South African apartheid was eradicated in 1992 and the republic that emerged from its rubble held elections two years later. The ‘Rainbow Nation’, a definition coined by Nelson Mandela, set out with an inclusive spirit. But the colors have not mixed as the father of the country intended. A good part of the whites long for their political supremacy and, even, part of their representatives want to break away and create their own and independent country. The most radical do not limit themselves to dreaming and resort to extreme violence to fight against the black majority. Last October, Harry Knoesen, leader of the tiny National Christian Resistance Movement, was sentenced to two life sentences and 21 years in prison for planning terrorist attacks using biological weapons. The prisoner claimed in his defense that God had asked him to recover South Africa for the descendants of the Europeans.
There is no truce for the southern giant. His own and global economic crisis, corruption and migratory tensions shake him periodically. In July 2021, a wave of looting and indiscriminate violence followed the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma, implicated in numerous crimes. The regime that emerged from the end of ‘apartheid’ was then at its lowest level of credibility.
The shocks continue, despite the fact that that crisis was overcome. The procedure opened for the disappearance of more than 4 million dollars in the farm of Cyril Ramaphosa, the current head of the Executive, can lead to his prosecution for alleged money laundering, as denounced by the opposition. The consequences of this hypothetical process are unpredictable.
The present is troubled and the past continues to take its toll. Many of the conflicts are the result of a social and economic structure inherited from the previous era. The white minority, less than 8% of the total population –4.6 million citizens– has lost political power, but continues to hold a large part of the economic power. Farmers of European origin own 70% of the commercial farms and 72% of the cultivated area.
Segregation is the objective of the most radical, generally coming from the Afrikaner or Boer collective, made up of citizens of Dutch, French and German origin, of Calvinist faith and significant agricultural resources. Its political horizon goes through the implementation of a ‘volkstaat’ or ‘State of the people’ similar to the republics that they created in the 19th century and that were annihilated by the expansion of the English army. But the proposal is very complicated, not only because of the political opposition, but also because of the demographic impossibility; and it is that the whites do not enjoy a majority in any of the provinces.
Culture is another of his banners when it comes to exposing grievances, especially after the educational system has replaced Afrikaans, his vernacular language, with English in all universities. But here too they cannot resort to identity discrimination, at least in the strict sense, since it is used by more than 12% of South Africans, often with a vehicular function. There are more blacks and mestizos than whites who speak this Germanic language derived from Dutch.
Agrarian reform
The field is the main scene of the confrontation. President Ramaphosa’s agrarian reform, one of his flagship projects, is based on the expropriation without compensation of the large estates. The ruling party has not been able to get Parliament to approve its measure and aspires to a constitutional reform that will facilitate the process. On the left, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EEF) party advocates strict nationalization.
The struggle for land, the epicenter of many debates, has driven the Afrikaner initiative. The AfriForum NGO is the most belligerent in the fight against government intentions. Its detractors place it on the extreme right, while the group identifies itself with the field of civil rights and the defense of minorities.
The influence among whites in the interior is undeniable. In 2016 they had 170,000 members and six years later their social mass reaches 295,000 affiliates within a group of about 3 million inhabitants. Among other initiatives, he has fought in court issues such as positive discrimination, which benefits the black majority, ‘fracking’ or the change of name of some cities. He has also denounced Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, for singing the hymn ‘Dubul ‘ibhunu’ which can be translated as ‘Kill the Boer’.
It is not just an organism that fights internally. Afriforum has exposed its demands in Australia and the United States, countries that have welcomed a large part of the Afrikaner diaspora, and also assumed the claims of white farmers in Zimbabwe, victims of a similar initiative. The organization obtained a favorable sentence in which it was revealed that Robert Mugabe, the former president of that country, used the complicity of his colleague Jacob Zuma to dissolve the Court of the Southern African Development Community, an institution that recognized the rights of the litigants.
Crime has heightened tensions. The entity denounces the murder of 59 farmers in 2020, 30% more than in 2019, and generally at the hands of blacks. His interpretation is dangerous for coexistence. The attacks against property owners served as a spur to the white genocide theory that maintains the existence of a certain covert operation to carry out an ethnic massacre.
High murder rate
Tempers flared as a result of these accusations. In 2003, the security forces arrested about thirty members of Die Boeremag, a militia that had already organized an attack in Soweto and that stored a ton of explosives. However, that same year, the National Police Commission refuted these arguments and denied that the attacks were exclusively against the minority. South Africa is the fifth country in the world for its homicide rate. During the first quarter of last year alone, 6,400 people died at the hands of common criminals.
The political scene has capitalized on discontent. The Liberty Plus Front has become the political instrument of the nostalgic, but also of those who have stopped believing in a questioned regime and of those who want a white republic in the African savannah. In the last elections, held in 2019, he obtained 414,000 votes and ten parliamentarians.
Mistrust is not a recent phenomenon. Between 1995 and 2006, 20% of the population of European origin emigrated and some agricultural entrepreneurs have taken over farms in Anglo-Saxon countries, but also in others as unexpected as Brazil or Georgia. Economic degradation also plays a role. Although their economic situation is usually privileged, 10% of white workers are unemployed, a quarter of the national average, and a third intend to emigrate as soon as they get the right passport.
The incidents feed the discontent and, in parallel, the fundamentalist factions try to make them profitable. In 2020, the murder of Brendin Horner rocked the country. The body of this young 21-year-old farmer was found tied to a post with signs of torture and numerous knife wounds.
Far-right groups wearing Police uniforms from the previous apartheid regime later provoked riots in front of the Court that tried the suspects and in which EEF militants, opposed to white supremacy, also gathered. There were no convictions for lack of conclusive evidence. The theory of genocide becomes strong in the most radical mentalities. The rainbow fades with the passing of the years.
Orania is the closest thing to an Afrikaner dream. This small town, on the banks of the Orange River and located in the Northern Cape Province, is an artificial bastion of the culture and politics of the descendants of Dutch and French Huguenots. Its 1,700 inhabitants share similar pale skin, the Afrikaans language, a common currency, called ora, and their own flag, which shows a boy rolling up his shirtsleeves against a blue and orange background.
It is difficult for the boy to grow up and become a leader of the masses. Although the population is settled in the least populated territory of the country, endowing it with a white majority would require massive displacements. This backwater relatively untouched by South African turbulence is reminiscent of the Boer republics, but unlike previous colonizations, it has preserved ethnic homogeneity. The neighbors, rich and poor, are white, unlike the surrounding reality, where whites, Asians, and a black elite coexist with the majority of indigenous and mestizo origin, habitual residents of the less favored suburbs.
Boshoff, el promoter
The ideological project that supports Orania does not hide its roots, sunk in apartheid. Carel Boshoff, its promoter, is the son-in-law of Hendrik Verwoerd, one of the architects of the segregation regime. Its establishment in 1990 seems like an attempt to seek refuge after the collapse of an entire social and political system. The same nostalgia invades the inhabitants of Kleinfontein, an urbanization located on the outskirts of the capital Pretoria, inhabited by a thousand whites and where strangers with another skin color are not allowed to enter.
Both experiments cannot change the direction of a country of more than 60 million inhabitants that receives emigrants from all over Africa and the Indian subcontinent, mainly. It is hard to believe in a South Africa only for whites, even if they continue to be an extraordinarily significant minority in relation to their numbers.