DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
and the university issue, he identified two clashing ideals. Both ideals acknowledged that the South African nation consisted of two nationalities (black people were not regarded as members of the nation). One of these ideals advocated the amalgamation of the two nations into one – which would inevitably be English. The other, which Malan regarded as the only true ideal, held that
in South Africa there are two nationalities and so it always ought to be; that both will be entirely free and that each will have an equal opportunity to maintain and develop that which is its own. This is the best manner for the greater South African nation to become one, a moral union, founded on a common love for a common fatherland, but it will be a unity that consists of a duality – a dual-unity. [111]
These words were very different from those uttered by Jan Smuts four years earlier: ‘The great task was to build up a South African nation … In a South African nation alone was the solution … Two such peoples as the Boers and the English must either unite or they must exterminate each other.’[112] Malan’s solution, an order in which the two language groups would be ‘separate but equal’, was based on an assumption that cultural equality did not exist as yet. As far as he was concerned, English was still dominant and was hostile towards the Afrikaners and their language. These years were marked by deep divisions and a general animosity between English and Afrikaans speakers, with the language issue presenting an exceptionally explosive dilemma.[113]
The situation also manifested itself in the press. In the immediate aftermath of the South African War, two distinct interest groups were engaged in buying up press organs in order to propagate their political views. On the one hand the British high commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, used state funds to buy the loyalty of a number of newspapers that would propagate the imperial idea – and exploited martial law and censorship to stunt the growth of an opposition Afrikaner press – while on the other hand, Botha and Smuts were able to utilise funds from the Netherlands to counter Milner’s attempts to silence the Afrikaner press. In spite of these machinations, the press appeared to unite briefly – in the midst of the euphoria brought about by Union and the prospect of conciliation between the two camps – but its partisan nature soon re-emerged as the division within the country manifested itself within the Botha cabinet.[114]
Botha, in an attempt to counter the deep rifts in the country, chose individuals from all four provinces to serve in his cabinet. His and Smuts’s sympathies, however, were closer to the ideals of the English-speaking Unionist Party, which formed the official opposition,[115] than to those of the other extreme end of the cabinet, General J.B.M. Hertzog.[116] As early as 1907, Botha and Smuts had begun to move to the centre and reached out to English speakers. This was based on their growing awareness of the wider world of international power politics. The British Empire offered both security and beneficial trading links, and they realised that they could only achieve rapid economic growth if they gained the trust of English speakers of both British and Jewish descent, who controlled most of South Africa’s capital.[117]
For this reason, there was hardly any difference between the policies of Botha’s SAP and those of the Unionist Party, whose supporters were mainly English, and which took it upon itself to protect South Africa’s ties to the British Empire. The Unionists counted men like Leander Starr Jameson (of the Jameson Raid), the mining magnates George Farrar and Lionel Phillips, as well as Percy Fitzpatrick, who had been a prominent Uitlander leader in Kruger’s republic, among its leaders.[118] Both parties advocated the concept of a single South African nation, a non-doctrinaire native policy, white – but not Asian – immigration, economic development, and imperial preference. Neither party advocated special protection for the Afrikaners, a stance that aggravated Hertzog. It was through Hertzog’s intervention that the National Convention – where the terms of the Union were negotiated – accorded equal status to both Dutch and English in all public business, and provided for a bilingual civil service. Hertzog insisted that language equality could only be achieved when both languages were used as a medium of instruction in schools. As a cabinet minister in the former Orange River Colony, he had established parity in that colony, despite being labelled a ‘racialist’ by English speakers who saw no reason for their children to learn Dutch. Hertzog’s educational policy had brought about a clash between two conflicting principles: the right of parents to choose the language in which their children were educated versus the right of society to expect its children to be bilingual. Botha, for his part, felt frustrated with Hertzog for stirring up the language issue,[119] but managed to outmanoeuvre Hertzog when the new Union’s education policy was formulated. Hertzog’s system of absolute parity was abandoned in favour of one that made mother-tongue instruction for the first six school years compulsory in three of the four provinces, and gave parents the right to choose the medium of instruction thereafter. In Natal, the choice was left entirely to parents.[120]
Back in Montagu, Malan – as chairperson of the local high school’s school committee – made a point of asserting the rights of Afrikaans children to be educated in Dutch. As far as he was concerned, mother-tongue education existed only on paper in a system that was dominated by English. In response to a government questionnaire, Malan made it clear that school inspectors had to be bilingual, and requested that the Department of Education conduct all correspondence with the Montagu school committee in Dutch, since it was the language most spoken and understood by the committee, and because, ‘according to Section 137 of the South Africa Act, Dutch is one of the official languages of the country’.[121] The department replied that the practical application of the law was rather difficult, as not all civil servants could write in Dutch, to which the school committee replied that the situation had to be addressed as soon as possible.[122]
When it came to education, Malan’s concerns went beyond the language issue. At a time when poverty among Afrikaners was becoming more and more acute, his pastoral visits to his flock revealed the extent to which parents still ignored the 1905 law that made education compulsory and, to make matters worse, the limited extent to which the authorities enforced the legislation. Making compulsory education a reality in his district – and especially to the children of the town’s poor – became one of his main concerns.[123] The poor white problem was one of Malan’s most pressing priorities. During his studies in the Netherlands he had displayed sensitivity to the issue of poverty,[124] and his work as a minister made the poverty of his flock a daily reality which he witnessed at first hand as he entered the houses of his congregants. It made a deep and lasting impression on him, an impression inscribed even deeper when he later encountered some of the most deprived Afrikaners: those who lived beyond the borders of the Union.
These were also the years when mission work gained increasing prominence within the Dutch Reformed Church. Malan himself came from a family that held mission work in high regard – his sister Cinie worked as a missionary in Southern Rhodesia, and the family still treasured the memory of his deceased brother who, at the age of ten, had wanted to become a missionary. Malan displayed a formidable ability to inspire his congregation’s fundraising efforts, and motivated them to give generously to mission work. The parish of Montagu paid the salary of Rev. George Murray, a missionary in Mashonaland, and later also supported Rev. J.G. Strijdom, a missionary in the Sudan. By 1911, the Montagu parish was making the highest per capita contribution to mission work in the entire Cape Province. Malan linked these fundraising efforts to fundraising for the community’s own poor and thus, as the amount of money donated for mission work rose, so too did donations for poverty relief.[125]
When Malan took part in a large mission conference in Stellenbosch in April 1912, he was approached and interviewed by one of the Synod’s committees about the possibility of visiting Dutch Reformed congregations that were scattered throughout the two Rhodesias. Malan declared that he was able and willing to undertake the journey.[126] He would also write letters on his progress to De Kerkbode, the DRC’s periodical in the Cape Province. These letters took the form of a travel diary, and became popular reading – to the extent that they were also published by Ons Land and Onze Courant, Graaff-Reinet’s local newspaper. The letters were exceptionally well written, and made for such gripping reading that they were collated into a book that went through two prints.[127]
Malan left Montagu on 18 July 1912 in order to wander further north than he had ever been. He was accompanied by David Burger, one of the deacons from his church.[128] Together the two men would undertake what