The Afrikaners - A biography of a people - Giliomee

2003 paperback with 698 pages in good secondhand condition.

Complexity and controversy are often signs of great history. Good, clear writing is usually a bonus. Yet all three are to be found in Hermann Giliomees new magnum opus. The subtitle says a lot too: this is primarily a collective biography of the Afrikaner people.Biography as a genre is a form of history that focuses on a person, a life, achievements and failures, context and character. It is all too often done badly, but when done well it presents us with the best kind of history, history that one can relate to as a person. Seldom is good biography neutral: we can learn as much about the author as the subject. Giliomees biography of the Afrikaner reveals a highly complex people whose sense of identity is multi-layered, formed by a range of conflicting experiences: multiple nationalities; a sense of African-ness, yet with strong ties to Europe; the experience of being an underdog, yet also having an experience of baasskap; fiercely independent, yet with a strong sense of group solidarity. The broad outline of this biography is familiar to anyone who has read even a bit of South African history: Dutch colonisation of the Cape in the 17th century, first by a company then later assimilated into the Dutch seaborne empire; gradual evolution of a notion of distinctiveness, brought about by assimilation (of German and French settlers, of intermarriage in many cases with local indigenous peoples and Malay slaves), by colonisation (by the British), by rebellion against foreign rule and for some by establishing often precarious political entities with Southern Africa; periods of being dominated and then the rise and fall of political hegemony in South Africa during the 20th century. Today, as Giliomee notes at the end, the struggle is for a new identity in the post-apartheid era.Beneath this superficial view lies a complex account of a people, an account that will prove controversial to many readers. Giliomee challenges us to take such complexity seriously in the interest of historical truth and, I would suspect, out of a personal quest to help retrieve what can be retrieved of Afrikaner identity to serve the needs of a new situation. And why not is that not what great historians do, whether they like to admit it or not?Giliomee challenges many of the fundamental assumptions and myths about early Dutch settlement in South Africa. Clearly it was far from a homogenous society rigid class distinctions existed at the Cape, between Dutch East India Company and free burghers, and within the Company itself. Non-Dutch settlers were certainly welcomed to the Cape, but on very strict terms: they were, in effect, to be assimilated into Dutch culture. Enlightenment ideas frequently clashed with the interests of the Company and later the state; even here, the degree to which such ideas were the basis for early struggles against the rulers in Cape Town is moot. Inevitably one comes to the question of race and class. Here, too, the distinctions are at times blurry, at times deeply complex. There was an attitude of cultural supremacy at the Cape that together with the dominant ideas of Enlightenment Europe assumed the supremacy of European culture, civilisation, commerce and values. Yet it was, at least at times, assimilationist. The worst forms of racism the idea that blacks were biologically inferior entered society in the 19th century. Far more important was the question of trade, commerce and political alliances.Another theme that gets deserved attention is the question of Afrikaner attitudes to Britain and British rule. Having established the considerable degree to which the Great Trek (in fact a series of treks) was primarily an economic migration, Giliomee points out that the majority of Afrikaners did not leave the Cape Colony. Many Cape Afrikaners though Dutch-speaking and bearing resentments about being under British rule were very much part of the Cape establishment. Well they might have been: British rule, though it did away with slavery (and pretended at least to be colour-blind), was relatively benign. Here a point might be stressed: in many respects the mid-19th century Cape political system was more liberal than that in Britain with regard to such matters as the franchise.Nor too, as Giliomee shows, should we see the Boer republics as either powerful independent polities or homogenously Afrikaner. The Free State and South African Republic were relatively weak states, by no means masters of all the territory they occupied. Frequently these states were in treaties with local African communities, communities which in some cases extracted tribute from Afrikaners living in their areas. Though there were battles for independence from Britain, culminating in British victory and territorial consolidation in 1902, there were also diplomatic and trade relations with Britain and considerable numbers of Brits or Afrikaners who used English as a language of preference in the Republics. Bloemfontein in the late 19th century was in many respects a very English town. And that arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes relied heavily on Afrikaner voters and politicians to keep his Cape parliamentary seat (Barkly West) and his control over Cape government.Apartheid too, Giliomee argues, must be examined for its complexity. The distinction between before and after 1948, between paternalism and hardcore racism, is a myth. The year 1948 and the years that followed merely consolidated and gave rigid structure to an existing system. This system had the support of most world powers until the process of Third World decolonisation. Even after 1960, he points out, many liberal thinkers and governments were at least prepared to concede the possibility of segregation with equal justice for black and white. Many advocates of apartheid, he shows, were in fact stressing the need for separation with justice even if it meant whites losing land and having to reduce their standard of living (literally poorer but separate). As it happened, with the economic boom of the 1960s raising white standards of living, this idea fell out of favour completely. The rest, as they say, is history.In his final chapters, Giliomee shows the complexity of Afrikaner response to the crises of the 1980s (starting in reality in 1976) when apartheid started to unravel, as well as the tensions of the transition and the uncertain present. He shows how these crises have shaken the Afrikaner identity and forced many to rethink their presuppositions, though for a considerable number this has not led to a conclusion that apartheid was in principle wrong. Afrikaners today, he argues, no longer speak of themselves as a separate volk with a special calling and destiny however: without strong leaders or organisations, they have started to rethink their own particular identity.