Wednesday 9 June 2021
South Africa Languages and Culture
South Africa is the Rainbow Nation, a title that captures the country's cultural and ethnic diversity. The population of South Africa is one of the most complex and diverse in the world. Of the 51.7 million South Africans, over 41 million are black, 4.5 million are white, 4.6 million are coloured and about 1.3 million Indian or Asian. About 51.3% are female, and 48.7% male.
The People of South Africa
The black population of South Africa is divided into four major ethnic groups; namely Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swazi), Sotho, Shangaan-Tsonga and Venda. There are numerous subgroups within these, of which the Zulu and Xhosa (two subgroups of the Nguni group) are the largest.
The majority of the white population (about 60%) is of Afrikaans descent, with many of the remaining 40% being of British or European descent. The coloured population have a mixed lineage, which often comprises the indigenous Khoisan genes combined with African slaves that were brought here from all over the continent, and white settlers.
Did you know? The first inhabitants of South Africa were the San and the Khoekhoe. The San and Khoe descended from early stone age people and migrated from their birthplace in East Africa to the Cape.
Most of the coloured population lives in the Northern and Western Cape provinces, whilst the majority of the Indian population lives in KwaZulu-Natal. The Afrikaner population is especially concentrated in the Gauteng and Free State provinces and the English population in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
There are eleven official languages in South Africa. These are English (9.6%), Afrikaans (13.5%), Ndebele (2.1%), Sepedi (9.1%), Xhosa (16%), Venda (2.4%), Tswana (8%), Southern Sotho (7.6%), Zulu 22.7%), Swazi or SiSwati (2.5%) and Tsonga (4.5%). Much of the country’s media has been tailored to include as many of these languages as possible. Of course, many other languages from all over the world are spoken here too; including Portuguese, Greek, Italian, French, Chinese, and so on.
About the Afrikaans Language
The Afrikaans language is one of South Africa’s official languages and a large proportion of the local population uses it as their first or second language. It is still taught in schools. Afrikaans has a fascinating history of its own, and a heritage and culture that are deeply entwined in its character.
Did you know? There are 11 officially recognised languages, most of which are indigenous to South Africa. English is spoken everywhere you go. English is the language of the cities, of commerce and banking, of government and official documents. All our road signs and official forms are in English and at any Hotel, Bed and Breakfast or Guest House the service staff will speak to you in English.
The language is also widely spoken in Namibia and, to a lesser degree, in Zimbabwe, Botswana and other surrounding countries. Some believe that Afrikaans is a dying language, however, it remains spoken all over the country and respected for its origins.
“Afrikaans” is a Dutch word that means “African”. Afrikaans was formed as a language in Cape Town, thanks mainly to the French and Dutch settlers of centuries ago. Today, the Mother City is still home to a smorgasbord of nationalities. Historically, the main nationalities that contributed to South African society were Indonesians, Madagascans, Khoi, the Dutch settlers and West Africans.
Afrikaans is heavily based on the Dutch language. Today, the original dialect is still referred to as Kitchen Dutch, Cape Dutch or African Dutch. It was only in the late 19th century that Afrikaans was actually recognised as a separate language to Dutch. In 1961, Afrikaans became one of the official languages of the country, along with English.
Dutch and Afrikaans are differentiated by their grammar and the vocabulary. Afrikaans is considered to be a language containing “regular” grammar. This is ascribed to certain influences by Dutch-creole languages. A huge proportion of vocabulary shows evidence of its South-Hollandic Dutch origins. The Afrikaans language contains influences and roots from English, Khoi, Xhosa, Asian Malay, Malagasy, San, Portuguese and French; although many of these words do sound extremely different.
The dialect in the north-east was a form of Afrikaans and the written standard was developed from this. Afrikaans is spoken as a first language by 60% of white South Africans and by about 90% of the local coloured folk. Many South African races use Afrikaans as their second or third language.
Afrikaans has been labelled by critics as being an "ugly language" for its guttural quality. This has not prevented it from gaining popularity in many other countries, though. Universities in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Russia and Poland are also teaching Afrikaans.
In 1975, Afrikaans-Language Monument was built near the town of Paarl in the Western Cape Province. The structure was extremely impressive and was created to commemorate and honour the Afrikaans language.
How a Right-Wing South African Group Incites a New Wave of White Fear
When Dylann Storm Roof, the suspect in last week’s mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, told his victims that black people “are raping our women and taking over the country,” he was echoing a belief held by white nationalists worldwide, who feel that their way of life is under threat from people of color, be they in the United States, Europe or South Africa.
Roof is thought to have penned an inchoate manifesto laying out fears of a “white genocide” in the days leading up to the attack. On a Facebook page attributed to him he can be seen stomping on the American flag, and proudly wearing the flags of white-ruled Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa.
In South Africa, the old flag on the jacket of Dylann has created uproar and discussion. A lot of people don’t want South Africa to be linked to what happened in Charleston, and say that even the old flag has nothing to do with hate crimes. Still, South African columnist Max du Preez feels there is a link to be made: “No, apartheid didn’t aim to wipe out black South Africans. But that doesn’t change the fact that apartheid was an extremely violent ideology and state policy. In short: at the heart of apartheid was the belief that a black life was worth less than a white life. Dylann Roof believes that too,” he wrote for the South African website News 24.
It is unlikely that Roof had any direct connection to South Africa, but the ideology of white primacy, and whites under threat that may have inspired his actions on the night of June 17 still exists in a country that only 25 years ago brought an end to the legal separation of blacks from whites. Though rare, there are still white communities in South Africa who believe that separation must be maintained.
After a three-hour drive from Johannesburg the boys, aged between 13 and 19, spill from the bed of a rusty truck, lugging huge bags full of military clothing. “There are old blood stains on my uniform,” one of them says, as he trades his sneakers for army boots. Shouted orders ring out. Groaning, the boys raise 15-foot tent poles among the cow paddies dotting the grassland. The large army tent will be their home for the next nine days. South African teenagers often go to camp during school holidays to learn how to start fires, build huts and identify animal tracks. But this survival camp is different. Here, the focus is on the survival of white South Africans.
The participants are all Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch, German and French colonists. They are also all children of the “born-free” generation, born after 1990 into a multiracial South Africa. “I don’t know what apartheid is,” 13-year-old Jano, the youngest member of the camp, says. “But a long time ago, Nelson Mandela made it so everyone has the same rights.”
Their position as the first generation of whites after apartheid in South Africa makes them an interesting demographic. According to Professor Eliria Bornman at South Africa’s UNISA university many of them feel unsure about their place in their homeland. “They have a strong Afrikaner identity and they are struggling to determine their position in South Africa,” she says. “There’s a great deal of anger, too. They know they’re different from the rest of the population.”
That anger is fueled in part by positive discrimination, which has made it harder for white youth to find jobs and which fans the flames of racism. Many of them feel unwanted. “Anyone [in authority] can take their frustration and channel it in a negative way,” Bornman says.
The boys run from the army tent to the mess hall. Before them, under the glare of fluorescent lighting, stands 57-year-old Franz Jooste. Army decorations gleam on his uniform; Jooste fought in the old apartheid army. “We’re going to make men of you all,” he says in Afrikaans.
