Does it make sense to be a South African and an Afrikaner?

Buks van Rensburg is an Afrikaner. He graduated from St. John's College in Cambridge with a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1988. He lives in Canada and is a Professor of Mathematics.

Contemplation on Culture, Decolonization, Africanization and Race in the New South Africa

There came a day when it no longer made sense for a white Anglophone to be also a Zimbabwean.

Rhodesia was a colonial destination for British subjects who sought their fortune in Britain's far-flung colonies. They arrived there from Britain in the late 1800's and early 1900's and established commercial farms on good land in a pleasing climate. Others came to mine, or to hunt, or to seek fortune and adventure in Africa. By the 1970's there were one quarter million white and anglophone Rhodesian citizens, and many of them still had close ties to Britain. There was also a raging Bush War waged by liberation movements (led by Joshua Nkomo and by Robert Mugabe) against the colonial order in Rhodesia.

The Lancaster House conference brought an end to the Bush War and transformed Rhodesia into Zimbabwe in 1980. Zimbabwe, named after the ruins of an ancient African civilization, was to be the antithesis of Rhodesia. It was to be a boldly African nation. Salisbury became Harare, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, her new rulers sought to remove vestiges of the colonial times. Much was changed as the old political and social order was overthrown.

In this way, Zimbabwe became the latest newly independent British colony in Africa, following Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia in a process that moved south from the equator. Her new rulers were the men of the ruling ZANU-PF party, led by Robert Mugabe. They were Africa's new breed of rulers, and their mission was to reclaim Africa from her colonial past under British domination.

Yet the ruling classes of the newly independent English colonies (including Zimbabwe) remained remarkably English. Idi Amin carried out his brutalities in Uganda in English. He later promoted himself to field marshal and awarded himself the Victoria Cross. He also made white residents of Kampala carry him on a throne, and fancied himself the 'Conqueror of the British Empire'. In Kenya Yomo Kenyatta ruled in English; Daniel Arap Moi who ruled as a dictator, also in English, succeeded him. Kenneth Kaunda ruled in Zambia, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Malawi, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. They were all new prime ministers and presidents of decolonized African countries, and all wannabee Englishmen. When South West Africa became Namibia, president Sam Njuma removed German (spoken by thirty two percent of the population) and Afrikaans (the common language of most of the population) as official languages, rejected Oshivambo (widely spoken by black Namibians), and declared that Namibia would be an anglophone country. This while initially less than one percent of the population could speak it (it is estimated that about seven percent of the population can now speak English, as a second language). Samora Machel followed these examples and introduced English in Mozambican Secondary Schools, presumably to promote that language in Mozambican society.

In Zimbabwe the Bush War was over and the English colonials were defeated. There was optimism for the future. Some Rhodesians declared themselves to be ready to become Zimbabweans, and to work for a just and equitable society. Many others were anxious, and they left Zimbabwe in large numbers, a final vote of no confidence in the future. They left primarily for other white and anglophone societies: the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. In some cases they went to South Africa where they assimilated into the large anglophone population there. Twenty years later, white Zimbabweans numbered perhaps a few ten thousand souls, most of them old and grey. Their children and grandchildren are overseas and are citizens of foreign countries. They have little knowledge and connection with the disappearing culture of their forebears.

There were ominous signs in Zimbabwe soon after independence in 1980. These include the killings of Ndebeles in Matabeleland and the Tekere affair (a government minister (Edgar Tekere) was accused of organizing the murder of a white farmer in 1981, he was found not guilty in the subsequent court case). Zimbabwe appeared to be a country in decline and Rhodesians were looking for a future elsewhere. Many were entitled to British citizenship, were themselves British expats or had relatives in other Old Commonwealth nations. Their local customs were only a thin veneer distinguishing them from Anglophones in other English-speaking countries, and they emigrated there and generally settled in with ease. There, life and culture and language could go on uninterrupted, and is in any case ensured by the overwhelming cultural, political and economic dominance of white anglophone culture over the earth. Many also went to South Africa where they assimilated in the large anglophone community in that country. Those who remained in failing Zimbabwe, either by choice or by necessity, are paying a difficult penalty today, as either their farms are expropriated, or they fall victim to a failing medical system and social infrastructure, or to violence, rape and murder in a socially bankrupt society.

Decolonization in Africa has followed the same general outline in a number of cases. The English in Kenya, their environment popularized in the film "Out of Africa", left that country after the Mau-Mau riots. Uganda expelled ethnic Indians when Idi Amin became its ruler. White owned commercial farms were expropriated by Julius Nyerere in Tanzania and used in his socialist experiments that eventually destroyed Tanzania's economy. The English in Zambia left quietly after independence. The Portuguese in Mozambique fled en masse after the collapse of the colonial administration there. Angola and Zaire collapsed in brutal civil wars.

