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Invoking the Afrikaner Ancestors1 Thamyris/Intersecting No. 27 (2014) 133–156 De la Rey, De la Rey, De la Rey: Invoking the Afrikaner Ancestors1 Melissa Steyn The Afrikaners in South Africa, descendants of Dutch settlers and some mixed European origins, have had the regrettable distinction of being custodians of overt systemic racism. Just as the rest of the world was shocked by the Nazi holocaust into turning its back on the institutionalization of racist organizations, Afrikaners designed and enforced what would become the Apartheid era (1948–1994). As a state system of white supremacy that was responsible for extreme human rights abuses, Apartheid was declared to be a crime against humanity by the United Nations. The end of white rule and the advent of democracy in 1994 have represented a decisive watershed in the history of Afrikanerdom. As can be expected, reactions have been divided on the new dispensation, yet one can say that the overall tone has generally been rather subdued. As I have argued elsewhere, this is “a whiteness dis- graced” (Steyn, “Rehabilitating” 143–69). While many have been making adjust- ments and getting on with their lives, there have been indications, including a subversive Boeremag plot against the state and a growing tide of emigration, that not everybody has been comfortable with the change. The generation of young people who were either not born or too young to have been participants in the Apartheid era have reached adulthood and are struggling to define a place for themselves among a range of options (Steyn, “Rehybridising” 70–85). When the singer, Bok van Blerk, recorded a song in 2006 about General de la Rey, the Afrikaner hero of the Anglo South African war, it became the most successful South African debut album ever, spreading like wildfire, and achieving something of the status of an Afrikaner anthem (see Groenewald). Replete with iconography invoking Afrikaner history and suffused with suffering, the song promises that the Boere are “a nation that will rise again.”1 De la Rey, De la Rey, De la Rey: Invoking the Afrikaner Ancestors | 133 Reactions to this phenomenon have been diverse, ranging from those who see the song as an attempt to recuperate the history of the Afrikaners to find a place of self- respect, to those who see the song as a virtual incitement to treason. Afrikaans radio stations in neighboring Namibia banned the song for fear of importing the political controversy.2 This chapter will first present a brief account of “Afrikaner identity” shaped through the trajectory of Afrikaner history in South Africa, defined in contradistinction to the various groups who impinged upon them, spatially, physically, and psychologi- cally.3 Then, turning to contemporary postapartheid South Africa, it will reflect on the De la Rey phenomenon, and what that may signify about how some young Afrikaners are constructing what it means to be Afrikaans in postapartheid South Africa. Historical Overview of the Afrikaners in South Africa: 1652–present Early settlement Official South African historiography, always written from the perspective of the white settler population, has marked 1652 as the beginning of South African history (Worden, Making of Modern South Africa 9). This was when the Dutch East India Company (VOC), with Jan van Riebeeck at the helm, established an outpost at first only intended as a refreshment stop for ships en route to trade in the East, at the southern tip of Africa and named it the Cape of Good Hope (Sanders and Southey 60; see also Witz). It can be surmised that most of the men who landed at the Cape were down at heel. Giliomee observes that “[few] inhabitants of the free Netherlands would sign up as sailors or soldiers except out of dire necessity” and that Jan van Riebeeck called the first batch of Europeans that disembarked at the Cape “weak and ignorant people” (Giliomee 5; see also Giliomee and Mbenga 4). As early as 1657, however, company employees were being released from the VOC’s service.4 These men, known as free burghers, were allowed to establish farms and would increasingly penetrate the area beyond the immediate settlement, thus impinging on territory belonging to Khoikhoi herders (Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa 10).5 As in most colonies where European women were scarce, there was a measure of miscegenation and intermarriage, practices that were initially tolerated.6 Despite the influx of German and French immigrants, the VOC was actively engaged in making and keeping the colony Dutch, following what Giliomee calls a “policy of forced cultural assimilation” (Giliomee 10–11, 42–45). Dutch was the offi- cial language of the VOC-administrated colony, and for more than a century, the Reformed Church was the only denomination in the Cape colony, this despite the fact that in the Netherlands it enjoyed the membership of only half the population (Giliomee 5). For instance, Germans in the colony were only permitted to establish a Lutheran Church in 1780 although, as Giliomee explains, “by then, the principle of one language and one church for the European community had become well 134 | Melissa Steyn.
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