The Afrikaner Question

South Africa's Afrikaner minority is under the microscope with the Trump administration offering refugee resettlement, but that imperils this unique people group.

When South Africa (SA) recently codified a plan to expropriate land without compensation, it attracted a swift adverse response from the Trump administration. American aid to SA has been suspended (on top of canceled USAID transfers that have already killed several programs in the country). A US investigation into land policies is also on the table, and there is a potential program to resettle white South African farmers and their families as refugees.

SA has already been goading Uncle Sam with its clamorous Cuba, Russia, and Palestine advocacy, which are the most public elements of its membership in BRICS, which has a strong anti-American intent. Underscoring the escalating conflict, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not participate in the upcoming G-20 meeting in Johannesburg. It is also being signaled that the US will exclude SA from all or some of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) when it comes up for renewal this September. That would tremendously damage SA’s foreign exchange earnings, import inflation, and expand unemployment, which is already shocking at 32.1%. Poverty is as extreme as you can imagine, but so are the enclaves of wealth.

The larger context is that SA’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), is leaking voters because it has failed to deliver the utopia it never stops promising. Thirty-one years after the negotiated end of Apartheid, the core ANC constituencies are much worse off, and the country has been in reverse on every economic and social metric. A modest black middle class has flourished, but a corrupt ruling elite is on a world-class looting spree that has collapsed the infrastructure and institutions critical for a relatively modern industrial economy.

A Brief History of Separation & Conflict

Modern narrative history teaches that Apartheid (separation) was a system of brutal Afrikaner (or Boer - a fusion of primarily Dutch, German, and French settlers, and staunch Calvinists whose language is most similar to Flemish) rule specifically and white minority rule generally. The actual history is far more complex, as it always is. Some context is important to frame what is now happening.

African settlers that moved into South Africa before, during, and after European settlement maintained “separateness,” often violently, from each other and the only recorded indigenous inhabitants, the San people¹. Similarly, they embraced caste systems that stratified their tribes. Europeans were little different and amplified social and political dysfunction with class dynamics and imported Muslim slaves. Layer on colonial great power competition to control a coveted geopolitical location and the discovery of one of the most significant mineral troves ever, and you have the outlines of South Africa’s persistent conflicts and struggles.

Afrikaner nationalists took power in 1948, although it was still in the British Commonwealth after becoming a Dominion of the Empire in 1910. They inherited a complex and centuries-old patchwork of laws heavily influenced by enduring race, land title, and labor pressures. To name the most prominent comparable colonies, nearly identical systems existed in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Indeed, the British colony of Natal cloned the attitudes and application of race and labor laws from the neighboring Boer Republics and vice versa. Vestiges of these systems are still visible today in all British colonies. The point is that Afrikaners did not invent Apartheid but instead gave it the name and added a level of industrial intensity to it.

That was partly driven by deep Boer insecurity and a cultivated sense of being constantly besieged. The White Tribe of Africa had arrived in South Africa as a persecuted religious minority and felt some extension of that by different means. Then, there were deadly engagements with mixed race and Bantu tribes, especially the Xhosa on the Fish River frontier and the Zulu in Natal (for a good parallel, study the Mexicans and Americans fighting the Comanche). Add abiding bitterness about the City of London instigating two wars against the Boer Republics to seize control of the Witwatersrand gold mines. Britain had an unhealthy appetite for stealing minerals, having betrayed an alliance with the Griquas to annex the diamond fields in Kimberley in 1871. Ironically, the pretext for the Boer wars was delayed voting rights for Uitlanders (foreigners—mostly British citizens) concentrated in Johannesburg.

The Voortrekker (Pioneer) Monument

The bitterness is rooted in British terror tactics to strangle the Boer Republics—razing every farm, exiling men to St. Helena Island, and imprisoning women and children in concentration camps where almost 30,000 (~3.5% of the entire Afrikaner population) died from disease and malnutrition. To this day, there is considerable antipathy between English and Afrikaner South Africans. The regional level of antagonism is strongly correlated to the locations of the worst concentration camps and is also a yardstick for English fluency in those areas (low!).