Jooste is the head of the Kommandokorps, a little-known but potentially dangerous extreme right-wing group. On its website, the Kommandokorps describes itself as an elite organization, “protecting its own people” in the event of an attack, necessary “because the police and the military cannot provide help quickly enough”. The organization claims to have trained more than 1,500 young white Afrikaners in defence skills since 2000. Jooste, who spreads his message via email and newsletters, says that 40 per cent of boys sign up themselves. The rest are volunteered by their parents.
Kommandokorps feeds on anxiety. Though the national crime rate is dropping, South Africans are increasingly anxious. Every year, 16,000 murders are committed and 200,000 assaults with intent to cause bodily harm. The violence breeds a sense of fear. As a result, farmers organise themselves into countryside militia that patrol at night to ensure their cattle are not stolen, urban residents form neighborhood watches, and every South African (white and black) who can afford it hires a private security company that will send an armed response team to his home when the alarm goes off. All of which provides fertile ground for an organisation such as the Kommandokorps. “We always have to lock our doors at night,” 18-year-old Nicolas says. “This camp will teach me how to protect my father and mother and little brother and sister.” But the group’s leader has a greater objective.
It is 4:30 on the first morning of camp. The boys are sent out on a one-and-a-half mile run in their heavy army boots, down a rocky country road filled with potholes. Sixteen-year-old E. C. is in the middle of the exhausted troop. Though not one of the youngest present, he is one of the smallest, a childlike teenager who is primarily excited at being able to shoot his paintball gun. “I want to be able to defend myself. And I am also doing this for my paintball career,” he says with a smile.
At 18, Riaan is more self-assured. “I want to learn how to camouflage myself in the field,” he says. As we talk about their country, the teenagers say they believe in the idea of South Africa, the “rainbow nation”. “People generally get along pretty well,” Riaan says. “We have to fight racism.” E. C. has two black friends, Thabang and Tshepo. “I don’t like racism,” he says.
Yet some of the older generation’s fears are visible in these boys, even though they were born after the end of apartheid. “I’m terrified to walk past black people,” Jano says. E.C. adds he would never marry a black woman. The boys seem trapped between the ideas their parents have passed on to them and what they learn at their mixed-race schools.
Leader Jooste sits in the mess hall and looks through the glasses on his nose at the following day’s programme. Kitsch paintings of buffalos, elephants and rhinos hang on the wall. The wicker furniture is covered in zebra-print fabric. Jooste is a proud veteran. He fought along South Africa’s borders with Zimbabwe and Mozambique and in Angola in the 1970s and is scarred by what he calls treason. While he was fighting for the white regime, his leaders were making peace with Nelson Mandela. “Aside from the Aborigines in Australia, the African black is the most underdeveloped, barbaric member of the human race on Earth,” he tells the boys during one of his lectures.
Few of South Africa’s 4.6 million whites (in a population of almost 52 million) share Jooste’s desire to return to the past. The majority of whites support the new democratic South Africa. “There are a few right-wing splinter groups, though I think they have no more than a thousand active members,” says Professor Hermann Giliomee, a historian specializing in Afrikaners.
The most prominent is the Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging or AWB (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), with which Jooste shares certain ideological views, but that organisation has lost momentum since the murder of its leader, Eugène Terre’Blanche in 2010. As the voice of hardcore Afrikaners has become quieter, men like Jooste have become more desperate to preserve, as he sees it, the Afrikaner identity – its culture, language and symbols. That means cultivating a new generation.
Jooste is lecturing in the mess hall. “Who is my enemy in South Africa? Who murders, robs and rapes?” His cadets sit cross-legged on the ground. “Who are these creatures?” he asks. “The blacks.” He goes on to tell the boys that black people have a smaller cerebral cortex than whites, and thus cannot take initiative or govern effectively.
Jooste boasts that it will take him just an hour to change the boys’ minds. “Then they’ll know they aren’t part of the rainbow nation, but part of another nation with an important history.” He picks up the South African flag, which was adopted in 1994, and lays it before the entrance to the mess hall like a doormat. He orders the boys to wipe their filthy army boots on it. They laugh uncertainly, then they do as they are told. Jooste tells them that they should love the old South African flag and the old national anthem.
Indoctrination takes root best in exhausted minds and hungry bodies. Outside, the cadets are made to crawl across the ground, army-style, gripping a wooden beam they call “sweetheart” in their arms, their knuckles bleeding. “Persevere! You’ve got to learn to persevere,” Jooste shouts. The sound of crying rises from the rearmost ranks. Jooste’s assistants, older members of the Kommandokorps, grin as they take photos of the boys with their mobile phones. It feels almost sadistic.
E. C. is struggling. The beam weighs almost a third as much as he does. The nights, too, are hitting him hard. “We sleep on the ground and our sleeping bags get wet. In three nights, I’ve slept six hours. Every day I think about giving up.”
Frans Cronje, director of the Institute for Race Relations, insists that “relations between black and white are civil” in South Africa, but while he dismisses Kommandokorps as a extremist fringe, he believes that the camp nonetheless represents a real concern. Jooste’s message is that conflict between whites and blacks is just around the corner. “I think we’re sitting on a time bomb here in South Africa,” Jooste says. “It’s inevitable that something is going to happen in this country, because there is discord.”
Cronje’s worry is that it only takes one boy to act upon Jooste’s words for there to be a serious incident. “When you convince a child that blacks are the enemy, the danger is that he will act upon it. He gets a gun, climbs onto a bus full of black schoolchildren, and shoots 20 of them dead. That’s a realistic danger. It’s brainwashing, and it’s easy to do.”
At camp, the young faces are increasingly marked by exhaustion as the days pass, yet the boys seem to grow more and more confident. “The training has taught me that you should hate black people,” E. C. says. “They kill everyone who crosses their path. I don’t think I can be friends with Thabang and Tshepo any more.”
Riaan repeats what he has learned in nine days almost word for word. “There’s a war going on between blacks and whites,” he says. “A lot of blood will flow in the future. I definitely feel more like an Afrikaner now. I feel the Afrikaner blood in my veins.”
Jooste maintains that he doesn’t want to force the boys in any particular direction and just wants to teach them how to defend themselves. “All we want to do is channel the feeling they already carry within them. We don’t want them to hate. We just want them to love their own culture, traditions and symbols, and to fight for independence and freedom.” As he prepares to leave camp on the final day, Riaan appears to have absorbed Jooste’s message: “This is my country,” he says. “I will fight for it.”
Afrikaners Afrikaners are Dutch, German, and French Europeans Who Settled in South Africa
The Afrikaners are a South African ethnic group who are descended from 17th century Dutch, German, and French settlers to South Africa. The Afrikaners slowly developed their own language and culture when they came into contact with Africans and Asians. The word “Afrikaners” means “Africans” in Dutch. About 4 million people out of South Africa’s total population of 56.5 million (2017 figures from Statistics South Africa) are White, though it's unknown if all identify themselves as Afrikaners. World Atlas estimates that 61% of whites in South Africa identify as Afrikaners. Regardless of their small number, Afrikaners have had a large impact on South African history.
Settling in South Africa
In 1652, Dutch emigrants first settled in South Africa near the Cape of Good Hope to establish a station where ships traveling to the Dutch East Indies (currently Indonesia) could rest and resupply. French Protestants, German mercenaries, and other Europeans joined the Dutch in South Africa. The Afrikaners are also known as the “Boers,” the Dutch word for “farmers.” To aid them in agriculture, the Europeans brought in enslaved people from places such as Malaysia and Madagascar while enslaving some local tribes, such as the Khoikhoi and San.
