those Afrikaners were gathering to revive a particular understanding of their culture, language and history. For decades many Afrikaners saw their history as the history of all South Africa; everybody had to learn that history in which “all Voortrekkers were heroes”. As history professor Fransjohan Pretorius of the University of Pretoria joked, “and they were all 10 feet tall!”
Now the rewriting of history is in full swing as owning the past is a mechanism to owning the future. For the first time Afrikaners are discovering that during the Anglo-Boer War there were also black concentration camps and that thousands of black people died; black soldiers (not only agterryers) also fought alongside the Boers.
Norman researched extremely carefully not only Afrikaner history but the history of this country as a whole, and she describes pretty accurately the role and development of Afrikaner thinking.
At first I thought that the role of Orania was overstated until I realised that for her Orania constitutes a mindset, rather than a locality.
In a book of about 200 pages she has painted a very clear picture of how a group representing a section of Afrikaners view themselves in relation to this country and their future in it; and why they feel the “laager” may be the safest haven.
It is significant that the late Swedish author Henning Mankell, creator of the legendary detective Wallander series, and who himself had roots in southern Africa, was one of the main forces propelling her towards this country and this task. Highly recommended.
In 1938, a century after the ‘Blood River’ battle, there was widespread Afrikaner participation in the re-enactment of the Great Trek