Afrikaner settlement and identity in South Africa

Afrikaners are the descendants of the European, mainly Dutch, settlers who first established permanent settlement at the Southern tip of the African continent in the mid-seventeenth century and later spread inland. The Afrikaners developed their separate identity as, after settling down in Africa, they identified themselves as Africans rather than Europeans, adopted a separate language called Afrikaans -- a dialect of the Dutch -- and gave rise to a distinct culture based on Calvinist beliefs honed by the harsh environs of the South African landscape. This paper traces the history of the Afrikaners from the time of earliest settlement in South Africa to the present day. It shall focus on their early history, language, culture, society, and politics besides discussing how the Afrikaners established themselves in a strange land and how they interacted with the indigenous people of Africa and the British colonialists.

Background

South Africa had been inhabited by hunter-gatherers, pastoral people who raised cattle, and some agriculturists for thousands of years before the Europeans first 'discovered' the Southern-most part of the African continent towards the end of the 15th century. The Portuguese mariner Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to sail round the Cape (renamed as Capo de Boa Esperanza by the Portuguese monarch John II) in 1488 while attempting to find a sea-route to India and other Asian trading ports. He landed briefly in Mossel Bay (halfway between the present day Cape Town and Port Elizebeth) and had a brief encounter with the local pastoral people -- the Khoikais, named the Hottentots by the Europeans. He was followed a few years later by another Portuguese -- Vasco de Gama who went all the way to India and laid the foundation of Portuguese domination of sea trade between Europe and Asia for the next 150 years. The Portuguese, however, were not interested in making permanent settlements in South Africa as they did not consider the area of much worth. Gradually the Dutch fleets forced the Portuguese off the Indian Spice Route and laid the foundation of the first white settlement in South Africa. (Keppel-Jones, 12-13)

The First Dutch Outpost

When the Dutch East India Company (VOA) started to make regular voyages on the spice route to India, it took several months for the ships to reach their destination. The ships used to face water and food shortages on the way. The Southern tip of the African continent (the Cape of Good Hope) lay almost midway between Europe and India and because of its location became a useful stop-over for the ships to replenish their water supplies and to occasionally barter cattle and sheep with the Khoikois. Gradually the idea of an outpost at the Cape took hold among the Dutch and the first small expedition consisting exclusively of VOA employees arrived in Table Bay on April 6, 1652. (Ibid. 16) They proceeded to build a fort as defense against the Khoikois, planted a vast vegetable garden, built a water reservoir, obtained cattle and sheep from the Khoikois through barter and provided care for the sick sailors who were off-loaded from ships to recuperate in the temperate climate of the Cape, which was free from tropical diseases. The initial settlers at the Cape considered it a temporary abode meant to provide services for the Dutch East India Company's ships only but gradually as the Dutch maritime power started to decline, ships of other countries on the spice trail to India also availed of the services.

The Freeburghers and the Beginnings of a Race-based Society

In order to make the settlement at the Cape, a self-sustaining venture the VOA started a policy of releasing some of their employees from their contract and giving them farms in the Cape area as 'freeburghers.' In exchange, the freeburghers were required to provide the company with its food and water needs and to serve in a burgher militia. The freeburgher population at the Cape started to grow gradually as several company employees took their retirement to settle there and were joined by a number of French Calvinist refugees in 1668 who were fleeing prosecution in their home country. (Beck, 24) These French Calvinists soon merged with the Dutch and German settlers and did not have much difficulty in becoming part of the White society at the Cape.

The first Commander of the freeburgher settlement, Jan van Riebeeck, was under strict orders by the company not to enslave the indigenous Khoikoi population in order to preserve peace. Riebeeck, therefore, tried to persuade the Khoikoi to work as manual laborers on the farms. On their refusal to do so, he decided to import slaves from West Africa and Angola, laying the foundations of the stratified society that later developed into the apartheid society of South Africa. The first ships carrying four hundred slaves arrived at the Cape in 1658, adding significantly to the population and providing the much needed labor to work on the farms.

When the company directors asked the opinion of local administration in the Cape about the desirability of continuing with the institution of slavery, the administration was almost unanimous in supporting it. This set the seal on the development of a caste-based society in South Africa and most 'lowly' jobs such as hard, manual construction and farm labor, domestic service, wet-nursing, artisanship, and gardening became reserved for the slaves. With greater importation of slaves, their population in the Cape soon outnumbered the whites and by 1793 there were 15,000 slaves and less than 14,000 freeburghers in the Cape. (Ibid., 28)