The Great Trek
For 150 years, the Dutch were the predominant foreign influence in South Africa. However, in 1795, Britain gained control of the country, and many British government officials and citizens settled there. The British angered the Afrikaners by freeing their enslaved people. Due to the end of the practice of enslavement, border wars with natives, and the need for more fertile farmland, in the 1820s, many Afrikaner “Voortrekkers” began to migrate northward and eastward into the interior of South Africa. This journey became known as the “Great Trek.” The Afrikaners founded the independent republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. However, many Indigenous groups resented the intrusion of the Afrikaners upon their land. After several wars, the Afrikaners conquered some of the land and farmed peacefully until gold was discovered in their republics in the late 19th century.
Conflict With the British
The British quickly learned about the rich natural resources in the Afrikaner republics. Afrikaner and British tensions over the ownership of the land quickly escalated into the two Boer Wars. The First Boer War was fought between 1880 and 1881. The Afrikaners won the First Boer War, but the British still coveted the rich African resources. The Second Boer War was fought from 1899 to 1902. Tens of thousands of Afrikaners died due to combat, hunger, and disease. The victorious British annexed the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
Apartheid
The Europeans in South Africa were responsible for establishing apartheid in the 20th century. The word “apartheid” means “separateness” in Afrikaans. Although the Afrikaners were the minority ethnic group in the country, the Afrikaner National Party gained control of the government in 1948. To restrict the ability of “less civilized” ethnic groups to participate in government, different races were strictly segregated. Whites had access to much better housing, education, employment, transportation, and medical care. Black people could not vote and had no representation in government. After many decades of inequality, other countries began to condemn apartheid. The practice ended in 1994 when members of all ethnic classes were allowed to vote in the presidential election. Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president.
The Boer Diaspora
After the Boer Wars, many poor, homeless Afrikaners moved into other countries in Southern Africa, such as Namibia and Zimbabwe. Some Afrikaners returned to the Netherlands, and some even moved to distant places such as South America, Australia, and the southwestern United States. Due to racial violence and in search of better educational and employment opportunities, many Afrikaners have left South Africa since the end of apartheid. About 100,000 Afrikaners now reside in the United Kingdom.
Current Afrikaner Culture
Afrikaners around the world have a distinct culture. They deeply respect their history and traditions. Sports such as rugby, cricket, and golf are popular. Traditional clothing, music, and dance are celebrated. Barbecued meats and vegetables, as well as porridges influenced by Indigenous African tribes, are common dishes.
Current Afrikaans Language
The Dutch language spoken at the Cape Colony in the 17th century slowly transformed into a separate language, with differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Today, Afrikaans, the Afrikaner language, is one of the 11 official languages of South Africa. It is spoken across the country and by people from many different races. Worldwide, about 17 million people speak Afrikaans as a first or second language, though first-language speakers are declining in number. Most Afrikaans words are of Dutch origin, but the languages of enslaved Asians and Africans, as well as European languages such as English, French, and Portuguese, greatly influenced the language. Many English words, such as “aardvark,” “meerkat,” and “trek,” derive from Afrikaans. To reflect local languages, many South African cities with names of Afrikaner origin are now being changed. Pretoria, South Africa’s executive capital, may one day permanently change its name to Tshwane.
The Future of the Afrikaners
The Afrikaners, descended from hard-working, resourceful pioneers, have developed a rich culture and language over the past four centuries. Although the Afrikaners have been associated with the oppression of apartheid, Afrikaners today live in a multiethnic society where all races can participate in government. However, the white population in South Africa has been declining since at least 1986 and is expected to keep decreasing, as reflected in South Africa SA estimates of a loss of 112,740 coming between 2016 and 2021.
Bijdragen over het Afrikaans Bydraes oor Afrikaans
The Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners/Fellowship of True Afrikaners
The Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners (the GRA, the Fellowship of True Afrikaners) was launched in Paarl, Western Cape on 14 August 1875.
The society was dedicated to the recognition of Afrikaans as a language in Parliament, schools, the civil service and society in general. But more than this, according to Davenport, ‘the Afrikaans language was also the vehicle of a bigger idea, as yet only vaguely formulated, which involved the self conscious cultivation of a distinctive Afrikaner outlook rooted in the religion and history of the people, to be attained by an all-embracing programme of popular education’.
The society was formed after a meeting between SJ du Toit and a man named by Davenport only as Morgan, who was a representative of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The pair met to discuss the idea of translating the Bible into Afrikaans.
Du Toit had been influenced by a linguist, Arnoldus Pannevis, when he studied at the Paarl Gymnasium from 1867.
Earlier, in 1873, educationist CP Hoogenhout had launched a campaign for the recognition of Afrikaans. Hoogenhout and Pannevis had become convinced that Afrikaans needed to develop its own literature. Pannevis the linguist considered Dutch too far removed from the experience of the ordinary Afrikaner to serve as an educational medium.
Du Toit, his schoolmaster brother DF du Toit, Pannevis and Hoogenhout met on 14 August 1875 and formed the GRA.
At its first meeting, the GRA listed three types of Afrikaners, those with Afrikaans hearts, those with Dutch hearts and those with English hearts. It resolved to mobilise and strengthen those with Afrikaner hearts.
According to Davenport: ‘Members had to be professing Christians; they looked upon the Afrikaans language essentially as something God-given…’
Meanwhile, a rival campaign for the recognition of Dutch was initiated by JH Hofmeyr in 1878. While the two parties disagree over the appropriate volkstaal – Afrikaans or Dutch – they co-operated with one another.
The GRA faced various difficulties: a lack of funding, and the lack of a printing press with which to publish the various projects they had in the pipeline. SJ du Toit funded the projects with his own money while Hofmeyr allowed them to use his printing press in Cape Town.
The Afrikaanse Patriot
The Genootskappers launched their own newspaper, Die Afrikaanse Patriot, which was first published on 15 January 1876. The newspaper espoused an anti-English, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist ideology, decrying free trade in goods, railing against merchants, bankers and agents of British financial capitalism. It targeted in particular the Standard Bank, accusing it of sending much of its dividends to its London head office.
The newspaper used a version of Afrikaans that was accessible to ordinary Afrikaners, and became immensely successful. By the early 1880s the newspaper’s circulation reached 3700.
Published as a monthly from January 1876, it became a weekly in January 1877, with the Du Toit brothers acting as editors. When SJ du Toit moved to the Transvaal to take up a position as an education officer, DF du Toit assumed full editorial responsibilities. He created a nom de plume, ‘Oom Lokomotief’, and encouraged readers to write to him, presenting lengthy correspondence columns in every edition.
The paper called for the establishment of a Huguenot memorial, while four editions between March and April 1892 mounted attacks on the Standard Bank.
Towards an Afrikaner Literature
SJ du Toit undertook to write a history of the Afrikaners, which he penned together with the other members of the GRA, but was its principal author.
Die Geskiednis van ons Land in die Taal van ons Volk (The History of our Land in the Language of our Nation), published in 1877, told the story of the Afrikaners in heroic mode, presenting Afrikaners as oppressed throughout their history, and hailing those ‘martyred’ after the Slagter’s Nek rebellion.