Anecdotally, this manifested in mild revenge even in my childhood. We are culturally English and predominantly that ethnicity, although we have about 1/4 Afrikaner ancestry. Nevertheless, that makes us English, or Rooinekke (Rednecks). My government English primary school had temporary asbestos classrooms, minimal sports facilities, and crammed classrooms (35-40 students per class). By contrast, one mile away, the Afrikaans primary school was a luxurious marvel. The greater contrast was that English children wore shoes to school, and Afrikaans children did not. When English and Afrikaans kids encountered each other at the local river after school or during holidays, fist and clay fights (soft clay molded onto a reed and whipped at the opponent) ensued. Rugby games played between English and Afrikaans schools were uncompromising reenactments of Boer War battles. In the army, only the threat of severe punishment tamed the ethnic friction. The factions still use pejoratives to refer to each other (Engelsman, Rooinek, Soutp*** vs. Dutchman, Rockspider, Clutchplate) and have an uncannily accurate ability to discern each other’s ethnicity from a distance.

In the wake of the Boer war, a large percentage of Afrikaners were mired in poverty and dire circumstances for decades. The hardships were amplified by the British's longstanding social and civil discrimination (Boerehaat). It was most visible in denying Afrikaners the right to teach their children in their mother tongue until 1925, and they were forced instead to submit to English or Dutch instruction.²

Another factor contributing to the siege mentality was the lack of competitive access to capital. The English predominated in general commerce in South Africa, while the Afrikaners predominated in agriculture. British and American capital markets (the infamous Anglo-American class) funneled cash into English enterprises, while Afrikaners had no similar link to call on. Afrikaners fell behind as the country industrialized. It was only a concerted nativist policy after 1948 that reversed the losses as the government used state funds to stake electricity, mining, steel, banking, and other enterprises. Those state corporations adopted generous sheltered employment programs to uplift the lingering Afrikaans underclass and mostly addressed it before the end of Apartheid.

Lastly, the Afrikaners observed that the world was turning its back on the white and Indian tribes of Africa—Kenya and Rhodesia being cases in point. Rhodesia was the inverse of South Africa, where Afrikaners were the white minority, the English were the majority and dominated all aspects of life. The country was free of the bitterness of the Boer War legacy, did not have the same harsh racial laws, and was a generally peaceful, productive, and prosperous little oasis in the hinterlands that had ended interminable tribal wars that decimated the black people groups by spear, club, and starvation.

Nevertheless, the international consensus was that white minority rule was intolerable in all circumstances, resulting in a protracted guerilla war. It was all over once SA withdrew its support for Rhodesia, hoping it would be a satisfactory sacrificial lamb for the world.

This is not to excuse odious Apartheid but to properly contextualize it and the struggle of the Afrikaner people to safeguard their future and heritage. Which ethnos would not have developed a siege mentality with that history?

Apartheid: Reconciliation or Revenge?

The United States was the primary agent in forcing Afrikaners to give up power, so it has a primary obligation to secure their future. However, just as the world shrugged its shoulders and looked the other way when Zimbabwe descended into genocidal chaos immediately after Robert Mugabe took power, so it also turned its back on SA. The new rulers were free to maintain an inverted version of Apartheid and begin the systematic looting.

The old Pan Africanist Congress war cry, “One Settler, One Bullet,” has been adopted and adapted by the Economic Freedom Fighters, who now lustily sing, “Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer.”

The “Rules-Based International Order” has been silent about all this because the attitude is that Afrikaners had it coming: karma for Apartheid. The reverse is never required, though. For example, the Zulu are free of bloodguilt for the Mfecane.

The EFF call to genocide has been condemned as hate speech by the South African Human Rights Commission, but its figleaf nature is evident by the EFF’s freedom to continue to sing it and say much worse.

“Victory will only be victory if the land is restored in the hands of rightful owners. And rightful owners unashamedly is black people. No white person is a rightful owner of the land here in South Africa and in the whole of the African continent. This is our continent, it belongs to us.”

“We, the rightful owners, our peace was disturbed by white man’s arrival here. They committed a black genocide. They killed our people during land dispossession. Today, we are told don’t disturb them, even when they disturbed our peace. They found peaceful Africans here. They killed them! They slaughtered them, like animals! We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now.”

As if EFF leader Julius Malema could not be more delightful, loving, and direct:

“These people, when you want to hit them hard, go after a white man. They feel terrible pain because you have touched a white man.

We're cutting the throat of whiteness. We will kill white women, children, and their pets.”

Even the ruling ANC is happy to tolerate it as a political lever:

"These songs cannot be regarded as hate speech or unconstitutional. Any judgment that describes them as such is impractical and unimplementable." ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe, 2010.

As the Rwandan Genocide and Zimbabwe Farm Invations demonstrated, Interahamwe is a most practical and implementable concept, easily set aflame by repeated public incitements. The perpetrators take comfort in knowing the authorities are winking, and the international community will tolerate it because “justice” requires an eye for an eye as revenge travels in one direction.

