DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
years, his insight into human affairs and his ability to handle flammable personalities in difficult situations became legendary, and possibly had much of its grounding in his late-night reading.[43] Yet Malan did not write or publish much during these years – he absorbed and he practised.
To outside observers, Malan was a young man of great potential. At the end of October and for the first half of November 1906, Malan attended his first Synod meeting, which was held in Cape Town. Here he drew attention to himself on account of his nationalist stance on matters of language and religion, which found approval with his audience. His first public appearance was as part of a debate on whether the DRC’s teachers’ training school ought to be moved from Cape Town to Stellenbosch. Malan asserted that a larger matter was at stake – that being nationalist principles – which ought to be the first concern when equipping Afrikaner children for their calling to their church and their state. For this reason, Malan argued, Stellenbosch provided a far more suitable environment for the nurturing of such principles than Cape Town. He also emphasised the importance of mother-tongue education for the sake of the Afrikaners’ national self-respect and continued existence.[44] Responding to Malan’s speech, the church’s actuary told his audience that he felt proud of the Dutch Reformed Church – especially since it had acquired the services of such a learned young man. He also observed that the young ministers who had recently returned from their European studies seemed to be of the opinion that, in the sphere of both education and politics, the Afrikaners had to separate themselves from the English. This, according to the actuary, was a new phenomenon, and deserved the serious consideration of both the church and the nation’s leaders.[45]
While the Dutch Reformed Church’s Synod was taking note of the language issue, the Second Afrikaans Language Movement – which Gustav Preller had established in the Transvaal – reached the Cape Colony. Its foremost campaigners were the young J.H.H. (Jannie) de Waal, who was destined to become an important Afrikaans novelist and playwright,[46] and D.F. Malherbe, who would become a prominent poet and academic.[47] On 3 November 1906, while Malan was in Cape Town for the Synod meeting, the Afrikaanse Taal Vereniging (ATV) was established in the same city, with D.F. Malherbe as its first president and Jannie de Waal as vice-president. Malan also attended the meeting, and was elected to the organisation’s management.[48]
Unlike their colleagues in the Transvaal, the young men who founded the ATV in the Cape had to contend with a powerful pro-Dutch establishment, which manifested itself in the Taalbond. The Taalbond was supported by the older generation, and included powerful Afrikaner leaders and intellectuals such as ‘Onze’ Jan Hofmeyr and Malan’s Stellenbosch professor P.J.G. de Vos.[49] Conscious of the opposition from the older generation, the fledgling organisation took pains to emphasise the advantages of a thorough knowledge of Dutch, and undertook to cooperate with pro-Dutch organisations – in particular the Taalbond. Nevertheless, the new movement’s aim was clear: Afrikaans had to be developed into a written language.[50] Its branches spread across the Cape, in spite of the disapproval of the older generation.[51]
Within this new generation, Malan stood out from the crowd. Just as the Synod took note of his presence, his peers also recognised his potential. For this reason, the ATV appointed him as its chairman at the end of 1907. As D.F. Malherbe later recalled, they ‘desired to have a man of the church who carried much weight among our ranks, in order to give status to our impoverished existence’.[52]
Malan’s yearlong leadership of the ATV was of a symbolic nature. He lived far away from Cape Town and Stellenbosch, where the heart of the organisation was situated, and could not make any noteworthy administrative contribution. He had no training as a linguist or a literary theorist, and could not participate in any of the ATV’s spelling commissions that battled to provide the new language with its own spelling and grammar rules[53] – it was not the reason for his election in the first place. Like many of the ATV’s members, Malan had joined because of his sympathy for the cause – he and others like him recognised the nationalist potential of the Afrikaans language. The ATV was the precursor to the more explicitly nationalist organisations that would enter the political scene less than ten years later: it was a breeding ground for a new generation of young Afrikaner nationalists. Malan therefore did not make any contributions to the development of the Afrikaans language itself but, in terms of adding moral substance to the movement, he was worth his weight in gold. In 1908, he gave one of the most famous speeches of the Second Afrikaans Language Movement to an audience in Stellenbosch. In response to ‘Onze’ Jan Hofmeyr’s address ‘Is’t ons Ernst?’ and Gustav Preller’s booklet Laat’t ons toch Ernst wezen!, Malan’s address was entitled: ‘Het is ons Ernst’ (We are earnest about it).
In his speech, Malan made it clear that his promotion of the Afrikaans language was not for linguistic reasons. His aims were of a purely nationalist nature, as he stated: ‘The Afrikaans Language Movement is nothing less than an awakening of our nation to a feeling of self-worth and to the call to take up a more dignified place in the world’s civilisation.’[54] This meant that the Afrikaans language had to become a vehicle for the Afrikaner nation’s upliftment:
If our nation’s language can never be the bearer of our own literature and our national culture, what else does it mean but that we will always be regarded by others, and that we will regard ourselves, as a dialect-speaking nation. Elevate the Afrikaans language to a written language, make her the bearer of our culture, our history, our national ideals, and in so doing you elevate the nation who speaks it. Keep the national language at the level of a barely civilised provincial dialect, however, and in so doing you will keep the entire nation at the level of a barely civilised, illiterate and lowly class of people.[55]
These words struck a deeper chord than the endless debates on spelling and grammar that characterised the language movement. Without offering a solution to the immediate problem of the linguistic merits of Afrikaans, Malan united his audience behind a broader ideal. In response to Malan’s speech, Gustav Preller wrote: ‘Nou is’t ons ernst!” (Now we are earnest about it!).[56]
By shifting the focus away from linguistics, Malan also managed to maintain a conciliatory tone towards the Taalbond, stating that they had different methods of achieving the same goal – and envisioning the day that the two organisations would become one.[57] This took place within a year of his speech when, in 1909, the tension between the two organisations was diffused in the establishment of the Akademie voor Taal, Letteren en Kunst,[58] of which Malan became a member.[59]
This passion for the nation and its language permeated every aspect of Malan’s life. As the Malan family gathered to celebrate what was to be D.F. Malan Sr’s last birthday, Malan observed the Babel that reigned among the new generation of Malans. His sister Cinie’s two youngest daughters could speak only Chicaranga, a Shona dialect. Koos, who had since married an Englishwoman, had just returned to South Africa, and his little son could speak only English. Fanie’s and Mimie’s children, as well as the daughters from D.F. Malan Sr’s second marriage, spoke only Afrikaans. Nevertheless, the children managed to play together. Malan, the eldest son, and still the only one who did not have his own family, watched their multilingual games and drily remarked to one of his young half-sisters: ‘You had better make a plan to teach this little Englishman and these two little Kaffirs [sic] some Dutch.’[60]
His half-sisters were soon to become a prominent part of his life. To them, he was simply ‘Boetie’ who had studied in Holland, and who came to visit them during holidays; Boetie who was serious and withdrawn, yet enjoyed teasing them; Boetie who would go hiking in the nearby mountains – wearing his tie and tight collar – and who would join the children in roaming around the veld in search of kukumakrankas.[61] Soon after the large family reunion, D.F. Malan Sr passed away. About a year after the funeral his widow, Esther Malan, announced to her daughters that she had finally decided to accept her stepson’s offer to move to Montagu, where the girls would be able to attend a larger school. He, in turn, was desperate for a pastoriemoeder (mother of the parsonage) who could assist him with his work in the church, especially among its women – and, of course, someone who could manage his household.[62] Malan had a particular knack for eliciting the support and involvement of the women in his congregation, who took the tasks normally accorded to the minister’s wife upon themselves.[63] In spite of this, Malan still felt the need for the more extensive support that could only