DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts

      The man who arrived home in the midst of the South African summer was now a learned doctor – in a country where the title inspired awe and respect, and where ministers of the church towered over their communities – and yet, somehow, he still felt uncertain about himself. He was thirty years old, but painfully aware of his inexperience. He felt certain that this was not lost on those around him, especially his father, who mock-sighed in jest: ‘Yes, Danie, you have studied for such a long time that you are almost old enough to retire.’[1] These words were not spoken with harmful intent, but to the recipient, they were painful.[2]

      His family was changed. His father had retired from farming during his absence and had handed the farm over to Fanie, who had since married. Even though Malan knew that he would never have become a farmer, he felt as if a bond between him and his home had been severed forever. He was filled with a sense of sadness and loss upon realising that he would in future be a mere visitor in the house of his birth.[3]

      He now had to take his own, independent steps into the world. The prospect of leading a congregation by himself was still too daunting – he preferred to become an assistant preacher in a parish where he would be able to learn from the senior minister.[4] In May 1905, after successfully completing the necessary admission exams to enter the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC),[5] Malan accepted the position of assistant preacher in the parish of Heidelberg, Transvaal, where he lived in the same house as the church’s minister, the Rev. Adriaan Louw.[6] Louw was well acquainted with Malan and his family: he had served as the minister of the Riebeek West congregation during the 1880s, during which time he had become close friends with Malan’s parents.[7] Louw had always taken an interest in the young Malan’s progress, and invited him to join him in his work shortly after his return to South Africa.[8]

      Malan arrived in Heidelberg right in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the clerical year. It was Pentecost, and Malan was overjoyed at the success of the Pentecostal services, during the course of which a number of new souls dedicated themselves to the Lord for the first time.[9] On 29 July 1905, Malan’s own big day arrived: he was officially ordained into the DRC. None of his family members were able to attend, which saddened him, but his old schoolmaster Theunis Stoffberg and his wife were there. The event itself was deemed to be an exceptional one. Malan’s ordination coincided with a mission conference in Johannnesburg. The delegates all decided to attend the ceremony, and so it happened that, at the height of the proceedings, Malan knelt in front of the pulpit with an unheard-of number of seventeen ministers in attendance to give him their blessing.[10] They formed a crowded half-circle around him, each with his left arm stretched out in order to lay his hand upon Malan’s head.[11]

      The community in which Malan now found himself had been ravaged by the devastation of war. A total of 867 of its members had died, whether in battle, in concentration camps, or in the field.[12] Malan worked with a battle-hardened church council: one of its members had lost an arm; another, both his eyes. The town also had a large orphanage that cared for the children who had been orphaned by the war.[13] Upon ‘Doctor’ Malan’s introduction to the Sunday school, the minister’s young daughter – under the impression that all ‘doctors’ were medics – exclaimed ecstatically: ‘But that means that he can treat the orphans free of charge!’[14]

      The parish of Heidelberg’s flock was sparsely distributed along the Vaal River, which meant that Malan had to travel for up to fourteen hours in order to visit congregants who lived on the outskirts of the district. These travels would take him away from the town for up to three weeks at a time. On these far-flung farms he conducted services for people who had last attended the church in town before the outbreak of the war. In a crowded burnt-out wagon house – a remnant of the war – the searing heat literally took his voice away as he tried to minister to his deprived flock. Here, on the farms, he encountered desperate poverty, especially among the bywoners.[15]

      And yet, in spite of all the hardship that he witnessed, Malan was inspired by the people he met. To Nettie he wrote:

      Please do not hold it against me for saying it so bluntly – we have spoken about this many times. What is the difference between the Transvaal and the Colony? To be Afrikaans (not just to feel like it), and to speak and to write it (not least the ladies), is the most natural thing in the world. People do not even dream about doing it differently. Poor, watered-down, emasculated Colony – the limpness and wretchedness and inability to stand on its own feet, although there is more than enough lip patriotism. Men of character and great deeds can, at present, only be born in the Transvaal and the Free State. The Colonial spirit is too impoverished for that.[16]

      In spite of its devastation, the Transvaal seemed to Malan like a nationalist’s paradise. These people were so different from those in the anglicised Cape Colony – they appeared to be the embodiment of his ideal. True to his nature, it was not long before Malan sniffed out kindred nationalist spirits. In the Transvaal, he was able to read Gustav Preller’s newspaper De Volkstem. Preller was to become famous for his work as an organiser of the Second Afrikaans Language Movement, as well as for his nationalist publications on Afrikaner history, which he managed to popularise to a phenomenal extent.[17] Like Theal before him, Preller portrayed the Afrikaners’ past as a battle between Afrikaner nationalism, British imperialism and black ‘barbarism’. Through the course of 1905 and 1906, which partially coincided with Malan’s stay in the Transvaal, Preller wrote a series of features on the Voortrekker leader Piet Retief that was published in De Volkstem. In 1906 these articles were published as a book, under the title Piet Retief, Lewensgeskiedenis van die grote Voortrekker. This book took a firm place as one of the first works of prose of the Second Afrikaans Language Movement.[18] It was filled with accounts of atrocities committed against the Voortrekkers, complete with ‘battered baby skulls, dead women, and drifting feathers from the ripped mattresses’.[19]

      It was Preller’s work as a language activist that drew Malan to him in 1905. In March of that year, ‘Onze’ Jan Hofmeyr had given a seminal address in Stellenbosch entitled ‘Is’t ons Ernst?’ (Are we earnest about it?)[20] Taking up the issue of language rights, Hofmeyr questioned whether Afrikaners were really serious when they complained that Dutch was being pushed out of the public space by English, since they made no notable effort to exercise their right to language equality. He echoed Malan’s private complaints that much lip service was paid to the issue, but no action was taken.[21]

      In response to Hofmeyr’s address, Preller published a series of articles in his newspaper, which were then collated into a booklet entitled Laat’t ons toch Ernst wezen! (Do let us be earnest about it!) While Hofmeyr’s address was concerned with the Afrikaners’ right to use Dutch, as opposed to English, in the public sphere – and especially in the education and religious instruction of their children[22] – the young Preller declared that for Afrikaners, Dutch was a dead language. There was certainly much to be gained from a study of Dutch, but Afrikaans was the language in which Afrikaners expressed their innermost feelings. Therefore, Afrikaans had to be elevated to a written language.[23]

      In August 1905, Malan wrote to Preller and requested a copy of the booklet, as the matter was ‘of great importance in view of the future