Malema and friends are not chanting political slogans. They are making promises. Only a true fool would say these things are allegorical and have no potential reality.

Recognizing an Imperilled Culture

The intervention on behalf of Afrikaners is the first time, to our knowledge, that America has explicitly defended a white Christian minority, and the second only on behalf of Christians anywhere in Africa if you count supporting the independence of South Sudan’s black Christians.

It is not in the interest of Afrikaners to be evacuated en-masse, even if it was possible. To remove them from South Africa as refugees is nothing other than passive ethnic cleansing - they will cease to exist as a people and a culture. However, refugee status should be granted to any white South African who wishes to leave.

Great care must be taken because Malema or any number of sympathetic thugs may seize the opportunity to force the expulsion of all remaining whites from SA. Consequently, if a line is crossed, the US will have to be more forceful in projecting its power and opening an umbrella of protection with unambiguous consequences.

It starts with:

1. Official recognition of Afrikaners as a Heritage Culture that requires preservation and protection—UN Charter Article 1; Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

2. Official recognition of the inalienable right to self-determination and independence for Afrikaners to pursue their own economic, social, and cultural development.

   1. There is prima facie evidence of an ethnic cleansing campaign against Afrikaner farmers.

   2. Given the escalating genocidal threats, international support for a two-state solution is required (East Timor, South Sudan, Israel), but without denying Afrikaners the right to live anywhere in South Africa.

   3. Create a Heritage Culture endowment to provide economic security against SA government intransigence and persecution.

3. Sanctioning any individual in political and business leadership - and their extended families - if they incite ethnic violence by commission or omission.

   1. Travel bans.

   2. Withdraw student visas.

   3. Freeze all foreign assets and ban SWIFT network transactions.

   4. Sanction any organization, including political parties and public or private corporations, where the above individuals are owners, principals, directors, or senior officers.

      1. Sanctioning related principals, directors, and senior officers.

         1. Travel bans on those individuals.

         2. Withdraw student visas for family members of those individuals.

      2. Freeze all foreign assets.

      3. Delist such entities from American markets and ban any passive or active investment in them.

4. Until the removal of all South Africa’s racist legislation:

   1. Suspend all foreign aid except to protected groups.

   2. Suspend all military cooperation and suspend NATO weapon sales.

   3. Suspension from AGOA

   4. Progressive restriction on remaining trade except for protected groups.

   5. Export controls on technology and equipment except for protected groups.

   6. Suspend all academic and research cooperation except for protected groups.

   7. Progressively taper telecommunications bandwidth to other regions.

☩TW☩

1. The region has no pre-European written history and unreliable oral histories. The most advanced pre-European settlement was at Great Zimbabwe, C. 1,000 AD), but it remains shrouded in mystery.

Civil liberties rebellions brewed in the Cape as the fusing Boer ethnos (settlers of Dutch, German, French, and Flemish stock and quite uniformly staunch Calvinists) chafed against repression by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The civil disobedience culminated in a mutiny in Graaf Reinet and the brief establishment of a nascent Boer Republic, Swellendam, in the neighboring district.

British troops landed in Cape Town in 1801 at the invitation of William, Prince of Orange, as the Anglo-Dutch alliance feared losing the colony to Napoleonic France. By 1806, Britain had taken full ownership. British soldiers and irregulars had considerable experience suppressing several uprisings and ethnic conflicts across the region. The Boers had dispersed deep into the country’s interior, becoming formidable guerillas, accomplished cattle raiders, and developing an appetite for independence. They had antipathy for authority, were unkind and repressive to their mixed-race cousins, and were in constant conflict with Bantu tribes that had settled or continued their southward migration from central Africa.

The arrival of the British introduced new ethno-religious tensions between English Anglicans and Catholics exercising minority political control over the majority Boers. The strains were exacerbated when Britain outlawed slavery in the colony in 1807, although complete emancipation only occurred in December 1834. Many Boers refused to submit, trekking as far as possible from Cape Town to avoid British controls on slavery and other labor, and they continued to enslave the Khoi and Nama people in the region.

Sometimes, the Boers and British allied, such as collaborating to defeat a 20,000-strong Xhosa army and pin it behind the Fish River. However, the Boers resented British imperialism and strongly resisted assimilation. That culminated in the establishment of the Transvaal and Orange Free State Boer Republics, which then suffered defeat at the hands of City of London bankers who succeeded in stealing most of the country’s mineral wealth. Thanks to South African gold, much of Edwardian and George V London was built.

2. This year marks the centenary of Afrikaans as a language, for which a monument was constructed, which may be the only language monument in the world.