The events in Zimbabwe were quite predictable. Crime and decay followed decolonization, and today, there are food shortages in a beautiful and resource rich country that once counted as one of Africa's breadbaskets. Black anglophone Zimbabweans are leaving. Some have managed to reach prosperous anglophone nations overseas, but the poor majority goes to South Africa where they languish in poverty and add to the considerable pool of poor there, exacerbating crime, disease, hunger and poverty in that country. Rhodesia was once a country that tamed the mighty Zambezi by building the Kariba dam. It had amazing wildlife in wonderful game reserves such as the Wankie that attracted thousands of foreign tourists. Salisbury and Bulawayo were once safe, busy and prosperous cities. If Rhodesia was a country based on colonial exploitation and oppression, then it was also a country with a prosperous economy and sound infrastructure. This country was handed to the men of the ZANU-PF party, who destroyed her with their political and social excesses, following the examples set elsewhere in Uganda, Zaire, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and too many other cases to mention.

Decolonization in Africa rolled south from the equator, and finally reached South Africa in the 1980's, leading to the election of Nelson Mandela as the first ethnic African ruler of that country in 1994. White and anglophone South Africans, and in the broader sense all anglophone South Africans, including large numbers of South Africans of Indian ancestry, and anglophone South Africans of African or mixed descend, must now ponder the same question their Rhodesian counterparts had to answer fifteen years before:

Does it make sense to stay in South Africa, and to remain South African, maintaining an anglophone culture, when there are anglophone societies, overwhelmingly white and now more multicultural, in countries as diverse as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom or Ireland? Examination of the decolonization process in African states south of the equator leaves much reason for pessimism and unease - in case after case the process was one of optimism, then crime, expropriation of property, decay and the killings of members of minority tribes and white farmers, to be followed finally by food shortages and failing states, disease and hopeless poverty.

Anglophones of any conceivable racial or ethnic background can be made welcome in the English-speaking Western democracies, where they can easily find a cultural niche, and in the long term be assimilated into a broader anglophone community. Tens of thousands of anglophone South Africans have already considered their options and emigrated to the English-speaking West. This migration started in the apartheid years when many went in exile to protest apartheid policies or to escape military service. Of those, few returned after 1994 when Nelson Mandela became president. Instead, the trend to emigrate accelerated, and it is estimated that some three hundred thousand South Africans (more than half of them anglophone) are in London alone. Tens of thousands of others have escaped to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

As Africa was spitting out its English population, its new decolonized rulers adopted Englishness as their culture. They speak English and adopted the mannerisms and dress of upper class England. They built mansions as if on the Thames, sent their children to English private schools, first locally, and later in England, or in other Old Commonwealth Countries. Their new high status, power and personal wealth (too often enhanced through corruption or nepotism), turned them into English lords and ladies. They frown on local and African grown culture, and adopt the cultural superiority of the English colonizers they may claim to despise. They lecture on the evils of English colonization in the English language, which they love dearly. In South Africa, they accept the apparent ethnic, intellectual and cultural superiority their English predecessors showed towards those peoples colonized by the British, including Africans, the Boers and Afrikaners.

In this contradictory climate of decolonization and a new English ruling class, white anglophone South Africans find themselves on the one hand to be culturally desirable, and simultaneously socially unacceptable. They are subjected to affirmative action and africanization at the same time as the new ruling classes are promoting their language and culture. This paradox can be resolved by noting that the new ruling class is an Afro-Anglophone class, having more in common with anglophone Blacks in the West than with ordinary Africans, or Afrikaners, or Anglophones in South Africa (be they English or in other minority groups). They speak English, read W.E.B. Dubois and cite Martin Luther King junior, and they introduce language and policies gleaned from the Black experience in the United States, including affirmative action and forced integration.

While anglophone South Africans voted consistently against the apartheid policies of the Old South Africa, in the New South Africa they find themselves to be as vulnerable as Rhodesians were in Zimbabwe. This is contrary to the expectations and claims of a peaceful democratic future for South Africa following majority rule, implied by the writings and speeches of many prominent anglophone South Africans (such as Alan Paton and Helen Suzman). They are now bewildered by their experiences under crime, transformation and affirmative action. Yet, this experience can hardly be surprising; a cynical outsider may note that being white and anglophone did not save Rhodesians in Zimbabwe.

