An Afrikaner experience of the past 30 years

Igrew up as an ordinary Afrikaner boy in Potchefstroom. As a student leader at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, I participated in meetings with various English-speaking and black Christians. Through these, I realised that apartheid was wrong, principally because it broke the unity of the church of Christ. I started to question the basic tenets of apartheid. This led to the 1977 Koinonia Declaration, which critiqued apartheid from a Christian Reformed point of view.

When I became a dominee in the Reformed Church in Pretoria, I continued to be involved in reconciliation processes and in 1987 joined Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert in meeting ANC leaders in Dakar, Senegal. The fallout from this engagement led me to leave the ministry in 1989 and join the Consultative Business Movement. As executive director, I played a facilitating role in the peace process and the signing of the Peace Accord in 1991, and became the head of the administration of the Multiparty Negotiating Process in 1993. My commitment to the constitution and the new

South Africa stirred high expectations of the future of our nonracial democracy.

The Mandela years were almost euphoric. We had achieved a peaceful transition, had an excellent constitution and were the darlings of the world. South Africans (and Afrikaners) were welcomed internationally and our experience and expertise on negotiations were sought after.

When Thabo Mbeki became president, it soon became clear that the reconciliatory tone of the Mandela era was over. In a speech about the two nations (rich whites and poor blacks), Mbeki labelled white South Africans (and Afrikaners) as “colonialists of a special kind”. As CEO of the National Business Initiative I felt extremely uncomfortable being labelled a colonialist. During Mbeki’s term, the ANC formally adopted cadre deployment as a policy. These two issues would have a profound effect on the position of nonAfrican minorities, including Afrikaners.

Jacob Zuma got rid of Thabo Mbeki in 2007 at Polokwane and when the Guptas landed at Waterkloof in 2013, it became clear something was afoot. Zuma perfected the toxic combination of corruption, cadre deployment and racial transformation, resulting in large-scale state capture. When the ANC got rid of Zuma, the damage was largely done. Cyril Ramaphosa reaped the fruits of what Zuma had started and he inherited a divided ANC. But even after he received the strong mandate of the ANC electoral conference in 2022, he failed to act decisively and rid his cabinet of those implicated in the report of the Zondo commission.

Today, South Africa is a failing state, with a largely incompetent and often corrupt civil service, exacerbated by many corrupt politicians with the attitude “it is now my time to eat”. Failing infrastructure is affecting electricity and water provision, sewerage, roads, crime fighting and education. Rural towns are a shadow of what they used to be and in some cities the decay is palpable.

There are, in my opinion, four main causes for this situation:

• We all underestimated the complexity of governing a country in a globalised world, especially the ANC.

• The ANC hastily got rid of experience and competence in the civil service, before skills could be transferred.

• In an effort to redress the effects of apartheid, race (again) became the decisive factor in the lives of South Africans. The ANC government has adopted 116 race laws since 1994 — despite the constitution’s founding provision of non-racialism.

• The ANC’s “Strategy and Tactics” document still talks about “seizing all the levers of power” in society to usher in a socialist state. The simple but brilliant plan is that all South African institutions (whether public or private) must in their staff, member or student composition reflect the national racial demographics: 81% African, 9% coloured, 8% white and 2% Indian. This means the African majority should be in control of every South African institution and that minorities are forever relegated to subservience. This is done by implementing the toxic combination of racial transformation, employment equity and BEE. The effects of cadre deployment and corruption would not have been as damaging if it hadn’t been for racial transformation. The transformation “targets” played into the hands of those who wanted to employ cadres and participate in corruption — racial targets became quotas.

In 2013 the labour court ruled in the case of a female Indian police officer who was denied promotion, despite being a woman and part of the designated target groups. Police management testified that the appointment norm was that Indians can make up only 2.5% of the 19 positions at level 14 in the police. If the 19 positions are multiplied by 2.5%, it comes to 0.5, with the conclusion that the “ideal” for Indian appointments at level 14 was zero. The judge called the appointing panel’s conduct “egregious” and that of police management “duplicitous and capricious”. Those are the consequences of racial transformation. History will judge racial transformation and its quotas as the biggest strategic mistake of the ANC government. It brought the party and the country to its knees. The country might survive it, but the party won’t.

All South Africans are negatively affected and all racial minorities are grossly disadvantaged by this ideology, including Afrikaners. Poverty among Afrikaners has risen dramatically, as can be seen in the many informal settlements north of Pretoria.

In addition to these problems, Afrikaners’ mother tongue, Afrikaans, has been under pressure in the past 20 years, especially in the public sphere. Of the 25 public universities, only the Potchefstroom campus of North-West University allows for the possibility to obtain a bachelor’s degree through the medium of Afrikaans. If one considers that 13.5% (7-million) of South Africans use Afrikaans as a first language, this is clearly not right. Similarly, of the 23,000 public schools in the country only 1,200 (or 5.2%) are single-medium Afrikaans institutions. And these schools and the other 1,200 that are dual medium are under tremendous political pressure to become English-only institutions. This will contravene section 29(2) of the constitution. It would also rob other African language speakers of the opportunity to be taught in their mother tongue up to at least grade 10, as is the international norm.

Having been part of the peace process and the constitutional negotiations, as well as business’s quest to help make the country work, it pains me to see where we are today. As a South African, I feel betrayed by a government that has betrayed the constitution and reneged on the promise of better life for all, especially the poor. As an Afrikaner, I feel betrayed that the ideology of racial transformation has disadvantaged my fellow Afrikaners, without helping the vast majority of poor South Africans. Young Afrikaners, who had not even been born when apartheid died, are being penalised for the sins of their fathers.

On the positive side: our judiciary has remained largely steadfast. There are a few national government departments and institutions, such as the Treasury and the Reserve Bank, that still inspire confidence. The resilience of South Africans, displayed in the hundreds of civil society organisations that deliver services the state cannot any more, gives me hope.

It is against this background that I became part of the discussions between various Afrikaner groups to reflect on who we are, where we are going and what contribution we can make to the rebuilding of the country. The Afrikaner statement that became public recently has two main themes: we are here to stay and to build, and to do that effectively we need a structured cultural accord with government. This is the Afrikaner community’s pledge and potential contribution to the country our constitution envisaged.

✼ Eloff self-describes as an Afrikaner and a South African. He was the head of the administration of the Multi-Party Negotiations Process in 1993.