Since 59 Afrikaners fled South Africa for resettlement in the US, the internet has been awash with allegations of anti-white discrimination, persecution, and even genocide levelled against Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC-led Government of National Unity (GNU).
One of the refugees, Charl Kleinhaus, spoke with the BBC on 15 May, stating that he had faith that his new life Stateside would work out well, and that it was “God’s plan for me”. Charl speaks about all he has left behind in SA: his farm in Mpumalanga, his mother, and his dogs, explaining he did so from fear that he could no longer keep his family safe. Exasperated, Charl shakes his head in frustration: “If you’re white, you’re wrong in South Africa. You are a land thief. You are racist.”
As we engage with these hot-button issues, thrust upon us by the mainstream media with little to no context, we’d benefit from a better appreciation of the past 200-odd years of South African history. Charl’s story, a microcosm of South Africa’s story, is intertwined with the history of state formation and colonial occupation of the subcontinent.
The roots of Afrikaner victimhood
The Union of South Africa Bill was passed in May 1910 and brought the British Colonies and Dutch-speaking Afrikaner Republics kicking and screaming under one political umbrella. This was the realisation of concerted efforts made since the 1870s to unify South Africa under one flag. Despite Britain’s best efforts to avoid war with the Afrikaners while forcing them to acquiesce to Crown domination, cracks quickly appeared on the surface of the Empire’s youngest Dominion.
During WW1, only four years after the Bill was passed, thousands of Afrikaners defected on the frontlines and sided with the Germans. Their goal: to do away with the yoke of the British or to die trying. Many were desperate for revenge for the injustices of the Boer War, in which Dutch civilians were rounded up into concentration camps as victory in the field eluded Britain’s poorly trained armies.
This mutiny is commonly known as the ‘Afrikaner Rebellion’, but Afrikaans people have lived with a strong sense of perceived injustice and persecution that stretches back at least 200 years and still lingers today.
The genesis of Afrikaner nationalism
The Dutch first arrived at the Cape in 1652 but did not see themselves as a separate ‘Afrikaner’ people until the Great Treks of the 1830s and 40s. During these Treks, more than 10,000 Afrikaners ventured thousands of miles into the interior, driven by something akin to a Dutch Calvinist version of ‘manifest destiny’. They saw British bureaucratic Protestantism as incompatible with their way of life and also had qualms about repeated British efforts to force the Dutch to give up slavery.
Afrikaner nationalism became further crystallised as they gained their great martyr in 1838: Piet Retief, a pivotal figure in leading the Great Treks. The story of Retief and his massacre is one even I grew up hearing. Betrayed by the Zulu King Dingaan in a heinous act of treachery, Retief and his 100 unarmed followers were invited into the Zulu royal kraal, seized, and bludgeoned to death while Retief was forced to watch, before himself being killed. In the aftermath of the massacre, the Afrikaners won a decisive battle against the Zulu at Blood/Ncome River.
Estimates of Zulu casualties at the battle range between 1000 and 3000, while purportedly only three Afrikaners were wounded. Inevitably, warring factions have historically tended to overstate their enemy’s losses while downplaying their own. But it is clear that the Afrikaner’s victory on the banks of the Ncome River cemented their regional power and persuaded them that God’s blessing was theirs.
Colonialism and the roots of racial inequality
Despite Afrikaner woes, none suffered a destruction of traditional ways of life as black Africans did during the colonial period. One striking example is the Zulu War, often associated with King Cetshwayo kaMapande’s stunning victory over the British at Isandlwana. The conflict would ultimately decimate the Zulu Kingdom’s large standing army, which had protected its people from raiders and rival chiefdoms.