The experiences of Anglophones are further compounded by the accelerating collapse of a civil society in South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa has become one of the most violent societies on earth, a fact pointed out by Interpol. Murders are committed without pity, rapes occur with unearthly violence, and car-jackings are casually executed, often leading to the injury or death of the victims by rape and murder. South Africans of all creeds live in perpetual fear of criminals. They lock themselves in their homes both night and day. They draw their curtains at night, not for privacy, but to avoid being the targets of random shootings in the dark. Many of them do not leave their homes unarmed, palely reflecting a lawless wild west so often seen in American mythology. The stark contrast to other English speaking countries cannot be ignored.

While subject to transformation, sport still plays a largely positive role, but has taken on an aura of escapism. It is as if the New South Africa will become a good place again for anglophone South Africans if only the rugby team or the cricket team will continue with their stellar performances. But these events are watched and talked about from locked homes by a fearful group of people, and sport is increasingly filling the role that it had in the old German Democratic Republic - opium to make the masses forget their problems. Many prominent professional sports heroes have already left South Africa apparently permanently, including golf, tennis and rugby players.

Contrary to the claims of some Afrikaans commentators, institutions frequented by anglophone South Africans in the pre-1994 years are also exposed to the ANC policies of transformation. Demographic pressures are quickly changing old anglophone establishments, including schools and universities, into Afro-Anglophone institutions where standards are often compromised by the large numbers of students who have English as a second language. The immediate consequence is the flow of middle class Anglophones to private schools, and to the "historic Afrikaans" universities, instead of the once excellent institutions such as my alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand, that is situated in a now crime-ridden downtown Johannesburg.

There are other consequences of transformation and Africanization, as practiced by the ANC government. Its manifestation as affirmative action benefits those who are defined by "Western minority groups" (African blacks and to a lesser extent Asians, and also including recently arrived immigrants who were not affected by apartheid from other African countries such as Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe). White and some Asian and anglophone South Africans, who are minorities in South Africa, find themselves, together with Afrikaners, locked out by affirmative action. The old white Anglo establishment may still own a large part of the South African economy, but their children are now locked out by virtue of race. Securing a proper job in the private or public sector has become difficult for young anglophone whites and Asians, and the chances for promotion are slim. Retrenchment for the purposes of transformation is a real possibility. Emigration is often the only career-advancing move, and many have been exercising that option.

To the above one must add the worrying track record of African countries on the fundamental Western idea of property. I cannot think of a single country that rejected property rights, but succeeded economically. On this issue there are ominous signs. The ANC's freedom charter states "land belongs to those who work it". The interpretation of this can be quite broad, and statements by ministers, and proposed legislation, indicate that expropriation of property, and in particular farm property, are eventually quite inevitable. On this issue the New South Africa may follow in the footsteps of other African failures, including Zimbabwe. There are clearly cases where past implementation of apartheid policies calls for restitution. However, it is inevitable that many expropriations will occur not because they are needed to right past wrongs, but because the ownership of property in South Africa by Afrikaners, and by many non-African Anglophones, is an affront to some elements in the ANC.

Expropriation of commercial farms to settle land claims will turn those into subsistence farms. The resulting loss in food production, and the loss of faith in agriculture as a profession (also driven by farm murders), may have severe consequences. It is indeed not hard to envision food shortages in the near future in South Africa similar to those seen in Zimbabwe. The South African government claims that it wants to avoid a Zimbabwe situation by acting soon and decisively, but it is obvious that their own statements are now driving expectations under their supporters, who believe that they will soon benefit by being granted land under some expropriation policy.

The situation for white farmers on commercial farms is depressing. These farmers (the majority are Afrikaners), who have learned to farm in a difficult and unpredictable climate, face the threat of expropriation, land reform instigated by land claimants, legal or otherwise, and unlike western farmers, little protection from the government against competition from western farmers in the form of subsidies.

They are also the victims of a decades old campaign of attacks and murders. The death toll stands at more than one thousand five hundred, the result of more than eight thousand attacks since 1994, and these numbers continue to mount. The violence in these attacks is breathtaking and inhuman. Rape is often used as a weapon to humiliate and to show dominance. Woman, from preteens to grandmothers, are raped in front of male relatives before they are tortured and killed. In Afrikaner history only perhaps the killings along the Fish River in the 1820's, and in Natal in the 1830's, are comparable (and less extensive). In those instances farmers abandoned their land and trekked away to settle elsewhere. In the current situation it may well be concluded that commercial farming cannot continue for much longer in many parts of South Africa, and that farmers should look elsewhere to re-establish themselves. The threat of expropriation and illegal squatting on farms complicates matters further for farmers, and the conclusion cannot be avoided: Commercial farming by the Boers may be on its way out. Urbanized South Africans must start to think carefully about the security of their food-supply.

