I've been meaning to share a personal story about my identity in post-apartheid South Africa for quite a while now. So, here goes.
I am an Afrikaner. I cannot deny this fact, nor do I want to. I grew up in the dying years of apartheid in a small town - in what was formerly known as the north western Transvaal - in a social context that, at best, can be described as contradictory.
My grandfather (my mother's dad) was a four year old boy when he and his family was taken to a British concentration camp during the Anglo Boer War. As a young teenager he later ran away from home to join the South African forces in the First World War. His mother wrote to the then prime minister to ask for her son back, and received a letter from him stating that she should rather be proud of her son.
Then grandpa did another abhorring thing: He married an English girl. My grandmother was the granddaughter of an Irishman who came to South Africa as a young boy along with his older brother and wife in the 1820's as part of the British resettlement program in the eastern Cape. My grandfather subsequently fell out of grace with his sisters because of his "treason." They only became reconciled on their death beds. In the 1940's Grandpa fought in the Second World War as well, returning to his farm in the northern Transvaal after the war. He later was disowned so that his farm can become part of the apartheid homeland of Lebowa. The family then moved to Benoni and grandpa worked for the government as a translator since he could speak 7 different languages, three of which were African. Grandpa Pieters died in 1974. I remember him vaguely as I was only four years old when he passed away.
My father's family has its roots proudly in the Cape Winelands. My grandmother Marais studied to become a teacher in the 1920's. She married a policeman (my grandfather) from the Karoo. He died very young - my father was only three years old - forcing my grandmother to raise three young children in difficult and often very poor circumstances. She had to quit teaching and start working in a butchery as this job paid better, for instance.
My father joined the police force as young man. Not long after my birth he fell out of grace with his station commander when he exposed corruption at that particular police station and was rewarded with an insubordination hearing in return. He quit the police and joined the department of justice as state prosecutor, having studied law through UNISA. He never completed his LLB, however, as he also died at a young age.
One of my father's personal friends in our home town of Rustenburg was a Muslim Indian doctor in the apartheid-based Indian township. They became friends through a legal case in which my father was the prosecutor and the doctor one of the witnesses. The week of my dad's death I contracted a children's ailment. My mother arranged that I would be taken to him. It was the natural thing to do as we didn't have to wait for an appointment with him. But, by way of contrast, my mother didn't approve of my father's friendship with him, as she was very uneasy with the idea of people from another colour coming into her house. My father just ignored her.
My father's funeral caused a commotion in the community as we asked our local church board's permission to allow non whites to attend the funeral. The uproar resulted in that very conservative congregation (even to today) becoming the first Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal with a decision in principle that people of colour is welcome at all funerals. This may sound trivial today, but remember the date: it was 1980. The Dutch Reformed Church only declared itself open to people of all races in 1987 and confessed that apartheid was a sin in 1990. The Belhar Confession didn't exist yet. Afrikaner nationalism was still a strong force. And it was before P.W. Botha's reform program.
In my matric year I was recruited into party politics as a youth leader for the right-wing politcal Conservative Party. I was only involved that one year and thereafter never again in politics. It was 1987 and that year saw the first whites-only general election in six years, quite a bit overdue as the then-president, PW Botha, tried to circumvent the constitution for his own gain. This was the general perception among common people about his refusal to call for a general election.
The town where I was born (Rustenburg) had a very large grouping of supporters of the HNP (an ultra right wing political group who still exists today and participates in every general election with the slogan, "Stay away - Don't vote." They refuse to accept the authority of the new South Africa and try to convince all white people to be the same. Nobody votes for them, however, since they don't partake in any elections). This large support base meant that the Rustenburg of my youth viewed the governing National Party as left-wing and the Democratic Party as communist. That left the Conservative Party as alternative. (Ironically, in 1987 the NP retained its seat in Rustenburg, as the right wing vote was divided between the CP and the HNP.)