According to Davenport: ‘It was romantic history of an exaggerated kind, in which the hero was the Afrikaner Boer. He was pictured, first of all, trying to build a colony, caught between the upper and nether millstones of the Dutch East India Company and the “wild nations”; and was seen to prevail over both because the Lord was on his side. The Huguenots were discussed at considerable length, and their fusion with the Cape Dutch was likewise brought within the scope of the Providential plan. The writers’ emphasis moved to the Republics from the time of the Great Trek onwards, with the implication that from that time the spiritual home of the Afrikaner lay beyond the Orange River. The authors, partly to offset distortions in the English textbooks the n circulation, played down the contribution of English speaking people to the development of South Africa, and they sought to arouse the group patriotism of the Afrikaner by a skilful use of melodrama, best seen in their account of the Slagters Nek executions in 1815.’
The first edition of 500 copies was rapidly sold out, and a second edition was printed much later in 1895.
SJ Du Toit translated the Bible into Afrikaans, and also worked towards the standardisation of the language, publishing Eerste Beginsels van die Afrikaans Taal (First Principles of the Afrikaans Language).
The GRA also published a history of the Afrikaans language movement, an anthology of Afrikaans poetry, and picture books for children.
The GRA printed more than 93,650 Dutch and 81,000 Afrikaans books.
Conclusion
In an editorial of the Patriot printed on 20 June, 1879, Du Toit called for the formation of an Afrikaner Bond (Afrikaner League), with the slogan ‘Afrikaner voor de Afrikaners’. This call was followed by the establishment of the Afrikaner Bond and its flourishing over the next two decades which had an immense impact on South African politics and history. (See the dedicated article on the Bond)
The GRA was the beginning of this Afrikaner mobilisation. By focusing on the development of a literature, standardising the language and the manner in which it became written, the GRA forged the basis of an Afrikaner nationalism. This focus on the ‘material infrastructure’ of nationalism was accompanied by the development of political organisations.
History of Photography in South Africa
A survey of the history of photography in South Africa reveals, broadly, three important eras, colonisation, repression and Apartheid and the democratic dispensation. It is against this backdrop that South African History Online (SAHO) is showcasing the different genres of photography that has been practised over the decades in the country, from the earliest analogue visual representation to the current digital images.
From the earliest ethnographic/anthropological images to documentary photography, landscape, portraiture and beyond this feature looks at the personal and political. This archive will serve as an invaluable source for further research into photography and academia — for scholars interested in the visual representation of South Africa’s past and current lens-based history.
The feature acknowledges and celebrates all photographers, academics, scholars, commentators, etc. who have contributed and continue to add to the rich South African photography tapestry.
With time, SAHO will expand this feature to include the history of photography on the African continent.
Sources in Our Archive
- Seeing and Being Seen: Politics, Art and The Everyday in Omar Badsha's Durban Photography, 1960s - 1980s
- Photographs as Sources in African History by Robert Gordon and Jonatan Kurzwelly
- Utopia as a perspective by Miki Kurisu
- Minna Keene: a neglected pioneer by Malcolm Corrigall
- Introduction: Visual Genders by Patricia Hayes
- Introduction: Relocating the African Photographic Archive by Christopher Morton and Darren Newbury
- Visualizing the Realm of a Rain-Queen by Patricia Davidson and George Mahashe
- Colonial specimen/neocolonial chic by Annemi Conradie
- Global Photographies. History - Memory - Archives, edited by Stefanie Michels/Sissy Helff
Timeline of the History of Rugby in South Africa
- 1862
- 23 August, Canon George Oglivie organizes first recorded rugby match in South Africa at Green Point, Cape Town, Western Cape between the Army and the Civil service.
- 1879
- Founding of the first two Whites-only rugby union clubs in South Africa, Hamilton and the Villagers.
- 1883
- Formation of the Whites-only Western Province Rugby Football Union.
- 1886
- Formation of the Blacks-only Western Province Coloured Rugby Football Union.
- 1889
- Formation of the Whites-only South African Rugby Board.
- 1897
- Formation of the Blacks-only South African Coloured Rugby Football Board.
- 1906-1907
- South Africa fields first national rugby team on a tour of the British Isles. British media anglicizes the team's self entitled nickname Springbokken and the South African Springboks are born. The team is composed of Whites-only.
- 1948
- The National Party comes to power in South Africa after winning the national elections.
- 1950
- The National Party enacts the Group Areas Act defining the separate geographic areas within which different South African racial groups could reside. South African rugby is legally and physically divided along racial boundaries.
- 1953
- The National Party enacts the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act leading to segregation of all public areas in South Africa – including rugby pitches.
- 1963
- Formation of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee. The group calls for the boycott of South Africa from the 1964 Olympic Games.
- 1967
- New Zealand All-Blacks cancel tour of South Africa in response to Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd's announcement forbidding their team from including any Maori players.
- 1970
- The National Party enacts the Bantu Homeland Citizens Act effectively removing Black South Africans’ citizenships and requiring them to become citizens of the homeland designated to their respective ethnic group.
- 1973
- March, Formation of the South African Council on Sport, a group aiming to establish non-racial sporting development within South Africa.
- 1976
- The National Party announces that multi-nationalism in sport will be extended down to the club level so as to allow Blacks to participate in the same sporting organizations as Whites – pending special permission.
- 1981
- Springboks tour New Zealand. The second match between the Springboks and All-Blacks is cancelled because hundreds of protestors occupy the pitch.
- 1984-1992
- South Africa banned from the International Rugby Board as a result of the nation's continuation of apartheid policies.
- 1988
- Danie Craven and Louis Luyt of the South African Rugby Board, Ebrahim Patel and Thabo Mbeki of the non-racial South African Rugby Union, and Steve Tshwete and Alfred Nzo of the African National Congress meet to discuss the formation of a single, non-racial controlling body for South African rugby.
- 1992
- 23 March, Official inauguration of the South African Rugby Football Union in Kimberley.
- International Rugby Board awards South Africa hosting of the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
- 1995
- 25 May–24 June, South Africa hosts the Rugby World Cup (RWC). The RWC is endorsed by President Nelson Mandela. South Africa beats the tournament favourite New Zealand in the final.
- 1997
- February, A taped conversation between Springbok rugby coach Andre Markgraaff and former player Andre Bester is played on the South African Broadcasting Corporation's national news. In the tape Markgraaff calls the Senior Vice President of the South African Rugby Football Union Mululeki George a ‘fucking kaffir’.
- 2013
- 5 December 2013, The incredible visionary Nelson Mandela passes away. The challenge lies with South Africans to honour his accomplishment of using rugby as a tool to unify the country.
Afrikaner Broederbond
Afrikaner Broederbond
On 5 June 1918 disaffected Afrikaners were brought together in a new organisation called Jong Suid-Afrika (Young South Africa). The following year its name was changed to the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB). The organisation had one main aim: to further Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa - to maintain Afrikaner culture, develop an Afrikaner economy, and to gain control of the South African government.
During the 1930s the Afrikaner Broederbond became increasingly political, creating several public front organisations - especially the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge (FAK - Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Societies) which acted as an umbrella organisation for Afrikaner cultural groups, and took over the original cultural remit of the AB.
The Afrikaner Broederbond, meanwhile, evolved into a highly influential 'secret' society. Its political influence became apparent in 1934 when JBM Hertzog merged the National Party (NP) with Jan Smuts' South African Party (SAP), to form the United Party (UP). Radical members of the NP broke away from the 'fusion government' to form the Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP - 'Reunited National Party') under the leadership of DF Malan. The AB threw its full support behind the HNP, and its members dominated the new party - especially in the Afrikaner strongholds of Transvaal and Orange Free State.