Interaction with the Natives

Ever since a group of Khoikhois had their first encounter with the white men who had briefly disembarked in the Mossel Bay area (circa 1488) to look for fresh water, the relationship between the Europeans and the local inhabitants had been hostile. In the beginning violent encounters between the two were occasional as the first Europeans (the Portuguese) who came to South Africa chose not to stay behind. In fact, the Khokhoi actually prospered during the period of their initial encounter with the Europeans as they traded meat for copper, tobacco, cloth, liquor, and ornamental items from the European ships that passed by the Cape. After the setting up of a permanent Dutch outpost in 1652, the relationship between the two worsened. The reason for the conflict was natural as both groups were competing for the same land. Before the Europeans arrived the Khoikhoi claimed all of the land on the Cape peninsula as their own and used to graze their livestock on the available pasture. Soon after setting up their outpost at Cape Town, the Dutch settlers seized the most fertile land on the Cape leaving only infertile land for the Khokhoi. The Khokhoi also lost their monopoly on trade with the European ships as the freeburghers now catered for most of their requirements. Having control of the more fertile land and fresh water sources, the freeburghers could provide more meat and other foodstuff at cheaper rates. To make matters worse for the indigenous population of the Cape, they gradually lost their previous role of 'middlemen' between the Europeans and the native tribes that lived inland as the freeburghers started to trade directly with the inland tribes.

As a result of their worsening economic situation, tensions increased between the Peninsular Khoikhoi and the freeburghers and frequent wars broke out between the two sides in 1659-1660 and 1673-1677. (Ibid, 30). The primitive Khoikhoi were no match for the better equipped Europeans and lost badly. To make matters worse, as the inland Khoikoi began to encroach upon the coastal areas to trade directly with the Europeans, they also came into conflict with the peninsular Khoikhoi who were caught in a classic nut-cracker situation.

Constant wars with the Dutch settlers and with the Bantu speaking indigenous people who lived further inland took their toll on the Khoikhoi people and by the early 1700s, their social and political system had virtually collapsed. Most Khoikhoi were forced to work as cattle herders, shepherds, and farm laborers for the white settlers. The Dutch now assumed the role of unchallenged masters and punished the locals cruelly for the slightest errors by beatings, branding, and exile. The final misfortune for the indigenous inhabitants of the Cape was their lack of resistance to the diseases introduced by the Europeans. A small pox epidemic in 1717 wiped out large numbers of the Khoikhoi and their population dwindled to near-extinction; the few individuals survived had no choice but to work as servants for the whites.

The Afrikaner Identity

The term "Afrikaner" was rarely used in the early period of the European settlements and the white settlers in South Africa were usually referred to as Boers since most of them were farmers. The first recorded use of the term 'Afrikaner' was made by a Huguenot settler named Bibault in 1705 who declared "I am an Afrikaner." (Quoted by Patterson, 272) it is perhaps significant that a Haguenot first made this assertion as the French immigrants in South Africa were the most fanatical Calvinists -- more so than the earliest Dutch settlers. Having been prosecuted in Europe, they were inclined to severe all ties with the continent and considered Africa their homeland. Since most other immigrants in Cape were also Calvinists -- members of the Dutch Reformed Church, the French Haguenots were readily accepted as part of a common community and were soon integrated into settler society by intermarriage. Their emphasis on a 'pure' form of Calvinism and self-sufficiency, however, influenced the development of the Afrikaner culture and way of life.

Afrikaner Culture and Society

The development of the Afrikaner culture was greatly influenced by Calvinism, the religious ideals of the Dutch Reformist Church and a craving for freedom. The Boers had always believed that they were the God's chosen people, like the Hebrew patriarchs of the Old Testament, who were divinely ordained to rule a new land and the backward natives who lived in it. They had an unapologetic racist belief about the superiority of the white man and deliberately turned their backs on the liberal ideals of Enlightenment that had a major impact on subsequent social and political development in Europe from the seventeenth century onwards.

The Dutch farmers who were stigmatized by the upper classes and the British colonists as uneducated and ignorant became wandering pastoralists to retain their freedom and developed their own subculture, based on self-sufficient patriarchal communities. The Boer society that developed in the rural South Africa was a homogeneous and egalitarian as well as highly patriarchal in nature. The head of the family was the husband, father, farmer, hunter, and frontier fighter. Theoretically, the place of the woman in the Afrikaner society was "beside and a little behind the male head of the household..." (Patterson, 240) in reality, she had an important role to play in the Boer society and was far from a meek housewife. She often had to work the land and defend her home while her man was away fighting wars. The 'ideal' of the 'pure white woman' was very important in the Afrikaner culture and she was idealized as the epitome of chastity. To protect her "purity" special legislation was enacted in 1949-50 that prohibited marriage and sexual intercourse between whites and all non-whites.