These uncertainties translate into the current general ambience in South Africa, and Anglophones, locked up in their security areas, must compare their lot to those of their brethren in the English-speaking Western democracies, where western ideals of property rights, freedom of speech, and security of the person, mild policies of affirmative action, and tolerance for differences in culture, are still to be found.

Above all, the specter of Zimbabwe remains unsettling. Robert Mugabe was once the toast of the English world. He jetted around western capitals, was treated like royalty during the Lancaster House conference, and was widely seen as a liberator of his people. The lessons of failures in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda were ignored, or perhaps it was just British expediency that ensured Mugabe's rise, first to fame, and later to notoriety. He later claimed to loathe the British colonizers, yet he clings to their culture and language. His government changed English place names in Zimbabwe to their (apparent) African equivalents, but nevertheless declared Zimbabwe to be an English-speaking nation. Under his rule Zimbabwe came undone by corruption, nepotism, crime, ethnic violence against the Ndebeles, and the destruction of commercial farms. The large-scale emigration of white Rhodesians in the early years (including farmers, doctors, lawyers and engineers) significantly contributed to the eventual decline of Zimbabwe into chaos, poverty and hunger.

South Africans should carefully consider the policies and events in the recent history of Zimbabwe to avoid this outcome; but in many respects it may already be too late. Emigration of skilled workers, the destruction of commercial farms, the transformation of the economy along ethnic lines, and the introduction of draconian legislation affecting health care workers and teachers, are going full pace in South Africa. It is notable and disquieting that many of the senior leadership of the ANC continue to stand in solidarity with the ZANU-PF party in Zimbabwe.

Lastly, there are the Afrikaners. These people became a central part of South Africa's history in 1652, when a Dutch merchant called Jan van Riebeeck set foot on wall in what is now Cape Town. Van Riebeeck was an employee of the Dutch East India Company, and his instructions were to establish a halfway station to supply ships en route to India. Part of the plan was to establish small farmers to grow fresh produce and to farm animals. Eventually the halfway station grew to a settlement that included Dutch farmers and sailors, Dutch orphans (imported as wives), French Huguenots, German soldiers and farmers, and Khoi, African and Malaysian slaves. These people (including the slaves, who were often taken as wives) grew into the Afrikaners. Their history is a remarkable and often tragic one, woven intimately into that of South Africa, and was popularized in the book "The Covenant" by the American author James Michener.

Afrikaners are now a small minority in the only country they can call home. South Africa was cobbled together by the British out of Afrikaner (or Boer) Republics (that were destroyed in the Boer War) and British colonies (the Cape and Natal) in 1910, and Afrikaners have since played a significant role in the politics and social development of the country. Since 1994, when the ANC took over governance in South Africa, the situation has become precarious for Afrikaners and their language, Afrikaans. The ANC has taken immediate steps to scale down Afrikaans, and to promote English as the only de facto official language in South Africa.

The ANC are also removing much of the historical evidence that Afrikaners, and their ancestors, the Boers, once put down significant marks in South Africa. They introduced policies to undermine Afrikaans medium institutions, especially schools and universities. Of the two thousand Afrikaans medium schools in South Africa in 1994, there are only about three hundred left today. There were six Afrikaans medium universities prior to 1994, out of a total of twenty-seven universities across South Africa. Of these six there are now two that are primarily Afrikaans, three more have become double medium (or have significantly reduced the use of Afrikaans on campus), and one has abandoned Afrikaans. Transformation and Africanization in traditional Afrikaans medium educational institutions also imply the hiring of non-Afrikaans speaking faculty and staff - and inevitably this means the phasing out of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction as Afrikaans speaking faculty reduce in numbers in the normal cycle of faculty retirement followed by faculty renewal. Pressure on the remaining institutions to abandon using Afrikaans as a medium of instruction continues to mount from the ANC government.

The ANC has labeled Afrikaans a "barrier-language"; this is an invented term with no basis in sociological discourse, and they use this purely to undermine arguments that Afrikaans speaking taxpayers have a right to educational institutions for their own children. Roughly half of all Afrikaans speakers are not white, and their participation in an Afrikaans economy and in Afrikaans educational and cultural institutions should be encouraged.