The South African prime minister, JBM Hertzog, declared in November 1935 that "there is no doubt that the secret Broederbond is nothing more than the HNP operating secretly underground, and the HNP is nothing more than the secret Afrikaner Broederbond operating in public." At the end of 1938, with centenary celebrations for the Great Trek, Afrikaner nationalism became increasingly popular, and additional organisations developed - almost all linked to the AB. Of particular significance were the Reddingdaadbond, which aimed to uplift (economically) the poor white Afrikaner, and the Ossewabrandwag, which started off as a 'cultural crusade' and rapidly developed into a paramilitary strikeforce.
When World War II was declared, Afrikaner nationalists campaigned
against South Africa joining Britain in the fight against Hitler's
Germany. Hertzog resigned from the United Party, made peace with Malan,
and became leader of the parliamentary Opposition. (Jan Smuts took over
as prime minister and leader of the UP.) Hertzog's continued stand for
the equal rights of English-speaking citizens in South Africa was,
however, incompatible with the stated aims of the HNP and the
Afrikaner Broederbond. He resigned due to ill health at the end of 1940.
Throughout the war support for the HNP increased and the influence of the Afrikaner Broederbond spread. By 1947 the AB had control of the South African Bureau of Racial Affairs (SABRA), and it was within this select group that the concept of total segregation for South Africa was developed. Changes were made to electoral boundaries, with constituencies favouring rural areas - with the result that although the United Party received a greater share of the votes in 1948, the HNP (with the assistance of the Afrikaner Party) had the greater number of electoral constituencies, and hence gained power. Every prime minister and state president in South Africa from 1948 to the end of Apartheid in 1994 was a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond.
Once [the HNP was] in power...English-speaking bureaucrats, soldiers, and state employees were sidelined by reliable Afrikaners, with key posts going to Broederbond members (with their ideological commitment to separatism). The electoral system itself was manipulated to reduce the impact of immigrant English speakers and eliminate that of Coloureds.
The Afrikaner Broederbond continued to act in secret, infiltrating and gaining control of the few organisations, such as the South African Agricultural Union (SAAU), which had political power and were opposed to a further escalation of Apartheid policies. Although revelations in the press, in the 1960s, about Afrikaner Broederbond membership began to erode its political power, influential Afrikaners continued to be members. Even at the end of the Apartheid era, just prior to the 1994 elections, most members of the departing white parliament were members of the AB (including almost all of the National Party cabinet). In 1993 the Afrikaner Broederbond decided to end the secrecy and under its new name, Afrikanerbond, opened membership to women and other races.
The rise and fall of South Africa’s far right What South Africa’s white supremacists can tell us about America’s.
Despatch is a small town in the Eastern Cape, South Africa’s poorest province. A friend’s mother grew up in there in the ‘60s, when the apartheid regime that fell in 1994 was at the height of its power. Organized black resistance had been crushed, the legal pillars enabling systemized black displacement and disenfranchisement stood firm. The ruling National Party, which implemented apartheid when it came to power in 1948, had widespread electoral support. At her whites-only, Afrikaans speaking school, my friend’s mother was given instructions about what to do if a black person happened to be walking towards her on the sidewalk. As a white child, she was taught that the sidewalk belonged to her. If the black adult walking towards her failed to grasp this, she was taught to look him in the eye to remind him of his place, and to keep staring at him until he stepped into the road to let her pass.
A month ago, the leader of the Freedom Front Plus party, Pieter Groenewald, visited Despatch. The “FF+,” as it is known, is a white Afrikaner nationalist party formed during the run-up to South Africa’s first democratic elections 27 years ago. It currently holds four seats in parliament, elected on a platform of opposition to affirmative action, advocacy for land reform benefiting white Afrikaners, and a commitment to self-determination and the protection of “minority rights.” For the FF+, the right to self-determination means the right to establish whites-only enclaves, places where people of other races may not live or work.
It was Groenewald’s first visit to Despatch. To cheers and applause, he told the crowd that it was long past time to set down the burden of white guilt, and that he refused to take responsibility for anything that had happened before apartheid fell: "Everywhere in the world, things happened that should not have happened. These feelings of guilt have to be shaken off now… I am a white man and I am not shy about my history."
Earlier this year, in a parliamentary debate over land reform, Groenewald warned that land expropriation would result in “a civil war.” In parliament, he was booed. His apocalyptic rhetoric presumably found a more sympathetic audience in Despatch. What would happen to white people, he asked, when South Africa was “nationalized”? He wasn’t suggesting that they move to Orania (a constitutionally protected whites-only town in the Northern Cape) — or not just yet. He urged them to consider it, though, and perhaps to go even further. They needed to start thinking about establishing a tenth province for self-governance.
The crowd, presumably, cheered some more, although it is difficult to know for sure, because the incident barely made the news. I saw two articles about it, neither of which gave any information about the size of the crowd, or the nature of the event, or what Groenewald was doing in Despatch in the first place. I only heard about it because a friend sent me a link with the subject line “FF+ are finally losing the plot.” In his tenure as party leader, Groenewald seems to have chiefly confined himself to resistance to land expropriation, and making accusations of “reverse racism.” The tenth province speech was something of a departure for him.
It says something about South Africa and its past that a party leader openly speculating about moving to a whites-only enclave was hardly discussed in the country, except in a mocking manner. Laughter might seem like an inappropriate response, and it is, really, but the speech had its humorous aspects. Groenewald’s address outlined his notions of the utopia that awaited white people in the tenth province: no affirmative action, satellite dishes for everyone, and a 4x4 in every driveway. He reassured his audience that none of them would be driving around in ox wagons, as if to ward off the natural assumption that this might be the case. The idea of a lot of terrible racists believing that “not traveling in a covered wagon pulled by oxen” was the apex of modern living made me laugh for a few days, and then I forgot about it, as did most of the people I know.
These discussions about ethnic nationalism and white supremacy, at least of the kinds that the Richard Spencers and Milo Yiannopouloses have made their lifes’ work in America, are nothing new to South Africans. Apartheid, as a national policy, was rooted in the idea that whites were superior, that they had a God-ordained right to the land, and that “racial mixing” would result in disaster. It’s almost inconceivable that a view to the right of that could exist, but it did. Afrikaner extremists feared that the apartheid government was too liberal, and that the only way to protect the Afrikaner people from extinction was to establish an independent Boer Republic. They believed that the land belonged to them by right of blood, and were prepared to go to war to defend it.
Today, Afrikaner extremism is often viewed as nothing more than an absurd spectacle. For many people, the response to bellowed rhetoric about tenth provinces is something like Can you believe these fucking losers are still at it. It’s easy to dismiss them as a joke, because they have been largely sidelined. But that fate didn’t always seem as inevitable as it does now. Eugene Terre’blanche is the clearest example of this. Terre’blanche — whose last name literally means white earth — was the leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, or AWB, a white supremacist separatist organisation which, at the height of its prominence in the 1980s, claimed to have a membership of 70,000. Terre’blanche and six other Neo-Nazis founded the party in 1973 in response to what they perceived as the increasingly liberal policies of the apartheid government under B.J. Vorster who, as prime minister, passed the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act, the final step in legislative machinations which stripped black South Africans of their citizenship and made them residents of one of the nominally independent apartheid reservations, or “homelands,” in the agriculturally poorest areas of the country.
