DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
important:
That we will regain political power is not entirely impossible, but then it will have to take place according to the precedent set by Cape politics – through concessions in terms of nationality, by hushing up the existence of the Afrikaner nation with its own history, nationality, language, and customs to death – and if this precedent is followed – given our nation’s well-known inability to stand on its own feet – in thirty years’ time there will be little reason, which is now still the case, to speak of an Afrikaner nation. If I have to choose – and it seems to me that our nation is increasingly faced with this choice – between having political power on the one hand, and on the other hand the preservation of our own nationality, which rests on our own national calling and our own history which on our part is not born out of racial hatred nor longs to dominate another nation, but which is the embodiment of a higher principle – a history which may therefore never be buried under sweet conciliation talk; if I am given the choice, then I for my part will still choose the latter – nationality without political predominance.[80]
To Malan, power had to be obtained without compromise, or not at all. At the same time, he was convinced that the Afrikaners faced extinction in the face of British cultural dominance. Somehow, the Afrikaners had to maintain their own nationality. What they needed were men like the biblical Elijah – much like the one that Valeton described. This idealised image now became Malan’s own role model. He now knew that he wanted to devote his life to the preservation of the Afrikaner nation. He confided his aspirations to a close friend:
Our nation, in spite of the praises of the non-English-speaking world, is substantially deprived of men of principle. We have many reapers who are all too ready to collect the fruits and the honours. But we have few sowers, who know that they will not reap but who nevertheless sow as if they shall reap. Everyone grasps at that which is at hand, he stretches his hand out to what is nearest, he pursues that which he himself can see and can enjoy. Few are content to build, unseen and unknown, the sure and stable foundations of a building whose completion they will not see, to live for an idea, to die for an ideal whose realisation they can prepare for but which they themselves will not see. I have undertaken to myself to use my weak powers to work for the Afrikaner nation and not to budge one inch from my path. To make it clear to the nation that God is also the Sovereign of its history, and that He needs to be recognised as such in the national life – this is as much an extension of God’s kingdom as it is to preach the Gospel to the heathens. But lately nothing has become clearer to me than that the man who wants to work for the Afrikaner nation’s ability to develop itself on its own terms, so that it can be an own nation with its own history, language, character and ideals, that would in its own manner embody the Kingdom of God in itself, that that man would be held up by heavy resistance, not least from his own nation. He will be seen as an extremist, a fanatic, one who is petty-minded.[81]
Malan wanted to be like Elijah: a man of principle, who was not interested in temporal rewards but only in the eternal, even if it meant that he would not see the fruits of his labour in his own lifetime, and even if it meant that he would be labelled an extremist. He could not guess how prophetic his words would turn out to be. Years later, when he had to wrestle with a choice between politics and the church, Valeton’s Ahab and Elijah would come to haunt him again.
Malan’s admiration for Elijah suited his temperament. Although he clearly had leadership abilities, Malan was always quiet, serious, and rather apart from the crowd. When all the Afrikaner students were gathered together in Utrecht and, as students typically do, discussed the merits of their professors, Malan remained silent while his friends became animated about the intellectual splendours of their learned masters. He waited until they had just about reached the height of their admiration before finally making his contribution: a good professor was merely a good student. If he was not a good student himself, he could not be a good professor. These words more or less sobered up the conversation, which then ran out of steam.[82]
However, like any other student, when it came to exam time, Malan fretted about his professors. To Nettie he wrote: ‘I am not afraid of old man Valeton – he is too much of a jolly chap to save the most difficult things for me. And of Lamers not too much either. But I shudder before Van Veen and especially Baljon with his bald brow.’[83]
As Valeton’s tenant, Malan knew all too well what a ‘jolly chap’ the old man was. To his sister Cinie, Malan described Valeton as ‘very amiable and childlike, and … just as interested in the question of the number of eggs his hens have laid as in the question of whether the book Isaiah was written by one or two prophets’.[84]
Malan’s most important theological education took place in Valeton’s living room. Here the two of them would drink their ‘customary three cups of tea’ and talk.[85] Malan regarded Valeton as the university’s finest theologian,[86] and readily absorbed his views on Ethical theology and Higher Criticism.
Valeton’s practice of theology revolved around his concept of revelation. All knowledge of God was based on revelation: either through the ‘general revelation’, which was manifested in nature and in history, or the ‘exceptional revelation’, which was manifested in Israel’s history and in the person of Jesus Christ. In that sense, the Bible was a means by which God revealed himself. Valeton rejected the notion that the Christian faith depended on church dogma or the historical accuracy of the Bible. Faith was based on personal experience and not on academic historical arguments. This personal experience originated from God and could therefore not be separated from him. For this reason, Valeton believed that true theological knowledge was only accessible to the faithful.[87]
Since his own faith was rooted in the experience of God, Valeton was able to accept the findings of the historical-critical method, which was a controversial issue in theological circles at the time, without regarding it as a threat to the basis of his faith. Although it was not the main focus of his own research, he used it as a tool to study the workings of God’s revelation in the history of Israel.[88]
The historical-critical method, which is also called Higher Criticism, did not approach the Bible as a source of supernatural revelation, but as a document that was rooted in time and space and which called for critical study. This meant that advances in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, mythology and the like became important tools in studying the religion of Ancient Israel.[89] Valeton, for example, identified traits that Israel’s religion shared with the beliefs of the other Semitic nations. This did not threaten his own faith, as Israel’s faith differed from that of the other Semitic nations in one important aspect: it was guided by the Holy Spirit and formed part of the exceptional revelation to Abraham and his descendants, as it had fallen to them to carry God’s message to the nations.[90]
These views brought Valeton into direct conflict with Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was the leading representative of Reformed theology (which has also become known as neo-Calvinism) in the Netherlands, and rejected Higher Criticism in favour of an uncritical acceptance of the Bible’s historical accuracy – everything in the Bible was true and accurate ‘because it is written’.[91] This was his indignant reply to Valeton’s and others’ questions on the problematic aspects of biblical interpretation. Because of Valeton’s prominence as a theologian and his role as an articulator of Ethical theology, he became the focused target of Kuyper’s attacks in the press. These attacks were part of Kuyper’s broader campaign against all established theologians, as he was in the process of establishing the Free University of Amsterdam and used the polemic to attract prospective theology students.[92]
Abraham Kuyper, who became prime minister of the Netherlands in 1901, was the antithesis of Valeton’s dichotomy between religion and politics. A theologian-cum-newspaper editor-cum politician, Kuyper combined politics and religion throughout his illustrious career.[93] Kuyper was able to justify this through the principle of ‘sovereignty in each sphere’, which dictated that society was composed of separate spheres, but that each had to adhere to God’s authority. Thus, the spheres of state and politics were also subject to religious principles.[94]
At this stage of his life, Malan chose his mentor’s side. In later years, although he owned a copy of Kuyper’s Het Calvinisme, along with a number of other standard works of theology, he never expressed much enthusiasm for Kuyper’s theology, and he never had much sympathy for