Whatever the arguments used by the ANC to justify their continued pressure on Afrikaans institutions to convert to English medium, it is apparent that the ANC has embarked on a process to turn South Africa into an anglophone nation, precisely when many of her Anglophones are leaving for other shores. In this process, they have also alienated many Afrikaners, who doubt that there is any future for their kind in the New South Africa. Comparisons with the events in Zimbabwe are hard to avoid - the ANC is behaving in exactly the same manner as other African liberation movements. They still pine for revolution, implying the complete transformation of South Africa (meaning first the deconstruction of South African society, followed by a reconstruction along some other ideological lines, rather like a Fidel Castro has done in Cuba).

Afrikaners lead a fearful existence in the New South Africa. They have been politically emasculated by fears of being labeled racist should they attempt to demand the linguistic, cultural and other rights that are in fact accorded them by the constitution. Public institutions are increasingly stacked against them, as the ANC government appoints their own to boards, the judiciary and sporting organizations. Crime also plays a part in the general anxiety in South Africa, and Afrikaners (together with other South Africans) find themselves subject to voluntary dusk-to-dawn curfews. Their homes have been turned into fortresses, with bars in front of every window, reinforced doors, and security arrangements that feed a flourishing security industry. They are afraid to venture out after dark on missions even as mundane as buying milk and bread. They are isolated and lonely on farms, and exposed to a frightening level of crime and death. There is barely a social life left in rural areas.

South Africa is a dysfunctional democracy with a permanent governing party and an ineffectual opposition. Every aspect of governance is controlled by the ANC. An elected council dominated by the ANC, or a coalition that includes the ANC, rules virtually every town, city and province, and the central government. Electoral boundaries have in some cases been drawn to ensure ANC majorities in local councils, and other abuses of the rules of democracy (especially with reference to the domination of minorities by a majority) can be found. Not even under the rule of the National Party in the Old South Africa was economic and social life so dominated by one political movement.

It is not impossible that South Africa risks the African route of newly de-colonized countries that descend into economic chaos, political meltdown, and finally civil strife. While the ANC government has taken laudatory steps to bring basic services (water and power) to its poorest citizens, they have failed miserably in crime control, and have apparently given up on securing the borders of South Africa. Millions of economic migrants are flowing in from other failed African states and they undermine the long-term stability of South Africa. For the purposes of transformation, the ANC has also undermined those working institutions inherited from the previous government, including the police force, the army, and a working farm economy (now threatened by farm killings, agricultural policies and the threat of expropriation).

Afrikaners have endured much in South Africa. Their history has taken them from exploitation by the Dutch East India Company, through farm killings along the Fish River and the Great Trek into unexplored parts. Piet Retief signed a treaty for land in good faith with the Zulu King Dingane in 1838, only to have him and his men clubbed to death in Mgungundhlovu. Death of woman and children followed at Bloukrans. These events spawned a Covenant and finally victory at Blood River (contrary to popular belief, Afrikaners lost most of their wars).

Defeat followed in the Boer War that brought disease, famine, death and sexual exploitation of woman and children in the British concentration camps. There were summary executions of Boers by Roberts' and Kitchener's men, and the complete destruction of Boer property, including their churches. Many were sent into exile, leaving their women and children destitute. After the Boer War there were forced anglicization policies under Milner who in 1902 vowed to "eradicate the last vestiges of Afrikanerism from South Africa". This was followed in 1914 by the rebellion of Boers against English domination, exploitation in the mines run by British expats, accusations of cultural inferiority throughout the twentieth century, desperate poverty in the Great Depression, and finally accusations of being Nazi sympathizers, even after participation in two World Wars against Germany.

The recent history includes weak leadership, the introduction of apartheid and the Border War against Cuban forces in Angola, fought as a proxy to the Cold War for American (and not Afrikaner) interests. There is the current crime wave with its many Afrikaner victims (and few Afrikaner perpetrators), farm killings (the overwhelming majority of murdered farmers are Afrikaner farmers, their spouses and children). Affirmative action and transformation policies imposed by the ANC government against Afrikaners rounds out the current situation. The collective Afrikaner experience in South Africa is a hard and bloody one.

The efforts of Afrikaners in the twentieth century to improve literacy, education and health of black South Africans (including the establishment of thousands of schools, and dozens of colleges, universities and hospitals dedicated to black South Africans, many of them initially staffed by Afrikaners) went unappreciated. The Afrikaans experience is completed by the transformation policies of the ANC in the public and private sectors, the cleansing of towns, streets and cities of their Afrikaans names, the destruction of Afrikaans educational institutions, and the removal of Afrikaans as a language in daily life, including on product labels, signs, and in public places such as airports, hospitals and universities.