The AWB insignia looks like three black, squashed sevens arranged in a white circle on a red background. In its first manifesto, the organization stated that the sevens “stand in direct contrast to the 666 — figure of the anti-Christ and the animal of the Book of Revelations.” It looks exactly like a swastika, and it’s meant to. The AWB modeled itself directly on the Nazi party, a cult of personality led by a domineering, sentimental demagogue dedicated to the creation of a Volkstaat, an independent Afrikaner homeland. Its members wore uniforms with the swastika prominently displayed.
Terre’blanche was a prolific and terrible poet who used to bring himself to tears at rallies with recitations of his own poems. He had a knack for political spectacle and oratory about covenant and blood. He once publicly tarred and feathered an Afrikaans historian who questioned the nationalist myths about God’s personal investment in the survival of the Afrikaans people. He arrived at rallies on horseback, flanked by members of his masked security unit, the Aquila. The AWB had a paramilitary wing, the Ystergarde (“Iron Guard”), and Terre’blanche presided over parades and training sessions where they demonstrated their proficiency with weapons, on horseback, in preparation for the coming war. Terre’blanche presented himself as the anointed saviour of an embattled, persecuted people perpetually on the verge of annihilation.
Members of the AWB referred to him as die grootleier (“the great leader”), and cried at the mention of his name. It is sometimes difficult to remember that he was a real person — he was in so many ways an exaggerated caricature of a white supremacist. If you put him in a novel, you’d have had to tone him down. Nick Broomfield’s 1991 documentary The Leader, His Driver, and the Driver’s Wife gives a comprehensive picture of Terre’blanche at peak messianic bluster. His relationship with the media was always combative, but he provided sensational content. South Africa’s transition to democracy was a big story, and Terre’blanche could reliably be counted upon to do and say the kinds of things that an Afrikaner nationalist fanatically dedicated to the creation of a Volkstaat would be expected to.
In June of 1993, 2,000 members of the AWB and other far-right groups gathered outside the Kempton Park World Trade Centre outside Johannesburg, where the multi-party negotiations to end apartheid were taking place. Lead by Terre’blanche, the Ystergarde drove a tank through the building’s plate-glass windows. Hundreds of AWB men entered the building, waving guns and shouting slogans about their demands for an independent homeland. The talks were disrupted, but the event has been relegated to a footnote in the wider story of the chaotic and precarious transition to democracy, presumably because the AWB didn’t murder anyone that day.
In March 1994, Terre’blanche was part of a catastrophically failed attempt to prop up the puppet government of Bophutatswana, one of the apartheid homelands, the leader of which refused to participate in the election. Interviewed by a journalist who inquired about their presence, an AWB member replied that they were there to shoot black people (he used a racial epithet that is too vile to repeat). Things continued to intensify. In April of that year, Chris Hani, the leader of the South African Communist Party, was assassinated in his driveway by Janusz Walus, a Polish immigrant with strong ties to the AWB. Also in April, the AWB set off a series of bombs around Johannesburg, killing 21 people.
As horrific as these events were, it’s important to note that what Terre’blanche and the AWB did was nothing compared to what the apartheid government did to black people for 46 years. Although he might have wanted it, Terre’blanche didn’t have the power to implement the laws which stripped a country’s majority of their basic human rights. The state presided over 46 years of legally sanctioned barbarity, forced removals, deaths in detention, torture, disappearances, assassinations, poverty, and humiliation.
Even post-apartheid, South Africa is consistently measured as the the most unequal society in the world (this result is robust to differences in the nature of the inequality, and the way in which it is assessed). Terre’blanche and the AWB did not have a hope of wreaking that kind of devastation, as much as they may have wished it. It’s also true that Terre’blanche’s efforts to derail the democratic negotiation process were not nearly as effective as, say, the tactics of the Inkatha Freedom Party, the powerful Zulu traditionalist party that, with the covert assistance of the state, was responsible for multiple atrocities during the transition. The IFP boycotted the election until the last possible minute; two weeks before the election, its members murdered eight people handing out IEC pamphlets in Ndwedwe, near Durban. Terre’blanche didn’t have the power or the numbers to do what he wanted to do.
I was nine in 1994, though, and he gave me nightmares. On the news, on his horse, with his swastikas and his masked guards, screaming about more blood and more war. He was so obviously terrifying. But for the adults around me, he had by that time become a punchline, someone who could not seriously threaten the negotiation process. The failed coup in Bophutatswana had exposed the AWB’s incompetence, and shown that they were nothing to worry about any longer. Terre’blanche was an emblem of the far right’s grotesque stupidity, its irrelevance, its cartoonish fuck-ups, its inability to turn its bluster into action, its inability to be anything other than a disgusting joke told by a fat, racist alcoholic who loved to play dress-up. By 1994, he was a distraction, a media sensation who refused to acknowledge his own insignificance.
Terre’blanche is primarily remembered as a joke. Two things typically come up when people speak about him now. The first are the persistent allegations of his affair with Jani Allen, a columnist at South Africa’s biggest newspaper. People love this story. The psychotic Afrikaans right-winger and the English-speaking columnist with her sassy little newsboy cap, driving around in a Jeep and watching reenactments of Voortrekker battles won with the assistance of God. Terre’blanche’s leadership was rooted in his self-presentation as a Calvinist paragon of virtue. A scandal involving him cheating on his wife with a divorced, English-speaking member of the media did not sit at all well with his deeply religious followers. The story was covered extensively by the press, joyfully celebrated as conclusive evidence that he was a hypocrite and a fraud.
The other thing is the horse. In 2010, Terre’blanche was murdered on his farm by two of his workers in a drunken dispute over wages. His death, and the nature of it, briefly revived global interest in him, and I did not read a single obituary that failed to mention the incident in which he fell off his horse at a rally. “I have seen sacks of coal more elegantly mounted astride a black stallion, and one of the funniest images I hold in my mind from those old battles was of Terreblanche riding to a political meeting in Pretoria, and promptly falling off his horse on to his well-padded back-side,” went one. Ha! The leader of a murderous white supremacist organization who was directly responsible for the deaths of dozens of people couldn’t even ride a horse! What a JOKE.
It’s impossible to think about Terre’blanche and not think of what is happening in America today. He was, to some extent, a creation of the media, but the poisonous legacy he left is very real. In 2001, Terre’blanche was jailed for the assault and attempted murder of two black men, one of whom was left permanently physically and mentally disabled. He served three years in jail, leaving the prison in June 2004 (on his horse, of course). That same month, he came in at No. 25 on a list of “100 Great South Africans,” voted for by the public. He was placed ahead of several revered anti-apartheid activists, many of whom died in the struggle. After being released from prison, he retired to his farm, apparently deteriorating further into alcoholism, and giving few interviews until his murder.
Some jokes don’t age very well, and Terre’blanche is one of them. We laugh at the far right because it makes them seem less frightening, but it doesn’t make them any less dangerous. There are still AWB-affiliated military-style camps here, where white teenagers are told that the land belongs to them, that “white genocide” is underway, that they are biologically superior, and that if they happen to be walking past a black person on the sidewalk, they need to stare him straight in the eye until he remembers his place and steps into the road to let them pass. When Donald Trump was elected, Steyn van Ronge, the current leader of the AWB, sent him a message thanking him on behalf of “tens of thousands” of AWB members, and telling him he could rely on their support, if it came to it.