The old rural Boer society was centered around the institutions of the family, the Church and the commando and was homogeneous and egalitarian in nature. The Dutch society at Cape Town was an exception to this rule and had become highly stratified from the early days. As the Afrikaners became more urbanized, the fabric of their society and culture also changed. The urbanized English-speaking South Africans had always considered the Afrikaners to be somewhat beneath them but the Afrikaners with typical tenacity clung on to their own culture which was mainly cemented by the Afrikaans language and was also sustained by the strict application of the politics of Apartheid until the transition to the majority rule in 1994.

Politics and Apartheid

The politics of the Afrikaners was based on the assumed superiority of the white people. The Calvinistic philosophy of a 'chosen people' was interpreted to mean that the Boers were chosen by God to conquer the desolate land of South Africa and to rule over its 'uncivilized' indigenous inhabitants. The unequal treatment of the colored and black people did not bother the Afrikaners as they considered them to be of a much lower mental level -- at best at par with that of children, at worst comparable to that of animals. Added to their notion of racial superiority was the fear of the primitive people encountered by the settlers in South Africa. The whites who first landed in South Africa were appalled at the appearance of the blacks (who were so different from the whites) and falsely assumed them to be cannibals. This fear and abhorrence of the blacks gave rise to a policy of segregation and later apartheid. The Afrikaners' views about their politics were further cemented when the British colonialists arrived in South Africa and tried to force the ideas of Enlightenment down the throats of the Afrikaners.

Considering such 'liberal' ideas as a direct contradiction of the word of God, the Afrikaners withdrew into isolation from the mainstream philosophical trends in the world, adopted extreme nationalistic politics, ultimately leading to the politics of Apartheid. The apartheid laws were strictly enforced from 1948 onwards when the Afrikaner-based National Party came to power. Racial restrictions were tightened, marriage between whites and Africans or Coloreds was made illegal, and draconian laws were enacted to discourage dissent. A voting system was put in place that gave greater weight to rural areas and the whites which enabled the National Party to easily win repeated election. As a result, the Apartheid policies in South Africa lasted into the nineties despite world-wide opposition.

Significant Events in Afrikaner History number of significant events have occurred in South African history that proved to be defining moments for the Afrikaners. A few of these are discussed below:

The Great Trek

By the time, the Dutch imperial power declined towards the end of the 17th century, the British Empire had emerged as the pre-eminent imperial power. In order to secure the sea-route to India, the British displaced the Dutch from the Cape and annexed the Cape Colony in 1805. It started an Anglicization policy of the colony, which was greatly resented by the Afrikaners. When the British decided to abolish slavery in the colony in the early 1830s, resentment against the British rule reached a breaking point and in 1834 about 12,000 Voortrekkers decided to leave the colony along with their livestock on a historic northward migration which came to be known as the Great Trek. It is considered as a defining moment in the Afrikaner history as the Voortrekkers went on to establish the independent republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal in the 1850s and showed their determination to remain free from British domination.

The Second Boer War: (Oct 1999-May 1902)

Throughout the 19th century tension had arisen between the British settlers and the Afrikaner community. When gold was discovered in Transvaal in 1884, thousands of British miners and prospectors migrated to the area, creating the city of Johannesburg almost overnight. The Afrikaners resented the newcomers, whom they called Uitlanders ("foreigners") and the Afrikaner government in Transvaal taxed them heavily. Egged on by Cecil Rhodes, the Uitlanders in Johannesburg revolted against the Afrikaner government. The revolt was suppressed but the British built up half a million-strong military force on the borders of Transvaal, and war broke out on October 12, 1899 between the British and an alliance of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. After initial successes for the Afrikaner forces in the war the British forces managed to prevail after a long drawn out and bitter war in which both sides suffered heavily. Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, Johannesburg and Pretoria -- the capital of the South African Republic fell to the British forces by June of 1900 and when Kruger, the President of South African Republic fled to Europe, the British thought the war was over. Afrikaners, however, did not accept their defeat and continued a damaging guerrilla war against the occupying British forces for another year. In retaliation, the British adopted extremely harsh tactics to crush the Afrikaner resistance by putting large number of civilians, including women and children, in concentration camps; they devastated and torched the Afrikaner farms that were suspected of sheltering the guerrillas. Almost 28,000 Boers died from disease and neglect in the concentration camps, which was approximately 10% of the total Boer population. The Afrikaners considered this a deliberate genocide on the part of the British and although the Boers were eventually forced to give up the fight and signed the peace Treaty of Vereeniging on May 31, 1902, the Boer War created lasting bitterness between the Afrikaners and the British. Despite the sufferings of the war, its lasting effect was a rise in the nationalistic sentiment among the Afrikaner people. (Grundlingh 21-22) the Union of South Africa was established in 1910 but the Afrikaners became even more determined to lead an insulated and culturally separate existence.