The Afrikaner Mind Can Change

Recently I narrated “The Cry of Reason,” a documentary to be aired this spring, about Beyers Naude, a white Afrikaner minister who abandoned apartheid in the 1960s and embraced the black struggle for liberation. In one deeply moving scene, Naude’s wife, Ilse, warned him about the dire consequences of his pending apostasy: “Beyers, you don’t know the mind of the Afrikaner.”

Naude had just concluded that the Afrikaners’ biblical justification of apartheid--one of the cornerstones of the Afrikaner faith and of the subjection and domination of the black majority by the white minority--was a pious fraud, if not outright heresy. Ilse dreaded that public confession of his discovery would jeopardize his prominent and powerful position in the closely knit Afrikaner volk (the people), where he would be branded a traitor. He and his family would be ostracized--religiously, culturally, educationally and socially.

Naude had been raised in a proud, devout and fervidly nationalistic Afrikaner family, educated at the prestigious Stellenbosch University, breeding ground of all Afrikaner leaders, and now was the influential and revered pastor of an elite Dutch Reformed Church in Johannesburg.

Naude’s father had been one of the founders of the Broederbond (Brotherhood), the secret society to which all male Afrikaner leaders belonged. It was widely believed because of his family prominence, intellectual reputation, influence and dedication to the Afrikaner cause, Naude was on the fast track to someday becoming the prime minister of South Africa--provided he did nothing silly.

But he had seen the irrefutable evidence of the evils of apartheid; he had experienced the torments of living a lie. He obeyed his conscience, and he and his family, as expected were banished from the volk ; he was shunned and made a non-person who could not be quoted in the press.

The incredible story of Naude’s spiritual pilgrimage, convictions, courage and deep faith offers rare insight into the nature of the Afrikaner mind, and the sundry forces that over 300 years have forged what today remains essentially an enigma to much of the world outside South Africa. The Afrikaners, who constitute about 66% of the white population of South Africa, and are the ruling power, have a documented history of being a tight, suspicious, proud, intransigent, insecure, unforgiving and fearfully nationalistic community. They see themselves as the Israelites of Africa.

It is erroneous to regard Afrikaners as the direct descendants of the Dutch settlers who came to South Africa in 1652 and settled in the Cape Province. Their true ancestors are the trekboers , a hodgepodge of disgruntled European emigrant white settlers, some Dutch, who, in the 1700s, despite their different national origin, combined because of shared vicissitude and a common Calvinistic religion.

Distrustful and hateful of British colonial occupation, under which they lost their black slaves and considerable property, the trekboers undertook, in 1836, a seminal journey, known as the Great Trek, into the heart of South Africa. They styled themselves the voortrekkers (pioneers). Throughout their peregrination they became embroiled in bloody wars with black tribes, and they attributed their triumphs over the falls of “savage heathens” to divine interventions and predestinations. To this day, these victories are celebrated with great pomp and circumstance as national holidays, and a voortrekker monument in Pretoria is a shrine of Afrikaner unity, resiliency and “superiority” over blacks.

The Anglo-Boer War at the turn of the century also had a decisive influence on the Afrikaner heritage. Through such brutal tactics as the imprisoning of Afrikaner women and children in concentration camps, the British were able to enforce a surrender by Boer commandos.

Such humiliation, atrocity and defeat the Afrikaners never forgot or forgave. And despite the superficial reconciliation with English-speaking whites shortly thereafter, brought about by their mutual interest in keeping blacks “in their place,” the Afrikaners persisted in their efforts to acquire political ascendancy. They intended to use that power to implement cherished ideas of national socialism brought back from Hitler’s Germany by their leaders who had studied there; to rid themselves of the inferiority complex they had developed under British imperialism and domination of every sphere of South African life, and above all, to protect the vital interest of the volk .

Their dreams came true in the election of 1948 when the Afrikaner party defeated the incumbent liberal government. The years that followed saw a rapid consolidation of Afrikaner power. The Nationalist Party’s election strategy was simple. It told Afrikaner voters “and English-speaking whites who from self-interest supported apartheid” that for the continued survival and domination of the volk , blacks had to be kept segregated and strictly controlled, and fastidious English liberals kept at bay.

Naude and many Afrikaners like him believed without question that apartheid was best for the country, and attributed many of the world’s problems to racial mixture. They earnestly sought biblical justification for so righteous a policy, and their blind faith led them to interpret various texts, like that of the Tower of Babel, as God’s commandment respecting separate identities. Soon stereotypes, half-truths and misconceptions about blacks abounded and ruled supreme among whites, more than 90% of whom had never seen a black ghetto. This blissful ignorance of the true nature of the apartheid system made it easy for whites to swallow whole Pretoria’s propaganda blaming black unrest on outside agitators and communists.

Naude’s conversion came when he witnessed the inhumanity of institutionalized racial segregation for himself. Once he did, he knew that only the truth could set him free; that he owed his obedience to God and his conscience, not to the state of personal interest. He hardly had any assurance that once he left the volk he would be accepted by blacks. But most blacks knew that any Afrikaner who renounced apartheid was a true child of Africa, a brother or a sister to be embraced and loved. He now preaches in Alexandra, the ghetto where I was born and raised.

Naude and a few courageous Afrikaners have met with the African National Congress, renounced apartheid and called for genuine negotiations with blacks, setting a shining example for other Afrikaners to follow. For he has proven that the intractable Afrikaner mind can change--if it wants to.