DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
drawn by donkeys that determined their own pace and working hours, a horse that was kind enough to bring variety to a hundred-mile journey by practising every trot known to his kind, mosquitoes that devoured them in the open veld and, above all, the beauty of the African bush.[129] But as he left the town in the full darkness of the night, still glowing from the hearty and spontaneous farewell in the local hall, Malan wondered whether he was to return to Montagu in order to continue his work there, or to bid it farewell.[130] A mere three days before his departure, the church council of the parish of Graaff-Reinet had addressed a letter to him in which it called on him to join their minister, Rev. P.K. Albertyn, in his work.[131] The letter was accompanied by a personal letter from Albertyn in which he implored Malan to accept the offer, as one of their main reasons for calling him to the position was because
we in these parts need a strong man on the terrain of language and nationality … our nation desperately needs you in these parts! Dear brother come, COME and help us! If you want to be the preacher and the student, I would willingly do the greater part of the pastoral visits.[132]
Albertyn foresaw that Malan was headed for great things – he assumed that Malan would become a professor in the not too distant future, and was happy to make whatever sacrifices were necessary in order to acquire the services of a man with Malan’s talents.[133] To Malan, always overwhelmed by the pastoral burden he carried by himself while his heartfelt passions and interests stretched far wider than the borders of his district, this offer must have sounded like manna from heaven. True to his nature, however, it was not an offer at which he jumped. He would mull it over while he journeyed beyond the borders of his country. As he travelled to Bulawayo, he was followed by a letter from the Montagu church council, imploring him to remain with them – unless it was God’s will that he left for Graaff-Reinet.[134] Malan did not come to a speedy decision, but he did not keep his church council in suspense for too long. By mid-August, he sent them a telegram to inform them that he had decided to accept the call to Graaff-Reinet.[135]
God’s will was also foremost in Malan’s mind as he contemplated his own future and that of the continent he was traversing. While on the train to Bulawayo, he spread a newly updated map of Africa open in front of him. It was so different from the one he had studied as a schoolboy. Earlier cartographers had filled the blank spaces on the continent with meticulous drawings of lions, elephants, crocodiles and snakes. Now these fearsome creatures had been replaced by the names of mountains, rivers, lakes and towns that could only intimidate the schoolboy who had to memorise them. Nevertheless, Malan felt that he was heading into a dark continent where uncivilised millions could not tell their right hand from their left – and these people were now the responsibility of the European nations who had painted their colours on the map. To Malan, the map resembled a cake from which the various colonial powers had each taken a bite. They carried the salvation of Africa’s inhabitants on their shoulders, and would have to account to God on Judgment Day about what they had done for the land and the people for whom Christ had given his blood.[136]
These musings revealed Malan as a child of his time – a product of a Social Darwinist mind-set – who saw the world in terms of a hierarchy of civilisations. To Malan, racial differences were God’s creation, they were inherent, the natural order – and they were unquestioned. Racial conflict was the result of the natural order being disturbed, and could be avoided by maintaining the status quo. By virtue of their skin colour and European heritage, white Afrikaners belonged to Western civilisation and were therefore inherently superior to black Africans, whom Malan regarded as primitive. To him, Africans belonged to the heathen nations, who were only now fortunate enough to hear Christ’s message for the first time. But Malan also believed that Africans had a natural and deep-rooted respect for the bearers of civilisation, which was why they addressed white men as ‘baas’ or even ‘Inkosi’ – the same name they used to refer to God. Malan was convinced that Africans had even more reverence for the Afrikaners than for the English; for example, they recognised that Paul Kruger was a greater man than Cecil John Rhodes.[137] Within this context, the Afrikaners had a special, God-given calling. ‘The Afrikaner has power over the Kaffir [sic]. But truly, we would not have possessed this power if it had not been given to us from above. Has God not embedded it with a high and holy calling for our nation?’ Malan asked.[138]
Malan’s idealism about racial relations revealed a deep naïveté about the nature and dynamics of interracial relations. Up to that point in his life, the demographics of the era dictated that his interaction with people of other races was limited to the coloured community of the western Cape. It was a paternalistic relationship in which he was always in a position of power – first as a farmer’s son who knew coloureds only as servants, and later as the man who addressed alcoholism in the coloured community by appealing to his white congregation’s position of power. His knowledge of African people, in contrast, had to come from books and the tales told by his sister and friends who lived in the north. In a world far removed from the racial conflict of the interior Malan had been able to build his ideal. This ideal was confirmed as he travelled through the north, as the traveller is always insulated from the realities of Utopia’s everyday life.
So it happened that he became enamoured with the places he visited and the people he met. Everything and everyone was so unlike the city with its uniform people, who held uniform opinions and had uniform habits, who practised uniform occupations, wore uniform clothes and lived in uniform houses. Here, in the wilderness, there were diverse and unique personalities and unspoilt character. He was overwhelmed by the hospitality and generosity of the people who stood ready to welcome this man of the church with open arms. On his first night in Rhodesia, he slept in an old Voortrekker house, complete with antelope horns mounted on the walls and animal skins on the floor. He held a service outside under the trees and as the hymns rose into the African heaven, he felt as if he had been transported back to the days of the Voortrekker leaders Piet Retief and Andries Pretorius – a time when simplicity, hospitality and sincerity were still the foundation of the Afrikaners’ national character, or so he believed.[139]
As he travelled further into Rhodesia, Malan discovered some more worldly challenges to his elevated ideal of the Afrikaners. The communities in Rhodesia were thinly scattered and well out of reach of the church and its sanctifying community. Many had fallen prey to the ‘worldliness’ around them and stopped attending church altogether, while others attended the services of other denominations simply because it was too difficult to reach the nearest Dutch Reformed congregation, thereby becoming estranged from their own denomination. Malan was disconcerted by the amount of ‘mixed marriages’ between Afrikaans-speaking members of the Dutch Reformed Church and members of the English-speaking churches. He believed that this weakened the bond between congregant and church, and that children born to such a marriage had no bond to the church at all.[140]
It was the first time that Malan used the term ‘mixed marriages’ – and in a religious context. Interracial marriages, which later were to become known as ‘mixed marriages’ in apartheid jargon, between whites and coloureds also took place in Rhodesia – and Malan found it abhorrent. He was convinced that Afrikaners were not party to such unions – only English speakers ‘debased’ themselves in this way. Malan ascribed this to the Afrikaners’ inherent aversion to such a shameful lifestyle, but the few exceptions to the rule concerned him deeply, and constituted an omen that the Afrikaners were also threatened by the spectre of racial mixing which, up to that point, had been kept at bay by the church.[141]
Upon his arrival in Bulawayo, Malan was astonished by the city’s intricate racial hierarchy. It had a large Afrikaans-speaking coloured community who refused to mix with the Africans or to share a church with them. To this end, a separate coloured church was being constructed – which meant that their joining the ‘white’ church was not considered either. Coloured employers insisted that their African servants address them as ‘baas’ and ‘nooi’, or Mr and Mrs. ‘What an indescribably complicated social state of affairs we have!’[142] Malan exclaimed. To this was added the problem of white poverty, which also had an impact on interracial relations. Malan was shocked to discover that the DRC’s orphanage in Bulawayo was filled beyond capacity, and had got to the point where it had to refuse entry to about twenty children. As a result, three of these children were taken in by a coloured family. When the news of this situation reached the Dutch Reformed minister, ‘compassion