The current realities surrounding race, crime and politics make it impossible to report the Afrikaner experience under ANC rule accurately. Transference of the unease surrounding crime and race in the West to South Africa by western reporters further undermines reporting from that country. Accusations of racism in sport teams in South Africa, or killings of black South Africans by whites are dutifully reported in Western news media, but farm killings (with its overwhelming list of Afrikaner victims of rape and murder) have been largely ignored, or at best, have only received passing notice. Yet, South Africa is now known in the West as a dangerous destination for visitors.

It cannot be overlooked that the ANC has gone out of its way to control every aspect of the lives of Afrikaners. The ANC view South Africans as one undivided people, and view autonomy or self-rule with suspicion. Self-control of Afrikaners over Afrikaans schools and universities (as one may find in a mature democracy such as Belgium) would be anathema to the ANC. A city defined to be Afrikaans (in the way that Quebec City is French in Canada, or Brussels is French in Belgium) would never be acknowledged by the ANC. Instead, the ANC appears determined to destroy the Afrikaans character of cities like Pretoria, whose mayor has announced a process leading to change its name to Tshwane. Afrikaners founded Pretoria in honour of the Boer Commander during the Covenant and at Blood River; it has an ANC dominated council due to the drawing of electoral boundaries to ensure ANC majorities.

In responding to these factors, Afrikaners have (in the broad sense) but few options. First, they can resist the attempts at anglicization, bear the crime wave, and be marginalized economically, by going into internal exile (such as the Oraniërs, a group of Afrikaners who went in internal exile in the arid Karoo) or by joining protest groups such as PRAAG (the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group) or the Group of 63 (a loose organization of academics pressing for linguistic and cultural rights for Afrikaners). Secondly, they may join the ANC's project of building a transformed South Africa, with one national language (English), a number of lesser languages, with eventually no Afrikaans institutions, and one ruling party (the ANC). This choice will inevitably imply the destruction of the Afrikaans language in the next one or two generations. Thirdly, they may emigrate, and many are choosing that option.

There seems to be, in the long run, no other possibilities than the above; every Afrikaner, or his or her child, will have to choose. Resisting the transformation process will be a difficult struggle. Afrikaners, who held a privileged position in the Old South Africa, have a considerable amount to learn about civil resistance from organizations such as the ANC, Sinn Fein, the civil rights movement in the United States, and in the more extreme situations, from the military wing of the ANC, the Palestinians, or the Irish Republican Army.

It is in fact possible to reduce the choices faced by Afrikaners to two broad options: Stay Afrikaans and be marginalized, or be anglicized (and in this case, it is better to emigrate and anglicize). This completes the circle to the question Rhodesians had to answer some twenty years ago:

There used to be a time that this could easily be answered in the affirmative, and I suspect that many Afrikaners will still answer positively. The Afrikaans press is full of what could be considered overcompensating propaganda extolling the virtues of the New South Africa and the cultural home it offers Afrikaners. It is of course not possible to be an Afrikaner and not be a South African -- there are no self-sustaining Afrikaans communities outside South Africa. Hence, the question can further be reduced to:

The ANC, and some of their very small cadre of Afrikaans following, deny the existence of Afrikaners as an ethnic group (or at least, this is indicated by the policies they choose to follow) - the source of this confused position is naturally rooted in the original question above: If you are a South African, can you also be an Afrikaner? According Afrikaners an ethnicity may force the government to give some collective rights to Afrikaners, and this they want to avoid. Currently, there is no room for diversity in the New South Africa; the constitution does not promote nor condone it, and does not protect any group who would struggle to sustain its unique cultural and linguistic heritage into the next generation.

Hence, for Afrikaners the situation is reduced in the medium to long term to either one of marginal existence, or cultural extinction. There appears to be no middle ground. If it will be extinction, then Afrikaners should establish a repository of the Afrikaans cultural legacy; including books, music and history. Preferably in Holland, where after they can collectively put off the light, agree that it was an eventful and interesting time, and then go home to be assimilated or emigrate to be assimilated.

The cultural marginalization of Afrikaners is forcing Afrikaners to live increasingly in an anglophone environment. Their children are often (without choice) at least partially educated in English, their workplace is de facto English, there is little choice on radio and television other than English programming (mandated by the ANC appointed board, who even as non-Afrikaners, dictate what Afrikaners may or may not see or listen to). While many Afrikaners might express preference for their culture, it is also so that a separation has opened between the language and the economy. Many private Afrikaans institutions have been forced to become English medium to survive, and this planted the seeds for the destruction of Afrikaans as an academic and commercial language. It is back in the kitchen, where it will wither and probably eventually die.