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Tuesday 8 June 2021
THE DAY OF THE VOW SOUTH AFRICA
THE DAY OF THE VOW SOUTH AFRICA The Day of the Vow (Afrikaans: Geloftedag or Dingaansdag) is the name of a religious public holiday in South Africa until 1994, when it was renamed the Day of Reconciliation. The holiday is 16 December. Commemorating a famous Boer victory over the Zulu, the anniversary and its commemoration are intimately connected with various streams of Afrikaner nationalism, According to an Afrikaner tradition, the Day of the Vow traces its origin as an annual religious holiday to The Battle of Blood River on 16 December 1838. The besieged Voortrekkers took a public vow or covenant, together before the battle, led by either Andries Pretorius or Sarel Cilliers, depending on whose version is correct. In return for God's help in obtaining victory, they promised to build a church. Participants also vowed that they and their descendants would keep the day as a holy Sabbath. During the battle a group of about 470 Voortrekkers and their servants defeated a force of about ten thousand Zulu. Only three Voortrekkers were wounded, and some 3,000 Zulu warriors died in the battle.Two of the earlier names given to the day stem from this prayer. Officially known as the Day of the Vow, the commemoration was renamed from the Day of the Covenant in 1982. Afrikaners colloquially referred to it as Dingaansdag (English: Dingane's Day), a reference to the Zulu ruler of the defeated attackers. No verbatim record of the vow exists. The version often considered to be the original vow is in fact W.E.G. Louw's ca. 1962 translation into Afrikaans of G.B.A. Gerdener's reconstruction of the vow in his 1919 biography of Sarel Cilliers (Bailey 2003:25). The wording of the Vow is:Afrikaans: Hier staan ons voor die Heilige God van hemel en aarde om ʼn gelofte aan Hom te doen, dat, as Hy ons sal beskerm en ons vyand in ons hand sal gee, ons die dag en datum elke jaar as ʼn dankdag soos ʼn Sabbat sal deurbring; en dat ons ʼn huis tot Sy eer sal oprig waar dit Hom behaag, en dat ons ook aan ons kinders sal sê dat hulle met ons daarin moet deel tot nagedagtenis ook vir die opkomende geslagte. Want die eer van Sy naam sal verheerlik word deur die roem en die eer van oorwinning aan Hom te gee. English: We stand here before the Holy God of heaven and earth, to make a vow to Him that, if He will protect us and give our enemy into our hand, we shall keep this day and date every year as a day of thanksgiving like a sabbath, and that we shall erect a house to His honour wherever it should please Him, and that we will also tell our children that they should share in that with us in memory for future generations. For the honour of His name will be glorified by giving Him the fame and honour for the victory. The "official" version of the event is that a public vow was taken by a Trekker commando on 16 December 1838 at Ncome River (Blood River) which bound future descendants to commemorate the day as a religious holiday (sabbath) in the case of victory over the Zulu. In 1841 the victorious Trekkers built The Church of the Vow at Pietermaritzburg, and passed the obligation to keep the vow on to their descendants. As the original vow was never recorded in verbatim form, descriptions come from the diary of Jan Bantjes ,possibly written on 9 December; a dispatch written by Pretorius to the Volksraad on 23 December 1838; and the recollections of Sarel Cilliers in 1871. A participant in the battle, Dewald Pretorius, wrote his recollections in 1862, interpreting the vow as including the building of churches and schools (Bailey 2003:31). Jan B. Bantjes (1817–1887), Pretorius' secretary, indicates that the initial promise was to build a House in return for victory. He notes that Pretorius called everyone together, and asked them to pray for God's help. Bantjes writes that Pretorius told the assembly that he wanted to make a vow, "if everyone would agree" (Bailey 2003:24). Bantjes does not say whether everyone did so. Perhaps the fractious nature of the Boers dictated that the raiding party held their own prayers in the tents of various leading men (Mackenzie 1997:73). Pretorius is also quoted as wanting to have a book written to make known what God had done to even "our last descendants". Pretorius in his 1838 dispatch mentions a vow (Afrikaans: gelofte) in connection with the building of a church, but not that it would be binding for future generations. we here have decided among ourselves...to make known the day of our victory...among the whole of our generation, and that we want to devote it to God, and to celebrate [it] with thanksgiving, just as we...promised [beloofd] in public prayer Andries Pretorius, Contrary to Pretorius, and in agreement with Bantjes, Cilliers in 1870 recalled a promise (Afrikaans: belofte), not a vow, to commemorate the day and to tell the story to future generations. Accordingly, they would remember: the day and date, every year as a commemoration and a day of thanksgiving, as though a Sabbath...and that we will also tell it to our children, that they should share in it with us, for the remembrance of our future generations Sarel Cilliers, Cilliers writes that those who objected were given the option to leave. At least two persons declined to participate in the vow. Scholars disagree about whether the accompanying English settlers and servants complied (Bailey 2003). This seems to confirm that the promise was binding only on those present at the actual battle. Mackenzie (1997) claims that Cilliers may be recalling what he said to men who met in his tent. Up to the 1970s the received version of events was seldom questioned, but since then scholars have questioned almost every aspect. They debate whether a vow was even taken and, if so, what its wording was. Some argue that the vow occurred on the day of the battle, others point to 7 or 9 December. Whether Andries Pretorius or Sarel Cilliers led the assembly has been debated; and even whether there was an assembly. The location at which the vow was taken has also produced diverging opinions, with some rejecting the Ncome River site for (Bailey 2003). Disagreements exist about the extent to which the date was commemorated before the 1860s. Some historians maintained that little happened between 1838 and 1910. Historian S.P. Mackenzie argues that the day was not commemorated before the 1880s. Initial observations may have been limited to those associated with the battle at Ncome River and their descendants. While Sarel Cilliers upheld the day, Andries Pretorius did not (Ehlers 2003). Informal commemorations may have been held in the homes of former Voortrekkers in Pietermaritzburg in Natal. Voortrekker pastor Rev. Erasmus Smit announced the "7th annual" anniversary of the day in 1844 in De Natalier newspaper, for instance. Bailey mentions a meeting at the site of the battle in 1862 (Bailey 2003:29,32). In 1864 the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in Natal decreed that all its congregations should observe the date as a day of thanksgiving. The decision was spurred by the efforts of two Dutch clergymen working in Pietermaritsburg during the 1860s, D.P.M. Huet and F. Lion Cachet. Large meetings were held in the church in Pietermaritzburg in 1864 and 1865 (Bailey 2003:33). In 1866 the first large scale meeting took place at the traditional battle site, led by Cachet. Zulus who gathered to watch proceedings assisted the participants in gathering stones for a commemorative cairn. In his speech Cachet called for the evangelization of black heathen. He relayed a message received from the Zulu monarch Cetshwayo. In his reply to Cetshwayo, Cachet hoped for harmony between the Zulu and white Natalians. Trekker survivors recalled events, an institution which in the 1867 observation at the site included a Zulu (Bailey 2003:35). Huet was of the same opinion as Delward Pretorius. He declared at a church inauguration in Greytown on 16 December 1866 that its construction was also part of fulfilling the vow (Bailey 2003:35). Die Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek declared 16 December a public holiday in 1865, to be commemorated by public religious services. However, until 1877, the general public there did not utilize the holiday as they did in Natal. Cricket matches and hunts were organized, some businesses remained open, and newspapers were sold. The name Dingane's Day appeared for the first time in the media, in an 1875 edition of De Volksstem. That newspaper wondered whether the lack of support for the holiday signaled a weakening sense of nationalism (Bailey 2003:37,38). After the Transvaal was annexed by the British in 1877, the new government refrained from state functions (like Supreme Court sittings) on the date (Bailey 2003:41). The desire by the Transvaal to retrieve its independence prompted the emergence of Afrikaner nationalism and the revival of 16 December in that territory. Transvaal burgers held meetings around the date to discuss responses to the annexation. In 1879 the first such a meeting convened at Wonderfontein on the West Rand. Burgers disregarded Sir G.J. Wolseley, the governor of Transvaal, who prohibited the meeting on 16 December. The following year they held a similar combination of discussions and the celebration of Dingane's Day at Paardekraal (Bailey 2003:43). Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal Republic, believed that failure to observe the date led to the loss of independence and to the first Anglo-Boer war as a divine punishment. Before initiating hostilities with the British, a ceremony was held at Paardekraal on 16 December 1880 in which 5,000 burghers [citizens] piled a cairn of stones that symbolized past and future victories (over the Zulu and the British). After the success of its military campaign against the British, the Transvaal state organized a Dingane's Day festival every five years. At the first of these in 1881, an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people listened to speeches by Kruger and others (Gilliomee 1989). At the third such festival in 1891, Kruger emphasized the need for the festival to be religious in nature (Ehlers 2003). The Free State government in 1894 declared 16 December a holiday (Bailey 2003). The Union state in 1910 officially declared Dingane's Day as a national public holiday. In 1938 D.F. Malan, leader of the National Party, reiterated at the site that its soil was "sacred." He said that the Blood River battle established "South Africa as a civilized Christian country" and "the responsible authority of the white race". Malan compared the battle to the urban labour situation in which whites had to prevail (Ehlers 2003). In 1952 the ruling National Party passed the Public Holidays Act (Act 5 of 1952), in which section 2 declared the day to be a religious public holiday. Accordingly, certain activities were prohibited, such as organized sports contests, theatre shows, and so on (Ehlers 2003). Pegging a claim on this day was also forbidden under section 48(4)(a) of the Mining Rights (Act 20 of 1967; repealed by the Minerals Act (Act 50 of 1991). The name was changed to the Day of the Vow in order to be less offensive, and to emphasize the vow rather than the Zulu protagonist (Ehlers 2003). In 1961 the African National Congress chose 16 December to initiate a series of sabotages, signaling its decision to embark on an armed struggle against the regime through its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. In 1983 the South African government vetoed the decision by the acting government of Namibia to discontinue observing the holiday. In response, the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance resigned its 41 seats in Namibia's 50-seat National Assembly. Act 5 of 1952 was repealed in 1994 by Act No. 36 of 1994, which changed the name of the public holiday to the Day of Reconciliation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission started its work on 16 December 1995. Those who celebrate the holiday argue that commemoration has nothing to do with racial dynamics; they are simply remembering to give thanks for divine deliverance from certain destruction. Detractors from this viewpoint claim that the victors were of one and the defeated from another race and that celebrating the breaking of the power of a Zulu tyrant creates racial tension. Yet others point out that the defeated Zulu leader, Dingane, was in fact a usurper of the throne who murdered the famous King Shaka; that the ultimate victors of the greater conflict were an alliance of Boers and a Shaka loyalist Zulu force led by Prince Mpande, who was the rightful heir; and that consequently, it is illegitimate to politicize the events at all, whether in a nationalist or liberal sense. Scholars like historian Leonard Thompson have said that the events of the battle were woven into a new myth that justified racial oppression on the basis of racial superiority and divine providence. Accordingly, the victory over Dingaan was reinterpreted as a sign that God confirmed the rule of whites over black Africans, justifying the Boer project of acquiring land and eventually ascending to power in South Africa. In post-apartheid South Africa the holiday was criticized as a racist holiday, which celebrates the success of Boer expansion over the black natives. By comparison with the large number of Afrikaners who participated in the annual celebrations of the Voortrekker victory, some did take exception. In 1971, for instance, Pro Veritate, the journal of the anti-apartheid organization the Christian Institute of Southern Africa, devoted a special edition to the matter. Historian Anton Ehlers traces how political and economic factors changed the themes emphasized during celebrations of the Day of the Vow. During the 1940s and 1950s Afrikaner unity was emphasized over against black Africans. This theme acquired broader meaning in the 1960s and 1970s, when isolated "white" South Africa was positioned against the decolonization of Africa. The economic and political crises of the 1970s and 1980s forced white Afrikaners to rethink the apartheid system. Afrikaner and other intellectuals began to critically evaluate the historical basis for the celebration. The need to include English and "moderate" black groups in reforms prompted a de-emphasis on "the ethnic exclusivity and divine mission of Afrikaners" (Ehlers 2003). The Battle of Blood River (Afrikaans: Slag van Bloedrivier; Zulu: iMpi yaseNcome) is the name given for the battle fought between 470 Voortrekkers led by Andries Pretorius, and an estimated 10,000–15,000 Zulu attackers on the bank of the Ncome River on 16 December 1838, in what is today KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Casualties amounted to three thousand of king Dingane's soldiers dead, including two Zulu princes competing with prince Mpande for the Zulu throne. Three Trekker commando members were lightly wounded, including Pretorius himself. In the sequel to the Battle of Blood River in January 1840, prince Mpande finally defeated Dingane in the Battle of Maqongqe, and was subsequently crowned as new king of the Zulus by his alliance partner Andries Pretorius. After these two battles of succession, Dingane's prime minister and commander in both the Battle of Maqonqe and the Battle of Blood River, general Ndlela, was strangled to death by Dingane on account of high treason. General Ndlela had been the personal protector of prince Mpande, who after the Battles of Blood River and Maqongqe, became king and founder of the Zulu dynasty. The Trekkers called Voortrekkers after 1880 decided to dethrone Zulu chief Dingane kaSenzangakhona after the betrayal murder of chief Trekker leader Piet Retief, his entire entourage, and some of their women and children living in temporary wagon encampments during 1838. On 6 February 1838, two days after the signing of a negotiated land settlement deal between Retief and Dingane at UmGungundlovu, which included Trekker access to Port Natal in which Britain had imperial interest, Dingane invited Retief and his party into his royal residence for a beer-drinking farewell. The accompanying request for the surrender of Trekker muskets at the entrance was taken as normal protocol when appearing before the king. While the Trekkers were being entertained by Dingane's dancing soldiers, Dingane suddenly accused the visiting party of witchcraft.Dingane's soldiers then proceeded to impale all Retief's men, lastly clubbing to death Retief, while leaving the Natal treaty in his handbag intact. Immediately after the UmGungundlovu massacre, Dingane sent out his impis (regiments) to attack several Trekker encampments at night time, killing an estimated 500 men, women, children, and servants, most notably at Blaukraans.Help arrived from farmers in the Cape Colony, and the Trekkers in Natal subsequently requested the pro-independence Andries Pretorius to leave the Cape Colony, in order to dethrone chief Dingane.After the Battle of Blood River, the Dingane-Retief treaty was found on Retief's bodily remains, providing a driving force for an overt alliance against Dingane between Zulu prince Mpande and Pretorius. http://www.sa-venues.com/events/southafrica/day-of-reconciliation/
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THE DAY OF THE VOW SOUTH AFRICA The Day of the Vow (Afrikaans: Geloftedag or Dingaansdag) is the name of a religious public holiday in...