Quite a few white people really believed the NP was about to hand the country over to the communists of Russia. Thanks to the political rhetoric of the day all black activists were branded as communists and as enemies to democracy and as enemies to Afrikaner identity. It wasn't hatred, it was fear. I remember from 1987 that a story did the rounds among white people how black people will choose a day on which they all will kill one white child each and then rape one white woman. Twenty years on, this story is still circulating but as the "night of the long knives" story that will take place when Nelson Mandela dies.
In those days Eugene Terre'blance told everybody who would listen that the Afrikaner was called by God to carry the white light of Christendom into dark Africa, playing on the cultural-religious consciousness of the corporate psyche of terrified people. People really believed this stuff as the truth.
Then I went to study theology in Pretoria. I was convinced of my calling to be in full-time ministry for God. I almost left the Dutch Reformed Church to join the whites-only Afrikaans Protestant Church, under the influence of my ere-time political mentors. This is the church that split from the DRC in 1987 because of the DRC's decision to be open to people of all races. At the end of my second year on university I became convinced that it would be wrong for me to leave the DRC. It is not what God wanted for my life, first, and I did not agree with the notion of a culturally defined church, second. (At that stage I already agreed that the church is to be defined by faith in Christ alone and not from some cultural definition added by subsequent generations.) Thridly, my weekly reading of Vrye Weekblad started to create questions in my mind about the quasi-political belief system I was indoctrinated with, which I accepte duncritically up to that point in time.
Today I am extremely glad I did not make this mistake.
My first year at Tukkies (1988) was the first year that the university was opened up to students of all races. That was the time of "Voëlvry" - the banned alternative Afrikaans rock music concert tour of Johannes Kerkorrel and his friends. Every Afrikaans white campus from the Cape to the north refused to host this concert. Out of curiosity I bought the album (just before it was banned) - it is still in my possession. It was also the time of Vrye Weekblad, Max du Preez's newspaper aimed at exposing the corruption of the apartheid regime. I bought a copy to see what this "tainted" newspaper was all about and almost as a natural consequence turned into one of its regular weekly readers up to its demise as newspaper.
I was also surrounded with quite a few male Afrikaans students who made a decision to continue with their studies until they won't be called up for military service in some way, believing it will come to an end soon. They didn't join the end conscription campaign as their decision wasn't ideological but pragmatic. There was a large group of them (us?) who didn't want to waste their time in a lost war with the risk of being killed after they completed their studies, therefore wasting all the time and money spent.
I hesitantly include myself in this group, as I didn't intentionally refuse to go to the army after school. I just made the decision to pursue my studies first, so I can place myself in a better position of service for when I eventually have to join the army. During the course of my studies I did start to share the idea that military service is a waste of time, especially after Namibia became independent. In my final year of theological studies the announcement was made that conscription will be discontinued with immediate effect.
In my third year (1990) I was elected as leader of the student congregation's ecumenical commission. Our first project was to organise an interdenominational camp. For this we reached out the the coloured branch of the Dutch Reformed Church family (viewing relations with the so-called "daughter churches" as ecumenism rather than a family affair) and arranged a camp with the congregation in Eersterust. Their youth leader proposed that we take reconciliation as theme. We ended the camp with a service in which we washed each other's feet (ha ha: I predate Adriaan Vlok with more than a decade on this one!).
I vividly remember how I difficult it was to find an appropriate camp site that would be willing to accommodate a mixed group. All camp sites of that time were for whites only. I really found it strange, since the camp had nothing to do with politics - it was, after all, only a church camp!
It took me almost twenty years to grasp the significance of that camp. There I was, organising a church camp with non white people on the theme of reconciliation. The social context of that time was laden with unrest and conflict and prejudice. Nelson Mandela was not yet free, although it was announced. De Klerk unbanned the ANC and removed the SA Army from Namibia. The members of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church could refuse to camp with us. They could use the camp to attack our racism. They could share their stories of suffering during the struggle. Instead, they wanted to speak about reconciliation. I would never be the same.
This is my story. Yet it is not finished.
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