Afrikaners are aware of this eventuality, and some (for example the Group of 63) have suggested that a follow-up settlement (to the Kempton Park negotiations) might be needed to maintain some foothold of Afrikaans in institutions. In the longer term, it is hoped, such a change could provide Afrikaners with a basis to build a healthy Afrikaans economy, which, while integrated in South Africa, will also be a distinct one (with educational and commercial institutions supporting an Afrikaans culture).

This suggestion, while very attractive to some Afrikaners, is unlikely to be heeded by the ANC. That permanent governing party has already decreed that every institution in South Africa must eventually reflect the composition of the population; including universities, corporations, and sports teams. Given the current demographic trends in South Africa, and including the millions of illegal migrants arriving yearly from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and other failing African states as far away as Nigeria and Ethiopia, Afrikaners will continue to become an even smaller constituent of South Africa. Their interests will be superceded by those of the majority groups, and of the migrants, whose arrival and continued arrival will likely feed into the economic decay and crime seen in so much of the New South Africa. (Inevitably, Afrikaners will continue to carry the blame for the continued poverty under these groups). In this sense, as demographers are often heard saying, "Demographics is destiny".

There cannot be any Afrikaans institution of any sort consistent with the ANC policy that all institutions are representative, and calls for a new Afrikaans medium university in Oudtshoorn (an isolated town in the arid Karoo) are pure folly. It may be safer to build such an institution outside the borders of South Africa, where it will be protected from ANC vindictiveness and the massive demographic change ongoing in South Africa. There are furthermore few, if any, examples of a majority government willingly giving some autonomy to a minority group. The opportunity for such a (more federalist) settlement between Afrikaners and the ANC was in Kempton Park. While Afrikaners seemed to have negotiated a new constitution in good faith, it is today abundantly clear that they seem to have had more constitutional rights under the old constitution.

Paradoxically, a country such as the United States, with a much more homogeneous population, has a vastly more federal dispensation than the New South Africa. That such a more federal constitution, long promoted by anti-apartheid parties such as the old PFP, did not materialize, indicates that it was never considered seriously by the ANC, who was the sole winner in the Kempton Park negotiations and now governs every aspect of life at every level in South Africa. I have to confess that almost every negative prediction about the Afrikaner experience under ANC rule made in the 1980's has proven to be true, or is becoming true. I was personally skeptical about some such predictions, but I was wrong.

Meanwhile, globalization and the communications revolution are continuing unabated. There are some futurists who claim that this revolution will fatefully undermine the Nation State as an institution. The effects of this on South Africa, with some western characteristics, but now defined as a "developing country", are unclear. It is noteworthy that an economic and cultural gap is opening up between the underdeveloped countries and the developed world (including Asia). A country such as South Africa will have to come to terms with the pillars of Western cultural and economic thought (as Japan, South Korea and other Asian countries have done) if it is to succeed economically - that includes property rights, cultural rights and tolerance for minority groups, economic freedoms and support for the private sector, an open approach to education, and the admission that there can be autonomous institutions (such as universities, colleges, and even hospitals) in democracies that cater to specific population groups. Such autonomous institutions strengthen democracies in synergy with one another. Unfortunately, the current directions of the ANC government policies are at odds with many of these ideas.

The future is very uncertain. Demographic changes in the West, and the accelerated economic growth in the Far East, suggest that the center of political and economic power might well shift East in the twenty-first century. India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China are already and will further establish themselves as major players on the world stage. Geography determines that these countries may influence events in Africa. There may even be a neocolonial approach to Africa (and South Africa) from an Eastern Power. China or India may well challenge the geopolitical and military dominance of the United States (and thus Anglophone dominance) within one generation. How Afrikaners and South Africa will fare in these changing landscapes remains anyone's guess.

-- Buks van Rensburg is an Afrikaner. He graduated from St. John's College in Cambridge with a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1988. He lives in Canada and is a Professor of Mathematics.

Postscript: The essay above [now slightly amended] was submitted to the British Magazine The Spectator on 8 September 2003. The cover letter with the article was as follows:

-- > Dear Sir/Madam > > I would appreciate it if you would consider the appended article for publication in The Spectator. > > It is an opinion piece on the situation facing Afrikaners in post apartheid South Africa. The tone is quite somber, and if I may suggest, contrary commentary might be interesting. The editor of Rapport, an Afrikaans newspaper (Tim du Plessis), or the well-known columnist Max du Preez, could be approached. They might well agree to write a reply if they know that you would in fact publish my essay. > > I hope to hear soon from you. > -

As it turned out, The Spectator seems to have declined publication, and I do not know if anyone was approached for comment. The article either did not measure up to standards at The Spectator, or may carry images inconsistent with the magazine's philosophy, or it was deemed not interesting, or a combination of these. Overseas media, once very interested in Afrikaner and South African issues, seem satisfied that the South African situation has been settled, and that no further comment or attention is warranted in their media organs. At best, Afrikaners have become a sideshow, invoked (usually negatively) only to break the monotony of the new dispute between the West and Islam.