In consequence, there were marked increases in young Zulu men moving to urban areas to work as wage labourers on farms and mines. It is unlikely that this was coincidental, either. In a letter to the Governor of Natal written in March 1875, Lord Carnarvon wrote that “greater control of native management and finances’ would ‘materially strengthen’ the home Government”.1
Even in the preamble of the earliest draft bill for a South African Union, written in February 1877, one passage illustrates what would become an enduring European attitude to Africans and a precursor to the ‘separate development’ narrative advocated by Apartheid architects such as Hendrik Verwoerd in the 1950s:
“In South Africa … [there is] an overwhelmingly large native population … to whom it would be obviously impossible to concede the same electoral rights as … persons of European extraction, while, on the other hand, … a native who has qualified himself by education and successful industry should not be excluded from all voice in the administration of affairs” 1 (archived manuscript, available upon request.)
Race, labour and the justification of inequality
So, it was the British who sought to break the independence of the African kingdoms in order to exploit their people as labour and bring them firmly into (the bottom of) colonial society. Half a century later, the Apartheid regime increasingly relied on narratives emphasising the ‘separate but equal’ development of whites and blacks as they became a global pariah state. The Apartheid regime would continue to insist that the two races had separate freedoms and differing interests, though whites lived in affluent cities and blacks in poor townships, and the exploitation of the latter continued to keep the South African economy afloat.
In Hegelian terms, the high-political zeitgeist of the imperial age was one of the ‘white-man’s burden’ and the civilising missions of the nations of Europe, which later fell out of favour as the ‘promotion of democracy’ and ‘self-determination’ became the latest fashion. Both the British Empire and the architects of Apartheid hid behind and amplified these legitimising narratives. Although ontologically opposed to one another, they served as justification for the same thing: building a prosperous nation from exploited African toil enforced through systemic violence and oppression.
Fear and power in the New South Africa
How is this related to President Ramaphosa’s meeting with President Trump and their debate on anti-white policies and farm-killings? Since the fall of Apartheid and the fear that an all-out assault on white civilisation was imminent, Afrikaner sensitivities have been heightened. This boogeyman of being overrun by a numerically preponderant black population is not new and conveniently served as justification for both the Annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 and the Anglo-Zulu War two years later. [1]
This isn’t the most significant event in 200 years – far from it. The reality is that South Africa can be a dangerous place, and (comparatively) wealthy white families are often the targets of crime. According to one article, 800,000 people have left since the fall of Apartheid. So, 59 more leaving should not be a headline. Nor, probably, should they be branded as ‘cowards’.
While it is important to challenge myths about the systematic persecution of whites, this does not mean that the fear itself is fabricated. The violent crime rate in South Africa is among the highest in the world, and many white South Africans, especially in remote rural areas, do experience real trauma, loss, and anxiety. Fear, even when coloured by history or misconceptions, is emotionally powerful and politically potent. It cannot simply be dismissed as irrational.
Conspiracy, Trump, and the legacy of colonialism on modern South Africa
So, what is the elephant in the room? Whites have never been on the receiving end of serious persecution in South Africa. In general, they live in the safest neighborhoods, have greater access to healthcare, and receive well-funded education. The country’s wealth is still disproportionately in white hands, and an estimated 15.6 million black South Africans live in townships.
This disparity, I’ve argued, is a direct consequence of successive British colonial administrations and Afrikaner Apartheid governments. And while Trump seeks to portray himself as offering compassionate assistance as a radical African dictatorship squeezes hard-working white farmers out of their last dime, the truth is that the ANCs policies have not been radical. According to AgriSA and other sources, White commercial farmers still own approximately 78% of privately titled farmland. The top 0.01% of South Africans own 15% of the national wealth, more than the bottom 90% combined.
Trump and his administration have clearly sought to make political capital from these Afrikaners by tapping into broader conspiracies surrounding ‘white genocide’. This isn’t the first time Trump has tacitly given his support or acknowledgement to fringe conspiracy theorists. But political undercurrents which charlatans and populists exploit are very often set in motion by events of the past and historical narratives. If we endeavor collectively to improve our historical literacy, we will be better able to make sense of the contours of our current political landscape.
[1] D. van Staden, Boer, Briton, and Bantu: Lord Carnarvon, the Annexation of the Transvaal Republic and the derivation of imperial policy, University of the West of England (2020), chapter 3.
We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
