DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism. Lindie Koorts
its task if the very highest echelons of the state were infused with its ideals. For the first time, Malan began to envision a place for religion in politics:
With reference to the increasing secularisation of our nation … the time might come when there will be an independent Christian-national party in our Parliament that can give a guarantee to the nation that its holiest principles will under no circumstances be turned into tradable commodities.[153]
This vision was closer than he realised. It was still a few months before Hertzog’s dismissal from the Botha cabinet, and more than a year before the National Party would be founded – but deep in the back of Malan’s mind, a door that had been shut for many years began to open.
The last stop on Malan’s journey was a visit to Morgenster, the mission station where his sister had lived and worked since her marriage. One of the missionaries, Maria van Coller, recorded her impression of Malan in her diary: ‘Despite outward appearances, Dr Malan is cheerful, sympathetic (very). Can laugh heartily, reason heartily, especially with women.’[154]
Here, Malan also met mission-educated Africans. The experience strengthened his views on the racial hierarchy and his arguments about white poverty. There were many whites who complained that missionaries who educated Africans stirred up racial tensions, as educated Africans had no respect for whites. For this reason, they were opposed to Africans receiving any education whatsoever. Malan tried to make it clear to them that it was impossible to halt African education – it was inevitable that Africans would strive to elevate themselves:
But even if, for the sake of the majority of the white race, a hostile attitude towards the education of the Kaffir [sic] could be justified, with the natives undeniably striving higher, such opposition would in any case be powerless. You cannot hold the waters of the Zambezi back with your hand. You cannot place a damper on Mount Etna. The only remedy is more, and especially better, education for the white so that he can, also without violence, maintain his superiority. Knowledge is power.[155]
Malan did not feel threatened by, or hostile towards, African education – as always, he shifted the focus back to the Afrikaners. He took pains to assure his readers that the worrisome ‘cheekiness’ of which they complained was nowhere to be found at Morgenster. Instead, he was overwhelmed by the Africans’ courtesy. He tried to explain to his audience, in the best possible terms, that there was nothing negative about Africans learning English. Black missionaries who worked among their own people in their own language also needed spiritual nourishment – and since there were no such books in their own language, they had to be able to read English in order to fulfil such an important need. Speaking English enlarged an African’s earning potential, and improved the manner in which he was treated:
The English are, as a rule, no experts in learning foreign languages and therefore, if he knows English, he can earn more. And besides, if he can understand his master he can do what is expected of him, and then he does not have to be cursed or beaten or kicked, as so often happens.[156]
Like his comments on the children who lived in the minister’s bathroom, these words were written without any reflection – but they were written to an audience who could empathise with the situation. However, Malan made it clear that mere knowledge of the English language did not constitute an education, and was openly hostile to American and British missionaries who laced the gospel with a good dose of cultural imperialism. As far as he was concerned, the education that they provided was designed to tear the African away from his nature and his nation. It would destroy his self-respect and thereby also his character and, ultimately, his future. Self-respect was of crucial importance, as it was the only way to elevate a human being, regardless of colour. This was Malan’s true motivation behind his language activism:
The struggle for the language is a struggle for self-respect and character, and therefore also for the spiritual and material independence of the nation. The satisfactory solution to the language issue is … also the solution to the poor white and poor coloured issue.[157]
He was adamant that black and coloured children, like white children, should receive mother-tongue education during their first six years of schooling. Thereafter, the parents could choose the medium of further education. Such education, however, should not be aimed at producing African or coloured imitations of Englishmen,[158] but had to be tailored to each nation’s particular character and calling:
What has to be done is that the governments of Southern Africa should not, as has been the case up to this point, leave the education of the coloureds to the whims of the Mission societies, even less should they force a wrong and disastrous system on the Mission societies but, taking account of the coloured’s destiny as a labourer, determine a particular native-education policy and embody it in law.[159]
Malan’s views on Africans reflected the conventional wisdom of the time, but these conventions would become the staple of apartheid mythology and discourse more than thirty years later – almost as if they had passed from common knowledge to law of nature.
Malan was overwhelmed by the beauty of the region that he visited. He had seen the capitals of Europe, but remained unimpressed. Here in the African bush, however, he was enchanted. Its beauty was a revelation of God’s greatness. Every place was more beautiful than the next, from the Matopos Mountains to the fertile valleys and the majesty of the Victoria Falls. The Zambezi River overwhelmed him; it was a ‘regal river’, the ‘pride of Africa’. Its clear and living waters, with its ‘dark-green, bushy banks and shady islands present a scene so picturesque and so romantic as to rival any other in the world’.[160] The Zambezi stayed with Malan long after he left. He would return one day, with his bride.
Malan finally returned to Montagu at the beginning of November 1912. In his absence, his travel descriptions to De Kerkbode had evoked a stream of letters and articles. Malan and the Afrikaners of Rhodesia were at the forefront of public interest.[161]
He now had to take the next big step in his life: from Montagu to Graaff-Reinet. There were long discussions between him and his stepmother – her following him was not a foregone conclusion. Finally, however, she decided to accompany him to his new congregation, and so the entire Malan family joined in the preparations.[162]
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