Most Afrikaners, and the local South African and the overseas press, fail to realize that the debate in South Africa has shifted from one primarily concerned with race to a debate about culture (but a separate debate about race continues unabated in the ANC, and remains directed at Afrikaners). In particular, does Afrikaners have, as a matter of principle, a right to cultural existence (or is their existence only at the pleasure of a ruling clique)? It may be argued that Afrikaners are free to express their culture on weekends at family barbeques, but that they have no intrinsic right to have Afrikaans medium institutions or to participate in an Afrikaans medium economy in the New South Africa.

Not one prominent Afrikaans commentator or politician has convinced me that they can map a secure future for Afrikaners in South Africa. Instead, all signs are that there is a common understanding that Afrikaners will be assimilated into a primarily anglophone South Africa, and that Afrikaans institutions will be turned into English medium institutions. No one is claiming that there will be Afrikaans lectures in South African universities, or Afrikaans in courts or government or business, or even in secondary and primary schools, in twenty years. The Boers have finally been defeated.

The poor demographic future of Afrikaners, confluent with low birth rates and large emigration, in synergy with government policy, is conspiring to make Afrikaners extinct in one generation. Many prominent Afrikaners (especially in the Afrikaans media) have apparently accepted a vision that Afrikaans, and thus Afrikaners, will exist for only one or two more generations. Their descendants will be anglophone and integrated as South Africans. I do not know where they think a new generation of readers for their publications and writings will come from: or perhaps they have visions that Rapport will become "The Reporter" and Beeld will become "The Image", and so serve a population of anglicized Afrikaners eking out a marginal existence in an Afro-Anglophone South Africa.

If this impression is not correct and if prominent Afrikaners believe that the Afrikaans language and culture will survive and thrive into the next generation, then a clear idea of how any Afrikaans institutions that transmit language and culture will survive remains lacking. For example, one may examine the situation at the (now truly) historic Afrikaans universities.

The introduction of English onto these campuses does not follow any recognizable model. The usual university is a single medium institution, with one language of instruction. There are few double medium universities, and in those cases the languages of instruction are usually separated into two different autonomous campuses. Elite universities are without fail always single medium, whether German, French, Italian, Chinese, English, and so on. I have never heard of a "language plan" at any major university. The language of instruction is set, and by applying for admission, students accept and understand that they will be educated in the set language of instruction. The introduction of English on Afrikaans campuses, and the hiring of non-Afrikaans speaking faculty (or faculty unwilling or unable to instruct in Afrikaans) by historic Afrikaans universities will inevitably morph those institutions into English institutions.

The future of Afrikaans seems to be one of marginal existence - a compelling case can be made that for economic reasons the language should be phased out to make way for a single unitary anglophone South Africa that can turn its attention to save the rest of Africa; recruiting the energies of (post)-Afrikaners in that project. The ANC government is in fact making this case well, and by gauging the behaviour and comments of Afrikaans commentators, they do so convincingly. Other languages such as Zulu and Xhosa may come to the same fate, but those may be saved by much more robust demographics. In any case, I fail to see the connection between the survival of (say) Zulu, and Afrikaner cultural rights. The Zulu nation (if this still exists) will have to make decisions about their own linguistic and cultural rights.

I have also detected a notion under some Afrikaners that "South Africa cannot succeed without Afrikaners". Perhaps this is born out of a psychological need to be wanted and to be relevant in the New South Africa. This is of course false. Neither the ANC nor South Africa needs Afrikaners to exist in principle; nor will the presence of Afrikaners arrest the potential slide of South Africa into the political excesses that occurred in Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania. It would be self-deception to believe otherwise.

In fact, the essay above argues that the current political and social reality may require Afrikaners to give up their language and ethnicity. Being South African and Afrikaner at the same time may have become, or are becoming, mutually exclusive. This is primarily due to the attitude of the ruling classes in South Africa towards Afrikaners, and the assault of the ANC education department on Afrikaans educational institutions. Those institutions are the most critical mechanisms for the Afrikaans language and culture to be transferred to a new generation.

The vision of South Africa as a "Rainbow Nation" is only for the short and perhaps medium term (and to fool Afrikaners into buying into their own deconstruction); the long term reality remains that South Africa is (now) an African nation, first and foremost, and that will trump such notions that the Afrikaans language and culture should be protected by the state, unless there occurs a complete change of heart in the ruling ANC.